But the issue sometimes arose, notably on the question of the
inheritance of the Hohenstaufen from Henry V; see infra, p.
inheritance of the Hohenstaufen from Henry V; see infra, p.
Cambridge Medieval History - v5 - Contest of Empire and the Papacy
Archbishop Anno had been
intriguing to get control of the government, and the plot that he contrived
was probably carried out with the connivance of Duke Godfrey. The
plot culminated at Kaiserswerth on the Rhine in April 1062, when Anno,
with the assistance of Duke Otto of Bavaria and Count Ekbert of
Brunswick, beguiled the young king on board a boat, took possession of
his person and of the royal insignia, hurried him by river to Cologne,
and there took charge of the government in his name. Agnes made
no attempt to recover her lost authority, and retired at once to the
life of religion to which indeed she had dedicated herself the previous
year.
For two years Anno retained control, and used his authority to
enrich his province and to advance his relatives'. He thought it politic,
indeed, when the court was in Saxony in 1063, to associate Archbishop
Adalbert in the government, and in a diploma of 27 June Adalbert is
described as patronus, Anno as magister of the young king. This was the
title under which he usually appears; the way in which he performed his
tutorship may be inferred from the charges, so constantly repeated after-
wards, of the vicious life of Henry's early years. Italian affairs in par-
ticular engrossed Anno's attention. In concert with Duke Godfrey he
had certainly decided for Alexander II and against Cadalus, but it was
important that the German government should formally have the decisive
voice. At the diet of Augsburg in 1062, and finally at the synod of
Mantua in 1064, Anno dictated a decision in favour of Alexander. But
in this he clearly over-reached himself, and the Papacy, which was
asserting its independence of imperial authority, did not accept the
position that a German archbishop could have the decisive voice in
a papal election. Both in 1068 and in 1070 Anno received a lesson at
Rome as to who was master and who servant. And his absence at Mantua
gave the opportunity to his rival in Germany. Anno returned to find
himself superseded by Adalbert.
For another two years the control rested with Adalbert, who had won
increased fame by a victory in Hungary which temporarily restored
Salomo. The regency, indeed, came to an end when in his fifteenth year
the young king came of age and girded on the sword at Worms on
29 March 1065. But the archbishop remained master, and made
imperial policy subservient to his own ambitions. He received lavish
grants from the royal domain in Saxony, and further impoverished the
1 On 14 July 1063 a royal charter granted one-ninth of the royal revenues to
the Archbishop of Cologne to be distributed among the monasteries of his province.
On 31 August 1063 Archbishop Engelhard of Magdeburg died, and Anno's brother
Werner (Wezil) was appointed to succeed him; he was only second to Anno's
nephew Burchard in instigating revolt in Saxony.
СВ. І.
8--2
## p. 116 (#162) ############################################
116
Short regency of Adalbert of Bremen
crown by a bountiful distribution of royal abbeys, mainly among bishops.
The coming-of-age of the king was to have been followed by his imperial
coronation at Rome, but this was prevented by Adalbert, who feared that
Godfrey and Anno would regain influence over the king in Italy. His
ambition brought about his sudden downfall. Anno was able to engineer
another coup d'état with his old associates, and to unite the leading
bishops and nobles on his side. At the diet of Tribur, in the beginning
of 1066, Henry was compelled to dismiss Adalbert. Though he had used
his authority for merely selfish aims, the principality he had erected
might have done great service to the cause of imperial unity in limiting
the independence of the Saxons, but it collapsed with his fall. The
Billungs, under Duke Ordulf's son Magnus, took advantage of his
humiliation to drive him from Bremen, and the collapse of the German
missions, which he had done so much to foster, among the Slavs and
Scandinavians both completed the ruin of his prestige and diminished the
sphere of imperial authority.
From the fall of Adalbert may be dated the commencement of
Henry IV's personal government. Anno made a bid for power once more,
but the murder of his nephew Conrad, whose appointment to the arch-
bishopric of Trèves he had just secured, combined with a serious illness
to force him into the background. Henceforward he devoted himself to
his province, using his remaining energies in the foundation of monasteries
and the reform of monastic discipline; rather more than a century later
his name was enrolled among the saints of the Church. There was no one
else ambitious or bold enough to succeed Adalbert. The lay princes could
only be roused to take an interest in imperial affairs when their indepen-
dence of action was threatened or when the actual safety of the kingdom
was at stake. A dangerous illness of the king caused alarm as to the
succession, and they united to bring about his marriage with Bertha of
Turin, to whom he had already been betrothed for ten years. The
imperial coronation was again contemplated, and indeed welcomed by the
Pope who was desiring imperial assistance against the Normans, but was
again prevented, this time by Duke Godfrey. Godfrey, alarmed at the
prospect of a revival of imperial authority in Italy, anticipated the
imperial expedition by himself marching against the Normans. His lack
of success compelled the Pope to come to terms with the Normans once
more. By Godfrey's action the German king lost all the advantage he
might have obtained from intervening as protector of the Papacy; the
attempt to interfere in the papal election had already been unsuccessful,
and imperial prestige in Italy was thus completely ruined when Henry
took over the reins of
power.
The regency of the kingdom, in the hands of a weak woman and of
ambitious metropolitans, had had disastrous results for the central
authority. Nor was there much change during the early years of Henry IV's
direct rule. The accounts of his enemies continually refer to the excesses
## p. 117 (#163) ############################################
The royal office
117
at any rate of his youth. The exaggeration of these accounts is evident,
but there is probably a substratum of truth, and the chief blame must fall
on Anno and Adalbert, if not on Agnes as well. The marriage with
Bertha, it was hoped, would prove a steadying influence. The king, how-
ever, was a reluctant, if not an unfaithful, husband, and visited his dislike
of the marriage upon his wife. In 1069 he even attempted to obtain a
divorce, but the Papacy intervened, and the papal legate, Peter Damian,
who never minced his words, compelled the king to receive back his wife.
This seems to have been the turning-point in the reign. From this time
he was a constant and an affectionate husband, and from this time he
clearly abandoned the path of pleasure and devoted himself assiduously
to the task of government.
The history of Germany under Henry IV and Henry V is in the main
a record of civil war, producing confusion and disorder throughout the
country and involving untold hardships and miseries for the lower classes.
The king was faced with formidable opposition even before the Papacy
joined the ranks of his foes. To realise this, as well as to note the changes
that resulted in Germany as a whole, it is necessary at the outset to survey
briefly the political and social structure of Germany. Difficult too as it is
to distinguish between the theoretical and the actual, some attempt must
be made to do so; particularly as the theoretical derives from the past,
and the past ideas, even in this period of change, still have their effect in
determining the relations of the various parts of the constitution to one
another. In the first place, the king held a unique position, obscured as
it often was by the actual weakness of the ruler. In theory he owed his
throne to election by the nobles, but in fact the hereditary principle was
dominant. Henry IV always insisted on his ius hereditarium against the
claims of Pope and nobles, and it was not until the death of Henry V
that the elective idea, asserted already in 1077 and 1081 at the elections of
the anti-kings Rudolf and Herman, won a victory over the hereditary.
The king alone held office dei gratia, and this was marked by the religious
ceremony of unction and coronation. He was supreme liege lord, com-
mander-in-chief, the source of justice, the enforcer of peace; these
attributes were symbolised by the royal insignia-crown, lance, sceptre,
sword, etc. — the possession of which was so important, as was evidenced
in the contest of Henry V with his father in 1105–6 and again in the
events which occurred after Henry V's death. Further, there were vested
in him the sovereign rights! —lordship of towns, offices, jurisdictions, mints,
tolls, markets, and the like all of which were coveted for their financial
| All that came under the heading of regalia. These were defined by Frederick
Barbarossa's lawyers at Roncaglia. Cf. also the definition of them in Paschal Il's
privilege to Henry V of 12 February 1111 (MGH, Constitutiones, Vol. 1, No. 90,
pp. 141 sq. ).
CH. III.
## p. 118 (#164) ############################################
118
“Princes” of the kingdom
advantages, and these could only lawfully be exercised after the grant of
a charter from the king.
Such a position carried with it potentialities towards absolutism, and
in the case of a strong ruler like Henry III the trend was in that direction.
But to this theoretical supremacy were attached definite limitations as
well. The king was subject to law, not above it, and as supreme judge
it was his duty to do justice ; the breach of this obligation, his opponents
declared, justified rebellion against him. In great issues affecting the
kingdom, or the person and property of a prince of the kingdom, the
king had to act by consent, to summon a diet of the princes and in effect
to be guided by their decision. These “princes ”—dukes, margraves,
counts, bishops, abbots of royal abbeys—owed their status originally to
their official position. With the office went land, and as the lay nobles
ceased in fact to be royal officials their landed position becomes the more
important. The period of transition is a long one, but the change
is especially rapid during the second half of the eleventh century;
naturally public recognition of the change lags behind the fact. One
result of this change from an official to a landed status was the decline
in rank of those nobles who held their fiefs from duke or bishop and not
directly from the king.
Among these lay princes, the dukes held a place apart, differing from
the counts not only in priority of rank. They had owed their position
originally not to appointment by the king but to election by the people
of the tribe, and this origin was still perpetuated in the claim of the
nobles of Bavaria to be consulted in the appointment of their duke. At
the same time the king was especially concerned to insist on the depen-
dence of these offices upon himself; he did not even feel himself obliged
to fill a vacancy in one of them within the year and a day that was
customary with other offices. Franconia during this period remained in
his hands, except that the Bishops of Würzburg were given ducal rights
in the eastern portion ; Swabia after Rudolf's deposition for treason in
1077 remained vacant for two years. On the other hand, in Saxony,
where the duke indeed had only a limited authority, the hereditary right
of the Billung family was not contested.
Of the counts (grafen), the margraves (markgrafen), important
especially for the defence of the eastern frontiers, retained exceptional
judicial and military privileges, and in some cases maintained their inde-
pendence even of the dukes. The counts-palatine (pfalzgrafen) too
retained their old position. They were four in number, one for each
of the tribes that formed the original stem-duchies—Franks, Swabians,
Bavarians, Saxons-and they acted in theory as representatives of royal
justice within the duchies and as the administrators of the royal domains.
Of these the Count-Palatine of the Franks, who had his seat at Aix-la-
Chapelle and was known now usually as Count-Palatine of Lorraine, though
later as Count-Palatine of the Rhine, was the most important. There was
## p. 119 (#165) ############################################
The countryside and the towns
119
no duke in Franconia to usurp his authority; he was, beneath the king,
supreme judge, and commonly acted during the king's absence as his
representative. But there was, on the other hand, a great change in the
position of the ordinary counts. There were few whose authority extended
over the whole of a gau or pagus, as had formerly been usual; of these
few, some, whose control extended over more than one gau, came to be
distinguished in the twelfth century, for example the Count of Thuringia,
by the new title of landgrave (landgraf). In most cases the county had
been divided up, often by division among sons, into several districts each
of them under a count, often of quite small extent. The family residence,
soon converted into a castle, gave the count his name, and, whatever
other dignities the counts might acquire, they never lost their connexion
with the duchy of their origin'. Their political importance, therefore,
varied in proportion to the extent of their lands, and in fact there
was little distinction between those who had merely the title of count
and ordinary freemen with free holdings.
The increasing importance of landed-proprietorship in the status of
nobles had its effect in tending to depress the majority of ordinary free-
men to a half-free status. In the country districts there was little real
distinction between the half-freeman and the freeman who held from
a noble in return for services in work and kind, and who had lost the right
of bearing arms. On the other hand, the rise of the class of ministeriales,
especially when they held land by military tenure, forming as they did an
essential element in the domain of every lord, lay and ecclesiastical, gave
an opening to freemen by joining this class to increase their opportunities
at the expense of a lowering of status. It was a particular feature of the
period. Conrad II had especially encouraged the formation of this class
of royal servant, and on it his successors continued to rely.
As in the countryside, so in the towns there was a tendency to
1
obliterate the distinction between the free and half-free classes, though
in the towns this took the form of a levelling-up rather than a levelling-
down. The “ free air” of the towns, the encouragement to settlers, the
development of trade especially in the Rhine district, as well as the pro-
tection of the town walls, caused a considerable increase in their
population ; they acquired both constitutional and economic importance.
Some towns were royal towns, but all were under a lord, usually a bishop,
and it was to the bishops that the trading element in the town owed its
first privileges. It was to the bishop's interest to obtain for his town from
the king special rights such as the holding of a market and exemption
from tolls in royal towns, and all charters to towns till the latter part of
the eleventh century are granted through the bishops. The first sign of
a change is in the charter of Henry IV to Worins in 1074. The privileges
1 The original home of the Welfs was Altdorf in Swabia. So it was to a diet of
Swabian nobles that Henry the Lion, Duke of Bavaria and Saxony, was first sum-
moned to answer the charges against him.
CH. INI.
## p. 120 (#166) ############################################
120
Alliance of the towns with the king
granted are of the usual nature-exemption from toll in certain (in this
case, specified) royal towns. But for the first time the charter is given
not to the bishop but to the townsmen, and they are described, for the
first time, not as “negotiatores” or “mercatores” but as “ cives. ” The
circumstances attending the grant of this charter', including the welcome
to the king, the well-equipped military support given to him, the pay-
ment by the community of a financial aid, the reception and preservation
of the charter, all imply a town-organisation of a more advanced nature
than previous charters would have led us to expect. The Jews played an
important part in these early trading communities, and they are specially
mentioned in the charter to Worms; so too the Bishop of Spires in 1086
for the advantage of his town was careful, as he states, to plant a colony
of Jews and to give them special privileges, which were confirmed by the
king in 1090? If Worms was the first town which gives evidence of an
organisation independent of its bishop, it was soon followed by others
where the bishop as at Worms was hostile to the king. The rising of the
people at Cologne against Archbishop Anno in 1074, the expulsion of
Archbishop Siegfried and the anti-king Rudolf from Mayence in 1077,
the expulsion of Bishop Adalbert from Würzburg the same year and the
defence of the city against Rudolf, and, above all, the devotion of the
Rhine towns to Henry IV during his last years, shew clearly a wide
extension of this movements.
The townsmen, then, were coming into more direct relations with the
king. As far as the nobles were concerned, the change is rather in the
contrary direction. The duty of fidelity to the head of the State was still
a general conception; even ecclesiastics who scrupled to take an oath of
liege-fealty to the king did not disavow this obligation. The oath of
fealty was not taken by the people as a whole, but only by the princes of
the kingdom, whether to the king or to his representative, and they took
the oath in virtue of their official capacity and as representing the whole
community. It mattered not whether they held fiefs from the king
or from another noble; it was not the fief but the office, through which
the royal authority had been, and in theory still was, asserted, that
created the responsibility on behalf of the people within their spheres of
control. So the relation of the king with the nobles was not yet strictly
1 See H. Wibel, Die ältesten deutschen Stadtprivilegien (Archiv für Urkunden-
forschung, 1918, Vol. vi, pp. 234 sqq. ).
2 Altmann and Bernheim, Ausgewählte Urkunden zur Erläuterung der Verfass-
ungsgeschichte Deutschlands, pp. 158 sqq.
3 In Flanders, Cambrai set the example by founding a commune in 1077. Here
the movement was also directed against the bishop, but in this case it was, as at
Milan, allied with the Church reform movement. See Pirenne, Histoire de Belgique,
Vol. 1, pp. 192 sq. In Germany proper the movement was definitely royalist in
character.
4 Cf. Waitz, Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte, Vol. vi (ed. Seeliger), pp. 487 sqq. ;
G. von Below, Der deutsche Staat des Mittelalters, Vol. 1, pp. 232 sqq.
## p. 121 (#167) ############################################
The growth of feudalism
121
a feudal relation. It was not to become so until the end of the twelfth
century, when the status of prince was confined to those nobles who held
directly from the king. The feudum was not yet the all-important thing,
at any rate in theory and law. There were many fiefs without military
service, some without service at all; there were vassals too without fiefs.
But these became, more and more, exceptional cases, and rapidly the
change from the official to the feudal status was being accomplished
in practice. Always the grant of a fief had accompanied the bestowal of
an office; and, as the fiefs had become hereditary, so too had the offices.
In the majority of cases, offices and fiefs had become identified, and the
official origin was preserved in little more than the title'.
In fact, the great nobles were no longer royal officials but territorial
magnates with alods and fiefs to which their children (sons if possible,
but failing them daughters) succeeded, and their aim was to loosen the
tie which bound them to the sovereign and to create an independent
position for themselves. Two circumstances combined to assist them in
this ambition-the rise of the class of ministeriales and the continual
civil war. The military fief became the normal type, and every important
noble had his band of armed and mounted retainers. He soon had his
castle, or castles, as well, built in defiance of the king; for castle-building
was a sovereign right, which only the stress of civil war enabled the noble
to usurp. Medieval society was based especially on custom and precedent.
If the central authority was weak, the nobles began at once to encroach ;
usurpations were in a few years translated into rights, and it was difficult,
if not impossible, for the king to recover what had been lost. Moreover,
while the counts had ceased to be royal officers, the system of maintain-
ing the royal control by missi had long disappeared. This made a fixed
seat of government impossible. The king himself had to progress cease-
lessly throughout his dominions to enforce his will on the local magnates.
There was no system of itinerant justices, and, except in the royal
domains, no official class to relieve the direct burden of the central
government. So there was no permanent machinery which could function
normally ; everything depended on the personality of the ruler.
But from the point of view of the king there were compensations.
Each noble played for his own hand, and there was rarely any unity of
purpose among them. It was from the dukes that the king had most to
fear, and with regard to them he started with many advantages. They
had no claim to divine appointment, no royal majesty or insignia, no
sovereign rights but such as he had granted. The nobles in each duchy
held office in theory from the king, to whom, and not to the duke, they
1 This is true even of the counts-palatine, with the exception of the Count-
Palatine of the Rhine who still retained much of his old official position; for instance,
when Henry IV went to Italy in 1090, the Count-Palatine of the Rhine was appointed
co-regent of the German kingdom with Duke Frederick of Swabia. So too when
Henry V went to Italy in 1116.
CH. III.
## p. 122 (#168) ############################################
122
The royal domain
had sworn liege-fealty', and they were far more jealous of the assertion
of the ducal, than of the royal, authority over them. Moreover the duke
by virtue of his office acquired little, if any, domain in his duchy? Where
his family possessions lay, there alone, in most cases, was he really power-
ful. Agnes in her appointments had at any rate shewn herself wise
in this, that she had appointed as dukes nobles whose hereditary lands
lay outside the duchies to which they were appointed. Berthold of Zäh-
ringen, the most powerful noble in Swabia, was a nonentity as Duke in
Carinthia; Otto of Nordheim, one of the leading nobles in Saxony, could
not maintain himself in his duchy of Bavaria when he revolted in 1070.
In other words, the noble depended on his domain, and this is equally
true of the king. There was no direct taxation' as in England, and the
king had in a very real sense to live of his own. The royal domain* was
scattered throughout the kingdom ; in each duchy there were royal
estates and royal palaces, though the largest and richest portion lay in
eastern Saxony, stretching from Goslar to Merseburg, the inheritance of
the Saxon kings. In the first place, it supplied the needs of the royal
household, and this, as well as the maintenance of royal authority, made
necessary the continual journeyings of the king and his court. The
domain, too, provided a means whereby the king could make grants of
lands whether in reward for faithful service or, more usually, in donations
to bishoprics and abbeys. And, finally, in these manors, as also in the
manors of nobles and ecclesiastics, there emerged out of the mass of half-
free tenants a class of men who played an important and peculiar rôle in
Germany. These royal ministeriales were employed by the king in adminis-
trative posts, as well as in the management of his estates; they were
armed and mounted, and provided an important part of the king's army.
On them he began to rely, therefore, to counteract the growing indepen-
dence of the greater nobles, both in his Council and on military expeditions.
In return, they were granted fiefs, and rose often to knightly ranks,
1 A duke or other noble might obtain an oath of fealty from his vassals, but
there should, by right, be in it a saving clause, preserving the superior fealty due
to the king.
2 Cf. Waitz, op. cit. Vol. vii, pp. 133 sq.
3 Unless the bede comes under this category. But all nobiles were exempt from
this, and other exemptions had been granted by charter.
4 Cf. M. Stimming, Das deutsche Königsgut im 11 und 12 Jahrhundert; B. Heusinger,
Servitium regis in der deutschen Kaiserzeit (Archiv für Urkundenforschung, Vol. viii,
pp. 26–159). Between the royal and the private domain of the king as a rule little
distinction was made.
But the issue sometimes arose, notably on the question of the
inheritance of the Hohenstaufen from Henry V; see infra, p. 336.
6 Eventually this had its result in the rise of a number of new noble families to
take the place in German history of older ones that had become extinct. One leading
cause for the disappearance of old noble families—the ecclesiastical career (with its
enforced celibacy) which in the abbeys especially had been almost a prerogative of the
nobility-is very clearly demonstrated by A. Schulte, Der Adel und die deutsche Kirche
im Mittelalter (Kirchenrechtliche Abhandlungen, ed. U. Stutz, LXIII, LXIV).
## p. 123 (#169) ############################################
Alliance with the episcopate
123
sometimes even to episcopal. The same process was occurring in the
domains of the nobles. The ecclesiastical nobles had probably set the
example? , which was followed by the secular nobility and by the king.
As it provided him with the possibility of making himself self-sufficient and
so independent of princely support, it provided them too with a means of
furthering their independence of him.
The royal domain, then, plays a central part in the policy of the
Salian kings, as it was to do with the Capetians in France. During the
regency it had been grievously depleted. But there were many ways
in which it could be increased and in which gaps could be made good-
by inheritance, by exchange, by conquest, by escheat. There were also
other sources of royal revenue, notably the sovereign rights, of justice
and the like, which were assumed by the king wherever he might happen
to be and which were frequently lucrative. From the towns too, as well
as from the domain, he could levy contributions? , and, as has been indicated
above, could look to them for valuable support especially in time of war.
The loyalty and devotion of the Rhine towns is most marked, particularly
when the episcopal lord of the town was disloyal. But only in a few cases
was the bishop himself among the king's enemies, and so a direct alliance
with the townsmen, which might have been as useful to the German
monarchy as it was to the French, occurred only in isolated cases. It was
not to the king's interest to make the bishops antagonistic.
For the alliance with the episcopate had, from the time of Otto I,
been a cardinal factor in the policy of the king of Germany. The political
importance of the ecclesiastical nobles was evident: on them, as well as on
ministeriales and lesser nobles, the king relied both for his Council and
government and for his military expeditions. They could never make
their offices and fiefs hereditary, and they could be depended upon as
a counterpoise to the dangerous power of the dukes; while in the con-
tinual civil wars of this period the summons to the host was not of much
avail, nor could it be made effective without the consent of the nobles.
But they were equally valuable to the king from the economic point of
view. In the first place, the royal abbeys made annual payments in kind,
which began to be converted into money payments or at any rate to
1 Compare with this the prominent part played by ecclesiastics in the drift
towards feudalism in Saxon England (supra, Vol. 11, pp. 375–7). The great differ-
ence is that in Germany it was an unfree class to whom these military fiefs were
granted.
? The tax known as “bede” (petitio, precaria)originally, as its name shews, a
voluntary contribution. On the nature of this tax see G. von Below, op. cit.
pp. 85 sqq. , and generally for the taxation of towns, K. Zeumer, Die deutsche
Städtesteuern (Staats- und socialwissenschaftliche Forschungen, ed. G. Schmoller,
Vol. 1, No. 2).
3 The lay nobles would take part only if they happened to be present, or if they
were summoned to diets on important issues of state or to judge one of their
number. The great offices of the household were held by dukes, but had become
merely titular and ceremonial.
CB. II.
## p. 124 (#170) ############################################
124
The complication of Italy
be reckoned on a monetary basis early in the twelfth century; from these
abbeys, too, when he visited them, he could claim hospitality. There
is no evidence that the episcopal services included fixed payments in kind,
but the obligation seems to have been imposed upon the bishops of main-
taining the king and his retinue during the king's stay in their towns,
whether or no these contained a royal palace. It is at any rate noticeable
how prominently they figure in the itineraries of the Salian kings! . And
on the death of a bishop the king exercised his rights of regalia and took
possession of the revenues of the see during the vacancy, and sometimes
of spolia as well, seizing the personal effects of the dead bishop. These
great ecclesiastical offices were regarded by the king as very distinctly
part of his personal possessions? . His lavish grants to them of territory
were therefore not lost to the Crown, and the ecclesiastical as distinct from
the lay nobles remained essentially royal officials. Royal control of
appointments to bishoprics and abbeys was a reality and at the same
time a necessity; and the royal chapel, which was a natural centre for the
training of ecclesiastics, was also a stepping-stone to advancement. From
among the royal chaplains, trained under the king's eye and experienced
often in the work of his chancery, appointments were commonly made to
vacant bishoprics.
This was bound to lead sooner or later to conflict with the reformed
Papacy, though the conflict might have been delayed and would certainly
have been less fatal in result had not this control of the German king in
ecclesiastical matters been extended to Italy and to the Papacy itself. To
the crown of Germany were attached the crowns of Burgundy and Italy,
and finally the imperial crown as well. These additional dignities brought
little real advantage to the German king. In Burgundy, the royal
authority was slight and rarely asserted; it was, however, of some impor-
tance to the Emperor that his suzerainty and not that of the French king
should be recognised. In Italy, the royal domain and episcopal support
were sometimes of definite advantage, but usually the interest of the king
in his Italian kingdom prejudiced his position in Germany. And the
imperial title was a similar handicap'. It magnified the importance of his
office and gave him increased prestige, but it added enormously to his
responsibilities and prevented him from concentrating on his real interests.
The imperial title added nothing to the royal authority in Germany. In
a sense it added nothing in Italy either. The title “ rex Romanorum
was used before imperial coronation occasionally by Henry IV, frequently
>
1 B. Heusinger, op. cit. Cf, especially, p. 70, “Für das 11 Jahrhundert ergibt
sich also, dass das deutsche Königtum in stärkstem Masse, vielleicht überwiegend
auf den bischöflichen Servitien ruhte. ”
2 Cf. U. Stutz, Die Eigenkirche als Element des mittelalterlich-germanischen
Kirchenrechtes, pp. 32 sqq.
3 See, for a discussion of this question, and a consideration of opposing views on
the revival of the Empire by Otto I, G. von Below, op. cit. pp. 353-369.
## p. 125 (#171) ############################################
Henry IV's policy
125
by Henry V, and as Emperor-designate the king acted with full imperial
authority in Italy and with regard to the Pope. But the imperial crown
was the right of the German king, to his mind an essential right, and it
was by virtue of this right that he claimed the control from which
the Papacy was now beginning to free itself, with results fatal to the
monarchy in Germany.
The task that Henry IV set before himself was to undo the damage
that had been wrought during his minority and to restore imperial
authority both in Germany and Italy; he was determined to be master
as his father had been at the height of his power. In Germany, he had
first of all to build up the royal domain, to force the nobles to a direct
subordination to his will, and to break down the independence of Saxony.
In Italy, where imperial authority was practically ignored, there were the
special problems of Tuscany', the Normans, and above all the Papacy.
But, determined as he was to revive the authority over the Papacy that
his father had exercised from 1046 until his death, the question of Ger-
many had to come first, and so for a time he was willing to make
concessions. Control of the Church in Germany and Italy was so essential
to him that he could not be in sympathy with the reform policy of the
Papacy. This was now beginning to be directed not only against the
simony and secularisation that resulted from lay control but against the
lay control itself; and it was a definite feature of that policy to demand
from the higher clergy an obedience to papal authority which could not
fail to be prejudicial to the royal interests. But at present the king was
anxious to keep on good terms with the Pope; as he was obedient to his
orders on the divorce question in 1069, so in 1070 he allowed Charles,
whom he had invested as Bishop of Constance, to be deposed for simony,
and in 1072 Abbot Robert of Reichenau to suffer the same penalty? The
Papacy was given no indication of his real intentions.
His compliant attitude to the Papacy on this question was in accor-
dance with his general policy. He worked patiently for his ends, and
strove to do the task first that lay within his power, careful to separate
his adversaries and to placate one while he was overcoming the other.
Adversity always displayed him at his best. Again and again he revived
his fortunes, shewing a speedy recognition and making a wise use of the
1 The death of Duke Godfrey in 1069 removed one great obstacle from Henry's
path. His son Godfrey (Gibbosus) succeeded to the duchy of Lower Lorraine and
was already the husband of Countess Matilda. But he quarrelled with his wife and
confined his interests to his German duchy, where he remained loyal to Henry.
2 In these cases, as also in the case of Bishop Herman of Bamberg in 1075,
when his attitude to the Pope was dictated by the same motives, he protested his
own innocence of simony in the appointments. There is no evidence against him.
Probably the offenders had paid money to court-favourites, whose influence had
secured the appointinents.
CH. III.
## p. 126 (#172) ############################################
126
His character
possibilities at his disposal, dividing his enemies by concessions and by
stimulating causes of ill-feeling between them, biding his time patiently
till his opportunity came. Nor was he prevented from following out his
plan by considerations of personal humiliation. Not only at Canossa but
also in 1073 a personal humiliation was his surest road to success, and he
took it. He was not the typically direct and brutal knight of the Middle
Ages, and he was not usually successful in battle; he generally avoided a
pitched battle, in contrast to his rival Rudolf, to whom he really owed
his one great victory in the field-over the Saxons in 1075. He recog-
nised his limitations. His armies were rarely as well-equipped as those of
his opponents: they were often composed of ministeriales, royal and
episcopal, and of levies from the towns, which were not a match for the
Saxon knights; also he had more to lose than they had by staking all on
the result of a battle. In an unstatesmanlike generation he shewed many
statesmanly qualities, which was the more remarkable in that he had
received so little training in the duties of his office. His enemies, when
they comment with horror on his guile and cunning, are really testifying
to these qualities; for it was natural that they should give an evil name
to the ability which so often overcame their perfidy and disloyalty.
But, as his greatness is best seen in adversity, so in the moment of
victory were the weaknesses of his character revealed. He allowed himself
to be overcome by the arrogance of success both in 1072 and 1075.
Having decisively defeated his Saxon enemies, he made a vindictive use
of his victory, when clemency was the right policy; by his arbitrary
actions he alienated the other nobles whose assistance had ensured his
success, and they formed a coalition against him to anticipate his too
clearly revealed intentions against themselves. His victory gave him so
false a sense of security that on both occasions he chose the moment to
throw down the challenge to the Pope, entirely miscalculating both the
reality of his position in Germany and the strength of his new adversary.
He profited by his lesson later, but never again did he have the same
opportunity. He certainly shewed a clear sense of the strength of the
papal position in the years 1077–1080, and also of the means by which this
strength could be discounted. On the whole he was a good judge of the
men with whom he had to deal. It may appear short-sighted in him to
pardon so readily a man like Otto of Nordheim and to advance him to a
position of trust in 1075; but he was faced with treachery on every side
and he had to attempt to bind men to his cause by their interests. At
any rate he was successful with Otto's sons, and also even in detaching
Duke Magnus himself from the party of Rudolf. The only occasions
when he was really overwhelmed were when the treachery came from his
own sons, and there is no more moving document in this period than his
letter to King Philip of France, in which he relates the calculated perfidy
and perjury of his son Henry V. For he was naturally of an affectionate and
sympathetic disposition, a devoted father and a kind master, especially to
## p. 127 (#173) ############################################
The peculiar position of Saxony
127
the non-noble classes throughout his dominions. Even if we discount the
glowing panegyric of the author of the Vita Heinrici IV, we cannot ignore
the passionate devotion of the people of Liège, who, scorning the wrath
of all the powers of Church and kingdom, refused to dissemble their grief
or to refrain from the last tokens of respect over the body of their beloved
master. That tribute was repeated again at Spires; and, though for five
years his body was denied the rites of Christian burial, few kings have
had so genuine a mourning.
The reconciliation of Henry with his wife in 1069 marked a definite
stage in his career. From this time he devoted himself wholeheartedly
to affairs of state, and his policy at once began to take shape. The par-
ticularist tendencies of the German princes in general had to be overcome,
but the extreme form which particularism took was to be found in Saxony.
Saxony, ever since it had ceased to supply the king to Germany, had
held itself aloof and independent. In various ways was its distinctive
character marked. It held proudly to its own more primitive customs,
which it had translated into rights, and the maintenance of which had
been guaranteed to it by Conrad II and Henry III; especially was the
royal system of justice, with inquest and oath-takers, foreign to Saxon
custom', which stood as a permanent bar to unity of government. These
customary rights formed a link between the classes in Saxony, giving it
a homogeneity lacking in the other duchies. Allodial lands were more ex-
tensive here than elsewhere, and the nobles accordingly more independent.
Among them the duke took the leading place, but only in precedence.
Margraves and counts did not recognise his authority over them; on the
other hand, the ducal office was hereditary in the Billung family, and so
it was not at the free disposal of the king. Finally, beneath the nobles,
the proportion of free men was exceptionally high; they were trained to
arms, and, though they usually fought on foot, were formidable soldiers
in an age when cavalry was regarded as the decisive arm. It was a bold
policy for a young king to attempt, at the beginning of his reign, to
grasp the Saxon nettle. It was essential that he should obtain assistance
from the other duchies, and this he might expect. The Saxons looked
with contempt on the other German peoples, who in their turn were
jealous of the Saxons and irritated by their aloofness. The ill-feeling
between the two was always a factor on which he could count.
But the determination of Henry IV to attack the problem of Saxony
had a further and more immediate cause. The effects of his minority had
not merely been to give the opportunity to particularism, here as else-
where. It had been disastrous also to the royal domain, that essential
basis of royal power, which had suffered from neglect or deliberate
squandering at the hands of the unscrupulous archbishops who had con-
trolled the government for their own advantage. The first task of the
· K. Hampe, Deutsche Kaisergeschichte im Zeitalter der Salier und Staufen, p. 40.
CH. III.
## p. 128 (#174) ############################################
128
The importance of the royal domain in Saxony
young king was to concentrate on the domain, to fill up gaps and make
compact areas where possible, to take effective measures to recover services
that had been lost, and finally to protect it against further usurpation.
It was natural that his attention should first be directed to eastern Saxony
and Thuringia, where lay by far the richest portion of the domain', and
which afforded the best opportunity for creating a compact royal territory.
It was here, moreover, that the domain had suffered most; it had not
only been wasted by grants, but also services had been withheld, minis-
teriales had usurped their freedom', and probably neighbouring lords had
made encroachments. One of Henry's first measures was the building of
castles on an extensive scale in this region, designed primarily for the
recovery and maintenance of the domain and the services attached to it,
and having at the same time the strategic advantage of being situated so
as to divide the duchy and in case of revolt to prevent a coalition of
Saxon princes. This was a menace to the independent spirit of the Saxons,
and he irritated them still more by appointing royal ministeriales from
South Germanyó as officials in the domain-lands and as garrisons in the
castles. There were clearly grievances on both sides, which only made the
subsequent contest the more bitter. The Saxons had infringed royal
rights by neglect and usurpation. The South German ministeriales in
their turn shewed little respect for Saxon customs, and acted in an op-
pressive manner in making requisitions and forcing labour. And probably
the Saxons were right in their suspicion that the king would take every
1 This is evident from the Indiculus curiarum ad mensam regis Romanorum perti-
nentium (best text in Neu. Arch. Vol. xli, pp. 572–4). A comprehensive survey of
this has been made by B. Heusinger, Servitium regis (Archiv für Urkundenforschung,
Vol. viii, pp. 26–159). M. Stimming, Das deutsche Königsgut, pp. 86 sqq. , has elabo-
rated the central importance of the domain on Henry's policy in Saxony and on the
subsequent Saxon revolt. J. Haller, Das Verzeichnis der Tafelgüter des römischen
Königs (Neu. Arch. Vol. xlv, pp. 48–81), rejects the accepted date (1065) of the Indi-
culus and dates it 1185. His arguments seem to me to be untenable, and to raise
more difficulties than they solve. I am convinced that it was drawn up at any rate
for one of the last two Salian kings, and that it is a rough draft prepared at a time
when an imperial coronation was anticipated. Anyhow, the statement in the text
is not really affected by the date of the Indiculus.
? Lampert of Hersfeld, sub 1066, ed. Holder-Egger, SGUS, p.
100.
3 Bruno, c. 16, ed. Wattenbach, SGUS, p. 11. Cf. Stimming, op. cit. p. 93.
4 Cf. Stimming (op. cit. pp. 98 sqq. ), who supports the view that the policy was
originated by Archbishop Adalbert of Bremen. He also points out the contiguity
of the chief leaders of the Saxon revolt, bishops as well as lay nobles, to the royal
domain.
• The Saxons especially complained of the low-born “Swabians” employed by
the king on official and garrison duty in their duchy.
intriguing to get control of the government, and the plot that he contrived
was probably carried out with the connivance of Duke Godfrey. The
plot culminated at Kaiserswerth on the Rhine in April 1062, when Anno,
with the assistance of Duke Otto of Bavaria and Count Ekbert of
Brunswick, beguiled the young king on board a boat, took possession of
his person and of the royal insignia, hurried him by river to Cologne,
and there took charge of the government in his name. Agnes made
no attempt to recover her lost authority, and retired at once to the
life of religion to which indeed she had dedicated herself the previous
year.
For two years Anno retained control, and used his authority to
enrich his province and to advance his relatives'. He thought it politic,
indeed, when the court was in Saxony in 1063, to associate Archbishop
Adalbert in the government, and in a diploma of 27 June Adalbert is
described as patronus, Anno as magister of the young king. This was the
title under which he usually appears; the way in which he performed his
tutorship may be inferred from the charges, so constantly repeated after-
wards, of the vicious life of Henry's early years. Italian affairs in par-
ticular engrossed Anno's attention. In concert with Duke Godfrey he
had certainly decided for Alexander II and against Cadalus, but it was
important that the German government should formally have the decisive
voice. At the diet of Augsburg in 1062, and finally at the synod of
Mantua in 1064, Anno dictated a decision in favour of Alexander. But
in this he clearly over-reached himself, and the Papacy, which was
asserting its independence of imperial authority, did not accept the
position that a German archbishop could have the decisive voice in
a papal election. Both in 1068 and in 1070 Anno received a lesson at
Rome as to who was master and who servant. And his absence at Mantua
gave the opportunity to his rival in Germany. Anno returned to find
himself superseded by Adalbert.
For another two years the control rested with Adalbert, who had won
increased fame by a victory in Hungary which temporarily restored
Salomo. The regency, indeed, came to an end when in his fifteenth year
the young king came of age and girded on the sword at Worms on
29 March 1065. But the archbishop remained master, and made
imperial policy subservient to his own ambitions. He received lavish
grants from the royal domain in Saxony, and further impoverished the
1 On 14 July 1063 a royal charter granted one-ninth of the royal revenues to
the Archbishop of Cologne to be distributed among the monasteries of his province.
On 31 August 1063 Archbishop Engelhard of Magdeburg died, and Anno's brother
Werner (Wezil) was appointed to succeed him; he was only second to Anno's
nephew Burchard in instigating revolt in Saxony.
СВ. І.
8--2
## p. 116 (#162) ############################################
116
Short regency of Adalbert of Bremen
crown by a bountiful distribution of royal abbeys, mainly among bishops.
The coming-of-age of the king was to have been followed by his imperial
coronation at Rome, but this was prevented by Adalbert, who feared that
Godfrey and Anno would regain influence over the king in Italy. His
ambition brought about his sudden downfall. Anno was able to engineer
another coup d'état with his old associates, and to unite the leading
bishops and nobles on his side. At the diet of Tribur, in the beginning
of 1066, Henry was compelled to dismiss Adalbert. Though he had used
his authority for merely selfish aims, the principality he had erected
might have done great service to the cause of imperial unity in limiting
the independence of the Saxons, but it collapsed with his fall. The
Billungs, under Duke Ordulf's son Magnus, took advantage of his
humiliation to drive him from Bremen, and the collapse of the German
missions, which he had done so much to foster, among the Slavs and
Scandinavians both completed the ruin of his prestige and diminished the
sphere of imperial authority.
From the fall of Adalbert may be dated the commencement of
Henry IV's personal government. Anno made a bid for power once more,
but the murder of his nephew Conrad, whose appointment to the arch-
bishopric of Trèves he had just secured, combined with a serious illness
to force him into the background. Henceforward he devoted himself to
his province, using his remaining energies in the foundation of monasteries
and the reform of monastic discipline; rather more than a century later
his name was enrolled among the saints of the Church. There was no one
else ambitious or bold enough to succeed Adalbert. The lay princes could
only be roused to take an interest in imperial affairs when their indepen-
dence of action was threatened or when the actual safety of the kingdom
was at stake. A dangerous illness of the king caused alarm as to the
succession, and they united to bring about his marriage with Bertha of
Turin, to whom he had already been betrothed for ten years. The
imperial coronation was again contemplated, and indeed welcomed by the
Pope who was desiring imperial assistance against the Normans, but was
again prevented, this time by Duke Godfrey. Godfrey, alarmed at the
prospect of a revival of imperial authority in Italy, anticipated the
imperial expedition by himself marching against the Normans. His lack
of success compelled the Pope to come to terms with the Normans once
more. By Godfrey's action the German king lost all the advantage he
might have obtained from intervening as protector of the Papacy; the
attempt to interfere in the papal election had already been unsuccessful,
and imperial prestige in Italy was thus completely ruined when Henry
took over the reins of
power.
The regency of the kingdom, in the hands of a weak woman and of
ambitious metropolitans, had had disastrous results for the central
authority. Nor was there much change during the early years of Henry IV's
direct rule. The accounts of his enemies continually refer to the excesses
## p. 117 (#163) ############################################
The royal office
117
at any rate of his youth. The exaggeration of these accounts is evident,
but there is probably a substratum of truth, and the chief blame must fall
on Anno and Adalbert, if not on Agnes as well. The marriage with
Bertha, it was hoped, would prove a steadying influence. The king, how-
ever, was a reluctant, if not an unfaithful, husband, and visited his dislike
of the marriage upon his wife. In 1069 he even attempted to obtain a
divorce, but the Papacy intervened, and the papal legate, Peter Damian,
who never minced his words, compelled the king to receive back his wife.
This seems to have been the turning-point in the reign. From this time
he was a constant and an affectionate husband, and from this time he
clearly abandoned the path of pleasure and devoted himself assiduously
to the task of government.
The history of Germany under Henry IV and Henry V is in the main
a record of civil war, producing confusion and disorder throughout the
country and involving untold hardships and miseries for the lower classes.
The king was faced with formidable opposition even before the Papacy
joined the ranks of his foes. To realise this, as well as to note the changes
that resulted in Germany as a whole, it is necessary at the outset to survey
briefly the political and social structure of Germany. Difficult too as it is
to distinguish between the theoretical and the actual, some attempt must
be made to do so; particularly as the theoretical derives from the past,
and the past ideas, even in this period of change, still have their effect in
determining the relations of the various parts of the constitution to one
another. In the first place, the king held a unique position, obscured as
it often was by the actual weakness of the ruler. In theory he owed his
throne to election by the nobles, but in fact the hereditary principle was
dominant. Henry IV always insisted on his ius hereditarium against the
claims of Pope and nobles, and it was not until the death of Henry V
that the elective idea, asserted already in 1077 and 1081 at the elections of
the anti-kings Rudolf and Herman, won a victory over the hereditary.
The king alone held office dei gratia, and this was marked by the religious
ceremony of unction and coronation. He was supreme liege lord, com-
mander-in-chief, the source of justice, the enforcer of peace; these
attributes were symbolised by the royal insignia-crown, lance, sceptre,
sword, etc. — the possession of which was so important, as was evidenced
in the contest of Henry V with his father in 1105–6 and again in the
events which occurred after Henry V's death. Further, there were vested
in him the sovereign rights! —lordship of towns, offices, jurisdictions, mints,
tolls, markets, and the like all of which were coveted for their financial
| All that came under the heading of regalia. These were defined by Frederick
Barbarossa's lawyers at Roncaglia. Cf. also the definition of them in Paschal Il's
privilege to Henry V of 12 February 1111 (MGH, Constitutiones, Vol. 1, No. 90,
pp. 141 sq. ).
CH. III.
## p. 118 (#164) ############################################
118
“Princes” of the kingdom
advantages, and these could only lawfully be exercised after the grant of
a charter from the king.
Such a position carried with it potentialities towards absolutism, and
in the case of a strong ruler like Henry III the trend was in that direction.
But to this theoretical supremacy were attached definite limitations as
well. The king was subject to law, not above it, and as supreme judge
it was his duty to do justice ; the breach of this obligation, his opponents
declared, justified rebellion against him. In great issues affecting the
kingdom, or the person and property of a prince of the kingdom, the
king had to act by consent, to summon a diet of the princes and in effect
to be guided by their decision. These “princes ”—dukes, margraves,
counts, bishops, abbots of royal abbeys—owed their status originally to
their official position. With the office went land, and as the lay nobles
ceased in fact to be royal officials their landed position becomes the more
important. The period of transition is a long one, but the change
is especially rapid during the second half of the eleventh century;
naturally public recognition of the change lags behind the fact. One
result of this change from an official to a landed status was the decline
in rank of those nobles who held their fiefs from duke or bishop and not
directly from the king.
Among these lay princes, the dukes held a place apart, differing from
the counts not only in priority of rank. They had owed their position
originally not to appointment by the king but to election by the people
of the tribe, and this origin was still perpetuated in the claim of the
nobles of Bavaria to be consulted in the appointment of their duke. At
the same time the king was especially concerned to insist on the depen-
dence of these offices upon himself; he did not even feel himself obliged
to fill a vacancy in one of them within the year and a day that was
customary with other offices. Franconia during this period remained in
his hands, except that the Bishops of Würzburg were given ducal rights
in the eastern portion ; Swabia after Rudolf's deposition for treason in
1077 remained vacant for two years. On the other hand, in Saxony,
where the duke indeed had only a limited authority, the hereditary right
of the Billung family was not contested.
Of the counts (grafen), the margraves (markgrafen), important
especially for the defence of the eastern frontiers, retained exceptional
judicial and military privileges, and in some cases maintained their inde-
pendence even of the dukes. The counts-palatine (pfalzgrafen) too
retained their old position. They were four in number, one for each
of the tribes that formed the original stem-duchies—Franks, Swabians,
Bavarians, Saxons-and they acted in theory as representatives of royal
justice within the duchies and as the administrators of the royal domains.
Of these the Count-Palatine of the Franks, who had his seat at Aix-la-
Chapelle and was known now usually as Count-Palatine of Lorraine, though
later as Count-Palatine of the Rhine, was the most important. There was
## p. 119 (#165) ############################################
The countryside and the towns
119
no duke in Franconia to usurp his authority; he was, beneath the king,
supreme judge, and commonly acted during the king's absence as his
representative. But there was, on the other hand, a great change in the
position of the ordinary counts. There were few whose authority extended
over the whole of a gau or pagus, as had formerly been usual; of these
few, some, whose control extended over more than one gau, came to be
distinguished in the twelfth century, for example the Count of Thuringia,
by the new title of landgrave (landgraf). In most cases the county had
been divided up, often by division among sons, into several districts each
of them under a count, often of quite small extent. The family residence,
soon converted into a castle, gave the count his name, and, whatever
other dignities the counts might acquire, they never lost their connexion
with the duchy of their origin'. Their political importance, therefore,
varied in proportion to the extent of their lands, and in fact there
was little distinction between those who had merely the title of count
and ordinary freemen with free holdings.
The increasing importance of landed-proprietorship in the status of
nobles had its effect in tending to depress the majority of ordinary free-
men to a half-free status. In the country districts there was little real
distinction between the half-freeman and the freeman who held from
a noble in return for services in work and kind, and who had lost the right
of bearing arms. On the other hand, the rise of the class of ministeriales,
especially when they held land by military tenure, forming as they did an
essential element in the domain of every lord, lay and ecclesiastical, gave
an opening to freemen by joining this class to increase their opportunities
at the expense of a lowering of status. It was a particular feature of the
period. Conrad II had especially encouraged the formation of this class
of royal servant, and on it his successors continued to rely.
As in the countryside, so in the towns there was a tendency to
1
obliterate the distinction between the free and half-free classes, though
in the towns this took the form of a levelling-up rather than a levelling-
down. The “ free air” of the towns, the encouragement to settlers, the
development of trade especially in the Rhine district, as well as the pro-
tection of the town walls, caused a considerable increase in their
population ; they acquired both constitutional and economic importance.
Some towns were royal towns, but all were under a lord, usually a bishop,
and it was to the bishops that the trading element in the town owed its
first privileges. It was to the bishop's interest to obtain for his town from
the king special rights such as the holding of a market and exemption
from tolls in royal towns, and all charters to towns till the latter part of
the eleventh century are granted through the bishops. The first sign of
a change is in the charter of Henry IV to Worins in 1074. The privileges
1 The original home of the Welfs was Altdorf in Swabia. So it was to a diet of
Swabian nobles that Henry the Lion, Duke of Bavaria and Saxony, was first sum-
moned to answer the charges against him.
CH. INI.
## p. 120 (#166) ############################################
120
Alliance of the towns with the king
granted are of the usual nature-exemption from toll in certain (in this
case, specified) royal towns. But for the first time the charter is given
not to the bishop but to the townsmen, and they are described, for the
first time, not as “negotiatores” or “mercatores” but as “ cives. ” The
circumstances attending the grant of this charter', including the welcome
to the king, the well-equipped military support given to him, the pay-
ment by the community of a financial aid, the reception and preservation
of the charter, all imply a town-organisation of a more advanced nature
than previous charters would have led us to expect. The Jews played an
important part in these early trading communities, and they are specially
mentioned in the charter to Worms; so too the Bishop of Spires in 1086
for the advantage of his town was careful, as he states, to plant a colony
of Jews and to give them special privileges, which were confirmed by the
king in 1090? If Worms was the first town which gives evidence of an
organisation independent of its bishop, it was soon followed by others
where the bishop as at Worms was hostile to the king. The rising of the
people at Cologne against Archbishop Anno in 1074, the expulsion of
Archbishop Siegfried and the anti-king Rudolf from Mayence in 1077,
the expulsion of Bishop Adalbert from Würzburg the same year and the
defence of the city against Rudolf, and, above all, the devotion of the
Rhine towns to Henry IV during his last years, shew clearly a wide
extension of this movements.
The townsmen, then, were coming into more direct relations with the
king. As far as the nobles were concerned, the change is rather in the
contrary direction. The duty of fidelity to the head of the State was still
a general conception; even ecclesiastics who scrupled to take an oath of
liege-fealty to the king did not disavow this obligation. The oath of
fealty was not taken by the people as a whole, but only by the princes of
the kingdom, whether to the king or to his representative, and they took
the oath in virtue of their official capacity and as representing the whole
community. It mattered not whether they held fiefs from the king
or from another noble; it was not the fief but the office, through which
the royal authority had been, and in theory still was, asserted, that
created the responsibility on behalf of the people within their spheres of
control. So the relation of the king with the nobles was not yet strictly
1 See H. Wibel, Die ältesten deutschen Stadtprivilegien (Archiv für Urkunden-
forschung, 1918, Vol. vi, pp. 234 sqq. ).
2 Altmann and Bernheim, Ausgewählte Urkunden zur Erläuterung der Verfass-
ungsgeschichte Deutschlands, pp. 158 sqq.
3 In Flanders, Cambrai set the example by founding a commune in 1077. Here
the movement was also directed against the bishop, but in this case it was, as at
Milan, allied with the Church reform movement. See Pirenne, Histoire de Belgique,
Vol. 1, pp. 192 sq. In Germany proper the movement was definitely royalist in
character.
4 Cf. Waitz, Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte, Vol. vi (ed. Seeliger), pp. 487 sqq. ;
G. von Below, Der deutsche Staat des Mittelalters, Vol. 1, pp. 232 sqq.
## p. 121 (#167) ############################################
The growth of feudalism
121
a feudal relation. It was not to become so until the end of the twelfth
century, when the status of prince was confined to those nobles who held
directly from the king. The feudum was not yet the all-important thing,
at any rate in theory and law. There were many fiefs without military
service, some without service at all; there were vassals too without fiefs.
But these became, more and more, exceptional cases, and rapidly the
change from the official to the feudal status was being accomplished
in practice. Always the grant of a fief had accompanied the bestowal of
an office; and, as the fiefs had become hereditary, so too had the offices.
In the majority of cases, offices and fiefs had become identified, and the
official origin was preserved in little more than the title'.
In fact, the great nobles were no longer royal officials but territorial
magnates with alods and fiefs to which their children (sons if possible,
but failing them daughters) succeeded, and their aim was to loosen the
tie which bound them to the sovereign and to create an independent
position for themselves. Two circumstances combined to assist them in
this ambition-the rise of the class of ministeriales and the continual
civil war. The military fief became the normal type, and every important
noble had his band of armed and mounted retainers. He soon had his
castle, or castles, as well, built in defiance of the king; for castle-building
was a sovereign right, which only the stress of civil war enabled the noble
to usurp. Medieval society was based especially on custom and precedent.
If the central authority was weak, the nobles began at once to encroach ;
usurpations were in a few years translated into rights, and it was difficult,
if not impossible, for the king to recover what had been lost. Moreover,
while the counts had ceased to be royal officers, the system of maintain-
ing the royal control by missi had long disappeared. This made a fixed
seat of government impossible. The king himself had to progress cease-
lessly throughout his dominions to enforce his will on the local magnates.
There was no system of itinerant justices, and, except in the royal
domains, no official class to relieve the direct burden of the central
government. So there was no permanent machinery which could function
normally ; everything depended on the personality of the ruler.
But from the point of view of the king there were compensations.
Each noble played for his own hand, and there was rarely any unity of
purpose among them. It was from the dukes that the king had most to
fear, and with regard to them he started with many advantages. They
had no claim to divine appointment, no royal majesty or insignia, no
sovereign rights but such as he had granted. The nobles in each duchy
held office in theory from the king, to whom, and not to the duke, they
1 This is true even of the counts-palatine, with the exception of the Count-
Palatine of the Rhine who still retained much of his old official position; for instance,
when Henry IV went to Italy in 1090, the Count-Palatine of the Rhine was appointed
co-regent of the German kingdom with Duke Frederick of Swabia. So too when
Henry V went to Italy in 1116.
CH. III.
## p. 122 (#168) ############################################
122
The royal domain
had sworn liege-fealty', and they were far more jealous of the assertion
of the ducal, than of the royal, authority over them. Moreover the duke
by virtue of his office acquired little, if any, domain in his duchy? Where
his family possessions lay, there alone, in most cases, was he really power-
ful. Agnes in her appointments had at any rate shewn herself wise
in this, that she had appointed as dukes nobles whose hereditary lands
lay outside the duchies to which they were appointed. Berthold of Zäh-
ringen, the most powerful noble in Swabia, was a nonentity as Duke in
Carinthia; Otto of Nordheim, one of the leading nobles in Saxony, could
not maintain himself in his duchy of Bavaria when he revolted in 1070.
In other words, the noble depended on his domain, and this is equally
true of the king. There was no direct taxation' as in England, and the
king had in a very real sense to live of his own. The royal domain* was
scattered throughout the kingdom ; in each duchy there were royal
estates and royal palaces, though the largest and richest portion lay in
eastern Saxony, stretching from Goslar to Merseburg, the inheritance of
the Saxon kings. In the first place, it supplied the needs of the royal
household, and this, as well as the maintenance of royal authority, made
necessary the continual journeyings of the king and his court. The
domain, too, provided a means whereby the king could make grants of
lands whether in reward for faithful service or, more usually, in donations
to bishoprics and abbeys. And, finally, in these manors, as also in the
manors of nobles and ecclesiastics, there emerged out of the mass of half-
free tenants a class of men who played an important and peculiar rôle in
Germany. These royal ministeriales were employed by the king in adminis-
trative posts, as well as in the management of his estates; they were
armed and mounted, and provided an important part of the king's army.
On them he began to rely, therefore, to counteract the growing indepen-
dence of the greater nobles, both in his Council and on military expeditions.
In return, they were granted fiefs, and rose often to knightly ranks,
1 A duke or other noble might obtain an oath of fealty from his vassals, but
there should, by right, be in it a saving clause, preserving the superior fealty due
to the king.
2 Cf. Waitz, op. cit. Vol. vii, pp. 133 sq.
3 Unless the bede comes under this category. But all nobiles were exempt from
this, and other exemptions had been granted by charter.
4 Cf. M. Stimming, Das deutsche Königsgut im 11 und 12 Jahrhundert; B. Heusinger,
Servitium regis in der deutschen Kaiserzeit (Archiv für Urkundenforschung, Vol. viii,
pp. 26–159). Between the royal and the private domain of the king as a rule little
distinction was made.
But the issue sometimes arose, notably on the question of the
inheritance of the Hohenstaufen from Henry V; see infra, p. 336.
6 Eventually this had its result in the rise of a number of new noble families to
take the place in German history of older ones that had become extinct. One leading
cause for the disappearance of old noble families—the ecclesiastical career (with its
enforced celibacy) which in the abbeys especially had been almost a prerogative of the
nobility-is very clearly demonstrated by A. Schulte, Der Adel und die deutsche Kirche
im Mittelalter (Kirchenrechtliche Abhandlungen, ed. U. Stutz, LXIII, LXIV).
## p. 123 (#169) ############################################
Alliance with the episcopate
123
sometimes even to episcopal. The same process was occurring in the
domains of the nobles. The ecclesiastical nobles had probably set the
example? , which was followed by the secular nobility and by the king.
As it provided him with the possibility of making himself self-sufficient and
so independent of princely support, it provided them too with a means of
furthering their independence of him.
The royal domain, then, plays a central part in the policy of the
Salian kings, as it was to do with the Capetians in France. During the
regency it had been grievously depleted. But there were many ways
in which it could be increased and in which gaps could be made good-
by inheritance, by exchange, by conquest, by escheat. There were also
other sources of royal revenue, notably the sovereign rights, of justice
and the like, which were assumed by the king wherever he might happen
to be and which were frequently lucrative. From the towns too, as well
as from the domain, he could levy contributions? , and, as has been indicated
above, could look to them for valuable support especially in time of war.
The loyalty and devotion of the Rhine towns is most marked, particularly
when the episcopal lord of the town was disloyal. But only in a few cases
was the bishop himself among the king's enemies, and so a direct alliance
with the townsmen, which might have been as useful to the German
monarchy as it was to the French, occurred only in isolated cases. It was
not to the king's interest to make the bishops antagonistic.
For the alliance with the episcopate had, from the time of Otto I,
been a cardinal factor in the policy of the king of Germany. The political
importance of the ecclesiastical nobles was evident: on them, as well as on
ministeriales and lesser nobles, the king relied both for his Council and
government and for his military expeditions. They could never make
their offices and fiefs hereditary, and they could be depended upon as
a counterpoise to the dangerous power of the dukes; while in the con-
tinual civil wars of this period the summons to the host was not of much
avail, nor could it be made effective without the consent of the nobles.
But they were equally valuable to the king from the economic point of
view. In the first place, the royal abbeys made annual payments in kind,
which began to be converted into money payments or at any rate to
1 Compare with this the prominent part played by ecclesiastics in the drift
towards feudalism in Saxon England (supra, Vol. 11, pp. 375–7). The great differ-
ence is that in Germany it was an unfree class to whom these military fiefs were
granted.
? The tax known as “bede” (petitio, precaria)originally, as its name shews, a
voluntary contribution. On the nature of this tax see G. von Below, op. cit.
pp. 85 sqq. , and generally for the taxation of towns, K. Zeumer, Die deutsche
Städtesteuern (Staats- und socialwissenschaftliche Forschungen, ed. G. Schmoller,
Vol. 1, No. 2).
3 The lay nobles would take part only if they happened to be present, or if they
were summoned to diets on important issues of state or to judge one of their
number. The great offices of the household were held by dukes, but had become
merely titular and ceremonial.
CB. II.
## p. 124 (#170) ############################################
124
The complication of Italy
be reckoned on a monetary basis early in the twelfth century; from these
abbeys, too, when he visited them, he could claim hospitality. There
is no evidence that the episcopal services included fixed payments in kind,
but the obligation seems to have been imposed upon the bishops of main-
taining the king and his retinue during the king's stay in their towns,
whether or no these contained a royal palace. It is at any rate noticeable
how prominently they figure in the itineraries of the Salian kings! . And
on the death of a bishop the king exercised his rights of regalia and took
possession of the revenues of the see during the vacancy, and sometimes
of spolia as well, seizing the personal effects of the dead bishop. These
great ecclesiastical offices were regarded by the king as very distinctly
part of his personal possessions? . His lavish grants to them of territory
were therefore not lost to the Crown, and the ecclesiastical as distinct from
the lay nobles remained essentially royal officials. Royal control of
appointments to bishoprics and abbeys was a reality and at the same
time a necessity; and the royal chapel, which was a natural centre for the
training of ecclesiastics, was also a stepping-stone to advancement. From
among the royal chaplains, trained under the king's eye and experienced
often in the work of his chancery, appointments were commonly made to
vacant bishoprics.
This was bound to lead sooner or later to conflict with the reformed
Papacy, though the conflict might have been delayed and would certainly
have been less fatal in result had not this control of the German king in
ecclesiastical matters been extended to Italy and to the Papacy itself. To
the crown of Germany were attached the crowns of Burgundy and Italy,
and finally the imperial crown as well. These additional dignities brought
little real advantage to the German king. In Burgundy, the royal
authority was slight and rarely asserted; it was, however, of some impor-
tance to the Emperor that his suzerainty and not that of the French king
should be recognised. In Italy, the royal domain and episcopal support
were sometimes of definite advantage, but usually the interest of the king
in his Italian kingdom prejudiced his position in Germany. And the
imperial title was a similar handicap'. It magnified the importance of his
office and gave him increased prestige, but it added enormously to his
responsibilities and prevented him from concentrating on his real interests.
The imperial title added nothing to the royal authority in Germany. In
a sense it added nothing in Italy either. The title “ rex Romanorum
was used before imperial coronation occasionally by Henry IV, frequently
>
1 B. Heusinger, op. cit. Cf, especially, p. 70, “Für das 11 Jahrhundert ergibt
sich also, dass das deutsche Königtum in stärkstem Masse, vielleicht überwiegend
auf den bischöflichen Servitien ruhte. ”
2 Cf. U. Stutz, Die Eigenkirche als Element des mittelalterlich-germanischen
Kirchenrechtes, pp. 32 sqq.
3 See, for a discussion of this question, and a consideration of opposing views on
the revival of the Empire by Otto I, G. von Below, op. cit. pp. 353-369.
## p. 125 (#171) ############################################
Henry IV's policy
125
by Henry V, and as Emperor-designate the king acted with full imperial
authority in Italy and with regard to the Pope. But the imperial crown
was the right of the German king, to his mind an essential right, and it
was by virtue of this right that he claimed the control from which
the Papacy was now beginning to free itself, with results fatal to the
monarchy in Germany.
The task that Henry IV set before himself was to undo the damage
that had been wrought during his minority and to restore imperial
authority both in Germany and Italy; he was determined to be master
as his father had been at the height of his power. In Germany, he had
first of all to build up the royal domain, to force the nobles to a direct
subordination to his will, and to break down the independence of Saxony.
In Italy, where imperial authority was practically ignored, there were the
special problems of Tuscany', the Normans, and above all the Papacy.
But, determined as he was to revive the authority over the Papacy that
his father had exercised from 1046 until his death, the question of Ger-
many had to come first, and so for a time he was willing to make
concessions. Control of the Church in Germany and Italy was so essential
to him that he could not be in sympathy with the reform policy of the
Papacy. This was now beginning to be directed not only against the
simony and secularisation that resulted from lay control but against the
lay control itself; and it was a definite feature of that policy to demand
from the higher clergy an obedience to papal authority which could not
fail to be prejudicial to the royal interests. But at present the king was
anxious to keep on good terms with the Pope; as he was obedient to his
orders on the divorce question in 1069, so in 1070 he allowed Charles,
whom he had invested as Bishop of Constance, to be deposed for simony,
and in 1072 Abbot Robert of Reichenau to suffer the same penalty? The
Papacy was given no indication of his real intentions.
His compliant attitude to the Papacy on this question was in accor-
dance with his general policy. He worked patiently for his ends, and
strove to do the task first that lay within his power, careful to separate
his adversaries and to placate one while he was overcoming the other.
Adversity always displayed him at his best. Again and again he revived
his fortunes, shewing a speedy recognition and making a wise use of the
1 The death of Duke Godfrey in 1069 removed one great obstacle from Henry's
path. His son Godfrey (Gibbosus) succeeded to the duchy of Lower Lorraine and
was already the husband of Countess Matilda. But he quarrelled with his wife and
confined his interests to his German duchy, where he remained loyal to Henry.
2 In these cases, as also in the case of Bishop Herman of Bamberg in 1075,
when his attitude to the Pope was dictated by the same motives, he protested his
own innocence of simony in the appointments. There is no evidence against him.
Probably the offenders had paid money to court-favourites, whose influence had
secured the appointinents.
CH. III.
## p. 126 (#172) ############################################
126
His character
possibilities at his disposal, dividing his enemies by concessions and by
stimulating causes of ill-feeling between them, biding his time patiently
till his opportunity came. Nor was he prevented from following out his
plan by considerations of personal humiliation. Not only at Canossa but
also in 1073 a personal humiliation was his surest road to success, and he
took it. He was not the typically direct and brutal knight of the Middle
Ages, and he was not usually successful in battle; he generally avoided a
pitched battle, in contrast to his rival Rudolf, to whom he really owed
his one great victory in the field-over the Saxons in 1075. He recog-
nised his limitations. His armies were rarely as well-equipped as those of
his opponents: they were often composed of ministeriales, royal and
episcopal, and of levies from the towns, which were not a match for the
Saxon knights; also he had more to lose than they had by staking all on
the result of a battle. In an unstatesmanlike generation he shewed many
statesmanly qualities, which was the more remarkable in that he had
received so little training in the duties of his office. His enemies, when
they comment with horror on his guile and cunning, are really testifying
to these qualities; for it was natural that they should give an evil name
to the ability which so often overcame their perfidy and disloyalty.
But, as his greatness is best seen in adversity, so in the moment of
victory were the weaknesses of his character revealed. He allowed himself
to be overcome by the arrogance of success both in 1072 and 1075.
Having decisively defeated his Saxon enemies, he made a vindictive use
of his victory, when clemency was the right policy; by his arbitrary
actions he alienated the other nobles whose assistance had ensured his
success, and they formed a coalition against him to anticipate his too
clearly revealed intentions against themselves. His victory gave him so
false a sense of security that on both occasions he chose the moment to
throw down the challenge to the Pope, entirely miscalculating both the
reality of his position in Germany and the strength of his new adversary.
He profited by his lesson later, but never again did he have the same
opportunity. He certainly shewed a clear sense of the strength of the
papal position in the years 1077–1080, and also of the means by which this
strength could be discounted. On the whole he was a good judge of the
men with whom he had to deal. It may appear short-sighted in him to
pardon so readily a man like Otto of Nordheim and to advance him to a
position of trust in 1075; but he was faced with treachery on every side
and he had to attempt to bind men to his cause by their interests. At
any rate he was successful with Otto's sons, and also even in detaching
Duke Magnus himself from the party of Rudolf. The only occasions
when he was really overwhelmed were when the treachery came from his
own sons, and there is no more moving document in this period than his
letter to King Philip of France, in which he relates the calculated perfidy
and perjury of his son Henry V. For he was naturally of an affectionate and
sympathetic disposition, a devoted father and a kind master, especially to
## p. 127 (#173) ############################################
The peculiar position of Saxony
127
the non-noble classes throughout his dominions. Even if we discount the
glowing panegyric of the author of the Vita Heinrici IV, we cannot ignore
the passionate devotion of the people of Liège, who, scorning the wrath
of all the powers of Church and kingdom, refused to dissemble their grief
or to refrain from the last tokens of respect over the body of their beloved
master. That tribute was repeated again at Spires; and, though for five
years his body was denied the rites of Christian burial, few kings have
had so genuine a mourning.
The reconciliation of Henry with his wife in 1069 marked a definite
stage in his career. From this time he devoted himself wholeheartedly
to affairs of state, and his policy at once began to take shape. The par-
ticularist tendencies of the German princes in general had to be overcome,
but the extreme form which particularism took was to be found in Saxony.
Saxony, ever since it had ceased to supply the king to Germany, had
held itself aloof and independent. In various ways was its distinctive
character marked. It held proudly to its own more primitive customs,
which it had translated into rights, and the maintenance of which had
been guaranteed to it by Conrad II and Henry III; especially was the
royal system of justice, with inquest and oath-takers, foreign to Saxon
custom', which stood as a permanent bar to unity of government. These
customary rights formed a link between the classes in Saxony, giving it
a homogeneity lacking in the other duchies. Allodial lands were more ex-
tensive here than elsewhere, and the nobles accordingly more independent.
Among them the duke took the leading place, but only in precedence.
Margraves and counts did not recognise his authority over them; on the
other hand, the ducal office was hereditary in the Billung family, and so
it was not at the free disposal of the king. Finally, beneath the nobles,
the proportion of free men was exceptionally high; they were trained to
arms, and, though they usually fought on foot, were formidable soldiers
in an age when cavalry was regarded as the decisive arm. It was a bold
policy for a young king to attempt, at the beginning of his reign, to
grasp the Saxon nettle. It was essential that he should obtain assistance
from the other duchies, and this he might expect. The Saxons looked
with contempt on the other German peoples, who in their turn were
jealous of the Saxons and irritated by their aloofness. The ill-feeling
between the two was always a factor on which he could count.
But the determination of Henry IV to attack the problem of Saxony
had a further and more immediate cause. The effects of his minority had
not merely been to give the opportunity to particularism, here as else-
where. It had been disastrous also to the royal domain, that essential
basis of royal power, which had suffered from neglect or deliberate
squandering at the hands of the unscrupulous archbishops who had con-
trolled the government for their own advantage. The first task of the
· K. Hampe, Deutsche Kaisergeschichte im Zeitalter der Salier und Staufen, p. 40.
CH. III.
## p. 128 (#174) ############################################
128
The importance of the royal domain in Saxony
young king was to concentrate on the domain, to fill up gaps and make
compact areas where possible, to take effective measures to recover services
that had been lost, and finally to protect it against further usurpation.
It was natural that his attention should first be directed to eastern Saxony
and Thuringia, where lay by far the richest portion of the domain', and
which afforded the best opportunity for creating a compact royal territory.
It was here, moreover, that the domain had suffered most; it had not
only been wasted by grants, but also services had been withheld, minis-
teriales had usurped their freedom', and probably neighbouring lords had
made encroachments. One of Henry's first measures was the building of
castles on an extensive scale in this region, designed primarily for the
recovery and maintenance of the domain and the services attached to it,
and having at the same time the strategic advantage of being situated so
as to divide the duchy and in case of revolt to prevent a coalition of
Saxon princes. This was a menace to the independent spirit of the Saxons,
and he irritated them still more by appointing royal ministeriales from
South Germanyó as officials in the domain-lands and as garrisons in the
castles. There were clearly grievances on both sides, which only made the
subsequent contest the more bitter. The Saxons had infringed royal
rights by neglect and usurpation. The South German ministeriales in
their turn shewed little respect for Saxon customs, and acted in an op-
pressive manner in making requisitions and forcing labour. And probably
the Saxons were right in their suspicion that the king would take every
1 This is evident from the Indiculus curiarum ad mensam regis Romanorum perti-
nentium (best text in Neu. Arch. Vol. xli, pp. 572–4). A comprehensive survey of
this has been made by B. Heusinger, Servitium regis (Archiv für Urkundenforschung,
Vol. viii, pp. 26–159). M. Stimming, Das deutsche Königsgut, pp. 86 sqq. , has elabo-
rated the central importance of the domain on Henry's policy in Saxony and on the
subsequent Saxon revolt. J. Haller, Das Verzeichnis der Tafelgüter des römischen
Königs (Neu. Arch. Vol. xlv, pp. 48–81), rejects the accepted date (1065) of the Indi-
culus and dates it 1185. His arguments seem to me to be untenable, and to raise
more difficulties than they solve. I am convinced that it was drawn up at any rate
for one of the last two Salian kings, and that it is a rough draft prepared at a time
when an imperial coronation was anticipated. Anyhow, the statement in the text
is not really affected by the date of the Indiculus.
? Lampert of Hersfeld, sub 1066, ed. Holder-Egger, SGUS, p.
100.
3 Bruno, c. 16, ed. Wattenbach, SGUS, p. 11. Cf. Stimming, op. cit. p. 93.
4 Cf. Stimming (op. cit. pp. 98 sqq. ), who supports the view that the policy was
originated by Archbishop Adalbert of Bremen. He also points out the contiguity
of the chief leaders of the Saxon revolt, bishops as well as lay nobles, to the royal
domain.
• The Saxons especially complained of the low-born “Swabians” employed by
the king on official and garrison duty in their duchy.
