The Age of Chivalry (12 page)

Henry's childhood and youth had been turbulent, and the king's headstrong temperament compounded his problems in the 1080s. Crowned king of the Germans as an infant in 1054, he succeeded to his father's throne on Henry III's sudden death three years later. The regency of his mother, the dowager empress Agnes, weakened her son's position by assigning Bavaria, Swabia and Carinthia to nobles who were intent on reducing the infant king's authority. Moreover, papal policy was already intent on interfering in the election of German bishops. In 1062 Henry was kidnapped by a group of noble conspirators led by Anno II, the archbishop of Cologne, who then took over the reins of power and supervised the young king's education. Henry asserted his independence of that tutelage when he came of age, however, and he was enthroned at the age of 15 in 1065. In 1068 he attempted to divorce his wife Bertha but had to yield in the face of papal opposition. This only strengthened his suspicion of the papacy as an institution. At the same time Henry was facing major challenges to his rule. He confronted Slavic incursions, which included a major siege of Hamburg, and he had to quell revolts led by Rudolf of Swabia and Berthold of Carinthia. His conflict with Otto of Nordheim, duke of Bavaria, occupied Henry for years. Otto had been involved in the earlier kidnapping of the young king and, following accusations of further plotting, in 1070 Henry declared the duke to be deposed and took the opportunity to plunder Otto's estates in Saxony. Otto had enough support, however, to sustain a rebellion in Thuringia as well as in Saxony until his submission in 1071. Henry was an unpopular figure among the Saxon population at large, since he had ordered the restoration of all Crown lands in the region and had built a series of fortifications there in an attempt to cow the local population. From 1073 until 1088 Henry was forced to deal with major insurrections among both the Saxons and the Thuringians.

A
BOVE
In this illustration from the
Life
of Matilda of Tuscany, written by her courtier Donizo of Canossa and completed by 1115, the excommunicated Henry IV is on his knees. He is begging Matilda and Abbot Hugh of Cluny to intervene on his behalf in the conflict with Pope Gregory VII
.

Pope Gregory was therefore confronting a weakened monarch, and the Church Councils' decisions meant, in effect, that the German Crown was threatened with the removal of the rights to about half of all its lands. Since Henry also ruled as king of Italy, there were major implications for the dispersal of power in the peninsula. Henry was right to see the papal policy as an attempt at delegitimizing him as king, and the authority of the German Crown would have collapsed if the bishops had removed their
allegiance. The king, however, carried on nominating his candidates to German and Italian sees. Furthermore, he declared the new conciliar and papal decrees to be illegal. After Gregory excommunicated several members of the court in 1075 and threatened Henry with the same punishment, the king retaliated and held his own synod of the German Church.

Gregory's abduction on Christmas Day 1075 by Cencio I Frangipane—a member of the local nobility—together with his subsequent imprisonment, introduced a new level of violence to the dispute. Moreover, the pope, who was later released by local Romans, accused Henry of involvement in his abduction. On June 9 of that year Henry gained a crucial victory over the Saxon rebels at the Battle of Langensalza, and now he was ready for a major fight with the papacy. At a synod of bishops and princes held in Worms on January 24, 1076 Henry took the extraordinary step of declaring Gregory's deposition. On February 22 the pope retaliated by excommunicating Henry and all the German bishops involved in the synod. Henry was now encountering opposition to his policy among some very alarmed German aristocrats. In October 1076 a diet of German princes meeting at Tribur gave Henry a year to repent and to get the excommunication lifted. Otherwise they would declare the throne to be empty. Henry therefore relocated to north Italy, where some of the clergy of Lombardy were among his supporters, and shortly after Christmas 1076 he arrived in Pavia. Gregory at the same time was traveling to Augsburg for a prearranged meeting with the emperor. On learning of Henry's arrival on Italian soil Gregory, fearing a military attack, took refuge in the castle of Canossa in Reggio-Emilia owned by his great supporter Matilda, the margrave of Tuscany.

THE INVESTITURE CONTEST

1073
Hildebrand of Savona is elected Pope Gregory VII.

1075
A Church council rules that only popes can appoint churchmen to their offices or transfer them between sees.

1076
Henry IV declares Pope Gregory to be deposed (January 24). The pope excommunicates him (February 22).

1077
Henry waits outside the gates of Canossa Castle (January 25–27) before being admitted to see Gregory, who lifts the sentence of excommunication.

1077–80
German princes revolt and are then defeated by Henry.

1080
Gregory renews Henry's excommunication (March). A German Church synod declares the pope to be deposed and elects Guibert, archbishop of Ravenna, to the papacy as Clement III (June).

1081
Henry embarks on military hostilities in Italy.

1084
Rome surrenders to Henry's army (March). Gregory takes refuge in the Castel San' Angelo. Clement III crowns Henry emperor (March 31). Robert Guiscard leads an army to Rome, and Gregory is freed. Henry withdraws from Rome.

1085
Gregory VII dies.

1104
Henry IV abdicates.

1122
Concordat of Worms: Henry V renounces rights of investiture.

In order to lift the excommunication placed upon him Henry needed to perform an act of penance. His continued competence as a ruler was now in doubt, but his decision to perform as a penitent in Canossa rather than wait for Gregory's arrival in Augsburg showed immense flair. Henry was going through the motions while at the same time consolidating his power in a region of northern Italy sympathetic to him. He also had with him the army he had raised in order to oppose the pro-papal Tribur agreement. From 25th to 27th January 1077 the German king stood outside the gates of Canossa's castle in penitential mode, asking to be admitted and begging that the sentence of his excommunication be rescinded. His wish to be admitted was granted, and the sentence of excommunication was duly lifted on certain conditions—which Henry violated soon afterward. Elements of the German aristocratic opposition now seized their moment. Judging Henry to be fatally weakened, in March 1077 the nobility of Saxony, Thuringia and
Bavaria elected Rudolf of Rheinfelden to be king of the Germans. Rudolf declared his obedience to the papacy and promised to respect the rights of individual German princes. Henry would eventually suppress the revolt in 1080, and in March of that year the pope renewed the sentence of his excommunication. Popular sentiment and German national feelings were now going Henry's way and, after Rudolf's death from injuries sustained at the Battle of Elster near Leipzig on October 14, 1080, support for the rebellion faded away. Henry, moreover, now had a very powerful supporter in Frederick I von Staufen, whom he had appointed to be the new duke of Swabia.

The synod of the higher German clergy convened by Henry at Bamberg in June 1080 declared Gregory deposed as pope, and elected the archbishop of Ravenna in his stead. An emboldened Henry returned to Italy, where he built up his support network by granting privileges to many cities in the north. War then broke out with Matilda's army in Tuscany, and in the course of 1081–82 Henry's forces attacked Rome in three separate offensives. By the end of 1082 the Roman populace had made their own peace treaty: it stated that Gregory and Henry's quarrel should be resolved by a special synod and, if that failed, another pope would need to be elected. At this point the pope took refuge in the Castel San' Angelo and Henry, aided by reinforcements from the Byzantine army, took the city in March 1084. The Romans then made their own declaration of Gregory's deposition and Ravenna's archbishop, now confirmed by them in office as Clement III, crowned Henry as Holy Roman Emperor on March 31, 1084.

B
ELOW
Canossa Castle, in northern Italy, where Pope Gregory VII received Henry IV in 1077
.

Gregory seemed encircled but he was rescued by the intervention of Robert Guiscard who saw an opportunity to attack his Greek enemies in Rome. Guiscard's army forced Henry to withdraw from Rome and Gregory was freed. The pope died the following year in Salerno, still urging the whole of Christendom to campaign against the German king-emperor. Gregory's great cause did not die with him. In March 1088 Otto of Ostia was elected to the papacy by legitimate means, and as Victor II he pursued thoroughly Gregorian policies. He excommunicated Henry, who had now returned to Germany, as well as the antipope Clement, and set about creating a formidable anti-imperial coalition consisting of the Normans, the
Rus of Kiev and the cities of the Lombard north of Italy. Henry's retaliatory expedition marched across the Alps and was defeated in 1092 by the allied Lombard communes, who took advantage of the ambitions of Henry's son Conrad and crowned him king of Italy at Monza in 1093. Henry was therefore forced to retreat to his German lands where by now his power was securely consolidated, and he therefore designated his younger son, the future Henry V, to be his heir in place of the rebel Conrad.

Pope Paschal II, elected in 1099, pursued his predecessors' policies and upheld Henry's excommunication, although the emperor's promise to go on crusade showed a readiness to conciliate. However, compromise became impossible once his son Henry rebelled in 1104, stating that he could owe no allegiance to an excommunicated father and emperor. Saxony and Thuringia, those chronic centers of rebellion, revolted against Henry. At a diet held in Mainz in December 1104 he was forced to resign his crown and was imprisoned, but Henry escaped from captivity and a final drama now unfolded. He joined the army formed in 1106 to oppose Henry V and Pope Paschal, and led that force to its victory on March 2 before dying a few days afterward. Henry V would choose one more antipope, despite his support for the Gregorian position, but in 1122 at the Concordat of Worms he renounced his rights of investiture and was therefore admitted back to the Roman communion. The agreement meant that Henry could now be recognized by the papacy as a legitimate emperor, but the longer-term effects of the contest were catastrophic. Although the Staufen emperors revived the imperial ambition to consolidate Germany's territories, unification would not be finally achieved until 1871.

THE SALIAN DYNASTY 1024–1125

CONRAD II

(
c
.990–1039)

r. 1024–39

HENRY III

(1017–56)

r. 1039–56

HENRY IV

(1050–1106)

r. 1056–1106

HENRY V

(1086–1125)

r. 1106–25

The universality of the claims made by Gregory for the Holy See's authority had their own implications for the English and French monarchies. Those abbots and bishops appointed by William the Conqueror, and by his successor Henry I, were loyal to the Crown and resistant to papal control on the terms set out by Gregory and his circle. There were heated exchanges between papal courts and English courts, but Gregory's concentration on the German dimension limited his ability to act against Henry I, and the terms of the Concordat of London (1107) favored the English monarchy. Henry gave up his right to invest bishops and abbots, and he therefore no longer appointed them. But he also required that they should swear homage to him in recognition of their status as feudal vassals with regard to the land that they held as bishops. So far as these territories were concerned, England's bishops were treated no differently from the secular lords who went through the same ceremony of
commendatio
or acknowledgment of loyalty. In practice, therefore, the investiture contest greatly strengthened the position of English monarchs, and their chanceries became increasingly staffed by secular scholars who could be rewarded with bishoprics and abbeys.