The quarrel with Pope Paschal II had broken out afresh over the question of his coronation and the investiture, but at length the disputants came to an agreement to the effect that the emperor should renounce the right of investiture and that the pope should prevail upon the lords spiritual to resign all temporal dominion in the empire. The pope then led the king to St. Peter’s, according to ancient usage, amidst hymns of praise and great rejoicings. Henry, however, had already surrounded the cathedral by Germans. When the bishops refused the renunciation required of them, and the emperor consequently demanded full rights of investiture, the pope was in doubt as to whether he should proceed with the coronation under these circumstances. One of Henry’s retinue cried impatiently: “What need of so many words? It is the will of my lord the king to be crowned as Charlemagne was!”
From that moment the pope and his cardinals were prisoners. Henry carried the former off with him, in spite of a furious tumult at Rome, through which he and his knights cut their way with the sword. But the spirit of Gregory VII lived on in the church; when the pope, his spirit broken by confinement, granted the king the right of investing bishops and abbots, and actually crowned Henry after his release from prison, the cardinals and the French clergy excommunicated the emperor and continued the conflict with their ghostly weapons. Meanwhile Henry V had returned to Germany, where fortune still smiled upon him; for at Warnstedt, to the north of the Harz, his general Hoyer von Mansfeld defeated the Saxon and Thuringian nobles, with Ludwig der Springer, “the jumper,” and Wiprecht von Groitzsch among them, who had risen in revolt against the imperial house with their old stubborn defiance (1113).
The emperor, who had just concluded a brilliant marriage with Matilda of England, was now at the height of his power; but he nevertheless did not succeed in permanently establishing the royal authority in North Germany, where the Saxons in particular were constantly striving to secure a more independent position. When Henry was on an expedition against the Frisians, the city of Cologne rebelled, and the princes of the lower Rhine entered into alliance with it. Henry’s good fortune deserted him before its walls; and his enemies lifted their heads on all sides. By his action in imprisoning Count Ludwig of Thuringia he had incurred the violent resentment of the Saxon and Thuringian nobles. They arose afresh in rebellion, and this time they defeated the emperor at Welfesholze near Mansfeld in the Harz (1115). The whole of North Germany and almost the whole of the German church fell away from him; in South Germany, on the contrary, his nephew, Friedrich von Staufen, duke of Swabia, remained loyal to the imperial cause, as did Bavaria under Welf.
Henry himself had gone to Italy again (1116-1118), another cause of quarrel having been added to the War of Investiture, which still dragged on. Countess Matilda was dead, and had bequeathed all her lands and goods to the holy see. A great part of the land, however, was held as a fief of the empire, and should therefore have reverted to the king on her death without issue; and Henry further laid claim to her allodium, or property, on the ground of near kinship. While he was in Italy Paschal II died.
In the person of his next successor but one, the papal throne was occupied, for the first time since the reign of Hildebrand, by a pope who had not been a monk. This was Guido of Vienne, a Burgundian of high rank and a kinsman of Henry’s, who took the name of Calixtus II. The elevation of this prudent and far-sighted man offered the emperor the prospect of reconciliation, although the new pope had hitherto been the leader of his opponents among the cardinals; and negotiations were set on foot. Calixtus went to France, which country, striving upwards with fresh vigour ever since the Crusades, became the zealous champion of the papacy. For a long time the negotiations led to no result; a personal interview between the pope and the emperor was projected, but the distrust of years and the memory of the capture of Paschal II prevented it from taking place. Calixtus retained the upper hand in Italy, Henry in Germany. But in spite of many successes on either side, both were inclined to moderate their demands. The German princes assumed the office of mediators, and after fifty years of strife the investiture quarrel was settled by the Concordat of Worms in 1122.
[1122-1125 A.D.]
The king resigned the investiture with ring and crosier, but obtained the privilege that the election of bishops should take place in his presence or in that of his representative, and that—in Germany at least—they should receive the territory appertaining to their sees in fief from the imperial crown before they were consecrated. Thus the emperor had secured much; but the papacy, on the other hand, had acquired a considerable influence in imperial affairs, and the loyalty of the bishops, which had been the strongest pillar of the throne, began to waver. Henry died at Nimeguen (1125) without issue; and the people, who had never loved him, saw in his childlessness the retribution for the war with his father, and his transgression of his duty as a son.
From the hands of Henry II the Franconian dynasty received a re-consolidated empire, although the great fiefs within it had already become hereditary. The first princes of the line, Conrad II and Henry III, who in greatness were second to none of the emperors of Germany, had so strengthened the royal power that both were able to cherish the dream of an empire such as Otto the Great’s had been. Their power passed to a child, and the nobles broke away from the curb all the sooner that it had been drawn over-tight. At the same time the church entered the field as a fresh power, wielding forces that were better organised and more deeply rooted in the popular mind than those of the empire, and armed with resources more efficacious than the sword.
Henry V, whose character offered so many points open to attack, succumbed in the conflict with these two forces. Towards the end of the eleventh century all fiefs had become hereditary, and bishoprics were no longer unconditionally at the emperor’s disposal; and he was therefore constrained to rely upon his dynastic possessions and his moral ascendency. In manners and education the Germany of the eleventh century lagged behind the awakening intellectual life of the Romance nations. The great effects of the Crusades had to become manifest before the crowning glory of the Middle Ages could extend to that country.i
With the death of Henry V the Franconian dynasty came to an end. The change of dynasty furnishes us a convenient place to pause in our narrative of the development of the Western Empire. We have seen that the centre of influence has long since shifted to the North, and that the Western Empire, though Roman in name, is essentially German in fact. Several important emperors are to come upon the scene in the next two or three centuries, and such men as Frederick Barbarossa and Frederick II will make Italy the field of some of their most prominent activities. Nevertheless, these emperors are German and the records of their lives are a component part of the history of the German Empire. We shall again take up the story of the German Empire in a later volume with the accession of the Hohenstaufens. Now for a time we are to turn back to the East, to witness the development of a wonderful oriental civilisation.a
FOOTNOTES
[147] [As C. T. Lewise notes: “The people took sides in their legends and songs with the unfortunate youth who had fought for his inheritance against a severe stepfather, and compared his fate with that of the equally unfortunate Ludolf, son of Otto the Great. Indeed, legend merged the two stories into one, and thus arose the song of Ernst of Swabia, which was long sung in the Middle Ages and represents the two friends as finally going to the East upon a crusade and meeting with manifold adventures.”]
[148] [Brycej says: “Under Henry III the empire attained the meridian of its power. At home Otto the Great’s prerogative had not stood so high.”]