Outlines of Universal History, Designed as a Text-book and for Private Reading

by George Park Fisher

II. THE FRANCONIAN OR SALIAN EMPERORS (1024-1125).

CONRAD II.: BURGUNDY: the POLES.—At a great assembly of dukes, counts, and prelates at Oppenheim on the Rhine, Conrad, a Franconian nobleman (Conrad II.), was elected emperor (1024-1039). He was in the prime of life, and went to work vigorously to repress disorder in his kingdom. He had the support of the cities, which were now increasing in importance. At his coronation in Rome, in 1027, there were two kings present, Canute of England and Denmark, and Rudolph III. of Burgundy (or Arles, as the kingdom was called which had been formed by Rudolph II., by uniting Burgundy with a great part of Provence). After the death of Rudolph, who had appointed Conrad his successor, the emperor was crowned king of Arles, which remained thus attached to Germany. But at a later time the Romance, or non-German portions, were absorbed by France. The Duchy of Burgundy, a fief of the French king, was not included in the kingdom. The Poles invaded Germany in great force. Miesko, their leader, was repelled, and obliged to do homage for his crown, and to give up Lusatia, which had been received by Boleslav from Henry II. In Italy, Conrad issued an edict making the smaller fiefs there hereditary. He seems to have designed to do away with dukes, and to make the allegiance of all vassals to the king immediate.

HENRY III.: THE TRUCE OF GOD.—With Henry III. (1039-1056) the imperial power reached its height. He was for a time duke of Bavaria, Swabia, and Franconia, as well as emperor. In Hungary he conquered the enemies of Peter the king, and restored him to the throne, receiving his homage as vassal of the empire. He had great success in putting down private war. In 1043 he proclaimed a general peace in his kingdom. He favored the attempt to bring in the Truce of God. This originated in Aquitaine, where the bishops, in 1041, ordered that no private feuds should be prosecuted between the sunset of Wednesday and the sunrise of Monday, the period covered by the most sacred events in the life of Jesus. This "truce," which was afterwards extended to embrace certain other holy seasons and festivals, spread from land to land. It shows the influence of Christianity in those dark and troublous times. Although it was imperfectly carried out, it was most beneficent in its influence, and specially welcome to the classes not capable of defending themselves against violence.

SYNOD OF SUTRI.—In 1046 Henry was called into Italy by the well-disposed of all parties, to put an end to the reign of vice and disorder at Rome. He caused the three rival popes to be deposed by a synod at Sutri, and a German prelate, Suidger, bishop of Bamberg, to be appointed under the name of Clement II., by whom he was crowned emperor. After Clement died, Henry raised to the Papacy three German popes in succession. While in the full exercise of his great authority, and when he was not quite forty years of age, he died.

HENRY IV.: HIS CONTESTS IN GERMANY.—Henry IV. (1056-1106), at his father's death, was but six years old. He had been crowned king at the age of four. Agnes of Poitou, his mother, the regent, had no ability to curb the princes, who were now released from restraint, and eager for independence. By a bold stratagem, an ambitious prelate, Hanno, archbishop of Cologne, carried off the young king, and assumed the guardianship over him. He had a rival in the person of Adalbert, archbishop of Bremen, whom Henry liked best, as being more indulgent and complaisant, and who at length became his chosen guide. But in 1066 the princes caused Adalbert to be banished from court. They obliged Henry to marry Bertha, the daughter of the margrave of Turin, to whom he had been betrothed by his father. The union was repugnant to him, and he sought a divorce; although her patience eventually won the victory, and she became a cherished wife. Henry, arrived at man's estate, was involved in a contest with three of the great dukes. It was evident that he meant to tread in the footsteps of his father, and to reduce the princes to submission. Hostility arose, especially between the young king and the Saxons, who did not relish the transfer of the imperial office to the Franconian line. The passionate and wilful disposition of Henry, and his sensual propensities, were his worst enemies. The strongholds which he erected among the Saxons, in themselves a menace, were made haunts of his boon companions and comrades in the chase. The extortion and depredations to which the Saxons were a prey provoked a great insurrection, which at first prevailed; but the excesses of the elated insurgents—as seen, for example, in the plundering and burning of churches—caused a reaction. Henry suppressed the revolt, and dealt with the Saxons with the utmost harshness, treating their dukedom as conquered territory. The Saxon chiefs were now in durance: his enemies on every side had willingly yielded, or were prostrate. The hour seemed to have come for Henry to exercise that sovereignty as Roman emperor over Church and State which his father had wielded; but he found himself confronted by a new and powerful antagonist in the celebrated Pope Hilde-brand, or Gregory VII. (1073-1085).

HILDEBRAND: INVESTITURES.—The state of affairs in the Roman Church had called into existence a party of reform, the life and soul of which was Hildebrand. He was the son of a carpenter of Soano, a small town in Tuscany, and was born in 1018. He was educated in a monastery in Rome, and spent some time in France, in the great monastery of Cluny. He became the influential adviser of the popes who immediately preceded him. The great aim of Hildebrand and of his supporters—one of the most prominent of whom was the zealous Peter Damiani, bishop of Ostia—was to abolish simony and the marriage of priests. By simony was meant the purchase and sale of benefices, which had come to prevail in the different countries. The old church laws requiring celibacy had been disregarded, and great numbers of the inferior clergy were living with their wives. In Hildebrand's view, there could be no purity and no just discipline in the Church without a strict enforcement of the neglected rule. The priests must put away their wives. Connected with these reforms was the broader design of wholly emancipating the Church from the control of the secular power, and of subordinating the State to the Church. For this end there must be an abolition of investiture by lay hands. This demand it was that kindled a prolonged and terrible controversy between the emperors and the popes. The great ecclesiastics had temporal estates and a temporal jurisdiction, which placed them in a feudal relation, and made them powerful subjects. It was the custom of the kings to invest them with these temporalities by giving to them the ring and the staff. This enabled the kings to keep out of the benefices persons not acceptable to them, who might be elected by the clergy. On the other hand, it was complained that this custom put the bishops and other high ecclesiastics into a relation of dependence on the lay authority; and, moreover, that, the ring and staff being badges of a spiritual function, it was sacrilegious for a layman to bestow them.

CONTEST OF HILDEBRAND AND HENRY IV.—In the period of lawlessness at Rome, Hildebrand had welcomed the intervention of Henry III., and even of Henry IV., at the beginning of his reign. But this he regarded as only a provisional remedy made necessary by a desperate disorder. On acceding to the Papacy, he began to put in force his leading ideas. The attempt to abolish the marriage of priests was resisted, and stirred up great commotion in all the countries. The legates of the Pope set themselves to stem the tide of opposition by inveighing, in addresses to the common people, against the married clergy, as unfit to minister at the altar. By this means, a popular party in favor of the reform was created. In 1075, in a synod at Rome, Hildebrand pronounced the ban against five councilors of Henry IV. for simony. At the same time he threatened Philip of France with a similar penalty. He forbade princes to invest with any spiritual office. To oaths of allegiance he did not object, but to any investiture of a spiritual kind. Gregory selected Henry IV. as the antagonist with whom to fight out the battle. Henry's ecclesiastical appointments were not simoniacal in fact, although they violated the papal decrees against simony. His real offense was his determination to make the appointments himself. Moreover, in 1075, he ventured to name Germans to the sees of Ferno and Spoleto. Unfortunately he was weakened by the disaffection of the German princes, and, most of all, of the Saxons. The fire of rebellion in Saxony had not been quenched: it was still smouldering. Gregory summoned Henry to Rome to answer to the charges made against him. In three German synods held in 1076, the incensed emperor caused empty accusations to be brought against the Pope, and a declaration to be passed deposing him. He sent to the pontiff a letter filled with denunciation, and addressed "to the false monk, Hildebrand." Gregory issued decrees excommunicating Henry, deposing him, and declaring his subjects free from their obligation of allegiance. It was the received doctrine, that a heretic or a heathen could not reign over Christian people. The discontented German princes took sides with Gregory. In an assembly at Tribur in 1076, they invited the Pope to come to Augsburg, and to judge in the case of Henry: he was to live as a private man; and, if he remained excommunicate for a year, he was to cease to be king altogether.

HUMILIATION OF HENRY IV.—Henry was now as anxious for reconciliation with the Pope as before he had been bold in his defiance. In the midst of winter, with his wife and child and a few attendants, he crossed the Mt. Cenis pass, undergoing extreme difficulty and hardship, and presented himself as a penitent before Gregory, who had arrived, on his way to Augsburg, at the strongly fortified castle of Canossa. The Pope kept him waiting long, it is said, barefoot and bareheaded in the court-yard of the castle. Finally he was admitted and absolved, but only on the condition that Gregory was to adjust the matters in dispute between the emperor and his subjects.

CONTINUED CONFLICT.—When Henry found that his imperial rights were still withheld, his fiery spirit rebounded from this depth of humiliation. The Lombards, with whom Gregory was unpopular, joined him. A majority of the German princes, adhering to the Pope, in 1077 elected Rudolph, duke of Swabia, emperor. The Pope took up his cause, and in 1080 once more excommunicated and deposed Henry. The emperor proclaimed anew, through synods, the Pope's deposition, and things were back in the former state. The emperor's party appointed a counter-pope, Guibert, archbishop of Ravenna, under the name of Clement III. Rudolph was killed in battle (1080). Henry's power now vastly increased. He invaded Italy (1081), and laid waste the territory of Matilda, countess of Tuscany, a fast friend of Gregory. In 1084 he captured Rome. The Pope had found a defender in Robert Guiscard, the Norman duke of Lower Italy, whom he had excommunicated, but whom (in 1080) he forgave, and took into his service. Robert released Gregory, who had been besieged in the Castle of St. Angelo. Hildebrand died at Salerno, May 25, 1085. When near his end he uttered the words which are inscribed on his tomb: "I have loved righteousness, and hated iniquity; therefore do I die in exile." Of the rectitude of his intentions, there is no room for doubt, whatever view is taken of the expediency of his measures. He united with an unbending will the power of accommodating himself to circumstances, as is witnessed in his treatment of Robert Guiscard, and in his forbearance towards William the Conqueror, king of England, with whom he did not wish to break.

Of this great pontiff, Sir James Stephen says: "He found the Papacy dependent on the empire: he sustained it by alliances almost commensurate with the Italian peninsula. He found the Papacy electoral by the Roman people and clergy: he left it electoral by a college of papal nomination. He found the emperor the virtual patron of the holy see: he wrested that power from his hands. He found the secular clergy the allies and dependants of the secular power: he converted them into the inalienable auxiliaries of his own. He found the higher ecclesiastics in servitude to the temporal sovereigns: he delivered them from that yoke to subjugate them to the Roman tiara. He found the patronage of the Church the mere desecrated spoil and merchandise of princes: he reduced it within the dominion of the supreme pontiff. He is celebrated as the reformer of the impure and profane abuses of his age: he is more justly entitled to the praise of having left the impress of his own gigantic character on the history of all the ages which have succeeded him."

LAST DAYS OF HENRY IV.—In 1085 Henry IV. returned to Germany, having been crowned emperor by his Pope, Clement III. The Saxons were tired of strife; and, on the assurance that their ancient privileges should be restored, they were pacified. Hermann of Luxemburg, whom they had recognized as their king, had resigned the crown (1088). The last days of Henry were clouded by the rebellion of his sons, first of Conrad (1093), and then of Henry (1104), who was supported by the Pope, Paschal II. The emperor was taken prisoner, and obliged to sign his own abdication at Ingelheim in 1105. The duke of Lotharingia and others came to his support, and a civil war was threatened; but Henry died at Lüttich in 1106. His body was placed in a stone coffin, where it lay in an unconsecrated chapel, at Spires, until the removal of the excommunication (1111).

CONCORDAT OF WORMS.—Henry V. (1106-1125) was not in the least disposed to yield up the right of investiture. Hence he was soon engaged in a controversy with Paschal II. Henry went to Rome with an army in 1110, and obliged the Pope to crown him emperor, and to concede to him the right in question. When he went back to Germany, the Pope revoked the concession, and excommunicated him. The German princes, as might be expected, sided with the pontiff. The conflict in Germany went on. The emperor's authority, which was established in the South by means of his powerful supporters, was not secured in the North; but, during the last three years of his life, he was at peace with the Church. By the Concordat of Worms in 1122, it was agreed that investiture should take place in the presence of the emperor or of his deputies; that the emperor should first invest with the scepter, and then consecration should take place by the Church, with the bestowal of the ring and the staff. All holders of secular benefices were to perform feudal obligations.

LOTHAR OF SAXONY.—The princes over whom Henry V. had exercised a severe control opposed the elevation of Frederick of Hohenstaufen, the son of his sister Agnes. At a brilliant assembly at Mentz, Lothar of Saxony was chosen emperor (1125-1137). He allowed all the Pope's claims, and was crowned at Rome by Innocent II., accepting the allodial possessions of Matilda of Tuscany, as a fief from the pontiff. He carried on a war with the Hohenstaufen princes, Frederick of Swabia, and his brother Conrad, who finally yielded. Lothar was helped in the conflict by Henry the Proud, the duke of Bavaria, who also became duke of Saxony. Germany under Lothar extended its influence in the north and east.

CULTURE IN THE ELEVENTH CENTURY.—The tenth century, owing to causes which have been explained, was a dark age. In the eleventh century circumstances were more favorable for culture. Under the Saxon emperors, intercourse was renewed with the Greek Empire. There was some intercourse with the Arabs in Spain, among whom several of the sciences were cultivated, especially mathematics, astronomy, and medicine (p. 232). The study of the Roman law was revived in the Lombard cities, and this had a disciplinary value. The restoration of order in the Church, after the synod of Sutri (1046), had likewise a wholesome influence in respect to culture. There were several schools of high repute in France, especially those at Rheims, Chartres, Tours, and in the monastery of Bec, in Normandy, where Lanfranc, an Italian by birth, a man of wisdom and piety, was the abbot.