Henry III. (1029-1056) came to the German throne with brighter prospects than any of his predecessors. What a field for an Alexander, a Cæsar, or a Napoleon! What an opportunity to cut Germany loose from the
Empire and make her the greatest power in Europe! The Polish monarchy was falling to pieces; Hungary was rent by the pagan and Christian parties; Canute's northern empire had broken down; Italy, chronically subdivided, was awaiting a master; and the young king was also Duke of Bavaria, Franconia, and Swabia. Hindesheim, a contemporary, declared that no one in the Empire mourned the loss of Conrad because such better things were expected of his son, one of the most highly cultured young men of the age.[409:1]
Henry III. continued the policy of Otto I. by seeking to increase the power of the crown at the expense of the petty rulers. Hence duchies were given to his relatives or to loyal vassals. The lesser nobility and the commons were used to counteract the influence of the lords and princes. His reign, in consequence, was disturbed by no serious insurrections. The border states were subdued—Bohemia in 1041 and Hungary in 1044.[409:2] To keep the peace and put down feuds the Truce of God was proclaimed in 1041 throughout Germany. All feuds were to cease from Wednesday eve till Monday morning and absolution from sin was the reward for keeping the Truce.[409:3] Those who purposely broke it were penalised. Burgundy extended it to the periods between Advent and Epiphany, and from Septuagesima to the first Sunday after Easter. Henry III. soon made himself master of Italy and like many a predecessor assumed the iron crown of Lombardy and then established his supremacy over the Normans in the south. Out of a rule of seventeen years he
spent but sixty-four weeks in Italy. In 1046 he was coronated Emperor at Rome and made Patrician.
Like Charles the Great and Otto the Great Henry III. assumed the headship of the Church. The Papacy, at that time, was a three-headed monster which needed a Hercules to slay it. Benedict IX., another member of the Tusculum family, elected Pope when a boy of eighteen (1033), had led a life of indescribable crime and, in consequence, had been driven from the city (1044) but returned and in 1046 held the Vatican.[410:1] Sylvester III. was elected anti-Pope when Benedict IX. was driven out and lived in St. Peter's. Gregory VI. literally bought the papal throne of Benedict IX. (1045) for 1000 pounds of silver and bribed the people into approval. He took up his residence at St. Maria Maggiore.[410:2] Learning of these disorders, Henry III. went to Italy and in 1046 held the Council of Sutri in which Gregory VI. acknowledged his guilt, divested himself of his papal insignia and begged forgiveness. Benedict IX. and Sylvester III. were declared usurpers, simoniacs, and intruders, hence they were deposed. Benedict IX. hid himself for future trouble, Sylvester III. returned to his bishopric and Gregory VI. was sent into exile in Germany. The Bishop of Bamberg, a German, was chosen Pope in a council held in Rome and assumed the title of Clement II. (1046) and immediately coronated Henry III. and his wife with the imperial honours.[410:3] This is the beginning of a series of German Popes who were to do much to purify and strengthen the Church. Before Henry died three such Popes were elected. Clement II. soon assembled
a council in Rome to extirpate simony and to that end had several canons enacted. But his reign of less than a year, was too short to accomplish much. Henry III. died in 1056 with his great Empire full of trouble from border wars and rebellious nobles. The Empire was on the wane and his son took up a crown of difficulties.
On Germany the effects of the creation of the Holy Roman Empire were very marked. It established the recognised right of the German King to wear the Italian and imperial crowns and made Aachen, Milan, and Rome the coronation cities. It tended to weaken the allegiance of the Germans to their king when he became Emperor and spent most of his time, together with German wealth and blood, in Italy. It fused the German King and the Roman Emperor into a product different from either and effected the whole subsequent history of both Germany and the Empire. The two systems were very different: one was centralised, the other local; one rested upon a "sublime theory," the other grew out of anarchy; one was ruled by an absolute monarch, the other by a limited monarch; one was based on the equality of all citizens, the other founded on inequality. As a result of the fusion both offices lost and won certain attributes and the product was a "German Emperor" who was the necessary head of feudalism which became so deeply rooted that it took ages to throw it off. To help on the process of disintegration Otto the Great allowed the five great duchies to be subdivided and thus created a second order of nobility and greatly increased the number of nobles. In short Germany was weakened, impoverished, divided, and stunted. The denationalisation of Germany was continued until 1870. What
might not have been the splendid career of Germany had Otto the Great and his successors devoted their time and talent to the creation of a powerful German national state as did the French and English kings? It must be added, however, that this peculiar relation with Italy opened the way for learning, art, and a more refined civilisation in the North and that, in turn, Germany became the schoolmaster of Poland and Bohemia and perpetuated the language, literature, and law of Rome.
On Italy the Holy Roman Empire left a deep and permanent impression. It gave Italy a long line of foreign rulers who seldom cared much for her real interests and only sought to exploit her for selfish ends. It prevented the establishment of a powerful national state as a republic, or as a monarchy, under some native noble, or a Pope, until 1859. On the contrary it encouraged decentralisation and local division of the people. Italy became the scene, cause, and victim of countless wars and invasions by foreign rulers; or of innumerable local contests which sapped the nation of all strength and ambition.
On the Empire the results were plainly seen. The Empire of the Cæsars and of Charles the Great was revived on a German basis with a German Emperor and kept alive till 1806 when Napoleon dealt it a death-blow. Its earlier extent and later claims were never realised. It was forced into a continual struggle for its existence with the Italian republics and German dukes, with the Papacy, and with the national states of Europe. The three theories about the relation of the world-empire to the world-church received final development.