[Sidenote: The new contest.]

With the great Emperor's death the contest between Papacy and Empire enters on a new phase. It is typical of this phase that the one outstanding question between the two powers after the Peace of Venice was the question of Tuscany. For the quarrel was now almost entirely political, and was becoming more and more confined to Italian politics. The imperial attempt to subdue Italy to Germany had failed, and it remained for the Emperor to make it impossible for the Pope to live at Rome except as a dependant of the German King. With Tuscany, Lombardy, and Sicily under the imperial control, there was no room for papal action in Italy. In a contest of abstract principles the Emperor had entirely failed to subdue the Pope; and the interest and importance of the contest between Frederick and Alexander lay in the fact that each was the representative of an idea. This is no doubt the reason why Frederick's failure did not damage his prestige. But he had learnt that he could not set the abstract claims of the Empire against those of the Papacy. The former did not appeal to any one beyond the limits of Germany; whereas the latter could count on sympathy in every country of Western Europe. Frederick, therefore, made no more appeals to Europe. His disputes with the Papacy were now individual matters: they were contests of policy, not of principle, and he would not hesitate to turn circumstances to his advantage. Perhaps, fortunately for Frederick's reputation, he did nothing more than inaugurate this policy. But it was a policy which essentially suited the peculiar genius of his successor.

[Sidenote: Henry VI.]

As soon as Frederick had started for Palestine Henry was plunged in difficulties. Henry the Lion returned from banishment and raised a disturbance. A few months later William II of Sicily died, and Pope Clement III (1187-91) immediately invested with the kingdom Tancred, Count of Lecce, an illegitimate member of the Hauteville family, who had been elected by the party opposed to the German influence. On the top of these difficulties came the news of Frederick's death. There was thus a double reason for an expedition to Italy—Henry must assert his wife's claim to the throne of Sicily, and he must do this without quarrelling with the Pope, from whom he must obtain the imperial crown. His first expedition was only a formal success. Pope Celestine III (1191-8), who took office just after Henry entered Italy, dared not refuse to crown him emperor, nor could he prevent Henry from either courting the Roman Commune with success or prosecuting his claim to the Sicilian crown. But Henry failed before Naples: his army was decimated by the plague, and his wife fell into Tancred's hands.

[Sidenote: His success in Italy.]

This ill-success revived the Guelf opposition in Germany, whose most powerful supporter was Henry the Lion's brother-in-law, Richard of England. Richard on his way to Palestine had made an alliance with Tancred against the common Hohenstaufen enemy. But returning from crusade Richard fell into the hands of Leopold of Austria. Leopold was forced to hand him over to the Emperor, and the anti-Hohenstaufen alliance fell to pieces. For whatever reason, Henry kept the English King for more than a year, and turned a deaf ear to the papal remonstrances against his detention of a crusader. Fortified by the failure of the threatened combination against him, and by the money from Richard's ransom, Henry returned to Italy. Fortune favoured him at every turn. Since he left Italy Tancred and his eldest son had died, and Henry found no difficulty in getting hold of the youthful son of Tancred, who had been placed upon the throne under his mother's regency. Apulia and Sicily were overrun. The toils were closing round the Pope. Celestine had excommunicated all concerned in Richard's imprisonment until they should have restored his ransom. Thus by implication Henry was excommunicate. The money had been spent in subduing the papal fief of Sicily; while Henry further made his brother Philip Marquis of Tuscany, and planted his followers about in the lands of the Church. Yet Celestine did not dare to pronounce the fatal sentence against the Emperor directly.

[Sidenote: His imperial schemes.]

Henry meditated one more step which would have rendered the Pope powerless. Frederick, with the mere prospect of the Sicilian succession for his son, desired to make the imperial title hereditary; much more was Henry, the active sovereign of Sicily, anxious to accomplish this. The lay princes could have been bribed to consent by the recognition of hereditary succession to their fiefs. But the German ecclesiastics, with the Pope at their back, had no desire to increase the power of the Emperor, and the utmost that Henry could secure was the election as German King, and therefore King of the Romans, of his two-year-old son Frederick.

[Sidenote: His death.]

Henry's projects stretched out beyond the lands under his rule. The death of Saladin encouraged the idea of a new crusade. Henry as crusader might propitiate the Pope. But such an expedition once started might have been diverted, as indeed happened a few years later, for an attack upon Constantinople, which should lead to the union of both empires under the ambitious Hohenstaufen. Pretexts were not wanting. Henry collected a number of German crusaders upon the coast of Italy, and many of these had actually sailed for Palestine when everything was changed by Henry's sudden death on September 28, 1197. He had reigned eight years, and was only thirty-two years of age. Despite his youthful age and his short reign he had raised the imperial power to a height which it had scarcely ever touched before and which it was never to reach again. Endowed with ability at least equal to his father's, his very selfishness and ruthlessness gave him a success denied to his predecessor. All Henry's acts were associated with his own aggrandisement, and the result shows that the Papacy no less than the Empire was dependent for its influence chiefly upon the personality of the holder of the office. Henry had to deal at Rome with Popes of inferior capacity. Had Innocent III been elected a few years earlier, the tragedy of Anagni—the maltreatment of Boniface VIII by the emissaries of the King of France—might have been anticipated by a century.