German Noble of the Eleventh Century in Court Dress
After the appointment of Pope Victor II, the king of Germany felt himself bound to afford him the protection of his imperial authority, and in the year 1055 he started for Italy, almost at the same time as the pope. In May of that year he appeared on the plains of Roncaglia; and there the princes and feudal vassals of Italy likewise appeared, to offer the homage of sincere reverence to the king of Germany, together with their oaths of allegiance. Pope Victor II convened a synod at Florence, where, in the emperor’s presence, the laws against simony and other edicts of a reformatory tendency were either re-enacted or amplified. An inquiry was then held into the conduct of Gottfried, sometime duke of Lorraine, which ended in the acquittal of the defendant—not, so the old chronicler expressly states, because his innocence was proved, but because his judges feared that if driven to desperation he would make himself the leader of the Normans in lower Italy. His wife Beatrice was carried off to Germany by Henry III, who defended his arbitrary action in this respect by saying that Beatrice had disposed of her hand without his consent, and had moreover bestowed it upon an enemy of her country. Towards the end of the year 1055 the emperor recrossed the Alps. Several nobles were already cherishing schemes of revolt, for a conspiracy had been formed against him under the leadership of Bishop Gebhard of Ratisbon; and Gottfried, assisted by Count Baldwin, once more made his appearance in Lorraine. The schemes of the malcontents were again frustrated by Henry’s firmness; Gebhard was brought to trial and committed to prison, and both Gottfried and Baldwin were defeated in the open field.
On this occasion the emperor met the king of France at Jovi to settle various affairs of state, and here again the vigour and heroic temper of Henry III were strikingly displayed. For the French king asserted that the German Empire had unlawfully taken possession of Lorraine, whereupon Henry offered to prove the falsity of the assertion by single combat. The king of France was only too well aware of the German emperor’s superiority, and fled secretly by night across the border.[h]
THE TRUCE OF GOD
[1035-1056 A.D.]
The times were rude, manners were no less so. Ceaseless wars, the feuds of the nobles, acts of violence of every kind, combined with hunger and pestilence to bring unspeakable misery upon the nations. According to the opinions of the time, the papacy should have been a strong helper in the midst of these calamities, but Rome was the seat of the worst disorders of all and most of the popes neither deserved nor commanded respect. At length the miseries of the age aroused—first in the monastery of Cluny in Burgundian France—an austere and devout religious spirit which at first found expression, according to the fashion of the times, in penitential exercises and monkish discipline, but presently ripened into vast projects of reform.
Hence came, in particular, the recommendation of the “truce of God” (Treuga Dei), and hence it spread over Burgundy and France. This was an attempt to insure certain days of peace and quiet in that iron age; it ordained that no feud should be fought out between Wednesday evening and early Monday morning, and the church sanctioned this institution. So strong was the influence of the example set by Cluny (Clugny) that in a little while all the numerous monasteries in France and Burgundy joined the “congregation of Cluny,” and a sombre earnestness took possession of the best men of the time.
So it was with Henry III. In the midst of the corruptions of the age he saw no salvation except through the most drastic measures, and felt that he, as the emperor, had a special call to be the deliverer of the people. He himself set a good example; he appointed none but earnest and worthy men to bishoprics, and that without taking money or presents from them; by act and admonition he laboured incessantly for peace and conciliation. He looked upon his imperial rank as a sacred office, instituted for the improvement of Christendom, and never set the crown upon his head without previous confession and penance, which last he even had inflicted upon himself with scourges. But the more he humbled himself the more urgent did he feel was the call to raise up the church by the mighty hand of the first of earthly sovereigns.