The Holy Roman Empire

by Viscount James Bryce Bryce

CHAPTER XIII.
FALL OF THE HOHENSTAUFEN.

In the three preceding chapters the Holy Empire has been described in what is not only the most brilliant but the most momentous period of its history; the period of its rivalry with the Popedom for the chief place in Christendom. For it was mainly through their relations with the spiritual power, by their friendship and protection at first, no less than by their subsequent hostility, that the Teutonic Emperors influenced the development of European politics. The reform of the Roman Church which went on during the reigns of Otto I and his successors down to Henry III, and which was chiefly due to the efforts of those monarchs, was the true beginning of the grand period of the Middle Ages, the first of that long series of movements, changes, and creations in the ecclesiastical system of Europe which was, so to speak, the master current of history, secular as well as religious, during the centuries which followed. The first result of Henry III's purification of the Papacy was seen in Hildebrand's attempt to subject all jurisdiction to that of his own chair, and in the long struggle of the Investitures, which brought out into clear light the opposing pretensions of the temporal and spiritual powers. Although destined in the end to bear far other fruit, the immediate effect of this struggle was to evoke in all classes an intense religious feeling; and, in opening up new fields of ambition to the hierarchy, to stimulate wonderfully their power of political organization. It was this impulse that gave birth to the Crusades, and that enabled the Popes, stepping forth as the rightful leaders of a religious war, to bend it to serve their own ends: it was thus too that they struck the alliance—strange as such an alliance seems now—with the rebellious cities of Lombardy, and proclaimed themselves the protectors of municipal freedom. But the third and crowning triumph of the Holy See was reserved for the thirteenth century. In the foundation of the two great orders of ecclesiastical knighthood, the all-powerful all-pervading Dominicans and Franciscans, the religious fervour of the Middle Ages culminated: in the overthrow of the only power which could pretend to vie with her in antiquity, in sanctity, in universality, the Papacy saw herself exalted to rule alone over the kings of the earth. Of that overthrow, following with terrible suddenness on the days of strength and glory which we have just been witnessing, this chapter has now to speak.

Henry VI, 1190-1197.

It happened strangely enough that just while their ruin was preparing, the house of Swabia gained over their ecclesiastical foes what seemed likely to prove an advantage of the first moment. The son and successor of Barbarossa was Henry VI, a man who had inherited all his father's harshness with none of his father's generosity. By his marriage with Constance, the heiress of the Norman kings, he had become master of Naples and Sicily. Emboldened by the possession of what had been hitherto the stronghold of his predecessors' bitterest enemies, and able to threaten the Pope from south as well as north, Henry conceived a scheme which might have wonderfully changed the history of Germany and Italy. He proposed to the Teutonic magnates to lighten their burdens by uniting these newly-acquired countries to the Empire, to turn their feudal lands into allodial, and to make no further demands for money on the clergy, on condition that they should pronounce the crown hereditary in his family. Results of the highest importance would have followed this change, which Henry advocated by setting forth the perils of interregna, and which he doubtless meant to be but part of an entirely new system of polity. Already so strong in Germany, and with an absolute command of their new kingdom, the Hohenstaufen might have dispensed with the renounced feudal services, and built up a firm centralized system, like that which was already beginning to develope itself in France. First, however, the Saxon princes, then some ecclesiastics headed by Conrad of Mentz, opposed the scheme; the pontiff retracted his consent, and Henry had to content himself with getting his infant son Frederick the Second chosen king of the Romans. On Henry's untimely death the election was set aside, and the contest which followed between Otto of Brunswick and Philip of Hohenstaufen, Philip, 1198-1208. Innocent III and Otto IV. brother of Henry the Sixth, gave the Popedom, now guided by the genius of Innocent the Third, an opportunity of extending its sway at the expense of its antagonist. The Pope moved heaven and earth on behalf of Otto, whose family had been the constant rivals of the Hohenstaufen, and who was himself willing to promise all that Innocent required; but Philip's personal merits and the vast possessions of his house gave him while he lived the ascendancy in Germany. His death by the hand of an assassin, while it seemed to vindicate the Pope's choice, left the Swabian party without Otto IV, 1208 (1198)-1212. a head, and the Papal nominee was soon recognized over the whole Empire. But Otto IV became less submissive as he felt his throne more secure. If he was a Guelf by birth, his acts in Italy, whither he had gone to receive the imperial crown, were those of a Ghibeline, anxious to reclaim the rights he had but just forsworn. The Roman Church at last deposed and excommunicated her ungrateful son, and Innocent rejoiced in a second successful assertion of pontifical supremacy, when Otto was dethroned by the youthful Frederick the Second, whom a tragic irony sent into the field of politics as the champion of the Holy See, whose hatred was to embitter his life and extinguish his house.

Frederick the Second, 1212-1250.

Upon the events of that terrific strife, for which Emperor and Pope girded themselves up for the last time, the narrative of Frederick the Second's career, with its romantic adventures, its sad picture of marvellous powers lost on an age not ripe for them, blasted as by a curse in the moment of victory, it is not necessary, were it even possible, here to enlarge. That conflict did indeed determine the fortunes of the German kingdom no less than of the republics of Italy, but it was upon Italian ground that it was fought out and it is to Italian history that its details belong. So too of Frederick himself. Out of the long array of the Germanic successors of Charles, he is, with Otto III, the only one who comes before us with a genius and a frame of character that are not those of a Northern or a Teuton[251]. There dwelt in him, it is true, all the energy and knightly valour of his father Henry and his grandfather Barbarossa. But along with these, and changing their direction, were other gifts, inherited perhaps from his Italian mother and fostered by his education among the orange-groves of Palermo—a love of luxury and beauty, an intellect refined, subtle, philosophical. Through the mist of calumny and fable it is but dimly that the truth of the man can be discerned, and the outlines that appear serve to quicken rather than appease the curiosity with which we regard one of the most extraordinary personages in history. A sensualist, yet also a warrior and a politician; a profound lawgiver and an impassioned poet; in his youth fired by crusading fervour, in later life persecuting heretics while himself accused of blasphemy and unbelief; of winning manners and ardently beloved by his followers, but with the stain of more than one cruel deed upon his name, he was the marvel of his own generation, and succeeding ages looked back with awe, not unmingled with pity, upon the inscrutable figure of the last Emperor who had braved all the terrors of the Church and died beneath her ban, the last who had ruled from the sands of the ocean to the shores of the Sicilian sea. But while they pitied they condemned. The undying hatred of the Papacy threw round his memory a lurid light; him and him alone of all the imperial line, Dante, the worshipper of the Empire, must perforce deliver to the flames of hell[252].

Struggle of Frederick with the Papacy.

Placed as the Empire was, it was scarcely possible for its head not to be involved in war with the constantly aggressive Popedom—aggressive in her claims of territorial dominion in Italy as well as of ecclesiastical jurisdiction throughout the world. But it was Frederick's peculiar misfortune to have given the Popes a hold over him which they well knew how to use. In a moment of youthful enthusiasm he had taken the cross from the hands of an eloquent monk, and his delay to fulfil the vow was branded as impious neglect. Excommunicated by Gregory IX for not going to Palestine, he went, and was excommunicated for going: having concluded an advantageous peace, he sailed for Italy, and was a third time excommunicated for returning. To Pope Gregory he was at last after a fashion reconciled, but with the accession of Innocent IV the flame burst out afresh. Upon the special pretexts which kindled the strife it is not worth while to descant: the real causes were always the same, and could only be removed by the submission of one or other combatant. Chief among them was Frederick's possession of Sicily. Now were seen the fruits which Barbarossa had stored up for his house when he gained for Henry his son the hand of the Norman heiress. Naples and Sicily had been for some two hundred years recognized as a fief of the Holy See, and the Pope, who felt himself in danger while encircled by the powers of his rival, was determined to use his advantage to the full and make it the means of extinguishing imperial authority throughout Italy. But although the struggle was far more of a territorial and political one than that of the previous century had been, it reopened every former source of strife, and passed into a contest between the civil and the spiritual potentate. The old war-cries of Henry and Hildebrand, of Barbarossa and Alexander, roused again the unquenchable hatred of Italian factions: the pontiff asserted the transference of the Empire as a fief, and declared that the power of Peter, symbolized by the two keys, was temporal as well as spiritual: the Emperor appealed to law, to the indelible rights of Cæsar; and denounced his foe as the antichrist of the New Testament, since it was God's second vicar whom he was resisting. The one scoffed at anathema, upbraided the avarice of the Church, and treated her soldiery, the friars, with a severity not seldom ferocious. The other solemnly deposed a rebellious and heretical prince, offered the imperial crown to Robert of France, to the heir of Denmark, to Haco the Norse king; succeeded at last in raising up rivals in Henry of Thuringia and William of Holland. Yet throughout it is less the Teutonic Emperor who is attacked than the Sicilian king, the unbeliever and friend of Mohammedans, the hereditary enemy of the Church, the assailant of Lombard independence, whose success must leave the Papacy defenceless. And as it was from the Sicilian kingdom that the strife chiefly arose, so was the possession of the Sicilian kingdom a source rather of weakness than of strength, for it distracted Frederick's forces and put him in the false position of a liegeman resisting his lawful suzerain. Truly, as the Greek proverb says, the gifts of foes are no gifts, and bring no profit with them. The Norman kings were more terrible in their death than in their life: they had sometimes baffled the Teutonic Emperor; their heritage destroyed him.

Conrad IV, 1250-1254.

With Frederick fell the Empire. From the ruin that overwhelmed the greatest of its houses it emerged, living indeed, and destined to a long life, but so shattered, crippled, and degraded, that it could never more be to Europe and to Germany what it once had been. In the last act of the tragedy were joined the enemy who had now blighted its strength and the rival who was destined to insult its weakness and at last blot out its name. The murder of Frederick's grandson Conradin—a hero whose youth and whose chivalry might have moved the pity of any other foe—was approved, if not suggested, by Pope Clement; it was done by the minions of Charles of France.