Part 40

At last, after an expedition against the Poles, Otto was able to fulfil the wish of his heart; he went to Italy in 980 and never returned to Germany. His claims to southern Italy were vehemently opposed, and in July 982 he suffered a disastrous defeat at the hands of the East Roman emperor's subjects and their Saracen allies. The news of this crushing blow cast a gloom over Germany, which was again suffering from the attacks of her unruly neighbours. The Saxons were able to cope with the Danes and the German boundary was pushed forward in the south-east; but the Slavs fought with such courage and success that during the reigns of the emperors Otto II. and Otto III. much of the work effected by the margraves Hermann Billung and Gero was undone, and nearly two centuries passed before they were driven back to the position which they had perforce occupied under Otto the Great. Such were the first-fruits of the assumption of the imperial crown.

Otto III.

About six months before his death in Rome, in December 983, Otto held a diet at Verona which was attended by many of the German princes, who recognized his infant son Otto as his successor. Otto was then taken to Germany, and after his father's death he was crowned at Aix-la-Chapelle on Christmas Day 983. Henry of Bavaria was released from his confinement and became his guardian; but as this restless prince showed an inclination to secure the crown for himself, the young king was taken from him and placed in the care of his mother Theophano. Henry, however, gained a good deal of support both within and without Germany and caused much anxiety to Otto's friends, but in 985 peace was made and he was restored to Bavaria. While Theophano acted as regent, the chief functions of government were discharged by Willigis, archbishop of Mainz (d. 1011), a vigorous prelate who had risen from a humble rank to the highest position in the German Church. He was aided by the princes, each of whom claimed a voice in the administration, and, during the lifetime of Theophano at least, a stubborn and sometimes a successful resistance was offered to the attacks of the Slavs. But under the prevalent conditions a vigorous rule was impossible, and during Otto's minority the royal authority was greatly weakened. In Saxony the people were quickly forgetting their hereditary connexion with the successors of Henry the Fowler; in Bavaria, after the death of Duke Henry in 995, the nobles, heedless of the royal power, returned to the ancient German custom and chose Henry's son Henry as their ruler.

The character of Otto.

In 995 Otto III. was declared to have reached his majority. He had been so carefully trained in all the learning of the time that he was called the "wonder of the world," and a certain fascination still belongs to his imaginative and fantastic nature. Imbued by his mother with the extravagant ideas of the East Roman emperors he introduced into his court an amount of splendour and ceremonial hitherto unknown in western Europe. The heir of the western emperors and the grandson of an eastern emperor, he spent most of his time in Rome, and fancied he could unite the world under his rule. In this vague design he was encouraged by Gerbert, the greatest scholar of the day, whom, as Silvester II., he raised to the papal throne. Meanwhile Germany was suffering severely from internal disorders and from the inroads of her rude neighbours; and when in the year 1000 Otto visited his northern kingdom there were hopes that he would smite these enemies with the vigour of his predecessors. But these hopes were disappointed; on the contrary, Otto seems to have released Boleslaus, duke of the Poles, from his vague allegiance to the German kings, and he founded an archbishopric at Gnesen, thus freeing the Polish sees from the authority of the archbishop of Magdeburg.

Henry II.

When Otto III. died in January 1002 there remained no representative of the elder branch of the imperial family, and several candidates came forward for the vacant throne. Among these candidates was Henry of Bavaria, son of Duke Henry the Quarrelsome and a great-grandson of Henry the Fowler, and at Mainz in June 1002 this prince was chosen German king as Henry II. Having been recognized as king by the Saxons, the Thuringians and the nobles of Lorraine, the new king was able to turn his attention to the affairs of government, but on the whole his reign was an unfortunate one for Germany. For ten years civil war raged in Lorraine; in Saxony much blood was shed in petty quarrels; and Henry made expeditions against his turbulent vassals in Flanders and Friesland. He also interfered in the affairs of Burgundy, but the acquisition of this kingdom was the work of his successor, Conrad II. During nearly the whole of this reign the Germans were fighting the Poles. Boleslaus of Poland, who was now a very powerful sovereign, having conquered Lusatia and Silesia, brought Bohemia also under his rule and was soon at variance with the German king. Anxious to regain these lands Henry allied himself with some Slavonic tribes, promising not to interfere with the exercise of their heathen religion, while Boleslaus found supporters among the discontented German nobles. The honours of the ensuing war were with Henry, and when peace was made in 1006 Boleslaus gave up Bohemia, but the struggle was soon renewed and neither side had gained any serious advantage when peace was again made in 1013. A third Polish war broke out in 1015. Henry led his troops in person and obtained assistance from the Russians and the Hungarians; peace was concluded in 1018, the Elbe remaining the north-east boundary of Germany. Henry made three journeys to Italy, being crowned king of the Lombards at Pavia in 1004 and emperor at Rome ten years later. Before the latter event, in order to assert his right of sovereignty over Rome, he called himself king of the Romans, a designation which henceforth was borne by his successors until they received the higher title from the pope. Hitherto a sovereign crowned at Aix-la-Chapelle had been "king of the West Franks," or "king of the Franks and Saxons." Henry was generous to the church, to which he looked for support, but he maintained the royal authority over the clergy. Although generally unsuccessful he strove hard for peace, and during this reign the principle of inheritance was virtually established with regard to German fiefs.

Conrad II.

After Henry's death the nobles met at Kamba, near Oppenheim, and in September 1024 elected Conrad, a Franconian count, to the vacant throne. Although favoured by the German clergy the new king, Conrad II., had to face some opposition; this, however, quickly vanished and he received the homage of the nobles in the various duchies and seemed to have no reason to dread internal enemies. Nevertheless, he had soon to battle with a conspiracy headed by his stepson, Ernest II., duke of Swabia. This was caused primarily by Conrad's avowed desire to acquire the kingdom of Burgundy, but other reasons for dissatisfaction existed, and the revolting duke found it easy to gather around him the scattered forces of discontent. However, the king was quite able to deal with the rising, which, indeed, never attained serious proportions, although Ernest gave continual trouble until his death in 1030. With regard to the German duchies Conrad followed the policy of Otto the Great. He wished to control, not to abolish them. In 1026, when Duke Henry of Bavaria died, he obtained the duchy for his son Henry, afterwards the emperor Henry III.; later, despite the opposition of the nobles, he invested the same prince with Swabia, where the ducal family had died out. Franconia was in the hands of Conrad himself; thus Saxony, Thuringia, Carinthia and Lorraine were the only duchies not completely dependent upon the king.

The neighbouring countries.

When Conrad ascended the throne the safety of Germany was endangered from three different points. On the north was Denmark ruled by Canute the Great; on the east was the wide Polish state whose ruler, Boleslaus, had just taken the title of king; and on the south-east was Hungary, which under its king, St Stephen, was rapidly becoming an organized and formidable power. Peace was maintained with Canute, and in 1035 a treaty was concluded and the land between the Eider and the Schlei was ceded to Denmark. In 1030 Conrad waged a short war against Hungary, but here also he was obliged to assent to a cession of territory. In Poland he was more fortunate. After the death of Boleslaus in 1025 the Poles plunged into a civil war, and Conrad was able to turn this to his own advantage. In 1031 he recovered Lusatia and other districts, and in 1033 the Polish duke of Mesislaus did homage to him at Merseburg. His authority was recognized by the Bohemians, and two expeditions taught the Slavonic tribes between the Elbe and the Oder to respect his power.

Conrad in Italy.

In Italy, whither he journeyed in 1026 and 1036, Conrad was not welcomed. Although as emperor and as king of the Lombards he was the lawful sovereign of that country, the Germans were still regarded as intruders and could only maintain their rights by force. The event which threw the greatest lustre upon this reign was the acquisition of the kingdom of Burgundy, or Arles, which was bequeathed to Conrad by its king, Rudolph III., the uncle of his wife, Gisela. Rudolph died in 1032, and in 1033 Conrad was crowned king at Peterlingen, being at once recognized by the German-speaking population. For about two years his rival, Odo, count of Champagne, who was supported by the Romance-speaking inhabitants, kept up the struggle against him, but eventually all opposition was overcome and the possession of Burgundy was assured to the German king.

The nobles and the land.

This reign is important in the history of Germany because it marks the beginning of the great imperial age, but it has other features of interest. In dealing with the revolt of Ernest of Swabia Conrad was aided by the reluctance of the vassals of the great lords to follow them against the king. This reluctance was due largely to the increasing independence of this class of landholders, who were beginning to learn that the sovereign, and not their immediate lord, was the protector of their liberties; the independence in its turn arose from the growth of the principle of heredity. In Germany Conrad did not definitely decree that fiefs should pass from father to son, but he encouraged and took advantage of the tendency in this direction, a tendency which was, obviously, a serious blow at the power of the great lords over their vassals. In 1037 he issued from Milan his famous edict for the kingdom of Italy which decreed that upon the death of a landholder his fief should descend to his son, or grandson, and that no fiefholder should be deprived of his fief without the judgment of his peers. In another direction Conrad's policy was to free himself as king from dependence upon the church. He sought to regain lands granted to the church by his predecessors; prelates were employed on public business much less frequently than heretofore. He kept a firm hand over the church, but his rule was purely secular; he took little or no interest in ecclesiastical affairs. During this reign the centre and basis of the imperial power in Germany was moved southwards. Saxony, the home of the Ottos, became less prominent in German politics, while Bavaria and the south were gradually gaining in importance.

Henry III.

Henry III., who had been crowned German king and also king of Burgundy during his father's lifetime, took possession of his great inheritance without the slightest sign of opposition in June 1039. He was without the impulsiveness which marred Conrad's great qualities, but he had the same decisive judgment, wide ambition and irresistible will as his father. During the late king's concluding years a certain Bretislaus, who had served Conrad with distinction in Lusatia, became duke of Bohemia and made war upon the disunited Poles, easily bringing them into subjection. Thus Germany was again threatened with the establishment of a great and independent Slavonic state upon her eastern frontier. To combat this danger Henry invaded Bohemia, and after two reverses compelled Bretislaus to appear before him as a suppliant at Regensburg. The German king treated his foe generously and was rewarded by receiving to the end of his reign the service of a loyal vassal; he also gained the goodwill of the Poles by helping to bring about the return of their duke, Casimir I., who willingly did homage for his land. The king of Denmark, too, acknowledged Henry as his feudal lord. Moreover, by several campaigns in Hungary the German king brought that country into the position of a fief of the German crown. This war was occasioned by the violence of the Hungarian usurper, Aba Samuel, and formed Henry's principal occupation from 1041 to 1045.

Henry's internal policy.

In Germany itself Henry acquired, during the first ten years of his rule, an authority which had been unknown since the days of Otto the Great. Early in his reign he had made a determined enemy of Godfrey the Bearded, duke of upper Lorraine, who, in 1044, conspired against him and who found powerful allies in Henry I., king of France, in the counts of Flanders and Holland, and in certain Burgundian nobles. However, Godfrey and his friends were easily worsted, and when the dispossessed duke again tried the fortune of war he found that the German king had detached Henry of France from his side and was also in alliance with the English king, Edward the Confessor. While thus maintaining his authority in the north-east corner of the country by alliances and expeditions, Henry was strong enough to put the laws in motion against the most powerful princes and to force them to keep the public peace. Under his severe but beneficent rule, Germany enjoyed a period of internal quiet such as she had probably never experienced before, but even Henry could not permanently divert from its course the main political tendency of the age, the desire of the great feudal lords for independence.

Henry's wars.

Cowed, but unpacified and discontented, the princes awaited their opportunity, while the king played into their hands by allowing the southern duchies, Swabia, Bavaria and Carinthia, to pass from under his own immediate control. His position was becoming gradually weaker when in 1051 he invaded Hungary, where a reaction against German influence was taking place. After a second campaign in 1052 the Hungarian king, Andrew, was compelled to make peace and to own himself the vassal of the German king. Meanwhile Saxony and Bavaria were permeated by the spirit of unrest, and Henry returned from Hungary just in time to frustrate a widespread conspiracy against him in southern Germany. Encouraged by the support of the German rebels, Andrew of Hungary repudiated the treaty of peace and the German supremacy in that country came to a sudden end. Among the causes which undermined Henry's strength was the fact that the mediate nobles, who had stood loyally by his father, Conrad, were not his friends; probably his wars made serious demands upon them, and his strict administration of justice, especially his insistence upon the maintenance of the public peace, was displeasing to them.

Henry and the church.

At the beginning of Henry's reign the church all over Europe was in a deplorable condition. Simony was universally practised and the morality of the clergy was very low. The Papacy, too, had sunk to a degraded condition and its authority was annihilated, not only by the character of successive popes, but by the fact that there were at the same time three claimants for the papal throne. Henry, a man of deep, sincere and even rigorous piety, regarded these evils with sorrow; he associated himself definitely with the movement for reform which proceeded from Cluny, and commanded his prelates to put an end to simony and other abuses. Then moving farther in the same direction he resolved to strike at the root of the evil by the exercise of his imperial authority. In 1046 he entered Italy at the head of an army which secured for him greater respect than had been given to any German ruler since Charlemagne, and at Sutri and in Rome he deposed the three rival popes. He then raised to the papal see Suidger, bishop of Bamberg, who, as Pope Clement II., crowned him emperor; after Clement three other German popes--Damasus II., Leo IX. and Victor II.--owed their elevation to Henry. Under these popes a new era began for the church, and in thus reforming the Papacy Henry III. fulfilled what was regarded as the noblest duty of his imperial office, but he also sharpened a weapon whose keen edge was first tried against his son.

The last years of Henry III. form a turning-point in German history. Great kings and emperors came after him, but none of them possessed the direct, absolute authority which he freely wielded; even in the case of the strongest the forms of feudalism more and more interposed themselves between the monarch and the nation, and at last the royal authority virtually disappeared. During this reign the towns entered upon an age of prosperity, and the Rhine and the Weser became great avenues of trade.

The minority of Henry IV.

When Henry died in October 1056 the decline of the royal authority was accelerated by the fact that his successor was a child. Henry IV., who had been crowned king in 1054, was at first in charge of his mother, the empress Agnes, whose weak and inefficient rule was closely watched by Anno, archbishop of Cologne. In 1062, however, Anno and other prominent prelates and laymen, perhaps jealous of the influence exercised at court by Henry, bishop of Augsburg (d. 1063), managed by a clever trick to get possession of the king's person. Deserted by her friends Agnes retired, and forthwith Anno began to rule the state. But soon he was compelled to share his duties with Adalbert, archbishop of Bremen, and a year or two later Adalbert became virtually the ruler of Germany, leaving Anno to attend to affairs in Italy. Adalbert's rule was very successful. Compelling King Solomon to own Henry's supremacy he restored the influence of Germany in Hungary; in internal affairs he restrained the turbulence of the princes, but he made many enemies, especially in Saxony, and in 1066 Henry, who had just been declared of age, was compelled to dismiss him. The ambitious prelate, however, had gained great influence over Henry, who had grown up under the most diverse influences. The young king was generous and was endowed with considerable intellectual gifts; but passing as he did from Anno's gloomy palace at Cologne to Adalbert's residence in Bremen, where he was petted and flattered, he became wayward and wilful.

Henry's personal rule.

Henry IV. assumed the duties of government soon after the fall of Adalbert and quickly made enemies of many of the chief princes, including Otto of Nordheim, the powerful duke of Bavaria, Rudolph, duke of Swabia, and Berthold of Zahringen, duke of Carinthia. In Saxony, where, like his father, he frequently held his court, he excited intense hostility by a series of injudicious proceedings. While the three Ottos were pursuing the shadow of imperial greatness in Italy, much of the crown land in this duchy had been seized by the nobles and was now held by their descendants. Henry IV. insisted on the restoration of these estates and encroached upon the rights of the peasants. Moreover, he built a number of forts which the people thought were intended for prisons; he filled the land with riotous and overbearing Swabians; he kept in prison Magnus, the heir to the duchy; and is said to have spoken of the Saxons in a tone of great contempt. All classes were thus combined against him, and when he ordered his forces to assemble for a campaign against the Poles the Saxons refused to join the host. In 1073 the universal discontent found expression in a great assembly at Wormesleben, in which the leading part was taken by Otto of Nordheim, by Werner, archbishop of Magdeburg, and by Burkhard II., bishop of Halberstadt. Under Otto's leadership the Thuringians joined the rising, which soon spread far and wide. Henry was surprised by a band of rebels in his fortress at the Harzburg; he fled to Hersfeld and appealed to the princes for support, but he could not compel them to aid him and they would grant him nothing. After tedious negotiations he was obliged to yield to the demands of his enemies, and peace was made at Gerstungen in 1074. Zealously carrying out the conditions of the peace, the peasants not only battered down the detested forts, they even destroyed the chapel at the Harzburg and committed other acts of desecration. These proceedings alarmed the princes, both spiritual and secular, and Henry, who had gained support from the cities of the Rhineland, was able to advance with a formidable army into Saxony in 1075. He gained a decisive victory, rebuilt the forts and completely restored the authority of the crown.

Pope Gregory VII.

In 1073, while Germany was in this confused state, Hildebrand had become pope as Gregory VII., and in 1075 he issued his famous decree against the marriage of the clergy and against their investiture by laymen. To the latter decree it was impossible for any sovereign to submit, and in Germany there were stronger reasons than elsewhere for resistance. A large part of the land of the country was held by the clergy, and most of it had been granted to them because it was supposed that they would be the king's most efficient helpers. Were the feudal tie broken, the crown must soon vanish, and the constitution of medieval society undergo a radical change. Henry, who hitherto had treated the new pope with excessive respect, now announced his intention of going to Rome and assuming the imperial title. The pope, to whom the Saxons had been encouraged to complain, responded by sending back certain of Henry's messengers, with the command that the king should do penance for the crimes of which his subjects accused him. Enraged by this unexpected arrogance, Henry summoned a synod of German bishops to Worms in January 1076, and Hildebrand was declared deposed. The papal answer was a bull excommunicating the German king, dethroning him and liberating his subjects from their oath of allegiance.

Effect of Henry's excommunication.