The election of emperor Henry VII

On November 27^th, 1308 the prince electors chose Henry VII, count of Luxemburg to be their new king of the Romans and future emperor. Little did they know that this decision will give rise to a dynasty that will rule the empire for as many decades as the Ottonian, the Salian and the Hohenstaufen had. A dynasty that featured such emblems of chivalric pride as the blind king John of Bohemia, builders of cities and empires like Charles IV and finally, in a faint mirror image of the height of medieval imperial power, an emperor who engineers the deposition of three popes and the appointment of a new one, whilst foreshadowing the wars of religion by murdering the reformer Jan Hus.

Today’s episode explores the backstory of the house of Luxemburg who have been around since Carolingian times. They were the “Where is Wally“ of the rich tapestry of High Medieval History, always somewhere in the picture, but never really in the foreground. Two women feature highly, the empress Kunigunde, wife of emperor Henry II and Ermesinde, who successful ruled the county for 47 years.

But the real step up came when Henry VII, barely 30 years old and running a county much diminished after the disastrous battle of Worringen became the only viable candidate to kingship. How that happened is what we will talk about in this episode..

TRANSCRIPT

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 144 – The Rise of the House of Luxembourg

On November 27^th, 1308 the prince electors chose Henry VII, count of Luxemburg to be their new king of the Romans and future emperor. Little did they know that this decision will give rise to a dynasty that will rule the empire for as many decades as the Ottonian, the Salian and the Hohenstaufen had. A dynasty that featured such emblems of chivalric pride as the blind king John of Bohemia, builders of cities and empires like Charles IV and finally, in a faint mirror image of the height of medieval imperial power, an emperor who engineers the deposition of three popes and the appointment of a new one, whilst foreshadowing the wars of religion by murdering the reformer Jan Hus.

Today’s episode explores the backstory of the house of Luxemburg who have been around since Carolingian times. They were the “Where is Wally“ of the rich tapestry of High Medieval History, always somewhere in the picture, but never really in the foreground. Two women feature highly, the empress Kunigunde, wife of emperor Henry II and Ermesinde, who successful ruled the county for 47 years.

But the real step up came when Henry VII, barely 30 years old and running a county much diminished after the disastrous battle of Worringen became the only viable candidate to kingship. How that happened is what we will talk about in this episode..

But before we start let me remind you that the history of the Germans podcast is advertising free thanks to the generosity of our patrons. And you can become a patron too by signing up on patreon.com/historyofthegermans or by making a one-time donation at historyofthegermans.com/support. Today I want to thank Loredana B., Charles D.W., Jordan R., Barry L., Ryan C.L. and Jakob H., relentless supporter of the show across all social media. Thank you all.

Now, back to the show

Last week we ended with a thud, when Johann Parricida’s sword cracked open the skull of his uncle, King Albrecht I from the House of Habsburg. Albrecht I had been 53 years old, old by the standards of the time, but still two years younger than his father had been when he had become king of the Romans.

Albrecht I had not made much of an effort to ensure the succession of his eldest surviving son, Friedrich, called the handsome. That may have been because Albrecht did not expect his demise to be imminent or he did not believe he could achieve a durable succession without having received an imperial coronation.

But even if he had made an effort to secure some votes in the event of his demise, he is unlikely to have had great success. It was only 7 years ago that he had fought an outright war with the Rhenish electors, the archbishops of Cologne, Trier and Mainz and the Count Palatinate on the Rhine. Furthermore, the man currently occupying the Bohemian throne and its voting rights, Henry of Carinthia, was at war with Albrecht at the time he was murdered.

So with Friedrich the Handsome out of the running, the now usual horse trading began. Despite the rather underwhelming success rate so far, the electors were keen to again elect someone of modest financial and military means as the new king and again make him sign over all and everything he would need to be an effective ruler.

This time the pope was brought in the loop right from the outset to avoid another upset of the Roman Curia that firmly believed it was their right to determine the new emperor in waiting.

Whilst the electors, specifically the three archbishops went through the list of malleable counts, a rather unexpected party through its hat into the ring. King Philipp IV the Fair of France suggested his brother, Charles of Valois would make an excellent king of the Romans and future emperor. Philipp the Fair had tried to secure his brother a crown already twice before, in Aragon and in Byzantium but had been rebuffed. But undeterred he supported Charles’ campaign with soft words and hard cash.

If the electors did not want any of the powerful imperial princes to pick up the crown, they certainly did not want to become the satellite of the most powerful monarch in Europe. But getting out of this conundrum required a lot of skilled diplomacy. As France had gradually been expanding west as we have mentioned last episode, Philipp the Fair and his predecessor had established close links to the three archbishops whose territories were fairly close to the border.

Pope Clement V too was put on the spot by this proposal. Clement had become pope in 1305 two years after Boniface VIII had been slapped in the face and the imperial papacy had crumbled to the floor with him. He was a Frenchman and according to Giorgio Villani had become bound to king Philipp the Fair even before his election. His coronation took place in Lyon and he spent most of his time in Poitiers, very much within reach of the French monarch and his armour-clad thugs. Clement V had to agree to Philipp’s persecution of the Knight’s Templars and on many other occasions was at the French king’s back and call.

Therefore when Philipp the Fair came to Poitiers and asked him to endorse his brother’s candidature to become king of the Romans, Clement V had no choice but to issue a proclamation encouraging the electors to act unanimously and hinted at a preference for Charles of Valois. But he was reluctant to issue an outright recommendation for Charles adding even more power to the family of his jailor. By leaving out the name, Clement V signaled to the electors that their choice could be approved by the papacy even if they had chosen someone else.

That opened up room for an alternative to the Frenchman, but who could fit into that role without creating outright hostilities with France. It had to be someone who was not threatening to the electors, amenable to the pope and close enough to Philipp the Fair that he would drop his brother’s candidature.

The only recently elected archbishop of Trier, Balduin, suggested his brother, Henry, the count of Luxembourg.

On November 27^th, 1308 Henry, count of Luxemburg was unanimously elected king in Frankfurt and he was crowned in Aachen on January 6. The pope acknowledged him on January 11^th and with that the House of Luxemburg finally rose to the royal title.

Which gets us to the question, who is this Henry, the seventh of his name to become count of Luxemburg ,king of the Romans, and emperor and why was he the only square peg that fit into that round hole?.

Though he was “only” (in inverted commas) a count, he was a very different kind of count to count Rudolf von Habsburg and count Adolf von Nassau.

The Luxemburgs were a family that went back to the time of the Carolingians. In the year 963 a certain Siegried, a man of noble descent acquired the Lucilinburuh by way of an exchange with the imperial monastery of St. Maximin near Trier. Lucilinburuh grew over the centuries into what we know today as the city of Luxemburg, capital of the Grand Duchy of Luxemburg.

As careful listeners will remember from two episodes ago, the current grand dukes of Luxemburg are descendants of King Adolf von Nassau, Henry VII’s predecessor but one.

The medieval counts of Luxemburg were a different family and their story starts well before that. The father of Siegfried had been count palatinate of Lothringia for emperor Charles the Simple. His mother was the granddaughter of the West Francian king Louis the Stammerer. Siegried’s brother was bishop of Metz and another brother was a close friend of emperor Otto the Great.

Basically the Luxemburgers were part of the high aristocracy of the empire, cousins of anyone who was anyone on the left shore of the Rhine. In the centuries that followed the House of Luxemburg was the “Where is Wally” of the tableau of medieval imperial history. At all times there would be a member of the family somewhere in the picture, sometimes closer to the centre, sometimes a little bit removed from the imperial court, but always there. In our podcast, the so far most prominent family member to feature had been Kunigunde, daughter of the aforementioned Siegfried and the wife of emperor Henry II. Kunigunde would be made a saint in in 1199 for her excessive generosity to the church. Beyond her religious devotion, Kunigunde had also played a very active political role, including running the duchy of Bavaria for a while, before handing it over to her brother, another Henry. Bavaria did however not stay in the family as Kunigunde’s brother fell out with emperor Henry II. For details, listen to the episodes 17 to 19.

The next time a Luxemburger made it onto the pages of HotGPod was in the election of Hermann von Salm as antiking against emperor Henry IV. Hermann was a younger son of the count of Luxemburg and hence lacked the means to be a credible threat to the emperor, so vanished from the story quite quickly.

So, before 1308 the Luxemburgs had their hands in the game, but they had never really made it into the big, big league. They had been dukes of Bavaria and at some point also dukes of Lower Lothringia, but they could not hold on to these positions.

Under the Salinas and then the Hohenstaufen, the Luxemburgs withdrew from imperial high politics and focused on expanding and consolidating their princely territory. And they were pretty good at it. Their medieval principality comprised significant parts of modern day Luxemburg and their main residence, the castle of Luxemburg became a focal point for the state. 

This territorialization process had broadly two components. One was to acquire as many territories as possible from the other local powers. In the case of the Luxemburgs, this was first and foremost their immediate neighbor, the archbishop of Trier and the immensely well endowed monasteries of St. Maximin and Stavelot. The dukes of Brabant and the counts of Flanders were major players as was the archbishop of Cologne. Smaller players were the counts of Namur, Berg, Julich, Cleves, Geldern, the bishops of Liege  and I have probably forgotten a few.

The most promising opportunities arose when one of the local families died out. Since everyone was related to everyone, it was ultimately a question of who had the bigger guns.

The Luxemburgs had periods of great success followed by periods of abject failure. One of these periods of success was unusually for the time overseen by a woman, the countess Ermesinde. Ermesinde was born the daughter and only child of count Henry IV who died fairly soon after her birth. Being the heiress of a wealthy county, she was quickly married. Though she wasn’t able to rule the county in her own right, her husbands, who had the decency to die quickly left her the run of the place. Ermesinde remained in charge of the county of Luxemburg for almost 50 years and thanks to her astute policy of territorial consolidation, by the 1240s Luxemburg was though small but a very coherent entity. She established a central bureaucracy and new judicial and administrative districts. Judges and other officers became salaried officials replacing the inherited structures that prevailed to that point. She granted city rights to Luxemburg, Echternach and Thionville. And she established an advisory council of nobles that helped tie the local powerful families to the princely house.

All in, Luxemburg was well on its way to become an early modern state.

Things took a turn for the worst forty years after Ermesinde’s death at the battle of Worringen (1288). This battle had been the great showdown of all the players in the region which is today Belgium, Luxemburg and the parts of Germany east of the Rhine. War had broken out over the succession to the duchy of Limburg and the Luxemburgs had joined a coalition led by the archbishop of Cologne in the hope to get a juicy piece of this rich inheritance. As it happened, their side lost, and they lost badly. Moreover, the brunt of the blow fell on the Luxemburgs themselves. Count Henry VI and three of his brothers as well as many of his vassals perished. The heir to the county, our Henry VII, the future king of the Romans was just 9 years old when that happened. For the next six years a guardian took care of the county of Luxemburg.

Henry VII was sent to Paris to be educated at the court of king Philipp the Fair.

By the late 13^th century Paris had become the cultural center of Europe. The splendor of the royal court had no rival. Just go to the Sainte Chapelle, the private chapel built by king Louis IX, to house the crown of thorns he had brought back from the Holy land and you get a sense of its magnificence and wealth.

But it wasn’t just the castles and palaces. France had become the trendsetter for chivalric culture, determining the way a noble was supposed to behave. Its chanson de Geste had a huge influence on the German Minnesang. Whilst German courts did not yet speak French, the French language was considered not quite as prestigious as Latin, but close enough.

Paris also had its university where until recently the great Thomas Aquinas had reshaped theology. The university was a truly international place. Internally the university was organized by nations, the French nation including all speakers of Romanesque languages, the English, later called the German nation that comprised the people who spoke Germanic and Slavic languages, which included the British isles and Scandinavia. The other two nations were the Picards and the Normans. Alongside the well known university colleges of the Sorbonne and d’Harcourt were the college de Navarre for students from Navarre, a Danish, three Swedish colleges and a Scottish and a German one.

French culture and the still relatively new Gothic style of architecture that had first appeared at St. Denis outside Paris was being adopted all throughout Europe, but most enthusiastically in England and Germany. Like many other German Gothic cathedrals, the Dom in Cologne was inspired by a French cathedral, in that case the cathedral of Amiens. Ironically some of Germany’s most famous  medieval artworks, the sculptures of the donors at Naumburg Cathedral and the Bamberg rider were the works of craftsmen trained in the great cathedral workshops of Reims, Amiens or Noyon.

This cultural draw of France that began in the 13^th century would endure well into the 20^th century. We would call that soft power today. And as today, being able to draw in the most curious and the most ambitious from far and wide and leaving them with an affinity to their host country was a substantial source of influence abroad.

Henry VII was such an ambitious and curious young man. Though he had been sent to Paris aged 9 by his guardian, he would spend large amounts of time at the court of king Philipp the Fair until his election to king of the Romans. He accompanied the French king on his campaign against the English in 1294 to 1297 and was knighted by him. On that occasion he swore allegiance to the French monarch. This oath as a vassal was repeated several times. He had also sworn allegiance to king Adolf von Nassau when he had reached adulthood. And yes, at least technically King Adolf von Nassau was an ally of the English in the war where young Henry supported the French side.

It was not unusual at this time that aristocrats swore allegiance to two masters. In particular nobles whose lands were near the border often held fiefs on either side, so owing allegiance to two different rulers. That meant that in case the two masters were at war with each other, the noble was expected to remain neutral or send troops to both lords in line with their obligations as vassals.

What surprised contemporaries and later chroniclers was that Henry VII swore an oath to defend the borders of France against all and everyone, which would have included his liege lord, the king of the Romans. A commitment that bordered on high treason.

This closeness to France cannot be explained solely by the delights of gay Parris. Henry VII as we will find was an astute politician and quite capable to see where his best opportunities lay. And those opportunities lay in Paris, not at the courts of Adolf of Nassau or Albrecht von Habsburg. For one thing he could observe at close quarters how Philipp IV operated. Using his lawyers trained in Bologna and Montpellier, Philipp absorbed one smallish territory after another on his border with the empire, moving the goalposts methodically and patiently eastwards one baronetcy at a time.  This had been the MO of the Capetian monarchs for hundreds of years now and they have become really, really good at it. As far as Henry could make out, it was only a question of time before Luxembourg would be French and in that case it was better to be close to the king of France than fighting for an empire that was coming apart at the seams.

And Philipp IV rewarded him and his family for his loyalty. First he organized his marriage to Margarete, the daughter of the duke of Brabant, the victor of the battle of Worringen. This brought peace between these long standing enemies and as far as it is known, the marriage was a happy one.

Next Philipp IV helped elevate Henry’s brother to gain the archepiscopal seat of Trier, making him one of the seven electors. It is just another sign of the rising power of the French monarchs that Philipp the Fair was able to reward one of his followers with such a crucial position in a neighboring kingdom. How was it possible? Well, Philipp had his personal pope, Clement V and Clement V exerted his influence on the cathedral chapter to choose Balduin, the brother of Henry VII. Did I mention that Balduin had studied at the university of Paris which made him a suitable candidate for an episcopal seat and that he was just 22 years old, which quite frankly should have counted against him. But age 22 does not matter when the king of France and the Pope back you up. We are clearly leaving the High Middle Ages the age of lay piety and church reform and we are heading into the Babylonian Captivity of the Church and from there into the secular papacy of the Borgias, Farneses and Della Roveres.

And now the whole thing hopefully made sense. Our key question was, how could the Prince electors and the pope dare to elect a count of extraordinary lineage but modest means to become king of the Romans, when the king of France had proposed his own brother as candidate?

Well, as long as Philipp the Fair believed that Henry VII was his man, his vassal bound to him by oath and gratitude, well that was almost as good as having one’s own brother on the throne. It was easier to let the Germans choose their leader as long as that new leader was also the king of France’s man. That was better then ramming a candidate down their throat by force who would never be accepted.

And why did the electors like Henry VII more than other counts? One is obvious, his brother Balduin liked him a lot and proposed him as an option. Henry VII’s family had fought with the archbishop of Cologne at the battle of Worringen and had paid for their loyalty in blood. That brought him the second vote.

Henry VII, despite his extended stays in France had made a name for himself as an energetic and competent territorial prince. He did conduct feuds, like all his peers, but he was a man who one could negotiate with and find a reasonable compromise. He did support commerce in his lands which brought him  a lot of support amongst the cities. In fact the city of Verdun at some point offered itself up to become part of his territories. He had made arrangements with his neighbors that should any of them be put forward as a candidate for the throne, they would all support him. That endeared him to the archbishop of Mainz who looked for support in protecting the trade on the Rhine from robber barons.

Then it was just a case of explaining briefly to the Wittelsbach Count Palatinate on the Rhine and his brother the duke of Bavaria that, again, no they would not stand a chance. The support of the Rhenish electors meant there was now a majority for count Henry. Brandenburg and Saxony who were too far north to actually really care about who was king could be convinced with the help of some generous promises. And that was enough. The current king of Bohemia, Henry of Carinthia did not cast a vote.

All in, he was the perfect, if not in fact the only viable candidate to become king of the Romans in 1308. Few of those who sponsored him were aware that by electing the count of Luxembourg, the vassal of the king of France and modestly wealthy prince, they would set in motion a sequence of events that would lead to the return of real emperors who will rule for a nearly a century and a half, building one of the most beautiful cities in the world and – like Henry III had done  at the zenith of medieval imperial power – depose three popes and choose a new one.

That sequence of events will get going next week. In the meantime, thank you all so much for your efforts in drumming up new listeners for the History of the Germans Podcast. Please keep it up and let all your friends and family, your butcher, your baker, your  candle stick maker know about the History of the Germans. Or go to Facebook @HotGPod or twitter @germanshistory and share some of my posts as a teaser.

I hope to see you again next week.