Henry VII’s journey to Rome

In the winter of 1310 the emperor elect Henry VII not yet 40 years of age and every inch a king appears in Italy. An Italy torn apart by incessant violence, between and within the cities. Allegedly it is a struggle between the pro-imperial Ghibellines and the pro-papal Guelphs, but 60 years after the last emperor had set foot on Italian soil and seven years after the pope has left for Avignon, these designations have become just names without meaning, monikers hiding the naked ambitions of the powerful families.

The poet Dante Aligheri projects the hopes of many desperate exiles on Henry when he prays that “we, who for so long have passed our nights in the desert, shall behold the gladness for which we have longed, for Titan shall arise pacific, and justice, which had languished without sunshine at the end of the winter’s solstice, shall grow green once more”.

A lot to get done for our Luxemburg count and his army of 5,000 men. Certainty of death, small chance of success, what are we waiting for?

TRANSCRIPT

Hello and Welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 146 – The Return of the King – Henry VII’s journey to Rome

In the winter of 1310 the emperor elect Henry VII not yet 40 years of age and every inch a king appears in Italy. An Italy torn apart by incessant violence, between and within the cities. Allegedly it is a struggle between the pro-imperial Ghibellines and the pro-papal Guelphs, but 60 years after the last emperor had set foot on Italian soil and seven years after the pope has left for Avignon, these designations have become just names without meaning, monikers hiding the naked ambitions of the powerful families.

The poet Dante Aligheri projects the hopes of many desperate exiles on Henry when he prays that “we, who for so long have passed our nights in the desert, shall behold the gladness for which we have longed, for Titan shall arise pacific, and justice, which had languished without sunshine at the end of the winter’s solstice, shall grow green once more”.

A lot to get done for our Luxemburg count and his army of 5,000 men. Certainty of death, small chance of success, what are we waiting for?

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 who have signed up on patreon.com/historyofthegermans or on historyofthegermans.com/support.

And this week, as promised,  I would like to highlight some of you who have been so kind to promote the show these last few weeks. And that list starts with syrom whose article on Medium about the intersection of history and AI has been hugely interesting and brought so far a staggering 68 new listeners. You can find a link in the show notes. I would also like to thank Zeta of 1, SomeDude, Bloke in North Dorset, Tom Broekel, Mark Greenwald, Gerco Wolfswinkel and Michael P. Borneman for their relentless support on Twitter/X and elsewhere. And on Facebook, the list is even longer so I may miss some people, but let me thank Kent Lindahl, Katherina Russell-Head, Michael Cuffaru, Eric Andersen, Piotr Kaczmarczyk, Simon Wilde and the incredibly generous Nina Bugge-Rigault. Thank you all so much!

Now, back to the show.

Last week we left Henry VII, still only King of the Romans, in Turin, home of his brother in law, Count Amadeus of Savoy. With him is an army of about 5,000 men recruited amongst his friends and family from the western side of the empire. There are his two brothers, Balduin, the young archbishop of Trier and the great chivalric knight Walram, now count of Luxemburg.  Of the Prince Electors and other great imperial princes only Leopold, duke of Austria has come along.

A modest force, but by no means the smallest ever for a medieval emperor elect.

Two things were supposed to smooth his way down to Rome.

For one, pope Clement VII, the first pope to have left Rome for good and now residing in Poitiers under the watchful eye of the king of France, in an act of defiance, had promised Henry VII to personally crown him in Rome on February 2, 1312 .

And secondly, the citizens of Italy were tired of the perennial strife between and inside the cities, a struggle often described as the fight between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines. News of the arrival of Herny VII in Italy were greeted with great enthusiasm by many. The great poet Dante, at that point a political exile from his hometown of Florence wrote: “Rejoice, therefore, O Italy, thou that art now an object of pity even to the Saracens, for soon shalt thou be the envy of the whole world, seeing that thy bridegroom , the comfort of the nations, and the glory of thy people, the most clement Henry, Elect of God and Augustus and Caesar, is hastening to the wedding. Dry thy tears, and wipe away the stains of thy weeping, most beauteous one ; for he is at hand who shall bring thee forth from the prison of the ungodly, and shall smite the workers of iniquity with the edge of the sword, and shall destroy them.”

Such enthusiasm amongst the oppressed combined with the papal blessing put Henry into a much more attractive position than many of his predecessors had enjoyed in the past; and it presented him with three possible options.

Option 1 would be to just ride hell for leather down to Rome get crowned and get home barely touching the sides. That was the easiest options. Even cities that weren’t excited about the presence of a new emperor on Italian soil would not risk an outright war to stop someone who would be come and gone in a year. That had worked well before, for instance under Henry II, Konrad II an Henry III.

But this option would also mean abandoning any attempt at rebuilding imperial authority in Italy.

If Henry wanted to exercise power in Italy as the great Hohenstaufen had done in the past, he could step up as head of the pro-imperial Ghibelline faction, defeat the Guelphs and establish an imperial administration in each of the cities. That is option 2 and was the way Frederick Barbarossa and Frederick II had pursued their policies with to say it mildly, mixed success.

Option 3 was a new option. Henry could establish himself as the bringer of peace, as an impartial judge, neither Guelph nor Ghibelline, who reconciled the warring factions. Submitting to a just imperial ruler could work for both parties, at least in theory. The end of the incessant warfare would bring peace and prosperity to the merchants and artisans who were usually leaning on the Guelph side, whilst imperial projects in the Holy Land and eastern Europe could provide employment and excitement for the warlike Italian aristocracy who were usually supportive of Ghibelline positions.

No brownie points for guessing which option Henry VII preferred. Here is the great man himself, summarising his position; (quote)

“Has God, the supreme teacher of justice and equity, given a holier commandment than that which says: You shall love your neighbour as yourself? But is there any difference to be made between Christians?

Who is my neighbour? Is it the German, the Frenchman, the Vandal, the Swabian, the Lombard or the Tuscan? And who amongst you would like to answer: The Ghibelline? Don’t you dare!

What have I come for, what have I been sent for? That I, as a godless successor to take up the errors of all my predecessors and continue them? That I should reawaken the old divisions?

And Pope Clement, who occupies God’s throne on earth, should he have called forth our army and engraved his mark on lead so that I might subjugate the Guelphs to the Ghibellines or the Ghibellines to the Guelphs?

What has become of our justice and equality? Some have assumed names under the guise of the Empire, others under that of the Church, names which Lucifer the Fallen has given them and which can only generate hatred. I, then, who go forth as the messenger of Pope Clement and under his sign (which is why Christians look to me as to a second light of God), I am to appear here, to please some and betray others? Not so, as I declare to you loud and clear.” end quote.

What a fine speech by a such a fine man. Love thy neighbour, don’t repeat the errors of one’s predecessors and a promise not to betray those who put their faith in him. Very exciting new approach! Let’s see how that works out.

For that we need to dive a little deeper into the political situation in Italy. And if you think that the situation Germany is confusing, you ain’t seen nottin yet. I had a flick through the podcasts, books and history courses in search of a neat storyline that helps me cut through the events on the Italian peninsula between the death of Frederick II in 1250 and the arrival of Henry VII in 1310. What I found can be summarised in the words of the immortal Meryl Streep: “it’s complicated”.

We still have these city communes that had made life a misery for the Hohenstaufens.

But something has quite fundamentally changed. During the days of the Lombard League the cities were each dominated by an aristocratic oligarchy, the consuls or senators. Their structure was copied from the ancient Roman republic where most decisions about war and peace were discussed amongst the city leadership and then brought to the people for approval. These republics were incredibly warlike. If you remember episode 56 where we talked about the tiny city of Crema that resisted the huge army of Frederick Barbarossa for over a year. That is the one where Barbarossa had the prisoners from Crema tied to his siege engines to stop the defenders from shooting at the expensive equipment, but to no avail because the hostages encouraged their friends and family to rain stones and burning arrows on the attacking towers, even if that meant maiming and killing them.

During the 13^th century this fierce spirit waned away in line with a change in the social structure of the cities. The merchants and artisans had become richer than the land-owning city aristocracy. Trade had kept expanding throughout the 13^thand  14^th century in both scope and scale.

One legacy from the crusades was a dense network of trading posts across the Mediterranean and the Black Sea run by the maritime republics of Venice, Genua and Pisa that brought luxury goods from the East to Europe. Marco Polo had returned from his travels to China and Persia in 1295.  Already in 1245 a Franciscan monk, Giovanni del Pian del Carmine had travelled to the Mongol Khan’s court as an ambassador of pope Innocent IV. The exchange with the East was not limited to knowledge and luxury goods. To feed the ever growing city states, they needed to import grain, and much of it came from what is today Ukraine, already then the bread basket of europe.

Passing goods through from the east to the west wasn’t the only source of wealth. Artisans in Italian cities produced various goods much in demand across Europe. Florentine red cloth was much en vogue as was Venetian glassware from Murano or Milanese armour.

Other than the Hanse, the Italian merchants formed larger and larger firms that set up their own offices abroad and they competed intensely with each other. They believed in a winner takes all model of capitalism, rather than the supportive network approach favoured in Northern Europe.

Production too was proto industrial in as much that for instance Florentine cloth makers would employ hundreds of workers in their workshops where production was split into multiple stages to increase productivity.

All these activities required a lot of capital. Banking began in the Italian cities well before the 12^th century as crop finance. Farmers would receive a loan against their future crop which allowed them to buy seeds and feed their family until harvest. Mostly run as private operations, in 1282 the Republic of Venice opened the first state bank that accepted deposits and issued crop loans. The crusades lead to material expansion and internationalisation of banking activity that also created many of the financial tools we still use today such as bills of exchange, forwards and futures. As trade expanded, so did banking activity. Most bankers were merchants at the same time. They would fund risky ventures such as transporting a large consignment of silk to Bruges by assembling a consortium of merchants who were sharing the risk. Alongside that they may issue a loan to the junior trader who would lead the expedition. This diversification of risk and provision of finance allowed Italian merchants to expand far faster than their counterparts in the rest of europe, except for those of Flanders.

As time went by these banking houses would find themselves lending to kings, popes, emperors and their cities. These loans were extremely risky as the king, pope, emperor or city council could not be made to pay once the loan was due, as the Bardi and Peruzzi of Florence will find out to their detriment. Hence most of these loans were heavily collateralised giving the bankers the right to collect taxes, to exploit mines or other sources of income, sometimes even castles or whole territories. Interest was very high, reflecting these risks, which meant, a lucky banker ended up being a very, very rich banker.

The usual estimate is that even an average Florentine banker in 1310 had more ready cash than our friend Henry VII. Which meant they had a lot, a lot more money than the aristocrats who were ruling their city. This difference in resources caused frictions, but the bigger issue was that the consuls did not run the city in the interest of the merchants and artisans.

A merchant and artisan may be a able to defend himself if need be with a sword, but that does not mean they wanted to fight wars for war’s sake. But War for war’s sake was very much the aristocratic raison d’etre. The other flashpoint was justice. A functioning system of courts that enforced contractual obligations was a key building block in any successful economy and hence a key concern for the burghers. The city aristocrats regarded justice as a source of income from fees and bribes.

Throughout the 13^th century burghers formed associations or guilds to represent their interests. And as the struggle between the aristocrats and the burghers grew fiercer the city constitutions changed. Many communes had already called people from outside as Podestas to police the city streets and issue justice since the late 12^th century. But now we also find many cities appointing a Capitano del Popolo who was to represent the interest of the people, aka the merchant and artisan classes. This role became ever more powerful as the merchants became ever more wealthy. 

These two opposing groups did at some point adopt the names of Ghibellines and Guelphs. The aristocrats would usually become Ghibellines and the burghers tended to be Guelphs. The word Ghibelline refers to the castle of Waiblingen near Stuttgart which was the name of Agnes, the ancestor of the Hohenstaufen and the name they actually used when referring to their own family. So these were in principle the supporters of the emperor. The word Guelph is an Italianate form of the name Welf, the family of Henry the Lion and alleged antagonists of the Hohenstaufen. Though the name referred again to a German family, the Guelphs allegiance lay not with them, but with the pope. Bankers were particularly prone to be Guelph since the papal curia was in constant need of cash and in return appointed the Lombard and Tuscan bankers as tax collectors for the increasingly sophisticated set of church levies.

But like everything else in these convoluted times, this is not 100% the case in each city, but not a bad yardstick.

As we head into the 14^th century a couple of things are happening. Unsurprisingly as the merchants and bankers get richer and richer, they gain the upper hand over the aristocratic oligarchs. More and more cities become Guelph. Most visibly in Tuscany where the hitherto modest settlement of Florence starts to dominate the region. In 1289 Florence and its Guelph allies beat the Ghibelline resistance based in Arezzo comprehensively.

But Guelph or Ghibelline became increasingly hollow slogans. The internal struggles over political allegiances turned into a competition between two dominant factions, each picking one of these names. Or in Florence where the anti-Ghibelline sentiment was strongest the main factions became the White and the Black Guelphs. White and black Guelphs goes back to a fight within the city of Pistoia between the children of the city leader from his first marriage who were older and whose hair had already turned white and the second set of children from a second marriage who were still young and sported some luscious black hair. Seemingly by 1300 hair colour was as relevant a criteria for political affiliation as support for the imperial or papal cause.

These fights for supremacy between two factions, each headed by a clan chief were as disruptive as the previous fights between aristocrats and merchants. One minor improvement was that the party which temporarily gained the upper hand would only execute a small number of their rivals and then  exile the other prominent members of the opposing faction. The reason for this leniency is pretty clear. Neither party had a distinctly different program to the other, hence cities were usually split fifty-fifty between the two factions. To be able to run the city the winning side still needed to be able to cooperate with the defeated faction and that meant they could not kill all their brothers, uncles cousins etc. The downside of this policy of casting out your opponents was that there was constantly a government in exile trying to ferment unrest inside the city and gathering support on the outside. This perennial fear of revolt forced the city rulers to spend vast amounts of money and effort to gain favours with the people. In Florence and Milan all the streets, not just the main square were paved, the courts were made impartial and staffed with professional judges trained at the great universities of Bologna and Pavia. And then there were the public works, the cathedrals and churches, the city halls and so on.

There we are. Every city in Italy experienced regular convulsions as one family was trying to overthrow the other, not to implement any particular policy, but solely to gain power. And that meant each city had a large band of exiles roaming the peninsula in search for an ally that would help them oust their opponents.

And these exiles now flocked to the court of Henry VII in their hundreds and thousands, all hoping he would bring them back into their home towns and restore them into their previous positions.

On November 11^th 1310 Henry VII arrived in Asti, the then most powerful city in Piedmont. Today the city is famous for truffles, wine and its Palio a bareback horse race around the triangular piazza Vittorio Alfieri. I only found out about this delightful combination just now and Asti went straight on to my bucket list.

But in the late Middle Ages Asti’s speciality wasn’t wine or truffles, but banking and civil war. The Solari family of bankers had recently taken control of the city and expelled their rivals, the Castelli. And guess who was in the entourage of Henry VII, the Castelli.

The Castelli were Ghibellines, as were the majority of exiles that had joined Henry VII in Turin. That wasn’t because Henry VII favoured the Ghibellines, but it was simply that the Ghibellines were losing almost everywhere and hence the chances of being exiled were a lot higher for a Ghibelline than it was for a Guelph.

Asti now  became the prototype of Henry VII’s new policy of peace and reconciliation. Upon arrival he gathered the whole population of the city on the square in front of the cathedral where he received the oath of allegiance of the city council and in return confirmed the city’s ancient rights and privileges and even offered further benefices should they behave well.

But as so often with prototypes, version 1 did not work out so well. It is not clear what happened that evening, but next morning, according to the chronicler of Asti, Henry VII no longer thought this was enough. So he called the whole population back on to the market square. His right hand man, Niccolo de Buonsignori declared that the emperor was not satisfied with just the overlordship of the city. Then a cheese merchant stood up and shouted “I suggest o Lord, that you should receive the unconstrained power over the city and contado of Asti”. The imperial representative shouted back instantly, “Those of you who agree with the words of the cheesemonger shall remain standing, the rest shall sit”. That led to an instant tumult, everybody jumped up, shouting and screaming, some yes, yes, but the majority no, no. Meanwhile the imperial notary concluded quite accurately that, since hardly anyone had sat down, the motion was carried and Henry VII was now the absolute ruler of Asti and its Contado.

Happy with version 2 of his grand project of peace and reconciliation Henry appointed Niccolo de Buonsignori to be the new podesta, capitano del Popolo and just overall bossman of Asti. Niccolo then told the Castelli and Solari to kiss and make up and as punishment for their obstinacy ordered the Solari and other Guelphs to provide funds to replenish the imperial purse.

The imperial purse, smaller as an average Florentine banker’s safe, was rapidly depleting as more and more exiles raced to his banner.

Initially the Italian supporters were more or less impecunious exiles, but after Henry had taken control of Asti, a veritable snowball effect set in. The rulers of Verona, the della Scale, headed by Can Grande, which literally means Big Dog, sent an embassy extolling their long and loyal service to the empire going back to Barbarossa, but which weirdly did not include any tax payments owed under the peace of Constance of 1183. But who cares, he was a big dog and he brought some pretty big men on big horses. The Pisans, most fiercely Ghibelline since time immemorial and sworn enemy of the Guelphs in Florence sent 60,000 ducats and a few hundred knights, promising the same sum should the emperor honour them with a visit.

And then the appeal widened and several Guelph city lords appeared. The rulers of Vercelli, of Pavia and of Lodi came to submit to Henry VII. By doing so these men defied the rulers of Lombardy’s largest and most powerful city, Milan. As the chronicler Albertinus Mussatus speculated they may have done that to please the king or out of fear of their fellow citizens at home who had been enthusiastically celebrating the return of imperial splendour. And they were not the only ones. More and more Guelph leaders came to believe that joining the imperial cause was the best way to preserve their position. And with every powerful family that joined Henry VII’s army, this logic became more and more convincing.

The one who was not yet convinced was Guido della Torre, currently capitano del Popolo and all in big cheese in Milan. The della Torre were Guelphs and had swapped control of Milan with the Ghibelline Visconti family since 1259 roughly every 10 years, culminating in the execution of 53 Visconti supporters by Napoleone della Torre which was followed by the capture, torture and murder of said Napoleone by the archbishop of Milan, Ottone Visconti. In 1302 Matteo Visconti who had taken over from his uncle the archbishop and had been recognised as imperial vicar by Adolf von Nassau was ousted by Guido della Torre who could rely on support in the surrounding cities of Pavia, Lodi, Cremona, Piacenza, Novara, Brescia, Bergamo etc.

Milan was largest city in Northern Italy at the time, the city of Saint Ambrose, a great commercial cnetre and by now the overlord of most of the surrounding cities including Novara, Vercelli, Brescia as well as Monza and Pavia, the traditional coronation sites for a king of the Lombards.

When Henry VII saw the lords of Pavia, Vercelli and Lodi riding into his camp, he realised that the hold of Milan over its neighbouring cities was crumbling and he could now go for the big prize and take his beta-tested reconciliation policy to the capital of Lombardy.

Guido della Torre wanted none of this. No reconciliation, no peace and above all, no return of the hated Visconti into his city. Henry VII therefore opted for a display of strength. He took his now much enlarged force and paraded it below the walls of Milan. And very visible amongst his men were the lords of Vercelli, of Pavia and of Lodi, the cities whose rulers had brought the della Torre back into Milan 9 years earlier and who may now well be able to bring Matteo Visconti back.

Still, della Torre refused. He had begun discussions with Florence whose radical Black Guelph leadership was organising resistance against Henry VII. And there was also king Robert of Naples down south. Ever since they had wiped out the Hohenstaufen the kings of Naples had become the dominant power on the peninsula and the leaders of the Guelphs. Their tentacles reached well into Lombardy and Piedmont where Asti ad Alessandria had once sworn allegiance to the Anjou. King Robert was also papal vicar in Romagna and Tuscany and Florence had once made him their Podesta. And Robert was a cousin of King Philipp IV of France who was increasingly concerned about the shenanigans his former vassal was getting himself into down there in Italy.

But time was pressing. Henry’s army was now camped out in Vercelli, a day and half’s ride from Milan. And worse Guido’s nephew, the archbishop of Milan hated him, hated him a lot and for good reason. Guido had his father thrown in jail to rot for fear of competition. The archbishop and the Visconti were gathering support inside the city of Milan whilst the lords of Pavia, Vercelli and Lodi worked on the remaining loyal cities of Brescia, Cremona, Como etc.

The standoff lasted 30 days. Guido hoped for reinforcement to come from Tuscany and the other Lombard cities, whilst Henry hoped that Guido’s regime would simply collapse under the external and internal pressures.

Finally time ran out for Henry. He needed to make a move if not because he was running out of cash. He took his army from Vercelli west of Milan and marched it towards Pavia which is just south of the great city. Della Torre thought his lucky day had come and the dreaded imperial force would head south to Rome, never to be heard of again. But at the last minute, Henry turned his forces east and marched towards Milan. Della Torre knew that the citizens weren’t prepared to fight a long and painful siege and his enemies inside would find a way to open the gates to the imperial army. He caved and invited Henry VII into the city and accepted the king as his rightful lord.

The conquest of Milan turned the snowball into an avalanche. One city after another swore allegiance to Henry. Brescia, Cremona, Bergamo, Vicenza, Padua as well as the communes of the Emilia Romagna came to hand over the keys to their cities and to receive a new governor chosen by Henry VII. Only the Tuscan allies of Florence and Bologna, largest of the cities in the Romagna refused and instead fortified their walls. Alessandria down in Piedmont also failed to send a delegation as it was occupied by a garrison of king Robert of Naples who is now going from being mildly concerned about the count of Luxemburg playing emperor up in savoy to full on panic stations.

Meanwhile Henry VII went from strength to strength. His entrance into Milan turned into a triumph. Accompanied by Guido della Torre, Matteo Visconti and the archbishop, three men who hated each other from the bottoms of their hearts and whose rivalry had brought untold misery to the population of Milan were now riding side by side guiding the future emperor, the bringer of peace and prosperity into Italy’s foremost city. 

To literally crown his success Henry VII planned the next act in this drama, emulating the great Charlemagne and many of his Ottonian, Salian and Hohenstaufen predecessors by putting  the iron crown of the Lombards on his head.

He invited all the important families of Italy to come to the church of St. Ambrogio, the venerable house of St. Ambrose on January 6, the festival of Epiphany, 1311 to witness his coronation. Initially there was a bit of confusion since nearby Monza would have been more appropriate or Pavia on account of its early submission to imperial suzerainty. But Henry insisted on St. Ambrogio in Milan.

And so the great festivity took place before an enthusiastic crowd of princes, nobles and common people. Crowned with the iron crown of Lombardy the king and his wife rode out into the crowd on horses clad in scarlet and purple cloth, he carrying a sceptre of gold that end in the shape of a lily in his right hand.

He is every inch the king, tall, with reddish blond hair that reminds the crowds of the Merovingian and Lombard rulers of old. He wears his hair in the gallic style, short in the back as you can see with most UK teenagers today. His perfectly symmetric shoulders sit atop a strong upper body and well proportioned legs and feet. He speaks slowly and rarely, usually in French but he has some mastery of Latin as well.

His wife, albeit already 36 years of age has maintained much of the beauty she was famed for in her youth. She is blond and of pale complexion, beautiful cheekbones, the top of her nose a little reddish, the mouth small, and she seems to be perennially smiling. She gives good council, knows how to put her arguments across and is in no way haughty. Indeed some have complained that her friendliness towards the lower classes goes beyond of what was appropriate for a queen and future empress.

A near perfect royal couple that had subdued Italy in merely 3 months, not by war, but by the promise of peace and prosperity brought to you by the just, the good emperor, the new Marcus Aurelius, Constantine or even Augustus.

There was however a little kink in all this royal splendour. The crown that Henry VII carried so majestically on his graceful head was not the actual iron crown of the Lombards the one that contains a nail of the Holy cross in an iron ring on the inside. That crown was nowhere to be found. The della Torre had pawned it years ago to fund one of their endless wars against the Visconti.

So a Milanese goldsmith was made to create a gilded wreath overnight that could passably be called a crown. And like this crown, the empire that Henry VII had built was a rushed affair, an overnight success, a snowball that had turned into an avalanche. Now summer is approaching when snow turns to water, and the crown’s gilded surface flakes exposing the base metal underneath.

How that will go is what we will talk about next week. I hope you will join us again.

And just before I go, please remember that the History of the Germans is advertising free thanks to the generosity of our patrons and you can become a patron too by signing up at patreon.com/historyofthegermans or on historyofthegermans.com/support