Henry IV (1056-1105)

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The Investiture Controversy and its impact on the East

This week we will hit the arguably most important set of events in medieval German history often summarised under the banner of the Investiture Controversy. The Investment Controversy came about through a confluence of three major strains, the rise in piety in the wake of improving economic conditions, the establishment of the papacy as a power separate and superior to temporal rulers and thirdly, the opposition of the German magnates against centralising tendency of the emperors, led by the Saxons. And it is the latter part this episode focuses on. If you are interested in the whole story, the episodes 30 to 42 can give you the overarching story. I actually listened to them again and am a little bit proud of what I have done there. So much for self-aggrandization and let’s find out.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 102 – The Great Divide

This week we will hit the arguably most important set of events in medieval German history often summarised under the banner of the Investiture Controversy. The Investment Controversy came about through a confluence of three major strains, the rise in piety in the wake of improving economic conditions, the establishment of the papacy as a power separate and superior to temporal rulers and thirdly, the opposition of the German magnates against centralising tendency of the emperors, led by the Saxons. And it is the latter part this episode focuses on. If you are interested in the whole story, the episodes 30 to 42 can give you the overarching story. I actually listened to them again and am a little bit proud of what I have done there. So much for self-aggrandization and let’s find out.

But before we start let me tell you that the History of the Germans Podcast is advertising free thanks to the generous support from patrons. And you can become a patron too and enjoy exclusive bonus episodes and other privileges from the price of a latte per month. All you have to do is sign up at patreon.com/historyofthegermans or on my website historyofthegermans.com. You find all the links in the show notes. And thanks a lot to Justin K, Margaret G., Ragnhild S and Regina who have already signed up.

We pick up the story where we left it in episode 100. The Saxon leaders had surrendered to Henry IV on October 25th, 1075. Henry’s soldiers were raiding and murdering up and down the duchy in revenge for the destruction of the Harzburg and the desecration of the imperial graves.

After the battle on the Unstrut Henry IV had the opportunity to show mercy and reach a lasting arrangement with the Saxons. But Henry did not look for reconciliation. He wanted to continue his policy of territorial consolidation through the construction of castles. Fun fact, his great enemy Otto of Northeim had swapped sides and was now his administrator in Saxony, rebuilding the castles he had railed against just 2 years earlier. That meant the Saxons remained hostile and the other dukes, counts and bishops remained concerned about the king’s authoritarian streak.

And that hostility came to bear as the conflict between Henry IV and pope Gregory VII explodes into the excommunication and deposition of the king. Just as a recap, Gregory and Henry had got into a disagreement over who could appoint the archbishop of Milan, which had resulted in 2 rival archbishops. This conflict had escalated into a letter Henry wrote to Gregory calling him, Hildebrand, not pope but false monk and where he called for him to be replaced. Gregory VII responded by first excommunicating and then deposing him. Henry was now dependent upon the support of his bishops and magnates, support he found he did not have. At an assembly at Trebur the German magnates ordered him deposed unless he can be released from the ban within a year and a day. That led to the famous crossing of the alps in mid-winter and the penance Henry IV did before Gregory VII at the castle of Canossa.

Whilst all this is going on, Saxony is back in open rebellion. Magnates who had fled into exile returned and the bishops released those who had been taken prisoner. Otto von Northeim changed sides again and handed the Harzburg over to the rebels, wiping out most of the imperial gains.

As you may remember that in March 1077 the princes declare Henry IV formally deposed at the assembly of Forchheim, even though he is now released from the ban. It is unclear who took part in this assembly, but we do know that Otto von Northeim was an important voice. At this diet, two decisions are taken. The first was the election of Rudolf von Rheinfelden, the duke of Swabia as anti-king. Even more important than that was the decision to change the constitution of the empire. The new king conceded that “royal powers should belong to no one by heredity right, as was formerly the custom” and further that “the son of the king, even if he was extremely worthy, should succeed as king rather by spontaneous election than by the line of succession”. And that the “people should have it in their power to make king whoever they wished”. The empire had become an elective monarchy.

In the civil war that follows the support for Henry IV sits mainly in the south, in his own lands around Worms and Speyer, Bavaria, parts of Swabia and along the Main river. The supporters of Rudolf of Rheinfelden are the Saxons, even though the anti-king himself wasn’t one.

The two armies were equally matched, Henry may have had more resources, but Rheinfelden had the greatest general of the time, Otto von Northeim. The first two major battles followed a simple pattern, where Henry would have the upper hand for the first half until Otto von Northeim appeared out of left field and pushed him back.

In the first of these battles, Henry and Rudolph both fled the field of battle, in the second it was just Henry who fled, but the rebels had sustained too severe losses to pursue the royal army.

Despite the military success Rheinfelden never managed to expand the opposition-controlled territory much beyond the Saxony and his exclave in Swabia.

In between negotiations between the parties and with the pope continued but without any conclusions.

On October 15th, 1080, the two armies met again on the Elster river in Saxony, not far from Leipzig. Henry had been retreating from a pursuing Saxon army. He was outnumbered and tried to combine forces with his ally, the duke of Bohemia. His progress came to a halt when he reached the swollen Elster river that he could not cross. He pitched up camp and prepared for battle. That evening he drew up another donation to the cathedral of Speyer, the shrine to the imperial Salian family seeking the help of the Virgin Mary. It had become a habit of Henry’s to make generous donations to the church of Speyer at pivotal moments of his career and as we have already seen, there is no shortage of such moments, making the cathedral church extremely rich. All that money went into making this already enormous church even bigger.

Here is how the historian I.S. Robinson describes the battle (quote):

At daybreak on 15 October Henry drew up his army west of the Elster, along a stream called the Grune, where the marshy ground would impede the enemy’s approach. His forces included the vassals of the sixteen prelates who accompanied him, Swabians under the command of their duke, Bavarians under the command of count Rapoto IV of Cham and Lotharingians commanded by Count Henry of Laach (future count palatinate of Lothringia).

There were no Bohemians in the royal army; Henry had failed to make contact with Vratislav’s forces. When the Saxons arrived on the opposite bank of the Grune, they were exhausted by their rapid march and were without most of their foot soldiers., who could not keep up. As they approached the royal lines, the bishops in the Saxon army ordered the clergy to sing Psalm 82, traditionally regarded as a prayer against the enemies of god’s church. The two armies picked their way through the marches on opposite banks of the Grune until they reached a safe crossing, whereupon they immediately engaged in close combat. The royal army fought so fiercely that some Saxon knights fled and the rumour that the whole Saxon army was in retreat was so far believed that the clergy in the royal camp began to sing the Te Deum. They were interrupted by the arrival of men bearing the body of Count Rapato IV of Cham.  This sudden reversal was the work of the resourceful Otto von Northeim. When the Saxon knights fled and royal forces pursued them, Otto rallied the foot soldiers and forced back the pursuers. Returning to the battlefield, Otto found the royal contingents commanded by Henry von Laach beginning triumphantly singing the chant of Kyrie Eleyson. Once more the premature celebrations of the royal army were cut short and, the foot soldiers of Otto von Northeim sent the enemy fleeing across the Elster.” (end quote).

But this victory did cost the rebels dearly. When Otto von Northeim returned to the camp, he found his king mortally wounded his right hand cut off. Rudolph of Rheinfelden died that night or in the morning of the next day.

That was a major blow to the opposition. The manner of Rudolph’s death, losing the hand he had sworn allegiance to Henry IV, seriously undermined the standing of the opposition as the “good ones” in the conflict. For once Henry IV is winning the propaganda war.

The other issue was that the opposition was divided. The two major protagonists after Rudolph were Welf IV and Otto von Northeim. These two men hated each other ever since Henry IV had replaced Otto as duke of Bavaria with Welf IV. Both men had drawn pledges from Rudolph that in case of victory they would get the duchy of Bavaria.

Under these circumstances electing a successor for Rudolph as anti-king proved difficult. Henry IV tried to use the situation by making a peace offering to the Saxons. They could elevate his son Konrad as Saxon king, who would reign as their ruler before finally succeeding his father as Emperor. That would bring back the old Ottonian order where the emperor was a Saxon. Otto von Northeim’s response was “I have often seen a bad calf begotten by a bad steer, so I desire neither the father nor the son”.

The opposition kept debating about who to elect, not helped by Gregory VII urging them to wait with the election until he could come down to Germany. The two parties agreed a short-lived truce until June 1081. After that fighting resumed and an assembly of opposition leaders elected Hermann von Salm, a previously unknown count to be king. Gregory did not endorse the new king and his name was never mentioned by the pope. More importantly, Otto von Northeim took his sweet time acknowledging that he would never be king and finally recognised Hermann.

But somehow the momentum was gone from the rebellion. Henry IV could leave the management of the conflict to his closest ally and son-in-law, Frederick of Hohenstaufen. Frederick kept things ticking over whilst focusing on consolidating both the royal territories as well as is own.

This lowkey conflict continued until Henry IV returned to Germany in 1084. In the meantime Henry had taken Rome and managed to effect an imperial coronation. Gregory VII had retaken the Holy City with the help of the Normans, but they made such mess, the pope had to leave with them and died in Salerno that same year.

Basically, Henry IV was back in the saddle. All that was left was mopping up the opposition. That opposition had now changed quite fundamentally. Otto von Northeim had died in 1083. With him the Saxons had lost their unifying figurehead. Amongst the temporal leaders of the Saxons we now have several. There is Magnus, the duke of Saxony who does play a role, but is often lukewarm in the support of the uprising and subsequently does not have the leadership role his title suggests. Then we have the sons of Otto von Northeim, of which there are at least three, Siegried, Kuno and Henry the fat. The house of Wettin is also on the rise and their main protagonist is Henry of Eilenburg. But the most prominent was Ekbert II, margrave of Meissen. He needs a bit more of an introduction.

Last time we talked about the margraviate of Meissen, the man in charge was the ruthless Eckart II who died childless. The county then went to the counts of Weimar who only lasted about 20 years before it went to Ekbert I, count of Brunswick. Now that rings a bell I guess. Brunswick will become the de facto capital of the duchy once Henry the Lion from the house of Welf takes over. For now it is just one of several important counties and seat of the Brunones, one of the ancient Saxon families. They are linked to the imperial family and as it happens the only family the Saliens have in Saxony. Ekbert I gained his one significant entry into the history books when he rescued little Henry IV from drowning at the coup of Kaiserswerth. That explains why Meissen is given to Ekbert I when the previous margrave died without male descendants in 1067. He did not last long, and in 1068 his son, Ekbert II takes over.

Ekbert II should be a contented little count. Not only did he hold the margraviate of Meissen, he was also count of Brunswick and Count of Frisia plus he had inherited the lands of the counts of Weimar, making him the most significant magnate in saxony now that Otto von Northeim’s possessions have been split up between his sons.

But he is not a contented little count, nor is he loyal to the imperial house that had bestowed all that wealth on his family. So he joined the Saxon uprising in 1073 and fought alongside Otto on Northeim. When their case was lost in October 1075 Ekbert’s little empire collapses into dust. Henry IV is so enraged by Ekbert’s betrayal, he issues an order saying that by the law of the nations … the enemies of the king… are outlaws and should be disinherited of all their possessions and that Ekbert “shall have no part in the kingdom” Meissen goes to the duke of Bohemia, Frisia to the bishop of Utrecht and Brunswick, I do not know.

What we do know is that the year after as the rebellion resumes, Ekbert is back. He regains Meissen and Brunswick and puts his weight behind Rudolf von Rheinfelden. But after his previous experience, he likes to keep an open mind and open communication channels with the other side so as to be ready to swap sides should things turn unpleasant. They did not get too unpleasant for Ekbert II until 1085 which is why he stuck with the Saxons.

The other thing that has changed was the relationship between the Saxons and the church reformers. So far, the Saxons and the popes have shared an enemy, but not much else. You may remember that one of the reasons the Saxons were so disenchanted with the emperors was their sponsorship of the church. And they did not feel that Gregory VII had been wholeheartedly in their side. It took him 3 years to endorse the anti-king Rudolf of Rheinfelden and he never supported the current official head of the whole enterprise, Hermann von Salm. Ah, sorry I nearly forgot him. He is still about, still technically their king, but he does not really matter.

By 1084 when Henry IV had returned triumphantly from his Italian adventures, the Saxons and the church move closer to together. The main church leaders are Hartwig archbishop of Magdeburg and Burchard of Halberstadt. The bishops were much less interested in the rights and privileges of the Saxons, but in church reform and the supremacy of the papacy. But needs must and the bishops stood together with the temporal lords throughout the 1070s and early 1080s.

And there is another leg to all this, the Swabians. When Rudolf of Rheinfelden became anti-king, his vassals in the south joined the Saxon uprising as did the house of Welf. They were supposed to be joint partners in the endeavour, but the two groups had again little in common apart from the animosity towards Henry IV. The military benefit of the alliance with the Swabians was almost entire offset by the complexity of coordinating across disconnected territories and the inability to elect a truly powerful leader as anti-king.

When Henry returns, he is no longer the teenager/young adult of his earlier career. He had grown up and become more realistic in his ambitions. So rather than going in like a wrecking ball, he now aims to break up the opposition and reconcile with former foes.

He tries this with the bishops by inviting them to have a theological discussion about the legality of his excommunication. This does not get very far since the situation is ultimately irresolvable by argument. Henry had created not only an antipope but also anti-archbishops and anti-bishops all of which were trading excommunications and bans. There were synods on either side where either the all Gregorian bishops were summarily deposed or all Henrician bishops were told to go packing.

Where he had more success was in trying to break up the phalanx of territorial lords. These guys did not care much about the pope and church reform, they just wanted to be free from authoritarian rule. But talking to the other side was risky. At an assembly of Saxon magnates the bishop Udo of Hildesheim, his brother and the count Dietrich of Katlenburg were accused of having opened negotiations with Henry.  The three of them admitted having spoken to the emperor but insisted they had no intention of surrendering. They were accused of betrayal and a quarrel broke out at the end of which Count Dietrich lay dead and the bishop and his brother had to run to Henry Iv where they remained.

Count Dietrich was not just anyone, he was a rebel since 1073, a member of a great old Saxon family and married to Ekbert of Meissen’s sister. His potential betrayal caused a lot of concern, and with good reason. What added to the worries was that bishop Udo of Hildesheim now definitely supported Henry. His job was to recruit more defectors. Henry promised not just preferment but also that he would swear an oath that “if the Saxons permitted him to exercise kingship in the same way as his father, he would never infringe the rights they had enjoyed since the time of their conqueror Charles the Great.”. He basically offers the Saxons what they wanted all along. That did work for the temporal lords, but not for the bishops. They tried to hold things together, if necessary by purges.

In 1185 Frederick of Putelendorf, a nephew of our old friend Adalbert archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen, was killed by the count Louis “the leaper” of Thuringia, again upon suspicion of being a defector from the Saxon cause. This callous act brought Louis the victim’s job, making him count palatinate of Saxony.

Louis is a bit of a mystery man. There are many stories about him that are bit difficult to verify. He got his nickname when, after he was caught, escaped from prison by jumping into the Saale river from one of the towers of the castle of Giebichenstein. He was also the founder of the landgraviate of Thuringia, a princely territory that kept growing and growing in the centuries that followed, not always by playing cricket.

But by July 1185 the bishops’ poker play ended. Too many of the Saxon lords cared more about bringing the conflict to an end on acceptable terms. Henry IV was able to take a large army to Magdeburg where he was received with all the honours. The Saxon nobles even assembled to depose their useless anti-king Hermann von Salm. Henry then replaced all the opposition bishops with loyal candidates which was fine. Then he replaced several key administrative positions. All done, Henry IV dismissed his army and settled in to enjoy the lasting peace he had achieved.

His peace however lasted barely two months, or a Truss as we call it in England. Our friend Ekbert II who had sworn fealty again was clearly unhappy with the outcome. He had assumed that he would retain the margraviate of Meissen under the new regime. But that was not so. Henry IV maintained his decision to oust him and gave the margraviate to the duke of Bohemia. So he and others ganged up, sent the new bishops back home and called back Hartwig of Magdeburg and Burchart of Halberstadt. Hermann von Salm returned and celebrated Christmas in the same halls the emperor had sat in judgement only months earlier. Henry IV was back to square 1.

The following year, the emperor tried again. He mustered a large army and -after condemning Ekbert II again, this time as an enemy of the empire, set off for Magdeburg. But after a few weeks of burning and pillaging he turned around and goes back home. Why is not quite clear but some sort of treachery, this time in the imperial ranks thwarted the campaign.

Now it is the Saxons’ turn. They revive their old alliance with the Swabians around Welf IV and agree to jointly take Wuerzburg, thereby creating a land bridge between the two territories.  5 weeks into the siege an imperial army appears. The rebels march out to the Pleichfeld to fight. The southerners are full of fervour for the holy war they fight against their sinful deposed ruler. They put up high crosses on wagons flying red banners, a contraption that sounds like an Italian Carroccio. Whether rit was the crosses, the religious fervour or straightforward military skill, the imperials are defeated, not just defeated, but the battle turned into a rout. Eyewitnesses talk about nine huge piles of corpses of the defeated army against just 30 lost amongst the rebels.

But the Saxons and Swabians did not make much out of their success. They leave a garrison in Wuerzburg and re-install their archbishop. But a year later Henry IV is back, Wuerzburg returned to imperial control and the connection between the two rebel strongholds broken.

The divisions in the rebel camp keep deepening. At some point the Swabians negotiate with Henry directly without checking in with their partners. Duke Magnus Billung, after all nominally the leader of the duchy joins Henry IV.

So in 1187, Henry IV goes again. Same procedure as before. He raises and army and marches into Saxony. This time Ekbert II goes to the imperial tent, surrenders and swears fealty until the end of time, provided he is recognised as margrave of Meissen. Henry IV agrees, which was a difficult thing to do.

Henry’s most significant ally in the war with the Saxons was the duke of Bohemia, Vratislav. He was so dependent upon him, he elevated him to be king of Bohemia, something emperors had refused to do ever since Boleslav the Brave had claimed a crown. The other thing he had promised Vratislav was the margraviate of Meissen. He now had to go back on that promise. That was a high price to pay for the loyalty of Ekbert II, but sure worth it. Henry dismisses his army and sends Ekbert up to Magdeburg to get everything ready for his joyous entry into the city.

Well, Henry IV finds out that Ekbert’s idea of “until the end of time” meant barely 24 hours. Once he is in Magdeburg, Ekbert sends envoys to henry saying that actually, upon reflection, he is still bound by oath to his compatriots and so, sorry, no can do. What happened in the meantime is that the two bishops, Hartwig of Magdeburg and Burchart of Hialberstadt had handed over, not only all the land and money they could spare, but promised him they would make him “king of the Saxons”.

That was the end of that campaign. But hey, there is always another year.

The 1188 campaign was however different, different in so far as it did not happen.

The offer of kingship to Ekbert II was what brought the rebellion to collapse. The Saxon leaders knew Ekbert and they knew he was not to be trusted. So Ekbert was not proposed as king of the Saxons. Ekbert claimed that Burchart and Hartwig had tricked him, re-joined the camp of Henry IV, swearing ternal fealty and attacked the diocese of Halberstadt. Burchart met up with Hartwig and one of Otto von Northeim’s sons, Kuno in Goslar. What then happened is unclear, but somehow the citizens of Goslar and the Halberstadt Ministeriales get into a fight, at the end of which the Gregorian party is another bishop short. All fingers point at Ekbert II.

With Burchart gone, the other Saxons throw in the towel. The sons of Otto von Northeim bend the knee as does Henry of Eilenburg, head of the house of Wettin. In return henry confirms all ancient rights and privileges, whatever these are. Henry IV then marrie Eupraxia, the widow of the count of Stade, another important Saxon family.

Hartwig of Magdeburg is the first to submit, promising to bring along the other Gregorian bishops of Naumburg and Merseburg. Hartwig is immediately restored to his seat as the one and only archbishop. Not just that, he is made the emperors representative in Saxony and Thuringia, a sort of viceroy.

That arrangement was the smart move here. By creating a layer between the emperor and the Saxon nobles in the form of a man the Saxons knew and trusted, they could be assured that there would be no more imperial overreach. Hartwig was the ideal man for the role. He kept it until 1104, constantly loyal to the emperor and keeping his oath to leave the Saxons well alone.

That would be the end of this story was it not for the eternal troublemaker, Ekbert. Having rebelled twice and reconciled twice, he thought all good things are three and whilst all the other Saxons made peace, he got going again. And though he was pretty much on his own he won a battle at Gleichen where he again routed an imperial army. He captured the bishop of Hildesheim, the defector of 1185 and only let him live after he had handed over his diocese. But in the end, he could not sustain it. In 1189 Henry of Eilenburg caught up and defeated him. Ekbert got away and hid in a mill on the river Selke. There soldiers in the pay of the abbess Adelaide of Quedlinburg found him and killed him.

That was the end of Ekbert II of Meissen and also the end of the Saxon wars. The chroniclers counted 15 incursions of the emperor into Saxony. This was the last. Henry IV will never again set foot in the duchy. The Salians and their heirs will never again rule directly in Saxony. We have gone from unease, to rift to separation. Saxony will now look to its own leader who sits between them and the emperor. And the question who that will be hangs on the inheritance of Ekbert II.

Since Ekbert had no male offspring the margraviate of Meissen became a returned fief. That was given  to Henry of Eilenburg, whose family, the Wettins held it until 1918. 

Ekbert’s personal wealth including Brunswick and Frisia went to his daughter Gertrude who had married Henry the fat, son of Otto of Northeim. Henry the Fat takes over the role of Ekbert as the most important noble in Saxony until his death in 1101. Henry’s daughter Richenza inherited most of these lands and when she married Lothar von Supplinburg provided him with what he needed to rise first to duke of Saxony and later to emperor. But that is a tale for another time, next week to be precise. I hope you will join us again.

You won’t believe it, but when you hear this I will still be sailing somewhere in the Atlantic or maybe just got into the Mediterranean. If you want to follow along, you can do so on a website and app called Marine Traffic. Search for sailing vessel Purple Rain under French flag. What this journey means, apart from working like a dervish to get enough episodes recorded to cover the time, it also means that my marketing efforts trickle down to zero. Hence, I would hugely appreciate if you were to help promote the show. Why not send a link to the History of the Germans to a friend or family member who might be interested, write a comment on one of my older posts which tends to revive them or even write your own post on social media. That would be massively appreciated, as would obviously signing up on Patreon at patreon.com/historyofthegermans.

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The emergence of the duchy of Mecklenburg

This week we will follow the history of two men who could not be more different. On one side is Gottschalk, leader of the pagan Abodrites, who first comes to prominence as a brutal raider killing Saxons all across Holstein in revenge for his father’s killing. The other is Adalbert, son of a count, brother of the count palatinate of Saxony, friend and confidant of Henry III, a man who refused the offer of becoming pope for his ambition to convert all of Scandinavia and the Baltic. These two men formed an alliance against the Saxon magnates in general and the Billungs, dukes of Saxony in particular.

It is a story of greed and violence, of Christian conversion and attempts to break out of strategic gridlock…

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Transcript

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 101 – Gottschalk and Adalbert

This week we will follow the history of two men who could not be more different. On one side is Gottschalk, leader of the pagan Abodrites, who first comes to prominence as a brutal raider killing Saxons all across Holstein in revenge for his father’s killing. The other is Adalbert, son of a count, brother of the count palatinate of Saxony, friend and confidant of Henry III, a man who refused the offer of becoming pope for his ambition to convert all of Scandinavia and the Baltic. These two men formed an alliance against the Saxon magnates in general and the Billungs, dukes of Saxony in particular.

It is a story of greed and violence, of Christian conversion and attempts to break out of strategic gridlock…

But before we start let me tell you that the History of the Germans Podcast is advertising free thanks to the generous support from patrons. And you can become a patron too and enjoy exclusive bonus episodes and other privileges from the price of a latte per month. All you have to do is sign up at patreon.com/historyofthegermans or on my website historyofthegermans.com. You find all the links in the show notes. And thanks a lot to J. Lawton, Tracy J and Roger who have already signed up. And special thanks to Paul Huehnermund whose generosity and regular support on Twitter is much appreciated.

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Last week we did a recap of the Saxon war that pitted the emperor Henry IV against the Saxon magnates, led by Otto von Northeim. This story you may remember from Season 2 and we will get on to the follow-on of it. But before we do that, I want to talk about the second strain in our narrative, the fate of the Wends, the Slavic peoples who live between the Elbe and Oder river, specifically their federations, the Abodrites and the Lutizi.

We have met the Abodrites before. They are a federation of several Slavic tribes who live in the March of the Billungs, across modern day Holstein and Mecklenburg. They had played a leading role in the great Slav uprising when their leader Mistivoj brought his troops up to and then through the gates of Hamburg, burning the city and all its wooden churches. According to the chronicles of Helmond of Bosau the leadership of the Abodrites, including Mistivoj had accepted Christianity but were provoked into revolt by the oppressive tributes the Billungs extracted as well as their refusal to accept them as their equals and marry their daughters to them as they had done with the Poles.

After the uprising of 983 Mistivoj seems to have returned to at least nominal Christianity. We do know that his son and successor, Udo was officially Christian, though the chronicler Helmond of Bosau describes him as lax in his religious devotion. Honestly, I can’t blame him.

Udo’s son was Gottschalk, born sometime between the year 1000 and 1015. Young Gottschalk was brought up in a monastery in Luneburg. We do not know what role the academic reputation of this establishment played in Udo’s decision to hand over his oldest son to preceptors in the hometown of the occupying duke of Saxony. 

In 1028 or 1031 Gottschalk’s father was stabbed in the back by a Saxon in his retinue. Gottschalk flees from his monastery, sheds Christianity and takes over his father’s job, and goes out for revenge. For years he devastates what is today Holstein so that in the end only the garrisons in Itzehoe and Boeckelnburg remain standing. In the end he is captured by the duke of Saxony. The duke releases him after the two men had found an agreement. What the content of that was is unclear, but most likely a combination of a payment and promise to go into exile. Gottschalk went to Denmark and joined king Knut in his endeavour to gain the crown of England. He stayed in Denmark for almost 15 years and got involved in the various wars of succession that followed the death of the great Knut. It is during this period that the Abodrites show up on the Danish border. What exactly they were doing there is unclear. Some argue they were on migration, others that they had taken part in the wars of succession in Denmark. In what appears to have been an exceptionally brutal battle, the Slavs are beaten and allegedly 15,000 Abodrites lay dead on the field. Their leader, Ratibor fell in battle and his seven sons were caught to perish in Danish captivity. King Magnus of Norway and Denmark son of Saint Olaf wielded his father’s battle axe, curiously named Hel after the Nordic goddess of death…

Nominally the Abodrites had been allied with Sweyn Estridsson, one of the various claimants for the Danish throne, which makes it likely that Gottschalk was involved in this affair. We hear later that he married a daughter of Sweyn Estridsson, by now king of Denmark.

By 1047 he is definitely back in the land of the Abodrites where, probably with the help of his father-in-law, he had regained his position as the leader of the federation.

By now Gottschalk had converted back to Christianity. Not just that, he had become a strong promoter of the Christian faith. He founded monasteries in all the major towns, allowed new bishoprics in Mecklenburg and Ratzeburg to be erected until the whole land was full of churches and the churches full of priests as the Adam von Bremen noticed enthusiastically.

Which begs the question why he had done so? Sure Canute and his court were Christians, and they would probably have demanded nominal adherence to the new religion, as did Magnus and Sweyn Estridsson. But in a world where the saintly king of Norway calls his battle-ax Hel, this could only have been a thin veneer of Christianity. Gottschalk’s activity once he is back in charge is different. He means it. He is going to great length to convert his people. Chroniclers report that he joined the missionaries and translated the sermon into their language.

If you leave aside the possibility of a Damascus moment experienced in a Saxon prison cell, there might be another explanation. Imagine you are a pagan Slavic rule,r and you look at your list of long term options. Well, it isn’t a very long list.

Option 1 is to keep doing what you are doing which means at regular intervals the local margrave will come round and demand an outrageous amount in tribute. When you refuse, the margrave will come back with an army, devastate your land, steal everything that isn’t nailed down and take your women and children away as slaves. Or you can accept the tribute which requires you to gathe everything that isn’t nailed down yourself and hand it over.

Option 2 is to accept conversion. But that means you now have to pay the bishops and archbishops on top of the margrave. And even then you may find that the local rulers find ways to provoke you into fighting anyway. You remember grandpa Mistivoj who was called a dog by margrave Dietrich?

And then you look at Poland and realise things aren’t fair. The Poles had been pagan seventy years ago. Now look at them. There are churches everywhere, they have their own archbishop, their king had forced the old emperor Henry II to sign a humiliating peace agreement. And even though right now Poland is a mess, still their nobility is linked by marriage into the highest levels of the Saxon aristocracy, even the imperial family.

If you can set aside your religious scruples, that is where you want to get to. But how?

Just paying lip-service to the new gods is something the powerful Danes and Norwegians can afford, but that is not cutting the mustard out here in the Wendish lands. The solution has to be a close alliance with the one force that provides a counterweight to the Saxon magnates, the church, and most specifically the almighty archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen, Adalbert.

Adalbert you may remember was a close ally of Henry III who saw his role in being the patriarch of the north, bringing Christianity to Scandinavia and all the shores of the Baltic Sea. Gottschalk is likely to have met Adalbert before he returned to his homeland since Adalbert had been a regular visitor to the Danish court. The return of Gottschalk may have been supported, if not even conceived by Adalbert.

Adalbert and Gottschalk worked closely together. The new bishoprics in Ratzeburg and Mecklenburg became part of the archdiocese of Hamburg and Adalbert put competent men into those positions, including a man called John who had come from Scotland where he had been bishop of Glasgow and possibly of Orkney. I mention him because he will reappear again a little later.

Tagging on to Adalbert looked like a winning move already in 1047. Adalbert was already hugely powerful at court. He had accompanied the emperor on his journey to Rome which included the famous council of Sutri where the emperor deposed three popes and replaced them with German bishops.  Adalbert was offered the job but refused claiming he was needed for missionary activity in the north. A good move since the man who took the job, Suitger, bishop of Bamberg, died within months from the unhealthy climate in Rome.

If not at court, Adalbert’s main area of operations was Scandinavia. Adam von Bremen describes regular interaction with the kings of Norway, of Sweden and of Denmark. This is a period of constant coming and going on the Scandinavian thrones, though more often than not the going party wasn’t moving under its own propulsion any more. Adalbert seems to have managed these political upheavals deftly and held on to his position as the leader of the Scandinavian church.

Now let us move on to the year 1056. Two things happen. One, the emperor Henry III dies and two, the Lutizi achieve a major success destroying the army of William, Margrave of the Northern March. The first is a major problem for Adalbert, since Henry III was his great sponsor and as always in a regime change, the old advisors are chucked out. The latter was a real issue for Gottschalk who was trying to prove that a former pagan Slavic tribe could become an integral part of the empire. Ah, and if you remember last episode it was also a problem for the boy-king Henry IV who was nearly killed over it.

Now the next thing we hear is that a year after their great success the Lutizi begin to fight amongst themselves. The Lutizi are not a tribe itself but a federation of several small tribes, namely the Rearii, Tollensi, Kessini and Circcipani. No, you do not need to remember those. The Kessini and Circipani fell out with the Redarii and Tollensi on the other. We do not know what exactly drove the disagreement. Some have argued that the Redarii had been a sort of elite amongst the Lutizi and this was basically a revolt from below. It could also have been a falling out over strategy now that they had beaten the empire and the throne was occupied by a child. Or it was some clever undercover work by Gottschalk and Adalbert.

All that is fact is that the two sides went at it hammer and tongs. Adam von Bremen tells us of three separate campaigns that always ended with a defeat for the Redarii. The Redarii in their distress went for help to the most motley of crews. They first ask Gottschalk, prince of the Abodrites, then they ask Sweyn Estridsson, king of the Danes and then duke Bernhard of Saxony. All three of them are happy to help. So happy they bring along a colossal force that easily overwhelms the Circipani. Thousands of them die and the slaughter only ends when the defeated Circipani pay a fine of 15,000 pounds of silver. Adam von Bremen summarises the events as follows: Our soldiers returned home triumphant; there was no mention of Christianity, all they cared for was plunder.”

Adam von Bremen goes back to this again and again. In his view it was only the greed of the Saxons that stopped progress of the missionaries.

For Gottschalk this was at least outwardly a success. Fighting alongside his father in Law, the king of Denmark and his lord, Bernhard Billung, the duke of Saxony against the pagans makes him out as a Christian prince and reliable ally. The initial worry that the rebellion would force his strategy to unravel was put to rest. Gottschalk ploughs on in his project to convert his people and become a proper prince.

Adalbert meanwhile had other matters to take care of. We are now in the year 1057 and the imperial government under the regent empress Agnes is starting to get into heavy weather. The first year Agnes could rely in the pope, Victor II who had been the last of her husband’s appointees. Victor had been a relative of Henry III and fiercely loyal to the imperial family. But Victor II passed in 1057 and the inexperienced French empress was stumbling from one political mistake to the next. In 1061 she backed the bishop of Parma as pope Honorius II. Honorius had been part of a backlash against the progress of church reform. He and other prelates found the lifestyle restrictions proposed by the reformers around Peter Damian utterly cumbersome. Supporting the right of bishops to have mistresses and enjoy their wealth went completely against the grain of popular opinion. When Agnes sided with the counterreformers, the empire lost the lead in church reform, which was one of the reasons her son Henry IV ended up in the snow before the walls of Canossa.

Concerned about the implications of that decision the archbishop of Cologne, Anno, intervened. He had the boy king Henry IV kidnapped by luring him on to a ship he had moored in the Rhine River. Henry IV tried to flee by jumping overboard and nearly drowned. Child secured, Anno took over the government and formed a regency council on which Adalbert of Hamburg Bremen was the other prominent member. Adalbert and Anno did not like each other one bit, but shared a love for money and power. The chroniclers, even those who were on Adalbert’s side, tell tales of corruption and greed. Adalbert and Anno plundered the royal treasury, passing wealthy abbeys between each other.

Adalbert’s power increased further as young Henry IV grew older. Henry IV had never forgiven Anno the kidnapping. That made it easy for Adalbert to gain the young king’s confidence. The chronicler Bruno claims that Adalbert had encouraged the young king to give in to all his most base instincts. Henry supposedly always had two or three mistresses at the same time, lusted after his courtiers wives and daughters and even tried to get one of his guys to seduce the empress he had planned to divorce. That latter guy was by the way caught and beaten half to death by the enraged Bertha. Adalbert, instead of challenging his behaviour is supposed to have reassured the  the king that he could always confess later and be absolved and that he would be a fool not to give in to all his urges

Whether any of these stories are true is unclear though increasingly historians tend to the opinion that Henry IV was definitely more prone to sinful behaviour than his all so saintly forebears. What is very much true thou is that Adalbert gained an ever stronger hold over the young king to the point that any of the nobles saw him as a de-facto dictator. Even the Hamburg-based chroniclers like Adam von Bremen and Helmond von Bosau took a dim view of Adalbert’s entanglement in high politics and his sheer limitless ambition and greed.

What might have gone down really badly with the aristocracy was his personal behaviour. In particular in his later years he became too big for his shoes. Applicants, even the most powerful ones would have to wait as much as a week before they are admitted into his presence. And would later find out that Adalbert had made fun of them at dinner with his friends. As Adam von Bremen said, he shed all his virtues he once possessed and brought the hatred of the magnates upon him.

At the beginning of 1066 the opposition to Adalbert had firmed up to the point they were seeking an open confrontation. The king had spent the last three months in Goslar mainly because the princes, including the archbishops of Mainz and Cologne refused to entertain the royal court. That was not only a major logistical problem, as the large retinue had literally eaten every morsel of food within the vicinity of Goslar, but it was also an insult bordering on rebellion. And the princes went one step further when they called an assembly at Trebur, something so far had only ever happened upon the invitation of the king. The purpose of the meeting was to get rid of Adalbert, as “nearly all the princes and bishops of the kingdom were unanimous in their hatred and conspired that he should perish”.

When he hears about this, Henry IV, Adalbert and some of his followers raced to Trebur to confront the princes. Thietmar reports of an event en route to Trebur where the royal guards forced the inhabitants of a village to hand over food. The villagers resisted and the commander of the royal bodyguards was severely wounded. He was brought before the abbot of Hersfeld who refused to grant the man the last rites before he had passed over some property the abbot claimed was his. If a mere abbot can treat a man under royal protection like that, it does not bode well for an archbishop everybody hates.

Upon arrival in Trebur, the assembled magnates tell Henry IV that he has a simple choice. Sack Adalbert or resign the throne. Henry IV is still a teenager at this point, so he twisted and turned and hesitated to make a decision. Adalbert advised the king to pack up the insignia of kingship and flee back to Goslar in the night. Orders are given to load the treasury on to wagons but all that made such a noise that the others woke up and stopped the proceedings. Guards were posted so that nothing untoward could happen.

The next morning the magnates confronted Adalbert and it was only by intervention of the king that he wasn’t struck dead right there. That was the end of Adalbert’s time in the limelight. He did beat a hasty retreat to his diocese protected by the few soldiers the impecunious king could spare.

Adalbert’s ordeal wasn’t over though. As his power was broken, the eternal enemy of the archbishops, the dukes of Saxony came out for their pound of flesh. Magnus Billung at this point only son of the reigning duke took his soldiers and laid siege to the city of Bremen where Adalbert had sought refuge. The threat was such that Adalbert was forced to sign an agreement that handed over almost 2/3rds of the assets of the archbishopric to the Billungs. Adalbert was allowed to leave Bremen and fled to Goslar.

The fall of Adalbert brought his entire political construct to collapse. Led by a man called Kruto the Abodrites rose up against the Christian Gottschalk and had him murdered as was appropriate together with a priest on the altar of a church. This kicked off a general persecution of Christians, in particular the priests. In Ratzeburg two monks were stoned.

Gottschalk’s wife, the daughter of the king of Denmark was pulled out of her palace and dragged naked through the town of Mecklenburg.

But the worst ordeal was reserved for John, the Scotsman who had come down to be bishop of Oldenburg. He was hauled from town to town across the lands of the Abodrites and Lutizi until he arrived at the religious centre of the Wends, a place called Rethra. Thietmar von Merseburg describes the place as follows:

Their holy of holies was a triangular building with three doors, built deep inside a holy forest. The building can be entered by all through two of the three doors. The third door is reserved to a special caste of priests. It opens onto a path that leads to a lake, that according to Thietmar, was “utterly dreadful in appearance”. The outer walls of the building were adorned by marvellous sculpted images of the gods and goddesses. Inside, in the centre was a skilfully made shrine that was standing on a foundation composed of the horns of animals. There were full-sized free-standing sculptures of the gods, each inscribed with their name and clothed with helmets and armour. There was a senior god Thietmar calls Swarozyc, though other sources call him Radogast, the same as the name of the place.

The Lutizi had a priest class whose role was preside over the drawing of the lots to make major decisions. The process was divided in two parts. In part one the priests would throw the lots and divine from how they lay what they believed the correct decision was to be. Next, they would bring in the sacred enormous horse that would walk over the lots and thereby declare its reading of the omens. Only when the priests and the horse agreed would the decision be implemented. If they disagreed the proposal is rejected. And if the omen suggested that internal warfare was imminent, a giant boar would emerge from the lake. All that again is what we are told by a Christian chronicler not a Slavic one.

The temple at Rethra was not the only one, but the most sacred. There were other religious centres for the different tribes in the federation. These tribes would take their decisions, namely about war and peace jointly and unanimously. Unanimous the decision might be, but there was a rule that anyone who opposes the decision in the assembly was to be beaten with rods until he agrees and if he opposes after the assembly, he loses everything, either by burning or confiscation. Clearly it does not always pay to be contrarian.

Part of the decision over war and peace was to determine what offers have to be made to the gods in case of a successful completion of the campaign.

We do not know whether what happened next had been the result of such a pledge. Adam von Bremen tells us that when the Bishop John of Oldenburg refused to renounce his faith, he had first his hands and then his feet cut off. They then decapitated him and threw his body into a ditch by the road. The head was planted on a spike and then sacrificed to Radegast, allegedly the god of hospitality.

After these atrocities the Abodrites consolidated again, this time under the leadership of Kruto, the man who had led them in their rebellion. The duke of Saxony spent the next 12 years trying to suppress Kruto but this time the Slavs were better trained and better equipped. These campaigns failed again and again. Things got so bad that the duke of Saxony was becoming the butt of jokes about his inability to defeat the Slavs.

Seemingly there was a third option for Slavic leaders.

Gottschalk’s sons and his wife survived the carnage. The older one called Butivoj allied with the duke of Saxony and attempted to regain his father’s position. This attempt ended in the picturesque city of Ploen. Ploen is surrounded by lakes and was only accessible by a land bridge. Butivoj had come to the town with an army of auxiliaries provided by duke Magnus of Saxony. To his surprise he found the city empty of enemy soldiers. Though he was warned that this could be a trap, he stayed the night in Ploen. By morning he found the land bridge occupied by a vast army of Abodrites. A quick survey of the town revealed that the retreating enemy had stripped the stores of all foodstuff and, even worse, had taken away all boats. Butivoj’s position was hopeless. He negotiated terms with the Kruto who allowed him and his men to go, provided they leave their weapons and precious items behind. That they accepted. As they came out rumours swirled around the camp that Butivoj’s men had raped the women left behind in Ploen during their short stay. The Abodrites got so enraged they murdered the defenceless Butivoj and his men before Kruto could stop them.

Gottschalk’s wife and younger son, Henry, had fled to Denmark where they had family. Henry was more successful than his brother. With Danish assistance he forced Kruto to let him back in as leader of a part of the Abodrite federation in 1093. Kruto was at that point quite old, but still wasn’t willing to give up neither his throne nor other pleasures of life. He had recently married a young lady called Slavina. According to Helmond von Bosau this lady was young and of a fun-loving disposition. And clearly not interested in spending the rest of her life with a decrepit old man. Or she may have acted out of self-preservation since some of the pagan Slavic tribes practiced Sati, the burning of widows upon the death of their husbands. Either way, when Slavina heard that Kruto planned to kill Henry, she warned him. Henry decided to get on the front foot, invited Kruto to a feast, plied him with immense amounts of drink until the old man was barely able to stand. As the old lord stumbled to his bedchamber, one of Henry’s Danes split his head with an axe.

That elevated Henry to prince of the Abodrites and he married Slavina. The other Slavic tribes, presumably the Lutizi and some disaffected Abodrites raised an army to unseat Henry. However, Henry prevailed with the help of Magnus Billung at the battle of Schmillau in 1093.

With that Henry became a vassal of duke Magnus of Saxony. He chose Liubice as his main residence, a place we know better by its modern name, Lubeck. Under his rule the Abodrites flourished. The economy improved and it seems the tributes had become more acceptable.

Though Henry was a Christian, he did not force his people to convert as his father had done. Being a vassal of the duke of Saxony and not the archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen, the pressure to do so must have been less. He also remembered his father’s demise in a pagan revolt. So he gave his people religious freedom. They no longer journeyed to the temple at Rethra where bishop John Scotus had found his end because that had been destroyed sometime around these decades. Instead  the centre of the pagan faith was now the sanctuary of Cap Arcona on the island of Rugen.

It is around the time of Henry, whose reign went on until 1127, that the policy towards the marches is changing. Instead of raiding the lands to the east for plunder and slaves, the Saxon leadership is encouraging economic growth and colonisation. This is a decision with far, far reaching consequences.

We will hear more about that, the Abodrites, Henry and his descendants as we go along. But not next week. Next week we catch up with the high politics of the empire, the role the Saxons play in the Investiture Controversy and how once again a Saxon rises to become emperor. I hope you will listen in again.

You may not believe it but if all goes to plan I will still be sailing somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic. If you want to follow along, you can do so on a website and app called Marine Traffic. Search for sailing vessel Purple Rain under French flag. Being away has a number of implications, apart from working like a dervish to get enough episodes recorded to cover the time. It means that my marketing efforts trickle down to zero. That is where you my listeners come in. I was wondering whether you would be prepared to help promote the show. Why not send a link to the History of the Germans to a friend or family member who might be interested, write a comment on one of my older posts which tends to revive them or even write your own post on social media. That would be massively appreciated, as would obviously signing up on Patreon at patreon.com/historyofthegermans.

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What did the Investiture Controversy really change

In this episode we will come to the end of the Investiture controversy, the end of the Salian dynasty and the end of Season 2  – and ask the question, what was all that about?

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 42 –  A World Revolution?

In this episode we will come to the end of the Investiture controversy, the end of the Salian dynasty and the end of Season 2  – and ask the question, what was all that about?

Before we start a just a reminder. The History of the Germans Podcast is advertising free thanks to the generous support from patrons. And you can become a patron too and enjoy exclusive bonus episodes and other privileges from the price of a latte per month. All you have to do is sign up at patreon.com/historyofthegermans or on my website historyofthegermans.com. You find all the links in the show notes. And thanks a lot to Andrew, Martha and David who have already signed up.

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Last week we ended with Emperor Henry V and Pope Calixtus II getting within a hairs breadth of an agreement that would have brought the investiture conflict in Germany to an end.

Over almost 50 years of war the church and the secular rulers have narrowed down the so-called investiture controversy to one question, how are bishops and abbots appointed? Both France and England had settled the issue with the papacy in 1104 and 1107. In France the arrangement was that the church was free to select its bishops and abbots, however, once selected, the bishop or abbot would have to swear fealty to the king and offer him the services associated with the fiefs the church had received. In England that rule was similar with the crucial difference that the king was allowed to be present at the election and had a casting vote in case no unanimous decision could be agreed upon by the canons. Both of these compromises were a formal limitation of royal prerogatives, but left the rulers with the all important access to the church resources.

The Emperor Henry V was ready to go down a similar route in 1119 and had travelled towards an encounter with pope Calixtus II, only for negotiations to collapse at the last minute. Both sides accused each other of duplicity and last-minute changes. Everything reverted to square 1 and the pope excommunicated Henry V who in turn resumed hostilities against the Gregorian party in Germany.

In 1121 he mustered an army to attack the city of Mainz and its archbishop, his former friend and chancellor Adalbert. Adalbert had by now become papal legate in Germany and one of the most intransigent agents of the hard-line reformers. His stubbornness had lost Adalbert some support amongst the more moderate factions, including his fellow church leaders, the archbishops of Cologne and Trier, but he still had the support of the Saxons under the leadership of Lothar of Supplinburg.

When the two armies faced each other the princes in both camps decided that for the sake of the realm, battle should be avoided. Without a mandate from the emperor of the archbishop the two sides negotiated a formula for peace: “regalia vel fiscalia regno, ecclesiastica ecclesii”. To the king the king’s rights and possessions, to the church the churches’ rights.

This, all the princes jointly promised, is what they would help the king to negotiate with the papacy. Facing a united front of emperor and all the princes, Calixtus II would have to yield. The princes did not have to say what would happen to Henry V if the emperor had dared to reject their proposal.

Let me just leave this here – we will discuss why this is probably an even more important event than the actual concordat of Worms in a moment.

With Germany united in its position, negotiations started swiftly and -after a bit of diplomatic to and fro were concluded on September 23rd 1122 in a field outside the city of Worms. The agreement consisted in two separate treaties.

In the first one, the Henricianum, named after Henry V, the emperor renounces his right to invest bishops with the ring and the staff. He guarantees the churches their right to freely elect their bishops and abbots. He promises to return or help recover whatever land and rights the churches may have lost to secular lords.

In the simultaneous treaty called the Calixtinium, Pope Calixtus II grants the emperor the right to invest the bishop or abbot with his royal fiefs. The symbol for that investiture is now a sceptre. In Germany this investiture is to take place before the consecration of the prelate, whilst in Italy and in Burgundy it takes place afterwards. And the pope allows for Henry to be present at the elections of bishops and abbots and grants him some sort of involvement in resolving contentious elections. In all cases the bishop or abbot owes the king the services under the rules of the fief.

In non-legalese this means the role of the German king in the selection and investiture of bishops is very similar to the situation in England and more significant than in France. Hold that thought – we will get back to this in a moment.

The Concordat brought an end to the religious conflict in Germany but did not result in much of an increase in imperial power on the ground. Saxony remained firmly in the hands of Lothar of Supplinburg. How little influence he now has becomes clear when the counties of Meissen and Lausitz became vacant. It was the duke of Saxony, not the emperor who chose the new counts for these extremely wealthy and strategically important counties. Lothar’s choice as count of Meissen was Conrad of Wettin. Conrad’s descendants would rule the lands around Meissen until rising to become the electors of Saxony, later kings of Saxony-Poland and creators of the greatest of German baroque cities, Dresden.

Whilst Henry’s room to manoeuvre in Germany became tighter and tighter, he was looking for a way out. Anything that would help him gather enough resources to resume the fighting and return to effective power in Germany.

And that opportunity came after in 1120 thanks to a maritime disaster. On the 25th of November William Adelin, son of King Henry I of England boarded the Blanche Nef, the White Ship in Barfleur in Normandy. William being 17 and a man about town took along his entourage of some 300 retainers many of similar age. And they proceeded to do what 17-year-olds left without parental supervision have done since time immemorial, they had some hell of a party. Plus, they were on the fastest ship of the royal fleet, which meant that obviously they wanted to have a race. The king himself had set off earlier that day and bets were taken that the Blanche Nef could overtake the royal ship. The ship’s captain, probably ether sozzled or stirred in his pride set off with a bunch of pissheads in the depth of the night. Barfleur is not an especially difficult port to navigate. What you have to do is go East northeast for about 2 miles to be clear of outlying rocks before you can turn due north for England.  The pilot and the captain, keen to speed things up cut the corner and hit a rock. In the dark and cold all onboard perished except for one man, a butcher from Rouen who clung on to the fatal rock.

The death of King Henry’s only son created an opportunity for our Henry, Emperor Henry V who was married to, yes, the only legitimate daughter of King Henry I, Matilda. It wasn’t clear at this point that Henry I would not have another son, but the optionality was attractive enough for the emperor to invest heavily in the friendship with the ruler of England and Normandy.

The two of them forged a military alliance and Henry V mustered an army to support his father-in-law in his perennial struggles with the French crown. Fighting the French suited Henry V well anyway after their king had been such a strong supporter of the pope in the run-up to the Concordat of Worms.

Henry V thought the puny king Louis VI of France who controlled nit much more than the area around Paris and could call some bishops his vassals would be a pushover. In particular if the two Henrys staged a pincer movement coming simultaneously from the North and the East. And he should have been, had it not been for a sudden emergence of national sentiment amongst the French.

Henry V’s initial target was the city of Reims, the place of royal coronations and place of Clovis’ baptism. Something about the idea of the German emperor lording it over the church of Saint Remy stirred up patriotic sentiment amongst the French princes. They joined their king at the Abbey of Saint Denis, outside Paris, and raised the royal battle standard, the Oriflamme, a blood red, pointed banner flown from a golden lance for the very first time. The Oriflamme was the symbol of Saint Denis, everybody’s favourite headless saint, was believed to have been carried by Charlemagne into the Holy land and wielded by the legendary Roland. It would lead the French army into battle for the next couple of hundred years. Where the emperors had their Holy Lance, the Kings of France had their Oriflamme.

In this contest of the symbols in 1124 the shiny Oriflamme won out. The flipside of Louis’ support in France was the deafening silence Henry’s call for national unity found in Germany.

This defeat is by no means the end of the struggle for the succession of king Henry I, a process that will take decades and pitched Matilda against her cousin Stephen of Blois.

Henry V did not take part in any of these struggles. He died On Mai 23rd, 1125 in Utrecht. He was 39 years old. If he had lived it would have been him who had fought alongside Matilda for the crown of England and his sons rather than the Plantagenets would have ruled England for the next few centuries. No Eleanor of Aquitaine, no Richard Lionheart no Henry V or Richard III. Shakespeare’s heroes would have been called Henry, Konrad or Fritz and you would look at this podcast and go Ahh Salians – so boring. Can’t you talk about something we know nothing about.

His body was brought to imperial basilica in Speyer where he was buried next to his father, grandfather and great grandfather.

Henry V had no son and with that the Salian dynasty ended. Henry V designated the sons of his daughter Agnes, Frederick and Konrad of Hohenstaufen to be the heirs to his fortune.

The Salian dynasty had ruled the Empire for almost exactly 100 years, from the election of Konrad II in 1024 to the death of Henry V in 1125. It was a period of massive change, socially, economically, politically and spiritually. Debate about what had happened and what it meant for the future began amongst contemporaries and has been raging ever since.

The chronicler Otto von Freising, a grandson of Henry V who wrote just 25 years after the death of the emperor saw the conflict between the papacy and the emperor as a world-ending calamity. The fragmentation of the unity of the spiritual and the secular was a portent of the end of the Roman Empire, which according to Saint Augustin ushered in the coming of the antichrist and hence the end of the world. It was the bishops and abbots who were to blame for this. They had been made rich by the generosity of the emperors only to turn around and impale their now enfeebled benefactor with his own swords.

The German 19th century followed in that same vein. The church had stalled the progress of Germany towards statehood that ultimately resulted in the fratricidal religious wars and subsequent political decline to insignificance of the Reich. This storyline had the added advantage of blaming the catholic pope for all the misery of the 17th and 18th century.  A view that helped justify why Germany should be unified by protestant Prussia and not by catholic Austria. In 1872 Bismarck initiated the Kulturkampf, an early version of a culture war. He attempted to restrain the catholic churches political influence. When he had pushback from the pope he famously said “we would not go to Canossa”. This statement, later put on a monument erected on the Harzburg, summarizes the 19th century Prussian view that the pope was Germany’s downfall. Going to Canossa became a standing expression signifying humiliating defeat. It is the German equivalent of “eating humble pie”.

After World War II German historians began to de-emphasize the importance of the conflict between pope and emperor. Focus shifted to the reasons for the tensions between the emperor and the princes. A view emerged that the Investiture Controversy was mainly a German civil war over hegemony where the pope could tilt the balance but was not driving events. The ineptitude of Henry IV and the military success of the princes ended the command monarchy of the early Salians, not Canossa or the Concordat of Worms.

Whilst Germans were looking at the Investiture conflict more as a continuation of broader longer-term trends, English historians like Norman Cantor, Chris Wickham and most recently Tom Holland put the Investiture Conflict in a line with the French and the Russian revolution as one of the great turning points of European, if not world history.

A World Revolution they call it. Well, was it that? What is a “World Revolution”? Mike Duncan is on his 326th episode of Revolutions has not mentioned the Investiture Conflict once.

If I have taken anything away from listening to the Revolutions Podcast it is that all of Revolutions seem to have the same structure. It starts with an existing political and economic order that has some serious structural weaknesses. These weaknesses are getting exposed by a combination of specific events, lost wars, bad harvests, financial collapse etc.. The whole thing blows up because an incompetent or excessively stubborn ruler fails to see the opportunities to avoid disaster and hurtles the creaky wagon of history down the precipice.

Imperial rule being exposed to unreliable bishops and rebellious dukes, I.e., structurally weak – tick;

Untimely death of Henry III, papal schisms and abduction of the king at Kaiserswerth exposing weakness of the regime – tick

Henry IV acting like a bull in a China shop towards Gregory VII and the Saxons -tick, tick, tick

Once a revolution has started, we cycle through the degrees of extremism where last year’s hard left are this year’s conservatives until the process is led at absurdum. After that last spasm of revolutionary energy, the surviving protagonists begin to rebuild society by combining bits of the old and bits of the new.

Again tick, tick, tick. We go from moderate reformer Leo IX to revolutionary Gregory VII, inventive Urban II to extremist Paschalis II, only to end up with Calixtus II who tries to put Humpty Dumpty together again.

In episode 30 I suggested a structure for the narrative across three strains, the rise of the papacy, the conflict between the princes and the emperor and the rise of lay piety. Even now, 12 episodes later, I think this structure is still valid and a great way to look at how this new order differs from the old.

Let’s start with the papacy.

Before 1042 the pope was little more than the bishop of Rome and an authority that could be called upon to resolve conflicts within the church that could not be resolved at a lower level. There were no rules about the selection or investiture of popes and formally the emperor had a significant role to play in that selection process. Whenever the emperors were active in Italian politics, they appointed and dismissed the popes.

By 1125 the idea that the emperor could legitimately appoint popes was dead as the Dodo. Yes, Henry IV and Henry V had appointed antipopes, and future emperors will do too, but their power didn’t reach much further than the tip of the imperial spears. From now on, the only legitimate pope was the one elected by the College of Cardinals – full stop.

Again, before 1042 the pope had no direct influence in the churches outside Rome. He would hold synods, usually together with the emperor, to determine doctrine and resolve disputes. But the pope had little if any executive power. When we look at the situation in 1125, the pope, usually represented by his legates, exercised more hands-on control over church on the ground. Legates would depose or install bishops, demand changes in liturgy and enforce doctrine set in Rome. That is not to say the church in France or in Germany was at the Pope’s back and call. There are bishops like Hartwig of Magdeburg who were trying to be both supporters of the Gregorian reform and loyal vassals of the emperor. But relative to where we came from, the role of the papacy has become so much more significant.

And finally, the papacy began determining secular policy. Even though the Gregorians were focused on the spiritual world, they ended up becoming more and more political. The proposal of pope Paschalis II if we assume it wasn’t a cunning trick to discredit Henry V, would have been the most radical expression of Gregorian thinking. The church giving up its entanglement with the lay world and focusing entirely on the spiritual well-being of their flock would have pleased Peter Damian and Humbert of Silva Candida no end. But it never happened. Rather than severing the links to the world of power politics, the Gregorian reform dragged the papacy deeper into it. Calling the Crusades to Jerusalem might have been high politics but could still be seen as linked to the spiritual role of the church. When it comes to the military conflict between Gregory VII and Henry IV, that line was crossed. Using the Normans in Sicily and Matilda of Tuscany as a counterweight to the imperial armies meant the pope had to get his hands dirty. It is not just the sack of Rome by Robert Guiscard but the absolution of soldiers fighting the emperors that made the spiritual and political objectives of the church becoming indivisible.

And that is why the papacy did not really win in the investiture controversy. Yes, the pope stood now on par or even above the emperor, but he did so on the same playing field, the field of power politics. Being a significant secular player had its advantages, but in the long run undermined the role of the church as an organization, leading ultimately to the faithful searching for salvation outside the established church hierarchy, in ne monastic orders like the Franciscans, in new forms of religious communities like the Albigensian, Waldensians etc., and ultimately in the belief that salvation is to come from the individual itself, a process the culminated in the Reformation. In a way it comes full circle, because the Gregorians objective was to make the church a vehicle that allows the faithful to reach the gates of heaven. Like so many other well-intentioned plans, it failed in the end.

The rise of the papacy displaced the emperor in several of his roles. The Ottonian emperors had been universal sacred rulers. The 10th and early 11th century was the time of the sacred rulers. Saint Stephen in Hungary, Edward the confessor in England, Saint Olaf in Norway. Above these sacred kings was the sacred emperor, anointed to lead all of Christianity. His title was Vicar of Christ and most humble servant of the apostles. This is the time where people believe the king could heal diseases by laying his hand on people – like Aragorn of Gondor.

The transition to this state of sacred ruler was bestowed upon them when they were anointed during their coronation. You may remember that the child king Otto III was rescued from an early death by the mere fast that he had been anointed as king literally hours before news arrived that his father had died. A king, and even more so an emperor anointed by the pope was no mere mortal, he was a being halfway between this world and the next. And some of them, namely Otto III and Henry II live the lives of saints rather than those of worldly rulers.

Breaking an oath to such a sacred king was simply inconceivable. Untold horrors would come down on the oath breaker, in this world and the next.

Something happened around the middle of the 11th century that devalued these oaths. And that happened even before Gregory released Henry’s vassals from their oaths. It was Otto von Northeim’s speech in 1073 (check episode 31) that ends the idea that oaths are inviable. It is when he says “As long as he was a king to me and acted royally, I also kept the oath I swore to him freely and faithfully; but after he ceased to be a king, the one to whom I had to keep loyalty was no longer there.”  

Otto von Northeim denies the king sacred status. For him he is just a human in a two-way relationship with his subjects. The king has to provide peace and justice in exchange for obedience. When he fails to do his bit, the oath is no longer binding.

When Gregory VII releases everyone from their oath to Henry IV and the emperor then has to do penance in the snow outside Canossa the idea of sacred, unbreakable oaths vanish. How little they are worth becomes so clear when Paschalis II releases Henry V from his solemn, public oath made before innumerable relics to never challenge his father.

By 1125 a king is just a man, an important man, but a man nevertheless.

And that gets us to the second strain of the narrative, the conflict between the princes and the emperor. If you think back over the last 20-odd episodes, most of the time was spent talking about the wheel of fortune that pulled good old Henry IV up to dizzying heights of military and political success before dropping him deep into the depth of desperation.

All this came about because we are in a period of transition. This is the transition from a time where wealth and power was tied to large agricultural estates to a more martial time where all that mattered was the strength of your stone castle. Encastellation had been held back in Germany until Henry III but went stratospheric during the minority of Henry IV. The king’s mother, Agnes of Poitou was unable to stem the process and the subsequent government of Anno of Cologne had no interest in doing so.

In these barely 15 years royal authority was gravely undermined. Once the vassals had gained a castle, they could very much do whatever they wanted, as no one could touch them on their mountain tops. Castles were a bit like nuclear weapons today.. All those who have them want to prevent anyone else to get them. Whilst the world in the 20th and 21st century was somewhat successful with its non-proliferation policy the medieval empire wasn’t. On top of that the size of the nobility grew alongside or faster than overall population. Chroniclers of the Ottonian era like Widukind and Thietmar mention roughly 500 individuals amongst the aristocracy from presumably a much smaller number of families. By 1125 this number has likely doubled. Add to that the proliferation of Ministeriales who also often held castles, you can easily assume a tripling of the numbers. In the end there will be 20,000 castles across Germany.

And when the king himself wanted a piece of the action and get his own superweapons in Saxony, the civil war started. And that was a war nobody could win because everybody by now had castles. Presumably some aristocrats did not build castles, but they were never heard from again.

With castles came something else, territorial power. Once you have the castle that overlooks the local town, the bridge and the market, it is only a question of time before the castellan will have gained control of the town, the bridge and the market, even if these rights had been granted to someone else, a bishop, a monastery or another knight.

By 1125 we are well en route to territorialization of the empire. The princes are consolidating their holdings both horizontally as well as vertically. The emperor is no longer able to prevent this process. Even worse, there are large parts of the country like Saxony where effective power has transitioned from the emperor to the territorial princes, like for instance in Saxony. The five duchies are no longer enough to satisfy the demand for status amongst ambitious families like the Babenberger, Zaehringer, Welf, Wettin etc., and gradually we see a proliferation of ducal title combined with a deterioration of the ducal function as one of the few institutions the empire possessed.

The same thing had happened in France, only some 50 years earlier. Where the story differs is that the French monarchy over time consolidated into an absolutist regime, whilst central authority in Germany continuously weakened. As always in history there is never just one reason or one event that creates a specific outcome, but during the hundred years of Salian rule decisive steps were taken that facilitated the outcome.

The first one we already talked about, the collapse of the sacred kingship under the battlements of Canossa which was never really recovered. In France the Investiture conflict had the opposite effect. It created an alliance between the pope and the French king that materially enhanced his prestige. Several subsequent rulers could expand on that prestige, recuperating some of the sacred component of kingship, which culminated in the reign of Louis IX, later to become Saint Louis.

The second key decision point was the assembly in Forchheim in 1077. There the nobles asserted their right to freely elect their king purely on merit. The kingdom they claimed was not a personal property that could be passed from father to son like a horse or a castle. It was the res publica, the common good in which all members of the aristocracy had a stake. We will see that there will be transfers of royal and imperial power from father to son, but these will still be based on elections which at least in principle were based on merit or size of bribe.

Making the empire an elective monarchy created an incentive for the holder of the position to transfer as much of the royal rights, lands and other assets to his family, rather than expanding central authority. Any subsequent occupant of the throne will then have to dig deep into his own wallet to maintain his authority. At the end of the process the emperors will derive their power not from the fact that they were emperors, but from their personal territorial wealth. Politics are driven by the dynastic interests of the Staufer, Luxembourger and Habsburgs, not by the interest of the empire. This is the second crucial difference with France, where the Capetians were better at producing sons, they usually promoted to co-king during their lifetime until the election process became a pure formality and fell into disuse.

Was the decision in Forchheim irreversible? Surely not. If one of the emperors had been able to expand their personal territory to ultimately comprise all of Germany, surely the Empire would have turned into a hereditary monarchy. But that was made harder thanks to some of the political choices the Salians had made. 

One was the excessively generous sponsorship of the Imperial church. Compared to France in particular the imperial church was extraordinarily rich not just in private goods but also in territorial lordships. Under the Ottonians and the early Salians these donations did not diminish the royal position as the bishops and abbots on the whole though with exceptions acted as organs of the emperor. During the later years of the Salian reign the imperial church stopped being an organ of the state and the bishops began operating like territorial princes. You remember Anno of Colognes acquisition of the territories of the Ezzonen and Adalbert of Mainz attack on Trifels. This development is usually believed to have been caused by the Investiture Controversy and specifically the Concordat of Worms. Modern historians take a more differentiated view. The concordat did not differ much from the settlement in England where the church remained under closer control of the king – Thomas a Beckett notwithstanding. And the trend to consolidate the territorial position started before the investiture conflict. For instance, the Lothringian bishops in Toul, Verdun, Liege and Utrecht were proactively pursuing territorial policies against Godfrey the Bearded in the 1050s. It feels that the urge to create a territorial power was a combination of opportunity and simple, old-fashioned greed, something not even a bishop is immune to. I would also throw in the betrayal of the bishops in 1111. When Henry V agreed with Paschalis II to expropriate the clergy, the remaining sense of fealty to the emperor evaporated.

Having lost so much of the royal resources to the church the emperors were now dependent upon their own territorial power. And again the Salians came up short. Henry IV tried create a territory under direct royal control outside interference of local dukes or counts around Goslar in Saxony. Henry IV defeat in the Saxon wars meant that the most valuable of the directly held royal territories was lost. Subsequent attempts for instance by Henry V around the family holdings in Worms were kept in check by a united front of the princes. With expansion in Germany blocked, the emperors had to find resources abroad. Henry V tried England, the Staufer looked to Italy, the Luxembourger and Habsburgs to Bohemia and Hungary and finally Prussia occupied lands to the east that were formally outside the empire.

That seemed a viable shortcut at the time but was not sustainable. Ruling Germany based on foreign resources was something even Emperor Charles V in whose empire the sun never set failed. In contrast  The kings of France  built their territory slowly and methodically, one castle at a time using only their domestic resources and a bit of help from the popes.. Again, the forks in the road the Salians went down or were dragged down were not roads that inevitably led to the fragmentation of the German states that could only be overcome by a militaristic regime. But it was a major contributing factor.

The flipside of imperial weakness is the enhanced role of the princes. Under the Ottonians the role of the dukes, counts and bishops was to support the emperor who was the sacred incorporation of the empire. By the time of Henry V’s death, the princes saw themselves as guardians of the empire. They had both the right and the obligation to defend it against its foes, to maintain peace and to protect the church. The emperor and the princes were the pillars on which the empire rested. That meant the princes can call royal assemblies, even royal assemblies where the emperor is not present or even NFI. The empire becomes a coordination mechanism that settles disagreements between the princes by consensus, rather than a state that settles it by force.

We have talked about the change in the relationship between emperor and pope and between emperor and princes which leaves the third strain in our narrative, the rise in lay piety.

As we talked about before, the period between 1000 and 1300 is a period of massive demographic and economic change. Population numbers overall roughly doubled thanks to improved agricultural technology, the abolishment of slavery and an absence of deadly pandemics. The improvements in agriculture allowed for a repopulation of the ancient Roman cities and the growth of new ones. Urbanization went hand in hand with the growth in trade. The large cities created markets for goods and ideas that travelled along the great rivers, the Rhine, Main, Danube and Elbe. These increasingly prosperous people demanded better from their clergy and better from their rulers.

These demands transformed from specific calls for say celibacy of the cathedral canons to broader claims for participation in city politics. The process started in Milan with the Pataria uprisings in the 1070s and then spread rapidly. Cologne rose up against its Bishop in 1074. That same year Worms sides with the emperor against their bishop. Once independent, the cities themselves became political players. Henry IV allied with Pisa and Lucca against Matilda of Tuscany. Mainz and Cologne were Henry IV’s strongest allies in his fight with his son. By Henry V’s time a city like Mainz would negotiate with its archbishop as equals, demanding freedoms and privileges in exchange for support in war.

On the underlying issue, the improvement in the quality of the clergy, the years 1024 to 1125 saw major shifts. Under the Ottonians we find many learned and sincere bishops, monks and abbots. But their ability to expand and project their knowledge was limited. By 1125 more and more Christian doctrine is written down and passed around the clergy along the same routes the goods are now shipped from Venice to Norway and from Cordoba to  Kiev. We find that by 1076 most bishops owned a more or less comprehensive compilation of canon law that they consulted to determine how to react to the excommunication and deposition of their king. The scholastic method, this great invention of the Middle Ages begins to spread amongst the intellectuals of the age. An early form of university opened its doors in Bologna in 1088, teaching amongst other things Roman law.

For the layman, on the still unpaved street these debates mattered. All they wanted was a priest who could help them into heaven. But that was no longer so easy. Is my vicar properly ordained by the right bishop? If not, what does that mean for the sacraments I have received. If not, how do I get a priest who will be able to pave the road to the final judgement? Can I make sure my town is loyal to whoever I think is the true pope, rue archbishop and bishop.

Mostly they had little ability to determine political outcomes. To mitigate their risk of ending up in purgatory or even hellfire, laymen became ever more pious. They tried to incorporate some of the habits of the apostles into their own life, fasting, regular prayer, good works and the like. In many ways this upped the ante for the priests who had to be even more devout in order to stand out and justify their elevated status. Most bishops saw these developments which is why, on the whole, they were supportive of church reform even when they were not supportive of the Gregorian popes.

This urge to find a way to heaven for oneself found its culmination in the First Crusade. Finally there was one thing any individual, rich or poor could do that was quite obviously in line with God’s wishes, that was outside these debates and civil wars. The first Crusade, though an amazing and unexpected military success must have been a terrible let-down for its participants. Instead of experiencing a period of bliss within the grace of god, the crusaders unleashed unimaginable horrors. We talked about the death and destruction the German participation in the First Crusade caused but even those who made it to Jerusalem must have wondered whether the slaughter of the cities Muslim population, the burning of its Jews inside their Synagogue was synonymous with walking in the footsteps of the apostles.

We asked at the start of this section whether the Investiture Conflict was a “World Revolution”. Sure, the Investiture conflict has all the hallmarks of a revolution, an old order is replaced with a new structure. That makes it a Revolution, but a “World Revolution”. That would be a revolution that fundamentally changed the whole of the humanity. It describes a series of events that stands unique in history as a turning point that, if it had not happened, would have left us with a materially different world.

Of all the things we talked about so far, the rise of the papacy, the loss of a central power in Germany or the emergence of cities and city states is not something that in similar form had happened before in other parts of the world and even in Europe itself. What could make it a “World Revolution” is that last consequence of the Investiture Conflict, bringing people the obligation and the right to choose your spiritualty.

That unleashed the scholastic method, universities, disputations, the Franciscans, the early heretics, the Hussites and the Reformation. Without the Reformation and the plethora of belief systems it seeded, the philosophers of the Enlightenment would not have dared to replace God with reason and modern life would indeed be fundamentally different. The crusades manifested a restlessness of spirit and body that drove European society to expand both their intellectual and their physical horizon until it had consumed the whole world.

So maybe it was a World Revolution. And even if it wasn’t, it was an epic tale, one I hope you enjoyed.

I will take a break now until early January to prepare for the next season, the Hohenstaufen. These ultimate glamour emperors may now have to work in this unwieldy new order, but hey do they make a story out of it. You can look forward to Emperor Fredrick Barbarossa still asleep under the Kyffhauser mountain waiting for the day his people need him to protect them from harm, Henry VI who used the ransom paid for Richard Lionheart to buy himself a kingdom, Frederick II the child of Puglia who allegedly grew up on the streets of Palermo to become one of best educated men in Europe living the lifestyle like his friend Salah ad Din. His son Enzo who was betrayed by his golden locks and his grandson Konradin who was beheaded on the market square in Naples.  I can barely wait. I hope to see you then.

And in the meantime, should you feel like supporting the show and get hold of these bonus episodes, sign up on Patreon. The links are in the show notes or on my website at historyofthegermans.com.

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Mathilda of Tuscany Marries a much Younger man

This week the wheel of fortune will turn again, tumbling our antihero Henry IV down from the heights he had so recently scaled. We will see him sink to the point of utter despair. And all that because a 43 year old woman marries an 18 year old.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 37 – The Two Grooms

This week the wheel of fortune will turn again, tumbling our antihero Henry IV down from the heights he had so recently scaled. We will see him sink to the point of utter despair. And all that because a 43 year old woman marries an 18 year old.

Before we start a just a reminder. The History of the Germans Podcast is advertising free thanks to the generous support from patrons. And you can become a patron too and enjoy exclusive bonus episodes and other privileges from the price of a latte per month. All you have to do is sign up at patreon.com/historyofthegermans or on my website historyofthegermans.com. You find all the links in the show notes. And thanks a lot to Steven and Jay who have already signed up.

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We should probably quickly recap where we are in the year 1090.

Things aren’t looking too bad for Henry IV. He has a modicum of control over most of Germany. The 17 year long war with the Saxons had been brought to an end, largely by giving them what they wanted, but peace is peace. In Italy his bishops were in charge of the northern part of the country and his anti-pope Clement III was on and off in control of Rome.

As for his enemies, there were essentially three centres.

In Swabia the deposed dukes of Bavaria and Carinthia, Welf IV and Berthold of Zaehringen kept fighting. Henry had entered peace negotiations with both, but their demands were unacceptable. They required the anti-pope Clement III to be removed and they themselves re-instated as dukes.

The second key enemy was the great countess Matilda of Tuscany, one of, if not the most formidable woman in 11th century Europe. Matilda had been reigning an area of Northern Italy, ranging from near Verona down to the papal states, including important cities like Mantua, Lucca, Pisa, Modena, Reggio and Florence. Matilda had been at war with her imperial kinsman and overlord since at least 1082, though the conflict dates back to the marriage of her mother to Godfrey the Bearded in 1054. She had stood loyally with her friend Pope Gregory VII until his very end at great personal expense.  At times she had been reduced to her indomitable mountain fortresses around Canossa and even needed to melt down her gold and silver treasures. Once Henry had left Italy, Matilda could free herself from the encirclement and won a great victory against the Lombard Bishops at Sorbara. That brought her back into her previous position as the most powerful secular ruler in Italy.

And finally, there was the Gregorian papacy. After Gregory VII had died in 1075 his remaining cardinals refused to recognise Pope Clement III, the man Henry had elevated to the seat of Saint Peter. Instead, they elected one of their own as Pope Victor III. Barely ever had anyone been so reluctant to become pope as Pope Victor III. He had been the abbot of the great monastery of Monte Cassino, founded by Saint Benedict and under his leadership the foremost seat of learning, literature, arts and monastic life in Italy. He had not just been an outstanding abbot but also a great negotiator on behalf of the church. He had good relations with his neighbours, the Normans. It was thanks to his efforts the initial agreement between the papacy and the Normans came about in 1059 and he also helped bringing Robert Guiscard to Rome in 1084.

And Victor III was a realist, not a fanatic like Gregory VII. He knew too well that after what Guiscard had done to Rome, the Romans would not voluntarily accept a Gregorian pope. Ad that meant getting into Rome was only possible in the train of a Norman army. What is a pope whose authority comes from the bloodied swords of Northmen and their Saracen soldiers? Well, not one Victor III aspired to be.

Having resisted the election for a year he was finally coerced into accepting the election in Rome. But just 4 days later, before he could be consecrated, he had to leave the Holy City as riots broke out. He returned to Monte Cassino and put the papal regalia into the bottom drawer. He remained as an elected but not consecrated pope for another year before The Normans again smashed into the Holy city. Victor III was finally consecrated. The Romans were still unconvinced of the benevolence of the Papal allies and so Victor III ran away after 10 days and hid in Monte Cassino, before the Normans dragged him back into Rome in June. He stayed a month before claiming he needed to go home for health reasons. He died in Monte Cassino in September 1087.

That should have been that. By now the Gregorian papacy had proven to be nothing more than a Norman plaything. The Antipope Clement III could hold at least parts of Rome and enjoyed the support of the local population. Clement III was also not against church reform so that the urban population saw some of their demands to get a better sort of vicar for their churches fulfilled.

The reason the Gregorian ethos survived owed a lot to Victor III’s successor, pope Urban II. He became pope in 1088 and – since Rome was in the hands of Clement III – was elected and consecrated in the stunningly beautiful, but tiny city of Terracina, halfway between Rome and Naples.

Urban II had grown up in France, son of a local aristocrat in Champagne and had joined the fabled monastery of Cluny. He rose through the ranks and was made prior of the abbey. In 1080 Pope Gregory invited him to become Cardinal Bishop of Ostia, the highest-ranking member of the college of cardinals.

Urban II shared Gregory VII’s view of the role of the papacy as the preeminent institution of Christendom, superior to kings and emperors. Where he differed was in his methods.

Where Gregory was rigid and doctrinal to the very end, Urban II had the polish and diplomatic finesse needed to get the papacy out of the hole Gregory had dumped it in.

The first order of service was to get out of the dependency on the Normans without irritating them. On that front he was lucky as Robert Guiscard died in 1085. His successor as duke of Apulia was Roger Borsa. Borsa means “Moneybags” in English suggesting he had less ambitious goals than his father more interested in “counting and recounting his money”.

Leadership of the Normans fell to Roger I, count of Sicily, the youngest of the 12 brothers of Robert Guiscard. Roger had been busy conquering the island of Sicily since 1063. Sicily had been an Arab emirate since the 9th century but had broken apart in the 11th century into small warring factions which created the opportunity for Roger. By 1090 he had removed the last of these mini emirs and set out to conquer Malta. What I am saying is that Roger was busy consolidating his rule over Sicily and less in need of a pet pope.

Urban then applied the old rule that my enemy’s enemy is my friend and concluded that in order to get rid of Clement III he needed to remove Henry IV. And that means he needed to forge a coalition of Henry’s enemies.

And that coalition came about in the form of a marriage, a marriage that even today would be seen as scandalous. Urban II’s proposal was simple, Matilda of Tuscany should marry the son of Welf IV, leader of the German opposition. That would give the anti-henry forces control over a coherent area stretching from the border of the Papal State all the way north, across the alps into Switzerland and Southern Germany. Henry IV and his pet pope, Clement III could be shut out from Rome.

Sounds great. Only issue was that Matilda of Tuscany was no spring chicken anymore. At 43 years of age she had little chance of further offspring, which was according to the doctrine of the church, the main purpose of marriage. And Matilda’s track record as a wife had not been quite in line with the expectations of the time.

She had separated from her first husband, Godfrey the Hunchback after a short marriage. The marital differences had come less from the lack of mutual attraction but from her reluctance to grant him political control over her rich lands. Matilda very much took the view that these lands were hers and hers alone and that no man, husband or otherwise were to command them. To put that into context, it took until 1963 before Italian women were allowed to hold a public office contested by a man.

For an 11th century red-blooded nobleman Matilda as a wife was a nightmare. 

And now let’s talk about the groom. His name was Welf V, son of -guess it – yes Welf IV. Not only was his name unimaginative in the extreme, but he was also no more than 18 years’ old.

The logic of the union was so blatantly obvious, it barely needs explaining. The lands of Matilda were to fall into the hands of the Welf family upon her soon to be expected demise, making the deposed dukes of Bavaria the most powerful princes in the empire.

Matilda was not keen, but a silver tongued Urban II convinced her that she had to make this last great sacrifice for the cause of god and the papacy. Young Welf V presumably was told to grin and bear it for a few years.

The betrothal of this unlikely couple took place in 1089.

With this announcement all peace negotiations between Henry IV and the Southern German opposition ended. War was to resume; the question was where? Henry IV could either continue his operations in Southern Germany and subdue the Welf and their allies, leaving Matilda well alone until that was resolved. Or, he could go down to Italy, knock out Matilda and end the schism once and for all by capturing Urban II.

Option 2 was bolder and – we know our Henry – for him bolder is better.

He appears in Italy in May 1090 at the head of a sizeable army. This time he brought along some of his German followers including Frederick von Hohenstaufen, his son in law and closest ally. That suggests he was looking to make Italy the place where the final battle was to be fought. Equally Welf V joined his new wife in Tuscany, together with a contingent of his German allies. 

As before Henry can count on the support from the Lombard bishops though their numbers are somewhat depleted as the archbishop of Milan had changed sides. Henry also no longer commanded the cities of Pisa and Lucca who returned into the fold of Matilda, having received all they needed from the emperor.

Hostilities in the first year are taken up by the siege of Mantua, forever one of the military linchpins of Italy.  Mantua barred the way to the heart of Matilda possessions south of the Po river. After 12 months of siege the city yielded and Henry entered the city in triumph. Two further strongholds nearby fell too opening the road towards the Po river and the heart of Matilda’s possessions.

This success was significant enough for Welf IV, father of Matilda’s husband to resume peace negotiations. It seems the marriage alliance has failed to yield the desired benefits. And with some of his supporters amongst the bishopric having passed this last year, it was time to look for a compromise.

As before Welf’s demands were twofold, return the duchy of Bavaria to me and abandon your antipope Clement III. With henry now in an even better position that two years before, he saw no reason to accept these demands and by summer 1091 hostilities resumed.

The year ended with another success for Henry. Matilda had sent out 1,000 of her knights to capture the emperor she had been informed had travelled with a small contingent close to her lands. Well it was a trap and her soldiers were routed by a much superior imperial force. 

At that point Matilda did what she had done previously when things had turned against her, she returned to her string of fortresses around Canossa and employed a defensive strategy.  In spring 1092 Henry began to systematically besiege and break these fortresses. First Montemorello, then Montalfredo. When he proceeded to Monteveglio, progress slowed. He wasted the whole of the summer before the walls of that castle.

There were around nine strongholds around her heartland of Canossa. Having lost two and one on the verge of going, Matilda’s vassals became concerned and wanted to bring this process to an end. Matilda was initially reluctant, but negotiations began in October 1092. But they went nowhere. A hermit, named John showed up and declared a vision that Matilda would prevail, and salvation was close at hand.

I usually do not set much store by hermits, but this one was right.

After the failure of the peace negotiations, Henry feigned a retreat towards Parma, but doubled back to attack her home and the heart of her defensive system, Canossa itself. Matilda left the castle with most of its garrison and moved a few miles down the road to another of her castles, Bianello. Bianleeo was by the way where most of the initial negotiations over the lifting of the excommunication had taken place 14 years earlier. This time the roles were reversed. Henry was at Canossa and Matilda in Bianello. But as before, Henry was not inside Canossa but besieged the castle from below.

It might well be that Henry thought that Matilda and most of her soldiers were inside the castle of Canossa or thought she had left for somewhere far away. In any event, on one foggy afternoon Matilda’s garrison came down from Bianello whilst the troops inside Canossa attempted a sortie. In the dark and foggy chaos henry’s troops had a hard time distinguishing friend from foe. The most dispiriting moment came when Matilda’s soldiers captured the royal banner, creating panic in the royal army.

Henry fled the site of his now second humiliation and took his remaining army north. News of his defeat travelled fast and two of the fortresses he only just had captured were returned to Matilda. One of them held the imperial train with supplies and  the campaign funds.

Christmas was a difficult feast for Henry who had lost most of the progress he had made that previous year. At the same time his German enemies smelled the morning air.  Berthold von Zaehringen had himself elected duke of Swabia though there was already a duke of Swabia, Frederick von Hohenstaufen. And so, Frederick von Hohenstaufen who had been with Henry these last 2 years has to go back home and take his remaining troops with him.

Another member of Henry’s entourage had also left, his eldest son Konrad. Konrad had lived in Italy for neigh on 10 years by now after his father had left him in the care of the Lombard bishops when he returned to Germany in 1084. He was now 20 years of age and his father entrusted him with an important mission.

Henry’s mother-in-law and Konrad’s grandmother, Adelheid countess of Savoy had died at the end of 1091. She was, like Matilda, one of these exceptional women who ran a state against all the laws and customs of the time. Her state was the margraviate of Turin and the county of Savoy, in essence what is today the Italian province of Piemonte and the French region of Savoy. And most importantly she controlled a number of Alpine passes, including Mont Cenis which you may remember her daughter Bertha tobogganed down.

Adelheid had no heir in the male line and had designated one of her grandson’s to inherit her lands. To Henry’s annoyance this grandson was not Konrad. But as emperor he could determine the succession of his vassals should they die without direct male heirs. That was the law of the land, but to enforce it, an army needed to be deployed against the obstinate new count of Savoy. Konrad was put in charge of that army and dispatched west.

So far so good. Konrad campaigned gingerly around Asti and Turin until in the summer of 1093. But then disconcerting news reached Henry at his camp in Verona. His own son had joined up with Matilda and pope Urban II.

What brought this treachery about has long been debated. Some later writers point out that Konrad was a bookish man who preferred reading over riding into battle. Some suggested that he had a falling out with his father over points of canon law and the claims of papal supremacy. The imperial propagandists describe him as a feckless boy who had lent his ear to bad councillors.

Modern historians like I.S. Robinson and Egon Boshof attribute him with more political intelligence. Konrad saw his father’s position deteriorating rapidly after the rout before Canossa. His army shrunk and the ranks of his enemies were swelled by formerly loyal Lombard bishops and  emerging independent cities. And there was no way this could be resolved as long as Henry clung to his anti-pope Clement III. And Henry could not let go of Clement III, because that would invalidate his Imperial Coronation.

Konrad may well have come to the conclusion that the only way the Salian house can remain in possession of power was if he would be crowned emperor by the right pope, i.e., Urban II. If that happened, he could fulfil the two conditions Welf IV had set for a lasting peace, setting aside Clement III and giving him the duchy of Bavaria. Peace with Welf IV and an arrangement with urban II would end all conflicts and bring Konrad on the throne of a now united empire.

That sounds like a plan. A plan Konrad went into without reservation. He met pope Urban II in Cremona. When the pope approached, Konrad went out to meet him and there performed what is called “the office of the groom”. Konrad would get off his horse and he would take the papal bridle, guiding the  vicar of Christ into the city.

This act of imperial submission to the papal authority had not been performed since the emperor Louis II, who was in fact no more than an Italian warlord. Allegedly it had been introduced by the emperor Constantine who performed it for Pope Sylvester after he had cured his leprosy by bathing him in the blood of young boys or some such nonsense.

By performing the office of the Groom or Stratordienst Konrad accepts the Dictatus Papae of Gregory VII and becomes a vassal of the Pope. And from now the popes will demand the office of the Groom at every Imperial coronation

For Henry this must have been a stab through the heart. All he fought for was the preservation of the Salian rule he had inherited from his father and grandfather. His son joining the papal camp makes all that worthless.

And this is not all. The next attack comes from his new wife. Empress Bertha who had faithfully followed her husband to Canossa had died 5 years earlier and Henry had married Eupraxia, a Russian princess. This marriage seemed to have been quite unsuccessful. Eupraxia does appear in only one charter during their marriage, which is a very low number compared to other Salian empresses and Henry’s first wife who appeared very regularly. That suggest she had little if any influence at court.

Early in 1094 Eupraxia sent a plea for help to Matilda of Tuscany.  Matilda then sent a small elite force who extracted Eupraxia from the imperial court at Verona and brought her to Canossa. There she quote  “complained that she had suffered so many and so unheard-of filthy acts of fornication with so many men as would cause even her enemies to excuse her flight”.  End quote.   eupraxia will repeat these allegations of gang rape by her husbands me. in public at a Papal Synod in 1095 and they have been recounted again and again ever since. There is no way to determine the veracity of these statements since propaganda in the 11th century generally pays no regard to facts.

And it does not matter, Henry had been betrayed by his son and accused of infernal crimes by his wife. His military position is now absolutely dire. His empire has shrunk to a couple of counties in Northern Italy held by his ally, the duke of Carinthia. He cannot return to Germany because his enemies control the Alpine passes. He cannot overcome his Italian enemies whose numerical superiority is now overwhelming. It may well be that he contemplated suicide or its 11th century equivalent, riding your horse into the middle of a melee.

As Henry’s star had sunk, Urban II is heading to the crowning moment of his papacy. On November 27th, 1095 in a field outside the French city of Clermont Urban II had gathered not just the bishops and magnates of the council, but also the local landowners, the castellans, their knights and the common people, the peasants, the artisans of the city and even the urban poor

 “A barbaric fury has deplorably afflicted and laid waste the churches of God in the regions of the Orient” Urban declares and this barbaric fury has “even grasped in intolerable servitude its churches and the Holy City of Christ, glorified by His passion and resurrection”. He calls upon all to “free the churches of the East”, and promises that “If any man sets out from pure devotion, not for reputation or monetary gain, to liberate the Church of God at Jerusalem, his journey shall be reckoned in place of all penance” “Deus vult, God wills it” is the crowds response, not just in Clermont but all across Europe. The crusades have begun.

Whilst Urban is making world history up in France, the wheel of fortune turns again, unexpectedly. It is not just Henry’s marriage that is on the rocks, the match made in heaven between Matilda and Welf V had also run its course. The marriage that brought all this misery about in the first place is now over.

We do not know who left who, but the bottom line is the same as in Matilda’s first marriage. The Lady is not for turning. Welf V may be a strapping young lad, but that does not mean Matilda will leave him her lands or take his political advice. Matilda’s life and work is bringing about her friend Gregory VII vision of an all encompassing and all controlling papacy. And hence the heir to Matilda will be the one who had been her master all along, The Lord and his representative on earth, the Pope. Little Welf will get nothing.

When this notion trickles through to the older Welf IV, deposed duke of Bavaria, he realised that everyone was in it for themselves, surprise. Time for Welf to finally get something for himself.

He opens negotiations with Henry and the two men quickly reach an agreement. Welf IV offers fealty to the emperor in exchange for the duchy of Bavaria. There is no mention of Pope Clement III or the schism or church reform. Let’s just bring this nonsense to an end.

In spring 1097 Henry IV returns to Germany after 7 years, most of which spent in despair and inactivity. He was so inactive that there is not a single imperial charter for the year 1094. None, nada, zilch.

Next week we will leave Henry to his own devices and talk a bit about the next great achievement of the Gregorian papacy, the First Crusade. We will talk about the horrors it unleashed for the Jewish communities in Germany and the misery it brought to the children and adults who walked all the way to Turkey only to be mercilessly slaughtered. And the men who in the main went, not for pure devotion but for reputation and monetary gain. I hope you will join us again.

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Today we will look at what went on with Gregory VII after Henry had left to fight his rivals in Germany. Spoiler alert, things will not turn out the way he had hoped.

Transcript

Hello and Welcome to the History of the Germans, Episode 35 – To Rome to Rome

Today we will look at what went on with Gregory VII after Henry had left to fight his rivals in Germany. Spoiler alert, things will not turn out the way he had hoped.

Before we start a just a reminder. The History of the Germans Podcast is advertising free thanks to the generous support from patrons. And you can become a patron too and enjoy exclusive bonus episodes and other privileges from the price of a latte per month. All you have to do is sign up at patreon.com/historyofthegermans or on my website historyofthegermans.com. You find all the links in the show notes. And thanks a lot to Alon and Bengt who have already signed up.

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When Henry IV left Pope Gregory in Canossa in January 1078, Gregory thought he had won the ultimate victory and Henry would from now on be an obedient son of the church. And that should give him room to look after his other ambitions, namely, to bring the King of France to heel and to cash in on the support he had given to William the Conqueror, you know the guy who invaded England whilst Henry was fighting to establish his personal rule in 1066.

Let’s start with the  conqueror, Gregory had ensured he had the full support of the papacy and even received a papal banner to be carried into battle. His objective was to gain control over the English church. And William it seemed delivered, at least initially. He removed the existing Anglo-Saxon bishops wholesale and replaced them with reform-minded Norman clergymen. His new archbishop of Canterbury, Llanfranc was a man of international standing, originally from Italy. And though Lanfranc did all the right things and collected his Pallium in person in Rome and swore to be obedient to the pope, relations soured. When it came to Gregory’s claim to be the overlord of all secular rulers, Lanfranc was not falling in line. His allegiance was first and foremost to the man who put him in his post, William the Conqueror. He sided with his lord when Gregory insisted on the appointment of the bishop of Dol and even more importantly when Gregory insisted on splitting the country between the archbishops of York and Canterbury. Gregory wrote a string of angry letters to William and Lanfranc, but England being a country far, far away and his ruler well established, all he could do is write and be angry.

Geography matters – like a lot. And on that score, France looked like an easier place to assert papal authority. And Gregory had good reason to castigate the King of France for the way he selected his bishops. In the second half of the 11th century the kings of France were by all accounts the poor relations of the European rulers. Their land barely extended beyond the Ile de France. One of the few sources of income to the king was the right to invest his bishops and charge handsomely for that. Gregory’s man for French affairs was Hugh bishop of Die and later archbishop.

Gregory’s letters were a lot more effective in France then they were in England as the powerful magnates used it to further constrain the power of the king.

It was mostly with an eye to France rather than Germany that Gregory VII declared in 1080 (quote):

Following the statutes of the holy fathers, [] now we decree and confirm: that, if any one henceforth shall receive a bishopric or abbey from the hand of any lay person, he shall by no means be considered as among the number of the bishops or abbots; nor shall any hearing be granted him as bishop or abbot.

Moreover, do we further deny to him the favour of St. Peter and the entry to the Church until, coming to his senses, he shall desert the place that he has taken by the crime of ambition as well as by that of disobedience – which is the sin of idolatry. []

Likewise, if any emperor, king, duke, margrave, count or any one at all of the secular powers or persons shall presume to perform the investiture with bishoprics or with any ecclesiastical dignity, – he shall be bound by the bonds of the same condemnation” (unquote).

This is the famous ban on lay investiture. And what it says is quite simple. If any bishop, abbot or priest has been put into his role by a layman he is automatically excommunicated and so is the layman who had put him there.

There were bans on lay investiture before, but they were rarely as clear and uncompromising as this.

The real investiture conflict starts here, in 1080. Sure, the struggle between Gregory and Henry had its beginnings in the conflict over the investiture of the bishop of Milan. But the heart of the conflict had not been over the investiture of bishops but over whether the pope ranks above the emperor.

This ban turns it from a struggle for supremacy into a fight over the institutional integrity of the empire. The. An emperor who cannot appoint his bishops means the imperial church system collapses, and without the bishops the emperor has no soldiers. And that does just apply to the empire. As we saw some episodes ago, the power of the Norman dukes and later the kings of England was as well dependent on their control over the bishops. The. Inflict has become a fundamental question over the respective responsibilities o, the ecclesia, the church and the mind us, the world

Initially ban on investiture as well as the second excommunication of Henry IV on the same synod went nowhere. Gregory’s excommunications have been raining down on people in such frequency that people stopped caring. Practically all Lombard bishops had been excommunicated for years already. Many of Henry’s supporters in Germany are now excommunicated for the second time. And now the king of France and even the king of England were on the verge of being banned. But it wasn’t just the die-hard supporters of Gregory’s direct adversaries, neutral bishops were required to come to Rome and receive the Pallium or were refused consecration. Their reform efforts were criticized and constant demands to do this or that issued. And if one takes the wording of the ban on lay investiture literally, more or less everybody was excommunicated, because pretty much every bishop, abbot and priest had received at least his worldly fiefs from a secular lord. And these secular lords were now also technically under the ban. And as they say, if everybody is excommunicated, nobody is. Never will a ruler kneel in the snow before a pope again. The greatest weapon of the papacy had been utterly spent in just 3 years.

Henry’s reaction to this Synod of 1080 was his own synod of Brixen. Having first gathered his support amongst the bishops in Germany he brought his Italian and German support together, a total of 30 senior clergy. This synod did something the Synod of Worms did not dare to do, it “canonically deposed and expelled Gregory and condemned in perpetuity, if, having heard this [decree], he does not step down.”.

The synod accused Gregory of various misdeeds including of simony, violence, false oaths, the support of heresy, murder, watching pornographic floor shows and even of having a demon, all based on testimony of Hugo the White, cardinal bishop of San Clemente and sworn enemy of Gregory VII. So far so traditional. These kinds of arguments had been made as far back as the deposition of John XII by Otto the great who was accused of congress with all sorts of occult spectres.

But as time went on, the arguments for a deposition of Gregory changed in quality. It is right around this time that Roman law, specifically the Justinian Code was being studied again for the first time in centuries. Until now, most secular law had been Germanic law codes that had very limited internal coherence and some argue have actually rarely been applied. Royal judgements tended to be a bit ad hoc and often political. The church had raced ahead, and Canon Law had gained a lot of internal coherence during the 11th century. By the time of Gregory, most bishops would have a collection of Canon Law in their possession and would base their decision who to support in the ongoing conflict on these compilations. There are conflicting sources who ordered the codification of canon law and who actually produces the first approved version, but by the end of the century Canon law had a solid structure and coherence.

If the church has a coherent system of law, then secular lords needed one too. And that law was the Roman law compiled during the reign of the emperor Justinian in the early 6t century. If in canon law the pope was the source of all justice ad truth, under the Justinian code, that role fell to the emperor. Secular ruler really fell in love with the Justinian code once they could interpret it such that Emperor does not mean Henry IV, but any king, prince, count or baron.

One of the key provisions of the Justinian Code was the Lese Majeste – disrespecting the crown, a crime punishable by death. And that is what Gregory was accused of. He had offended the dignity of the ruler by claiming his excommunication.

For now, these arguments did not carry much weight, nor did other legal constructs from the Justinian code used in the case of Henry IV. But as we will see, the Roman law and its notion of the role of kings will become a key justification for the expansion of royal power, culminating in absolute monarchies almost everywhere in Europe, except for outliers like Britain, Poland and Venice.

This split of law into church law and secular law rare outside Europe is just another result of the events we describe here and call the Investiture Conflict or just Canossa.

The synod of Brixen did not just depose Gregory, it also elected Wibert archbishop of Ravenna as successor to Gregory VII. Clement III was of the same age as Gregor but different in background. Wibert was an old-school prelate in the mould of Leo IX. Of aristocratic stock he had pursued his career in the wind shadow of Emperor Henry III and rose to be Imperial chancellor for Italy. Empress Agnes made him Archbishop of Ravenna and despite his initial support for the antipope Cadalus was given his pallium by Pope Alexander II. Gregory thought him insufficiently fervent in his support for reform and excommunicated him – another one.

He took the name of Clement III but declared that he would not act as pope until he had been properly enthroned on the seat of Saint Peter. That might have been Clements’s own choice or a move by Henry IV to leave a way open for reconciliation with Gregory is not clear.  What is clear is that for the policy to work, Henry will have to bring Clement down to Rome, remove Gregor and affect a proper coronation of his pope. To get that done proved time consuming.

By 1081 Henry had suppressed the rebellion in Germany sufficiently to mount an attack on Italy and took a small army across the alps. The Lombard bishops swelled the ranks of his army and he was thinking that he would be back into Germany within a mere 4 months.

Gregory had not only lost a lot of ground within the church, he had also excommunicated Robert Guiscard the Norman lord the church had been relying on for the last decade. Gregory and Robert did patch up things in 1080, but the Norman was anything but an obedient vassal. His main focus was Constantinople which had fallen into complete disarray after a terrible defeat against the Seldjuk Turks at Manzikart. Robert, freebooter to the last instead of defending Christendom against the Muslim onslaught thought of benefitting from the chaos and pick up as much of the Byzantine empire as possible. So, not much help to be expected from that side.

Matilda was forever loyal, but powerful as she may be, could she hold out against the combined forces of the Empire and the Lombard bishops.

The last part of Henry’s calculation was that the population of Rome should be on his side. The former praefect Censius had already tried to abduct Gregory in 1075 and now assured the king of the support he should encounter in the city.

Henry marched gingerly through Italy which had become a lot more supportive of the Imperial party since his last visits.

Henry arrived in Rome at Pentecost expecting to be greeted by a procession of the senate and people of Rome accompanying him into the city under the singing of hymns and prayers. He was sorely disappointed. The people of Rome stuck by their pope. The church reform movement was a movement of the people and that is why they supported Pope Gregory as a representative of reform versus the conservative backlash.

Rome’s defences, built by the emperor Aurelian in the 3rd century were still strong and well maintained. And Gregory had created the Papal militia as his own military force that now manned the fortifications. Henry’s supporters came dressed for a party, not for war. They had no siege equipment, and their army was small.

But most importantly, it is already Pentecost, i.e., early May and Rome’s greatest defence mechanism, Malaria is getting into gear. There is nothing Henry can do but retreat with his tail between his legs. This is the first time an imperial progress towards a coronation had failed. The embarrassment of the failed coronation was almost as detrimental to his standing as the kneeling in the snow of Canossa.

As things stood, Henry now needed to get crowned, cost it what it may. If he did go back to Germany without a crown his enemies would feel vindicated, and the wavering middle would believe that God had made it clear that Henry should not be king.

The next 2 years Henry roamed around Italy, fighting Matilda od Tuscany and gathering armies he brought before Rome to besiege the city.

His army consisted initially mostly of the contingents of the Lombard bishops. But over time he gathered ore supporters. Amongst them were the Tuscan cities of Lucca and Pisa. Lucca had been the pre-eminent city of Matilda’s lands. Lucca was most famous for its silk weavers who initially imported their raw materials from the near East via Genoa before producing it themselves. Their silks replicated and improved Byzantine designs that proved extremely popular. Lucca was also home to prominent members of the Kalonymos family, which must count as one of the most creatively productive families in history. They can trace their lineage back to the 8th century and numerous rabbis, preachers, poets, teachers, authors, moralists, and theologians, and many prominent leaders of Jewish communities up to the 15th century came from its ranks. The family had branches in both Italy and Germany where they had been invited to settle by Charlemagne or one of his successors. They played a major role in the great Jewish communities of Speyer and Mainz.

Sorry, I digress. I simply cannot help myself looking at history I frankly did not know anything about before researching this episode but clearly features heavily in the history of other communities.

Back to Lucca. Henry IV offered the city more or less total freedom from oversight by either the margrave of Tuscany or the emperor himself. The city was allowed to build and maintain its own defences, was no longer obliged to build or maintain the imperial Pfalz, could no longer be billeted with soldiers, received market rights, customs privileges, and jurisdiction over everything but the most severe crimes. Lucca became thereby the first city in the empire to be officially granted the full rights of an imperial free city.

But Lucca was not the first free city in Italy. Seafaring cities like Venice, Genoa, Pisa, Amalfi and Naples had been de facto free cities for a long time already. But even these saw value in being granted rights and privileges by the empire. Pisa valued the confirmation of its rights sufficiently to side with Henry IV.

Whilst Henry was gathering troops in Italy, the situation in Germany oscillated. At times the new anti king Hermann managed to gain control of Saxony and the bits of Swabia and even at some point contemplated a march on Rome to support the pope. That effort collapsed when Otto von Northeim finally died, and Herrmann had to focus on holding Saxony.

For Henry that meant he had to rush back and forth between Rome, the lands of Matilda of Tuscany and the Alpine passes, never able to fully deploy his forces for a lengthy siege.

He showed up in Rome in February of 1082 with an army. But that siege failed again at the staunch defence of the Roman population.

Despite Henry’s efforts going nowhere, Gregory’s position also became desperate. He was simply running out of funds. He had called a synod for Lent in Rome, but hardly any bishops made it through and when Gregory asked for approval to pawn church property to fund the ongoing war, the few bishops who had gathered refused. Matilda, herself under enormous pressure had the great gold crosses and liturgical objects held at Canossa melted down and sent to the pope as bullion. 

By 1083 Henry found a new ally, Jordan of Aversa, the other Norman. You may remember that Pope Nicolas II had elevated two Norman warlords to become dukes, Robert Guiscard and Rainulf of Aversa. The idea was to split the Norman power in the South to ensure the papacy does not get too dependent on just one ruler. Robert Guiscard was a lot more successful than his countrymen, but the Aversa Normans were still around. These now joined Henry’s side in an attempt to push back Robert Guiscard. Guiscard himself was at the time fighting in Greece and what is now Albania, having upgraded his ambition from just taking over chunks of it to making the whole lot a Norman kingdom.

In the year 1083 Henry showed up before the gates of Rome again. As before he set up camp on the Vatican side of the Tiber. His troops made two attempts to overrun the Leonine walls that protect Saint Peter but were rebuffed. At the third attempt, the Romans attempted a sortie to break the siege. Fighting ferociously driven by the pangs of hunger and desperation, they pushed Henry’s forces all the way back into their camp. Henry, seeing that his rule may come to an end in this skirmish joined the fray and his soldiers followed him with renewed vigour driving the Romans back behind the walls of the city.

This fight had broken the resilience of the Romans who found themselves bereft of food, supplies and any hope of relief. Matilda was unable to help, the Normans were overseas. Morale deteriorated and discipline became slack. A few days later Henry’s soldiers noticed that a stretch of wall had no guards on them. In the dark they brought the ladders and climbed in without encountering any resistance. They opened the gates and the Imperial soldiers flooded in.  Gregory and his closest associates rushed for the safety of the Castello di Sant Angelo whilst resistance on the Vatican side of the city was quickly overcome. The papal militia was however able to hold the bridge over the Tiber and the main city of Rome remained in Gregory’s hands.

After that, negotiations started again. From Henry’s perspective the best solution would be if Gregory could be made to crown him. That would remove the stain of excommunication and end the conflict. Hence he and his pope-elect Clemet III left Rome. He kept a garrison there and tore down the walls of the Vatican city.

Thigs looked good for a while as Gregory, pressured by the Roman people, called a synod and promised to subject himself to whatever that synod decides about how the conflict could be resolved.  How sincere this promise was soon became quite clear. His invitation to the synod included clear instructions to the bishops attending. They were told to defend the church against the king a king he had once again excommunicated  from the walls of the Castello di Sant’Angelo. Gregory really did not care for compromise. Henry had no option than to sabotage the synod by apprehending the Gregorian bishops travelling to Rome.

In the meantime, he had received some financial support from the emperor in Constantinople who had come under pressure from Robert Guiscard. The Byzantine emperor wanted Henry to invade Robert Guiscard’s lands in Southern Italy and thereby forcing him to abandon his attacks against the Eastern Empire.

Henry used these funds to bribe the Romans who were now seriously tired of the stubborn Holy Father. They may support church reform, but they were even more keen on bringing these endless sieges to an end. And even in his college of Cardinals dissent was rising. His autocratic style had already irritated some of these eminent churchmen, but his insistence on fighting to the death was the last straw.

In 1084 16 cardinals went over to Henry’s camp and finally Rome opened its doors. Henry and the archbishop of Ravenna moved into the palace of the Lateran. A synod was called which deposed and excommunicated Gregory VII. Clement III was elected (again) and consecrated by the cardinal bishop of Ostia as was right and proper.

And then, finally, finally Henry IV. King of the Romans since 1056 was crowned emperor in St. Peter in the 28th year of his reign by Pope Clement and in the presence of many bishops, cardinals dukes, counts and the Roman people. If it wasn’t for the previous pope still holding out in the Castello di Sant’Angelo, it would have appeared as if finally, the good years of Emperor Henry III were back.

Are they? Well, we will see next week. Gregory is still around, and there is Robert Guiscard whose adventure in Byzantium is going pear-shaped. When he returns to defend his lands now under threat from henry in Rome, the rollercoaster that is Henry Iv’s reign will take another turn, a turn the brunt of which will be borne not by Henry but by the people of Rome who will see their worst fears realised. I hope you will join us again next week.

And in the meantime, should you feel like supporting the show and get hold of these bonus episodes, sign up on Patreon. The links are in the show notes or on my website at historyofthegermans.com.

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The end of Emperor Henry IV

It is hard to believe, but the last years of Henry IV’s tumultuous reign still held one final humiliation that capped the pain this man had already endured.

And that despite a period of relative stability which began after his return to Germany in 1097. Henry IV had accepted that his rule could not be one more than a First amongst Equals. He reconciled with his enemies in Swabia and Bavaria, largely by bribing them with valuable crown lands and settled into his new favourite residence in Mainz. The only one he did take issue with was the archbishop of Mainz for his involvement in the murder of the Jewish community under his protection.

He even attempted a lasting reconciliation with the Gregorian papacy admitting to having broken the unity of the holy mother church. But the new Pope, Paschalis II was not playing ball, leaving this issue as an open wound…long after the antipope Clement III had died.

The internal weakness of his regime became apparent when one of the guests at his imperial assembly in Regensburg ends up murdered by Ministeriales…..

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 39 – The End of Henry IV

This week we will talk about the last years of Henry IV, which, as hard as it is to believe, holds a final humiliation that capped the pain this man had already endured.

Before we start a just a reminder. The History of the Germans Podcast is advertising free thanks to the generous support from patrons. And you can become a patron too and enjoy exclusive bonus episodes and other privileges from the price of a latte per month. All you have to do is sign up at patreon.com/historyofthegermans or on my website historyofthegermans.com. You find all the links in the show notes. And thanks a lot to John, Jason and Demetrio who have already signed up.

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At the end of episode 37 Henry IV was finally allowed to return home thanks to the reconciliation with his Southern German enemies, Welf IV and Berthold von Zaehringen. The price Henry had to pay for this reconciliation was fairly straightforward. He had to reinstate Welf IV as duke of Bavaria, and most painful of all, accept that Bavaria became a hereditary duchy, in other words, the king could no longer appoint the duke of Bavaria, let alone manage the duchy himself as he had done for the past 14 years.

As for the Zaehringer who had himself elected as anti-duke of Swabia against Frederick of Hohenstaufen, the deal was that Berthold retained the title of Duke, even though he was no longer duke of Swabia. He also received the royal demesne around Zurich, one of the most valuable of the crown’s possessions.

The net effect of that was that Swabia was divided into the ducal Swabia ruled by Frederick of Hohenstaufen and the Zaehringer Duchy in the south. Some argue it was even a three-way split, as the possessions of the Welfs in the eastern part of the duchy around Ravensburg were also out of ducal control.

The reconciliation with his last enemies meant that Henry IV could finally reign as emperor recognised across the whole of the empire. But this reign was now very different from the reign his father and grandfather exercised. Henry IV was now a First amongst Equals, a bit like his namesake Henry the Fowler had been. 200 years of expansion of central authority have been reversed.

The only right he still held on to was the right to invest bishops. These last 20 years, the bishops were often the only support Henry IV enjoyed. Amongst the secular princes only Frederick von Hohenstaufen had been unwaveringly loyal. The rest had to be bought or otherwise placated.

Before we get to the attack on this, the last real royal prerogative, there was one other thing that he believed his royal authority extended to, the protection of the Jews.

Those of you who have listened to the whole of Episode 38 may remember that Henry IV had declared himself the protector of the Jews in the empire in 1090. That was probably less of an act of religious tolerance than an attempt to raise funds for the depleted imperial coffers. Whether it was greed or enlightened self-interest does not matter because the imperial protection counted pretty much for nought when the crusaders massacred Jewish communities in Worms, Mainz, Trier and elsewhere.

Upon his return Henry IV initiated an investigation into these horrific atrocities, specifically the events in Mainz. He explicitly condemned the enforced conversions and allowed the Jews to return to their faith. Pope Clement III seconded this by declaring their baptisms uncanonical, which means they could return to their faith without being deemed apostate. That mattered because the sanction for apostasy was death.

Henry then followed the money trail and detected that a lot of the property of the murdered Jews had miraculously ended up in the hands of kinsmen and followers of the archbishop of Mainz, Ruothard. In fact a significant chunk of the assets had gone directly to this great prelate.

Henry could not let that go since Ruothard had been specifically ordered by the emperor to offer protection to the Jews. Ruothard had gone through the motions and offered the large Jewish community shelter in his fortified palace in the city. But when the troops of Emrich of Leiningen came knocking, the archbishop and his knights fled by the back door, leaving the unarmed men, women and children to their fate.

It transpired that the archbishop took 50 of the most prominent members of the community along and held them in a castle nearby. There they were offered freedom for conversion and compensation, which most refused resulting in them being killed or killing themselves in front of the archbishop.

Before the investigation was completed the archbishop and his kinsmen decided to run for it and hid in Thuringia for the next 7 ½ years.

That suited Henry well who took over Mainz as one of his preferred residences. It suited the citizens of Mainz even more as they thoroughly disliked their archbishop. This trend of citizens throwing their bishops out and forming their own independent city states is now really taking hold with Worms and Cologne leading the movement..

These next five years are a period of calm, most unusual for the reign of Henry IV. His rule is recognised by almost everyone. Once the Welf and the Zaehringer had reconciled themselves to the king, the only truly Gregorian base was the bishop of Constance, Gebhard. Though he remained the legate of the Gregorian pope in Germany, he had no more influence outside his own diocese, where Henry IV left him alone.

With his authority recognised across the land, Henry IV could move on to plan for his succession. He was now 48 years old, older than his father and grandfather when they died.

His eldest son, Konrad was still alive. You remember that he had betrayed his father and joined the Gregorian party. Pope Urban II and Matilda had promised him the world, including the imperial crown. He was even given a rich bride, the daughter of king Roger of Sicily. But, once the alliance between Matilda and the House of Welf had fallen apart and Henry IV had returned to Germany, young Konrad served no further purpose. He was given a modest castle to live in with his bride and was left to rot. Nobody called on him and even the pope who had promised to be his guardian and advisor never contacted him again.

But he was still technically King of the Romans and the future emperor, which meant he had to be formally deposed. That happened without much fuss in May 1098. Konrad ultimately died a broken man in 1101.

At the same royal assembly, Henry IV pushed through the election of his second son, also Henry. He was crowned King Henry V in Aachen in January 1099. His father had become a bit suspicious after the treachery of his eldest. Hence Henry V had to guarantee the emperors life and safety of his person on oath and was made to swear that he would never interfere against his will and command with matters of the kingdom, his honour and current and future possessions during his lifetime.

Hmm, this sounds long enough and legalese enough an oath to be broken some day…

Part two of the program was to make the current peace a lasting one. At the royal assembly in 1103 Henry IV declared a comprehensive peace to last for four years. He committed his nobles to preserve the peace for the churches, clergy, monks and lay brethren, for merchants, for women and Jews. Penalties for breaching the peace were severe. Perpetrators were to be blinded or would lose a hand for attacking and burning another one’s house, taking prisoners, wounding or killing a debtor, persistent theft or defending a peace-breaker. A castle where the peace breaker had taken refuge could be destroyed and his benefice could be seized by his lord and his possessions taken by his kinsmen.

That sounds again like a peace of god his father could have declared. But in the end it was not. The administration of the penalty was not to be done by the emperor or his appointees, but by those who had sworn the peace. It wasn’t the central authority that delivered the peace, it was the community, or so they hoped.

This peace is sometimes seen as the first act of imperial legislation within the context of the Holy Roman Empire, a construct not of a central monarchy but a mixed monarchy built around co-operation rather than command. It sort of was as the imperial peace or Reichsfrieden and its smaller cousins, the Landfrieden which became regular instruments of imperial rule. Yeah, maybe the Holy Roman Empire starts here, at the royal assembly of 1103. It is not called that for another 150 years, but the foundations are being laid.

The third part of his program to stabilise his reign was a reconciliation with the papacy. After Urban II’s propaganda coup with the crusades and even more so after the fall of Jerusalem in 1099, the old conflict between pope and emperor was resolved. The pope had won. No ifs, no buts.

The last obstacle was the anti-pope Clement III. As long as he lived Henry could not accept a Gregorian pope since that would have invalidated his coronation. Clement III was kind enough to die in 1100 removing this particular obstacle. Though. Cement’s cardinals elected a number of successor anti popes and held parts of the city of Rome, Henry ignored them. 

So, all could now be resolved. Henry IV called a royal assembly in Mainz where he proposed to send envoys to the pope to negotiate a settlement. And from 1100 to 1103 he made regular attempts to agree with Paschalis II.

With the question of who has the biggest now resolved, the pope came up with the next set of demands set out in the Dictatus Papae, the investiture of the bishops.

This whole fight between emperor and pope has been labelled the investiture conflict but you may have noticed that I barely mentioned investiture much in previous episodes. The issue made appearances all throughout the reign of Henry IV, going back to 1059 and it was usually included in the list of papal prerogatives.  But in reality, it wasn’t the big issue in the previous conflicts. All throughout this period henry IV had invested bishops and the Gregorian popes would happily receive bishops into their party who had been invested by Henry IV. Several of the reform popes had been present at investiture ceremonies performed by the emperor and kept stum.

But now, as the emperor was down, the popes saw the opportunity to tackle the issue.

What was the issue? The bottom line of it is, who appoints the bishops and abbots. In canon law, the question is a bit more complex. Because of the way the imperial church system had evolved over the previous two centuries, the German bishops were both religious leaders for the people in their diocese and feudal lords over the counties, castles, privileges and estates granted to their church. Under the early Ottonians the process of making a bishop consisted in two separate acts. Part one was the election as a religious leader by the congregation, specifically by the cathedral canons. Once elected, the bishop would then ask the king or emperor to be enfeoffed with the various secular rights of the bishopric. These two separate appointments were represented by the ring as a sign of the religious marriage of the bishop with his diocese and the staff as his sign of secular power. That sort of made sense, reflecting both the religious and the political dimension of the role of the bishop.

But as time went by the weight of the king and emperor in the decision who would be bishop had become ever more significant. The canons were aware that the king could refuse to enfeoff their chosen bishop with the lands, making them all suddenly very poor. Hence, they would ask the emperor for guidance in advance of an election. That then mutated in a process of direct orders of the king to elect so and so. Finally, under Henry III they dispensed with the niceties entirely and the king would invest his bishops directly with both the ring and the staff.

For the popes who saw themselves as the leader of Christendom and the immediate superior of the bishops, this system was unacceptable. How could a layman appoint a church leader, in particular a layman whose morals were not just in doubt but who was even excommunicated.

On the other hand, Henry IV could not relinquish the right to appoint bishops. That was literally the only power base he had left. The crown lands had been diminished and after the disaster in Saxony earlier in his reign there was no chance of building his own territorial power base.

We are at a complete impasse. Both sides want to come together, but they cannot get over this hurdle. Henry IV will send messages of peace and reconciliation to Paschalis II whilst at the same time investing bishops as before. Paschalis never writes back. Instead, he calls him “the chief of the heretics” and grants the soldiers fighting against henry in the constant border conflicts the same absolution crusaders received for going to Jerusalem. In 1102 he solemnly repeats Henry IV’s excommunication at a council in Rome and again releases everyone from their oath sworn to the king.

Henry’s response was to brush up his PR. He would make a big show and dance of his efforts to protect the priests and abbots against their rapacious secular neighbours. He would make another string of donations to the churches of Worms and Speyer. The cathedral in Speyer is by now reaching its completion as the extraordinary building that still stands today. He talks about going on pilgrimage to the Holy land to atone for his sins and he even writes to his godfather, abbot Hugh of Cluny, that he wants to do penance for his acts that ruined the unity of the holy church.

Did he mean all that? Maybe he did. He is now really old by the standards of the time and had been through the wringer so many time, I am wiling to believe he had enough. All he now cared about is leaving the empire to his successor in a reasonable shape and the conflict with the papacy resolved.

And most people in Germany agreed. 30 years of civil war had been enough, and nobody wanted a repeat. But as the failure to resolve the investiture conflict dragged on, the outward appearance of peace and stability hid some profound disagreements.

All came to a head at an assembly in Regensburg, capital of the duchy of Bavaria in the winter of 1103/1104. Many princes from all over the realm joined the emperor and his son for great festivities.  One of them, Count Sieghard of Burghausen, a rich noble from Southern Bavaria showed up with an unsuitably number of retainers. He argued that he needed so much protection because the court was too friendly to the Saxons and Franconians and that he feared for his life.

He may have been right about that. On the 5th of February 1104 Count Sieghard was murdered in his lodgings in Regensburg by a mob of Ministeriales. Ministeriales you may remember were unfree knights who were obliged to follow orders of their owners, usually princes, bishops or the emperor himself. But they weren’t just salaried soldiers. They had received fiefs to fund their weapons and cover their expenses. They would build castles on these lands and -over time- become indistinguishable from actual knights.

 According to some chroniclers, the Ministeriales had been enraged by some judgement count Sieghard had made in respect of one of his own Ministeriales. It was clearly not a smart move to antagonise a group of heavily armoured thugs with a chip on their shoulder for not being real knights. The Ministeriales besieged the lodgings of Count Sieghard for six hours and even the entreaties of the crown prince King Henry V could calm them down. The Ministeriales finally broke in and killed the Count and his household.

Public opinion blamed Henry IV for this murder. Sieghard was a guest of the emperor and was hence under his protection. Henry IV had sponsored the Ministeriales throughout his reign and his voice should have carried favour with them. In other words, Henry IV had failed to do his job, which led to the accusation that he was condoning the murder.

Feuds broke out across the empire, and particularly in the Northern provinces of Bavaria where many of the local counts had Gregorian leanings. The rebellion than extended to Saxony where another count apprehended the imperial candidate for the archbishopric of Magdeburg.

It is civil war again and Henry IV musters an army at Fritzlar in December 1104. And in the night of December 14th, 1104 young King Henry V, son of the emperor and sworn to obey him in all his commands, leaves the imperial camp. He runs for Bavaria where he finds support amongst the relatives of the murdered Sieghard.

Henry IV has to abandon his expedition to Saxony and returns to Mainz.

Henry IV’s enemies rally around his son. The pope, who had almost given up hope to unseat Henry IV was clearly surprised to receive a letter from young king henry V offering him allegiance in exchange for support in his fight with the father. He also urgently needs to be absolved from his solemn oath to obey his father. An oath he had made before the whole of the realm and on the most precious relics and regalia of the land. Without absolution, his soul and his rebellion would be lost.

But hey, that is one of the easiest things to sort out. Paschalis argument is simple. Henry IV has been excommunicated since, like forever. What is an oath to an excommunicate – just hollow words.

Being absolved meant that more malcontents could join young Henry Vth’s banner. And malcontent the Saxons always are. Archbishop Ruothgar of Mainz is another obvious supporter, as is the nominal leader of the Gregorian party in Germany, bishop Gebhard of Constance.

Most of the year 1105 was spent in military walkabout whereby Henry V failed to successfully challenge his father but gradually gains control of Southern Germany. One great coup was to get hold of the 15 year old Frederick II of Swabia, the son of Henry IV’s great ally Frederick of Hohenstaufen who had died the year before.

The elder Henry made a last attempt to take Regensburg with the help of the Austrians and the Bohemians. But after 3 days of a standoff outside the ancient city, Henry IV was betrayed by his allies and had to flee back to the one loyal area he still had, the cities of the Rhineland, namely Mainz, Speyer and Cologne.

Speyer fell at the end of October and Mainz was considered too dangerous, so he retreated towards Cologne. His son caught up with him near Koblenz.

Father and son finally met and first the elder Henry fell on his knees and begged his son to end the inhumane persecution. Then his son fell to his knees and said he would make peace with him if only he could reconcile with the pope.

The father accepted to come to a royal assembly in Mainz to debate the issue with the nobles and subject himself to whatever conclusion the assembly may reach. On the promise of safe passage to Mainz, Henry IV dismissed his army and joined the camp of his son.

On the first day his advisors told hm that they feared his son would break the oath and imprison him. When he confronted him, Henry V repeated his guarantee to take him to mains.

And when on the second day the number of armed men in Henry V entourage increased, the father asked the son again, are you taking me to Mainz to state my case, and again the son guaranteed the emperor’s safety.

And on the third day…well do I have to tell you, yes and for a third time Henry V guaranteed his father’s safety.

On the fourth day Henry IV was imprisoned in the castle of Boeckelheim. His goaler was a particularly Gregorian minded bishop who had little regard for an excommunicate imprisoned emperor. The former ruler’s followers had been dismissed except for three laymen, he was left without a bath and unshaven but worst of all, without being allowed communion during the holy days of Christmas.

There was no way Henry V would let his father appear in Mainz, a city staunchly supportive of the old emperor. He was allowed to come before an assembly in the imperial Pfalz of Ingelheim, but that was an assembly of henry V’s supporters. All the undecided and the supporters of the old king were left in Mainz.

Henry IV tried one last time to get himself out of the pickle he was in by displaying excessive penance. In a rerun of Canossa he threw himself at the feet of the apostolic legate, confessed his sins including his unjust persecution of the apostolic see and even performed the prescribed abdication. He then begged the legate to give him the absolution, having done all that was required of him. And if the man in front of him had been the pope, henry IV would probably have been absolved from the excommunication again, letting him fight another day. But the man in front of him was a mere apostolic legate who came up with the eternal rebuttal of the bureaucrat – I do not have the authority to release you from the ban. I will write to the pope who will sure acquiesce to your request. And even when he claimed he was in immediate mortal danger running the risk of dying without reconciliation with the church the legate remained unwavering – No can do. Do I need to tell you that under canon law he had been obliged to absolve the king under these circumstances? I presume you have heard enough about the Gregorian papacy by now to know the answer to that.

As Henry IV had now abdicated, his son Henry V was crowned in the cathedral of Mainz with the regalia he had forced his father to surrender and by that self-same archbishop Ruothard of Mainz who still had the blood of hundreds of Jews on his hands.

Henry IV was left in Ingelheim, apolitical and probably also emotional wreck. At some point he realise that his son could not let him live much longer and he fled. First to Cologne and then to Lothringia.

I have no idea how he did that, but somehow even after this last hammer blow, Henry IV did not give up. He retired too liege and when henry V send troops to capture him, his allies beat them. He then returned to Cologne where the citizens urged him to resume his role as emperor. When his son came to besiege the city he had to retreat twice experiencing heavy losses.

The father began to rebuild his power base and some disaffected nobles and bishops joined his side. He even opened up the possibility of giving in on royal investiture to split the Gregorian party. Things were looking up for old emperor henry in the spring of 1106 when he was suddenly struck by an illness. He died after nine days in Liege surrounded by his closest friends and advisers having received the last rites.

What a life. Henry IV had been emperor from 1056 to 1105, 49 years in total. In that time he was abducted by a faction of his nobles, abandoned by his mother, forced to marry a girl he saw as a sister, betrayed a hundred times by his nobles, forced to stand in the snow for three days to do penance, stabbed in the back by his eldest son , publicly accused of the worst misdemeanours by his second wife, and finally deposed by his youngest son. Where is the scriptwriter who sells the story to Netflix?

He was initially buried in the cathedral of Liege but was soon exhumed as the archbishops and bishops objected to an excommunicate to be laid to rest in consecrated ground. His body was then buried in un-consecrated ground outside the city. A few weeks later henry V demanded for his father’s remains to be brought to Speyer, but the citizens of Liege tried to keep hold of the body who they began to believe to be sacred. They would touch the bier for a blessing and spread the earth from his grave on their fields to ensure an abundant harvest.

Finally one of Henry IV’s most faithful servants was able to extract the body and transport it to Speyer where it was placed in a stone sarcophagus that was kept outside his magnificent cathedral for five years. Only once his son had achieved a breakthrough in the conflict with the papacy that from now on is indeed the Investiture conflict did he obtain absolution from the excommunication. He was finally buried in the magnificent cathedral he had built in the year 1111. His son held a eulogy of his great and beloved father, emperor Henry IV of happy memory.

Next week we will look at how Henry V, champion of pope Paschalis II finds himself caught in the same gridlock that prevented his fathers reconciliation with the mother church. I hope you will join us again.

And in the meantime, should you feel like supporting the show and get hold of these bonus episodes, sign up on Patreon. The links are in the show notes or on my website at historyofthegermans.com.

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Crusaders attacking the Jewish communities in Mainz, Speyer and Worms

In 1095 Pope Urban II launches the First Crusade. Emperor Henry IV and his allies would rather be strung up below a beehive covered in honey than join a scheme devised by the Gregorian Pope.

Does that mean no Germans take part? No, the lack of support by their high aristocrats did not stop the common people. While most of them perish before the crusade had even really begun, some turn their religious fervour into a very different endeavour, bringing untold pain to the Jewish communities of Worms, Mainz, Trier, Metz, Prague and elsewhere

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 38 – The First Crusade

Today we will leave Henry IV to fend for himself. Instead, we will be looking at the First crusade and most specifically the role of Germans in that First crusade. A word of warning. In this episode we will have to discuss extreme violence, religiously motivated crimes and suicide. I will give a specific warning when we get there. Feel free to skip from that point onwards. I will make sure that you can pick up seamlessly at episode 39.

Last week we talked briefly about Pope Urban’s famous speech in the field outside the city of Clermont in France that kicker off the crusades. I must confess that I took a bit of artistic licence there and put words into Urban’s mouth that reflect only one of the five different versions of that speech. I felt that was ok given that by and large the gist of the speech is the same in all five versions. Urban calls upon the Christian faithful to free the holy land from the infidels.

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I will not give you a full rundown of the whole of the First Crusade. There are a number of excellent indie podcasts on the topic, namely my old colleague from a different world Nick Holmes who has a great show called Byzantium and the Crusades and obviously Sharyn Eastaugh’s epic History of the Crusades. And if you want to read about the crusades, check out Steven Runciman 3 books on the crusades. Brilliantly written and for me still the “go to” source.

Though we are not going to go through the Crusades in detail, there are some elements that had a bearing on German history.

The first of those is the question Why Urban asks for a crusade at this exact point in time, and even more importantly, why was his call successful now? He was not the first to call for Christian knights to aid in the fight against the infidels. There might have been a call for a crusade as far back as 1010 under pope Sergius IV. Pope Alexander II supported the recruitment of Christian knights in the fight against the Muslims in Span and Sicily. And in 1074 Gregory VII proposed a march on Jerusalem to none other than the emperor Henry IV, the man he would excommunicate just a year later. So what are the reasons it worked this time when it had not worked before?

Reason #1 was the rise and rise in lay piety that lay behind the church reform movement.  As their economic conditions improved people began seeking self-actualisation, which in 11th century society meant finding a way to get to heaven. The crusades offered a nearly perfect deal. If you do something, i.e., travel to the holy land to free the sites of Christ’s birth. Life and passion, you will be automatically cleansed of your sins and have a free ticket to heaven. It is the same logic that is behind gym memberships and Yoga classes. The difference is that if halfway through your Yoga class you realise the Tripod Handstand with Lots legs is not for you, you simply stay home numbing your bad conscience with a cup of cocoa. If you go on crusade, halfway through means you are somewhere in Hungary with no food, no horse and under attack from hostile locals.

Reason #2 was more short term. The same economic growth that drove piety had also resulted in a surge in population, leaving the world with an excess of younger sons and daughters. These young people had no chance of an inheritance. There was little chance of gaining land by force after the expansion of the realm of the Christian faith into the east and north had stalled a 100 years ago. The population pressure was brought to bursting in the last 10 years thanks to a series of draughts, freezing cold winters and other freak weather events that had destroyed the crops.

Reason #3 was the weakness of the Truce of God movements. As central authority had almost vanished in France and deteriorated in the empire, the church attempted to maintain some semblance of security by making the feuding lord and castellans swear on powerful relics that they would refrain from fighting on certain days of the week and holy days. That was a suboptimal system to start with since on the free days, feuding, i.e., killing of each their peasants and burning of their fields was perfectly ok. Moreover, these arrangements tended to be forgotten after a few years and normal service resumed until the bishop called another truce. The crusades offered a way to reduce the feuding, since the most aggressive armoured horsemen would join the crusade in search of riches or just sport, whilst those who stayed behind swore not to attack the lands of the absent crusaders.

Reason #4 was the one officially given, i.e., that Jerusalem needed to be freed. It is also the least compelling.

By the time Urban II made his stirring speech, Jerusalem had been in Muslim hands for 460 years. Jerusalem had been captured in 636 by an army of the Caliph Umar, the father-in-law of Mohammed.

As had been the case in most conquests during the caliphate, the Arabs did not force the locals to convert to Islam. That did not mean they could live as they pleased. They did have to pay special taxes, could only maintain their old places of worship but not build new ones, and were generally treated as second class citizens though. But there was little persecution, and the Arabs did not mind in the slightest if Christian tourists came and generously spent their gold and silver. As long as the pilgrims behaved and paid for services, they were welcome.

In the early 11th century travel to Jerusalem had become relatively easy. The Byzantine empire had recovered from the initial dual assault by the Arabs and the Bulgars. It ruled over a coherent landmass from the Hungarian border to Syria. Hence pilgrims could either travel through Germany and Hungary and enter the eastern Roman empire in Belgrade or get there by crossing the Adriatic from Bari to what is today Durazzo in Albania. Once inside the Eastern Roman empire, the excellent roads would bring them via Constantinople and Anatolia to Antioch. Another 200 km on, the pilgrims would enter the Caliphate in Tartus in Syria from where it was just 500 km to Jerusalem.

The journey would take a whole year but was not much more dangerous or strenuous than travel in the Middle Ages was anyway. The comparative ease of the journey meant that pilgrim numbers surged. There were pilgrim hospices run by monks along the way, including the famed hospice of Saint John in Jerusalem had been set up in the 7th century well before the crusades.

For instance, in 1064/65 a large pilgrimage set off from Germany. It was led by the archbishop Siegfried of Mainz and comprised amongst others the bishops William of Utrecht, Otto of Regensburg, and Gunther of Bamberg. This pilgrim group numbered somewhere between 7,000 and 12,000 including women and children looking to see the holy sites.

After 1064 the journey had become more dangerous. The Caliphate had begun to crumble under its own internal problems and attacks from Seldjuk Turks. The Turks had been around for a long time controlling the lands between the caliphate and India. In the 11th century they began exploring the opportunities arising from the weakness of the Caliphs. A long conflict between Arabs and Turks ensued during which warlords carved out smallish territories that regularly changed hands whilst the two major Islamic powers, the Fatimids and the Turkish sultans tried to gain control.

At the same time the Turks had begun attacking first Armenia and then the Byzantine empire itself. The Byzantine empire had its own problems as the Macedonian dynasty had failed to produce a male heir. The empresses Zoe and Theodora held things together for 30 years after the death of the great emperor Basil II.  But when Empress Theodora died in 1056, the state fell into civil war as a succession of civil and military potentate vied for the throne. In this midst of this infighting the Turks advanced. In 1071 they won their great victory at Manzikart. Though they did not immediately take advantage of the defeat of the emperor, Seldjuk warlords would capture most of Anatolia during the 20 years that followed.

Bottom line was that by 1095 the Byzantine empire no longer controlled the route across Anatolia. Not could the caliphs offer safe passage across Syria, Lebanon and Palestine.  Pilgrims were molested and occasionally relieved of their possessions. There were even selected cases where travellers were provided with accelerated entry into heaven.

In other words, the route to Jerusalem had become dangerous because of the absence of a central authority. What wasn’t the case was that a central authority blocked the route to Jerusalem, as Pope urban and his preachers had claimed. Realistically, without the crusades, the situation in the levant would probably have stabilised after some time and whoever one the contest would have reopened the lucrative pilgrim route again. Instead, we ended up with a conflict that in some ways is still continuing today.

And Reason #5 is purely political. It all kicked off with Alexius Komnenos, emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire asking the pope whether he would be allowed to recruit some mercenaries in the west to fight against the Muslims. Well, that may well be what he meant, but what Urban understood is that Alexius asked him for help fighting the Muslims.

Pope Urban received the appeal early in 1095 and pondered it on his journey to Clermont. Clermont had initially been scheduled to be an important council, but no one expected a call to free the holy sites of Christendom. The great plan must have formed in his head as he travelled up the Rhone River. His Eureka moment might even have come when he stopped at his former home, the abbey of Cluny to consecrate the (second) largest church in Christendom.

Urban II realised that a successful expedition to Jerusalem under the leadership of the church could resolve all the conflicts of the last decades in one fell swoop.

Just think back and ask yourself why the emperors had such a stronghold over the church for so long? Where does their claim to lead Christianity come from?

It starts with Charlemagne who could claim that he had expanded the reach of the word of Christ into the pagan lands of the Saxons and that he had defended Christianity against the Saracens in Spain.

When Otto the Great came to Rome in 962, he could claim the conversion of the Poles and the defeat of the Hungarians as the Lord’s work. Under Otto II the eastward expansion stopped following the Slav uprising. Otto III reinvigorated the idea of the emperor as the bringer of Christian faith to the east through his pilgrimage to Gniezno.

But after that progress stalled. The Kievan Rus went to the Orthodox church, the Lithuanians remained pagan until 1387 and the emperors failed to control the pagan lands between Poland and Saxony. Expansion of the Christian faith was now the job of the Christian Spanish kingdoms and the Normans in Sicily. What these had in common were two things. One, they were fighting Muslims, not pagans and secondly they were both vassals of the pope, not of the emperor.

The logical conclusion from here is that if the Gregorian Reformers could scale up this effort, the leadership of Christendom would permanently shift from the emperors to the papacy. Henry IV or whoever was his successor would have to submit to the pope and the antipope Clemet III would lose all his remaining support.

The cherry on the cake was that if the expedition was successful, the emperor in Constantinople would be compelled to acknowledge the pope as the spiritual lead, ending the schism between Latin and orthodox Christianity.

And then, finally, all the princes will kiss the feet of the pope, as Gregory VII had set out in his Dictatus Papae of 1075.

All of this made overwhelming sense to the men and women standing in the November mud outside the walls of Clermont, as it made sense to congregations all across France, England and Italy.

Whilst still at Clermont, Urban II received the first major pledge to go on crusade by Count Raymond of Toulouse. Soon the offers to take the cross came in hard and fast. The brother of the King of France, Hugh of Vermandois signed up, as did the count of Flanders and the duke of Normandy. The Normans in Sicily quickly realised that this effort was an easier way to gather some lands in the east than going it alone as they had before. Hence Bohemond, son of Robert Guiscard and his nephew Tancred joined up as well. These high aristocrats began pawning their lands to raise funds to equip and feed an army for a campaign much longer than anyone had undertaken before in medieval Europe. There was however one subsegment of the European nobility who could not see the point of this at all, the German bishops and high aristocrats.

Obviously, Henry IV would rather be hung beneath a beehive covered in honey than join any of Urban II’s schemes. And that would go for most of his allies as well. If Henry and his mates are not going, then the rebel dukes and counts had to stay as well. They could hardly expect Henry IV to respect the Crusader’s immunity issued by Urban II.

There we go. A great war is on, and the Germans stay home – who would have guessed? All the Germans? No.

One of the great vassals of the empire would go on crusade, Godfrey of Bouillon, duke of Lower Lothringia. Godfrey was free to do what he wanted as he had made his peace with the emperor back in 1087 but was not close enough to him to be a target of the rebels. Godfrey raised one of the largest crusader armies, became the Crusades unacknowledged leader and was ultimately crowned the first king of Jerusalem. Godfrey’s leadership eclipsed the official leadership established by Urban II, that of bishop Adhemar de Puy. And with the crusade ultimately under secular, not papal leadership, the big political bet of Urban II did not come through.

The loss of church leadership in the crusade was not the only thing that did not go according to plan. Whilst Urban II organised his professional crusader army, the idea of a crusade went viral. Several preachers, usually monks began calling the common people to go to the holy land. Not next year when all the preparation is done, but right now. Salvation and eternal life is waiting for you. Go now. Drop everything and come along. The most famous of these preachers was Peter, an itinerant monk. Steven Runciman describes him as follows: Peter was an oldish man, born somewhere near Amiens. His contemporaries knew him as “little peter” -chtou or kiokio in the Picard dialect. – but late the hermit’s cape that he habitually wore brought him the surname “the hermit”, by which he is better known to history. He was a man of short stature, swarthy and with a long, lean face, horribly like the donkey he always rode, and which was revered almost as much as he was. He went barefoot and his clothes were filthy. He ate neither bread not meat, but fish and drank wine.

Despite his unassuming physique he clearly inspired people. Guibert of Nogent tells us the “Whatever he said or did, it seemed like something half divine”

Peter started preaching almost immediately after the council of Clermont and he gathered supporters amongst the poor, the townsfolk and the younger sons of knightly families of Northern France, Flanders and the Rhineland, so that when he appeared in Cologne in April 1096, his peasant army had grown to 15,000 people. There was no way such a mass of people could be fed and watered anywhere in 11th century Europe. They were condemned to keep moving. An initial contingent of about 7,000 set off right after easter. This group travelled through Hungary and entered Byzantine territory at Belgrade. There were some hiccups along the way as nobody was expecting the crusaders to arrive that early, but they managed to get to Constantinople in the end.

Peter stayed behind in Germany for a few weeks preaching. That refilled his ranks and he soon had 20,000 followers, mostly men but also women and children hungry for salvation. They as well set off on the land route to Constantinople. Everything went well until they reached the border between Hungary and Byzantium. It seemed the Hungarian governor of the border fortress of Semlin was trying to instil some discipline in the huge horde. Things went out of control over the sale of a pair of shoes in the bazaar. An altercation turned into a brawl, which turned into a riot which turned into a pitched battle, at the end of which the Hungarian city burned down and its garrison was slaughtered. The Byzantine governor watched this in horror from the other side of the Danube. His Petchenegg soldiers tried to establish order, but they quickly realised they had no chance against that huge press of humanity. The garrison fled to Nish with the inhabitants of Belgrade in tow. The pilgrims storm Belgrade but finding little of value burn it down.

As I said at the beginning there are scenes of extreme violence and religiously motivated crimes in the sections that follow. If you are concerned about the impact these could have on you or on other people around you, please close the episode here. You should be able to follow the narrative from the next episode, Episode 39.

After that the emperor sends what must have been a regular army as an escort to lead them to Constantinople. Still too large to stay anywhere for long, the horde is packed off across the Bosporus towards the frontier. Though they were told to wait for the whole army to assemble, they kept moving slowly towards Nicaea, the capital of the Turkish sultan. As they moved, they made no difference between Muslims and Greek Christians, either was robbed of their possessions, their wives and daughters raped, and the men tortured. Months on the road had ripped the last bit of Christian charity out of them.

What this army now often called the Tafurs looked like is best described by Norman Cohn in his book Millennium: “barefoot, shaggy, clad in ragged sackcloth, covered in sores and filth , living on roots and grass and also at times of the roasted corpses of their enemies, the Tafurs were a ferocious band that any country they passed through was utterly devastated. Too poor to afford swords and lances, they yielded clubs weighted with lead, pointed sticks, knives, hatchets, shovels, hoes and catapults. When they charged into battle they gnashed their teeth as though they meant to eat their enemies alive as well as dead”, end quote.

As this army came up against the Sultan’s capital at Nicaea, they believed they could take the city with the help of the lord. Against the disciplined Turkish troops that had defeated the greatest powers of the east, the peasants stood no chance. They were ambushed and within minutes their undisciplined march turned into a chaotic rout. They were back in their camp even before the older folk who were left behind had even woken up. There was no real resistance. Soldiers, women and priests were killed before they even moved. The prisoners were killed except for the boys and girls that were of pleasant enough appearance to be sold as slaves. No more than 3,000 of the 25,000 who set off from Cologne survived. They joined the main crusade and some of them even entered Jerusalem, creating a bloodbath amongst the Muslims whereby the city was covered knee deep in blood and gore.

Peter the hermit had left some of his disciples behind in Cologne to gather even more followers for his doomed adventure. Three leaders emerged, Volkmar, Gottschalk and Count Emich of Leiningen. Volkmar sets off first, followed a few weeks later by Gottschalk.

Emich, count of Leiningen’s army was somewhat different. Though equally driven by lay piety, his followers tended to include more knights and counts and less peasants. And he had better access to information. One piece of information he found particularly useful was about Godfrey of Bouillon. Godfrey of Bouillon, great noble and future king of Jerusalem had found it hard to raise funds for his expedition. Relief came from an unexpected source. Kalonymos, the chief rabbi of the great Jewish community of Mainz had offered Godfrey 500 pieces of silver. The equally famed Jewish community of Cologne paid the same. That generosity was prompted by rumours that Godfrey had vowed to avenge the death of Christ with the blood of the Jews before he set off on crusade. I mean, I would be the last to suggest that Godfrey may have spread the rumour himself or actually made such a vow. A man who supervised the valiant slaughter of the civil population of Jerusalem and the burning of its Jewish congregation in their synagogue is beyond reproach.

Let’s talk briefly about the status of Jews in the empire. I am relying here on Peter Wilson’s great book, The Holy Roman Empire”. According to him, Charlemagne had revived the late imperial patronage of the Jews. They played an important role in the economy as they were able to sell slaves from the Eastern pagan lands to Spain where they would become slave soldiers. He estimates that around the year 1000 there were about 20,000 Ashkenazi Jews in the empire north of the Alps. Under the Ottonians the imperial protection was inconsistent. Otto II allocated the protection of the Jewish communities to the bishops, whilst Henry II expelled 2000 Jews from Mainz in 1012 but had to revoke this decree the following year.

In 1090 our friend Henry IV implemented a wide-ranging reform. He issued a general privilege to the Jews and made himself the Advocatus Imperatoris Judaica, or general protector of the Jews in the Empire. This arrangement persisted until the end of the empire in 1806. The safeguarding of legal, economic and religious rights became a prerogative of the emperor. Implementation of that varied throughout time and we will certainly talk about the successes and failure of this construct as we go along. But is should be note that the general rule stood for over 700 years and, as it was woven into the fabric of the law, granted what Wilson calls a surprising level of autonomy to the Jewish population, notwithstanding their status as second-class citizens.

But we are in the year 1096 and Henry IV is bottled up in Verona and his protection is not worth much.

All that gave count Emich of Leiningen an idea. Maybe the Jewish communities along the route could be made to support the cause. He started in Speyer on May 9th but struggled to get past the bishop’s troops who protected their Jewish community, probably in exchange of a generous donation to the still ongoing building works of the great cathedral. Or maybe for once a prelate was doing his job. Note that the German Bishops had been ordered by Henry IV to protect the Jewish communities after he had heard about persecutions in Northern France.

After the failure in Speyer, Emich and his rabble moved a bit further to Worms. There he spread the rumour that the Jews had drowned a Christian and use the water he had died in to poison the wells. That brought the townsfolk onto the side of the crusaders. They broke into Jewish homes and killed everyone who was not willing to convert. Many Jews had fled into the bishop’s palace. Emich and his men broke down the doors and despite the bishop’s pleading killed all of them, men, women and children, a total of 500 dead.

From Worms he then travelled to Mainz. If you have any notion of geography, you might realise that Emich and his followers are travelling North, not exactly the direction of Jerusalem. Archbishop Rothard did close the gates against the crusaders. But Emich’s arrival triggered riots within the city during which a Christian was killed. The rioters opened the gates and Emich’s forces enter. Again, the Jews seek shelter in the bishop’s palace, and again it is overrun. Resistance against the overwhelming numbers was futile. Some may have been prepared to convert, or at least pretend to convert, but many preferred to die for their faith, either from the enemy’s sords or by suicide.

Here is the report by Salomon bin Simson of what happened then (quote):

“As soon as the enemy came into the courtyard, they found some of the very pious there with our brilliant master, Isaac ben Moses. He stretched out his neck, and his head they cut off first. The others, wrapped by their fringed praying­ shawls, sat by themselves in the courtyard, eager to do the will of their Creator. They did not care to flee into the chamber to save themselves for this temporal life, but out of love they received upon themselves the sentence of God. […]

The women there girded their loins with strength and slew their sons and their daughters and then themselves. Many men, too, plucked up courage and killed their wives, their sons, their infants. The tender and delicate mother slaughtered the babe she had played with, all of them, men and women arose and slaughtered one another. The maidens and the young brides and grooms looked out of the Windows and in a loud voice cried: “Look and see, O our God, what we do for the sanctification of Thy great name in order not to exchange you for a hanged and crucified one….”

Then the crusaders began to give thanks in the name of “the hanged one” because they had done what they wanted with all those in the room of the bishop so that not a soul escaped.” (unquote)

This slaughter cost another possibly more than 800 lives.

Emich then tried his luck in Cologne but was less successful as the news had arrived before him and Jews had left the city or hid with their Christian neighbours. Some of his troops separated from the main army and diverted even further away from Jerusalem and attacked the Jewish communities in Trier and Metz. This group then looked for their valiant leader near Cologne killing Jews in Neuss, Wevelinghofen, Eller and Xanten. Not finding him they returned home, their holy work done.

Meanwhile the two other groups under Volkmar and Gottschalk heard about Emich’s pursuits and emulated their efforts by murdering Jews in Magdeburg, Prague, Regensburg, to name a few. 

None of these three groups made it to Jerusalem. By now the king of Hungary had become wary of these peasant crusaders. They were held up at the border and when they began raiding and pillaging, the king deployed his armoured cavalry who killed and dispersed them.

Emich’s unit was the last to arrive. They fought a veritable battle with the Hungarians and even besieged the border fortress of Weissenburg. The arrival of a royal army and a sortie of the garrison brought that to an end. Emich’s troops fled in panic.

Emich himself returned to his possessions in Leiningen, forever disgraced. Disgraced not for his crimes, but for not fulfilling his vow to go to Jerusalem.

I leave it to you to decide whether the First Crusade was a glorious moment in European history. As for German history, I can only look at it as a moment of shame and horror. It was the first large scale persecution of the Jews in the Middle Ages, containing all the hallmarks of what was to come. The blood libel, the poisoning of wells and the inability of the authorities to protect them.

Next week we will return to the rollercoaster that is the life of Henry IV. He is back in Germany, reconciled with the southern German dukes and all could now go smoothly. But history still has one last humiliation in store for him, the longest ruling, or not really ruling medieval emperor. I hope to see you then.

And remember, the History of the Germans Podcast is advertising free thanks to the generous support from patrons. And you can become a patron too and enjoy exclusive bonus episodes and other privileges from the price of a latte per month. All you have to do is sign up at patreon.com/historyofthegermans or on my website historyofthegermans.com. You find all the links in the show notes. And thanks a lot to Steven and Jay who have already signed up.

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The Pacification of the Empire after a Decade of War

His coronation barely two months hence, Henry IV leaves Rome without being able to capture Pope Gregory VII. The Pope’s powerful vassal, Robert Guiscard, Duke of Apulia and greatest of Norman warlords was approaching with an army of 36,000.

Henry does not fancy a long siege in a malaria infested swamp with a hostile city population. He no longer needs Rome, what he needs to do is get back to Germany and bring peace to the war-ravaged country.

A U-turn in his policies helps to gain support amongst bishops and magnates so that by 1089, the country is largely pacified for the first time in 17 years.

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 36 – Henry IV is Coming Home

Today we will talk about the return of Henry IV to Germany and how he brings the civil war to at least a more than temporary halt.

Before we start a just a reminder. The History of the Germans Podcast is advertising free thanks to the generous support from patrons. And you can become a patron too and enjoy exclusive bonus episodes and other privileges from the price of a latte per month. All you have to do is sign up at patreon.com/historyofthegermans or on my website historyofthegermans.com. You find all the links in the show notes. And thanks a lot to Tom and Michael who have already signed up.

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Last week we left Henry IV celebrating his coronation in Rome. The ceremonies of emperor making had become ever more elaborate since pope Leo had surprised Charlemagne by putting a crown on his head on Christmas Day 800.  Ian Richardson describes the festivities as follows: The ceremonies lasted 4 days, during which the emperor entered five churches, St. Peter, St. John Lateran, Saint Paul outside the Walls, Santa Maria Maggiore and the church of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem. For the main events, the consecration on March 31st and the Coronation on April 1st, the emperor wore linen tunic embroidered with gold and precious jewels, the imperial mantle, golden spurs and the imperial sword. On his hands he wore linen gloves and the episcopal ring, and on his head the imperial diadem. He went in procession to St. Peter’s, carrying in his left the golden orb, which signifies the government of all the kingdoms and in his right the sceptre of empire, in the manner of Julius, Octavian and Tiberius. He was preceded by the empire’s greatest treasures: the double relic of the holy lance of the leader of the Theban legion, St. Maurice, which had been refashioned so as to contain a nail of the holy cross. These relics were followed by the venerable order of bishops, abbots, priests and innumerable clergy, followed by the emperor accompanied by the pope and the archbishop of Milan and they were again followed by the dukes, margraves, counts and orders of the various princes.

It was almost like in the good old days of his father, Henry III.

The only fly in the ointment was that the previous and to many, only legitimate Pope, shouted bans of excommunication down on the procession as it crossed the Tiber bridge below the Castello di Sant’Angelo.

Unbeknownst to Gregory in his futile rage, help was on its way. Robert Guiscard, Duke of Apulia and most senior of the Norman leaders in the South of Italy had mustered an army of allegedly 30,000 men to bring relief to Rome. This army had been put together in a rush as Robert wanted to prevent Henry from invading his territory as Henry had promised the Basileus in Constantinople. With time being of the essence, he took all comers and promised them the earth. Normans for sure formed the core, but he also hired Southern Italians, Greeks, Albanians, allegedly even some of King Harold’s men who had fought against the Normans at Hastings. But most shocking of all, a large part of his army consisted of the Saracen militia from Sicily, who were not only allowed but encouraged to retain their Muslim faith. These were the men who came to free the Vicar of Christ.

When Robert approached Rome from the South by the end of May, Henry, his Pope Victor III and his army left for the North of Italy. Without a single arrow shot, a single stroke of the sword and not a single lance thrown, Robert Guiscard entered Rome and freed Pope Gregory from his refuge on the Castello di Sant Angelo.

German historians have often wondered why Henry gave up Rome, a city he had besieged for four years and that had cost him gargantuan amounts of blood, treasure and time. Why did he give up a city that was the symbol of his empire and that still held a pope he needed to have removed? I find the answer is fairly obvious.

Rome in 1084 was an odd-shaped city. Its ancient Aurelian Walls encircled an area that held almost a million people when they were built in the 3rd century. By 1084 at best 50,000 people lived in the city. Defending these walls required either an extremely large army or a militia of volunteers who could stand watch. The Romans may have been exhausted enough to fall for Henry’s bribery and let him in. But that is not at all the same as being willing to fight to the death for a German emperor against the allies of the pope they had raised themselves to the Throne of St. Peter.

Without the full support of the Roman population and given the size of his army, Henry could not hold Rome even at the best of times. No medieval emperor had tried it since Otto III. And it wasn’t the best of times. The largest of Rome’s fortresses, the Castello de Sant Angelo was still in the hands of Gregory VII, and so were two others, the Capitol held by the Corsi family and parts of the palace of the ancient emperor Septimius Severus held by a nephew of Gregory VII.

But the main reason to leave Rome is the one, listeners of this podcast are very familiar with, Malaria. It is May, and in May is when the Germans die in Rome.

3 days before Robert Guiscard’s arrival, Pope Clement III retires to Tivoli and Henry leaves for Northern Italy. Again, German historians have described that as being a flight. But if you look at the timeline of the imperial charters granted along the way, it is clear this was a typical slow imperial progress, not a flight. The leaders of Northern Italy paid him Homage along the way and congratulated him to his success. Henry could take it easy because he had nothing to fear from Robert Guiscard. All Guiscard wanted was to protect his lands and once the emperor had handed Rome back to the Gregorians, he could no longer attack the South of Italy.   

The people who had to fear Robert Guiscard were the Romans. Guiscard’s army had not come to fight for church reform and the freedom of Gregory VII, its great advocate. They had come for plunder. When they arrived and realized that both the papal and the imperial treasury had left or were out of reach, Guiscard’s soldiers began to go from door to door taking all that was left from a population that had just endured four years of consecutive sieges. With nothing to be had to satisfy their demands, they turned to violence. They flattened a considerable part of the city between the churches of San Lorenzo and S Silvestro in the North and between the Colosseum and the Lateran Palace.  Finally, they set fire to what was left of the imperial palaces on the Palatine and many churches. They even raided the Vatican. This Sack of Rome stands in a line with the more famous Sack of Rome by the Goths in 408 and the Sacco di Roma by the troops of emperor Charles V in 1527. The chronicler Hildebrand of Tours described Rome 20 years later as a “desert, strewn with ruins”.

The sack also led to the demise of the previously all-powerful clans of the Crescenti and the Theophylacts. Their power had been fading ever since the church reformers had taken control of the papacy. But after 1084 they are being replaced by an emerging “new aristocracy” of Rome. These new families, the Frangipani and Pierleoni will ultimately merge into the better known Colonna and Orsini. These families will rise within the papal administration and dominate Roman politics from now on.

A more immediate effect of the Sack of Rome was that Gregory VII’s position in Rome had become untenable. The population who had suffered four sieges on his behalf, endured his stubborn refusal to compromise lost it completely when the Papal relief troops stole their meagre remaining possessions and raped their wives and daughters.

Gregory VII had to leave in the baggage train of Robert Guiscard’s troops. Robert installed him in the town of Salerno where he kept writing letters to all and sundry asking to support the one true pope or be excommunicated for not doing so. Nobody came and in 1085 Gregory VII died in Salerno. His last words were: “I have loved justice and hated iniquity, that is why I die in exile”

We will do a whole episode on the significance of these fifty years between 1070 and 1120. But it is still worth reflecting on Gregory for a moment. Even though he ends his life in defeat, he was one of the most important Popes in the history of the church. He had dominated the papacy long before he took the Holy See himself. Over these 40 years he relentlessly pursued his aim of making the papacy independent and superior to secular rulers and improve its moral standards. Even if I personally think that some of his reforms like the celibacy of the clergy had brought untold pain to both the members of the church and their adherents, I do admire Gregory’s unwavering commitment. He did not care about his own life or the life of his supporters when he resisted Henry IV alone in the Castello di Sant’ Angelo for nearly 2 years.

His genius was less in theology, in fact most would argue that Peter Damian and Hubert of Silva Candida were much deeper thinker and the true intellectual powerhouse of church reform. Gregory just copied what he liked from there and stubbornly stuck with it.

His genius was public relations. With very few exceptions all chroniclers have sided with Gregory against Henry. For some this was simply a function of their role, like Bruno and Lambert of Hersfeld. But for most it was a choice. Gregory managed to portray his acts not as acts he undertook as an individual but as a channel of the apostles or of God himself. And that allowed him to portray his ultimate defeat not as a failure of his policies, but as martyrdom for the cause. That is why his vision of the role of the papacy and the standards of moral rectitude survived his demise. 10 years after his death, Pope Urban II his direct successor will call Christendom to its most ambitious and most ill-fated endeavour, the Crusades.  Without Gregory no pope would have dared to call a crusade nor would have any secular ruler understood why he should follow this call.

When Henry IV hears about the demise of his archenemy he is back in Germany. After leaving Rome he had spent some time arranging the affairs of Northern Italy. He placed his 11-year-old son Konrad into the care of the Italian bishops as a focal point for imperial power in Italy.

Henry returns to a country devastated by more than a decade of relentless war. Saxony and parts of Swabia are still in the hands of the rebels. Henry’s main support base is Bavaria, the Rhineland, namely the archbishops of Mainz, Cologne and Trier and the lands of Frederick of Hohenstaufen. On the outside it seems not much has changed.

But stripping away the outer layers, a lot has changed. Henry seems to have realised that his previous policies have failed. Acting as an autocratic ruler towards either the princes or the Imperial Church system was no longer possible. He would not even be able to carve out his own territorial lordship as he had tried around the Harzburg. His new policy could be best described as a back-to-basics approach.

After 1085 he would be very careful with the appointment of bishops. Rather than running roughshod over the cathedral canon’s right to election, Henry would make sure that any of his bishops would be elected in line with canon law. He would choose candidates who had impeccable credentials both as scholars and as pastoral leaders. He supported candidates who were recognized for their efforts in implementing church reform. All he asked for is for them to be loyal to him and his Pope, Clement III.

He would be particularly careful in choosing bishops for the episcopal sees of his enemies. Pope Clement III had excommunicated and deposed all the bishops who supported the rebels, in particular the archbishops of Salzburg and Magdeburg, the bishops of Wuerzburg, Halberstadt, Hildesheim and many other Saxon sees. Henry could now go and appoint new bishops for these bishoprics. Apart from the above credentials he also made sure that the new bishops had strong support in their diocese, usually because they were members of a local aristocratic clan. That way he gradually dragged more and more parts of the country to his side.

His approach to secular princes also changed. When before he would just order them around and rarely listen to their advice, he now included them in his inner circle. Henry still relied on his Ministeriales, but these themselves gradually turned into aristocrats, building castles and marrying into the great families of the realm.

It is not just the inner workings of the regime that made it more attractive, the opposition also weakened.  The two towering figures of the early years of the rebellion, Rudolf von Rheinfelden and Otto von Northeim are both dead. The new anti-king, Hermann von Salm never really managed to get a foothold, largely because he was not as rich and as powerful in his own right as his predecessor.

The death of Otto von Northeim created a power vacuum in Saxony where various magnates competed for the leadership, the Archbishop of Magdeburg, the Margrave of Meissen, various sons of Otto von Northeim and the actual duke of Saxony. The struggle for leadership was often brutal and did not refrain from murdering of opponents.

Henry IV tried to take advantage of the disarray and invaded Saxony on multiple occasions. Bruno’s History of the Saxon Wars count a total of 15 invasions overall in the 17 years the war lasted. But none of these invasions was successful. Every time Henry manages to bring his troops into Saxony, the warring factions united against the external enemy, whilst Henry’s own army fell apart under the friction between its warlords.

I am not going to take you through the back a fourth of these 4 years of fighting. It ended around 1089 after some of the most stubborn opponents of Henry IV had died and Henry offered a compromise acceptable to all. He promised not to go back to Saxony, neither in peace nor in war, to respect the ancient rights of the Saxons that went back to Charlemagne and allowed the Saxons to rule themselves as they liked. He embraced Hartwig, archbishop of Magdeburg and one of the leaders of the Saxon rebellion since the very beginning as a member of his court and his inner circle of advisors. I like Ian Robinson description of this solution as a vice-regal system of government. The leader of the Saxons allowed them to do more or less as they liked, as long as they formally profess allegiance to the emperor and refrain from military action.

As for the other main opposition group around Welf IV, former duke of Bavaria and Berthold von Zaehringen, former duke of Carinthia, a solution was harder to find. By now the two lords have turned their fortified keeps on the tops of the mountains on the upper Rhine and in Switzerland into an impregnable string of fortresses. They enjoyed the support from some of the most revered bishops of the realm, including Gebhard von Salzburg, Altmann von Passau and Adalbert of Wuerzburg. Though these guys had all lost their diocese to Henry’s appointees they carried moral authority, further underpinned by the Gregorian papal legate, Odo Cardinal Bishop of Ostia.

They offered peace on condition that Henry would recognize Gregory’s successor, Victor III as the true pope and accept the excommunication of his pope Clement III. That was impossible since that would invalidate Henry’s coronation as emperor.

The only possible strategy for Henry was to keep the pressure on and wait for the old bishops to die. That they did, though slowly. But by 1089 the contingent of truly Gregorian bishops in Germany was down to 6 only one of them holding his own diocese.

By 1089 the kingdom was hence largely at peace for the first time since 1073. But this peace is very different to the peace under Henry III in the 1040s.

Henry III had ensured his peace through regular reconciliation assemblies where he would forgive his enemies and his enemies would forgive him, before everybody present would reconcile with everyone else. These events were followed up with imperial edicts banning feuds and these bans would be enforced by the imperial troops.

His son, Henry IV was no longer able to mandate peace in his realm. His aristocrats had used the preceding decades to build castles on their lands, increasingly in stone, that provided shelter from even the largest of armies. These castellans would settle their differences by raiding and pillaging their opponents’ lands, very much as has been the case in Capetian France. Central power had deteriorated so much that the bishops had to step in and declare a Peace of God for their diocese banning fighting during certain periods of the year. In 1082 Henry IV himself declared a Peace of God, together with his bishops. This time there was no edict of the king. Sanctions of the breach of the peace of God were spiritual, not secular. No imperial army would attack the castle of a castellan who breached the Peace. Henry had no military or political capacity to stop the feuding between his vassals. Where he intervened such as in the case of a feud between the archbishop of Salzburg and a local count, it was by bribing both sides with royal lands.

Whilst his rule stabilised, Henry also had been able to improve the position on the eastern border. Hungary had been lost the empire for a long time already despite the occasional marriage alliance. But the threat of Hungarian power meant that the Duke of Bohemia was looking for a closer association with the empire. Vratislav II, duke of Bohemia had been one of the most reliable of Henry’s allies all the way since 1075. In recognition of this loyalty, he raised him to be King of Bohemia. This royal title however came with a kink. It was a personal title, I.e., the sons of Vratislav would not be kings, unless the title was personally conferred on them by the emperor. To soften this blow he had Prague raised to be an archbishopric directly reporting to Rome, a privilege the dukes of Poland and Kings of Hungary had been enjoying for a long time and the Bohemians really, really wanted.

Even Poland came gradually back into the fold. The Polish rulers had used the weakness of imperial rule during the 1070s to distance themselves from the empire. That was made easier by the fact that the Saxons, Poland’s neighbours were busy fighting the royal armies rather than attacking Poland. When the Henry returned from Rome, the equation changed again, and Poland saw a benefit in supporting the emperor as a counterweight to the Saxons.

On the Western border of the empire the situation had remained challenging. You remember the endless wars between Henry III and Godfrey the Bearded. There was a period in the 1070s where the situation had improved for the imperial side. Empress Agnes had arranged a peace arrangement with the Counts of Flanders and Counts of Holland that held, at least for a while. When Godfrey the Bearded’s son. Godfrey the Hunchback became duke of Lower Lothringia, things improved even further. Godfrey the Hunchback had been one of Henry’s great supporters and potential trump card when he first contemplated a journey to Italy. I mentioned Godfrey some episodes ago because he had been married to none other than the great Countess Matilda of Tuscany. That marriage did not go well, and the couple separated. That may have been a reason for Godfrey to seek the support of Henry IV. It also could have facilitated Henry’s progress through the lands of Matilda of Tuscany. But none of that happened. Godfrey the Hunchback was run through by a spear in 1076 whilst answering a call of nature on campaign. His early death initiated a long and drawn war. Godfrey had appointed his nephew, also Godfrey to be his successor. Henry IV disagreed and appointed his own son, Konrad to be duke. After 11 years of war Godfrey ultimately won the conflict and was appointed duke of Lower Lothringia. This Godfrey was known as Godfrey of Bouillon after one of his possessions. And if you have some interest in the Middle Ages, this name might strike you as familiar. Maybe the first one you hear on this podcast. Godfrey of Bouillon will rise to prominence as the leader of the first crusade, which will kick off in less than a decade from where we are now.

The pope who will start the Crusades, Urban II had been elected pope in 1088 by those cardinals loyal to Gregory VII. The Gregorian reformers had gradually recovered from the loss of their great leader. Their main military supporter Matilda of Tuscany had regained her lands after winning a battle against the Northern Italian bishops.  The  Normans had provided the new pope with access to at least parts of the city of Rome with others held by Clement III. And Urban II was a dynamic and competent pope very much like a Gregory VII bringing bishops in his native France, in England and even some Cardinals back to the Gregorian side.

For Henry and his supporters, it had become clear that true and lasting peace could only be achieved by ending the schism. Only once Clement III was recognised across the whole of Christendom would the Swabians relent. And for that he had to go back down to Italy and end these Gregorians once and for all. Whether he will achieve that you will hear next week. I hope to see you then.

And in the meantime, should you feel like supporting the show and get hold of these bonus episodes, sign up on Patreon. The links are in the show notes or on my website at historyofthegermans.com.

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Henry IV defeats the anti-king Rudolf von Rheinfelden

Henry IV departs from Canossa having been released from the ban. But does that mean all his troubles are over? Far from it. His enemies in Germany gather to elect a new king and the war of words turns into a war of swords.

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans – Episode 34 – Gaining the upper Hand

Today we will find out whether the events of Canossa will turn Henry IV. into a faithful son of the church, a universally acknowledge ruler of the empire and ardent supporter of Pope Gregory’s brand of Church reform. Me thinks not.

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Last week we ended with King Henry IV. leaving the castle of Canossa where the pope had just released him from the ban of excommunication after a humiliating three days of standing outside in the snow doing penance for his alleged sins. Again, we do not know what he thought or felt on this journey down from the mountain. It could be elation that he is back in the bosom of the church and his kingdom returned to him, or he may be pondering the enormous price he had to pay for that.

But he did not have much time to ponder. A mere 10 miles down from Canossa he meets his army, led by the Lombard bishops. To put it mildly, these guys were certainly not happy about the reconciliation between the pope and their king. They had been living in a nightmare for years being pressured from below by an uprising of the urban poor and from above by the threat of being deposed by the pope. They had put all their hopes in the king coming down, removing this awful monk Hildebrand who had usurped the throne of Saint Peter and help them suppress the poor. Now this self-same king comes back from the negotiations having bent the knee and de-facto abandoning them to their fate.

The sources are contradictory about these next few weeks, but the most probable scenario is that Gregory and Henry had agreed to hold a joint synod in Mantua to stabilise the situation in Northern Italy and reconcile the bishops with the pope. That synod never happened, most likely because Gregory did not trust Henry’s promise of safe conduct. Not being too keen on getting apprehended by some irate bishops and incarcerated in a remote monastery or worse, Gregory remains on Matilda’s impregnable ring of fortresses around Canossa, watching.

Henry moves on to Piacenza and starts something that is supposed to look like royal rule in Italy. He even meets his mother who had come up from Rome, presumably to plead with him on behalf of the pope. I understand that psychology was an underdeveloped science in the 11th century, but who came up with the idea to think that Agnes could have any positive influence on the 26-year-old King Henry IV? His mother had abandoned him when he had been abducted age 11 in Kaiserswerth, she let him hang when he tried to establish his personal rule after 1066, she forced him to stay in the marriage with Bertha and now, during this low point of his career when he was abandoned by his friends, she had sided with his enemy. Well, she was very pious and prayed a lot.

Piacenza was the seat of bishop Dionysus of Piacenza, who like most of his colleagues had been excommunicated and hated Gregory. When Gregory sent two senior legates to the king to discuss what to do next after the synod of Mantua had failed, the bishop had both the legates thrown into jail. Henry said nothing.

The next day Henry sends a letter to Gregory’s asking for two things, (i) permission to be crowned king of Italy and (ii) who amongst the bishops should perform the ceremony. The latter is a good question since he needs an archbishop of Milan to officiate, of which there are currently a total of 3 roaming Lombardy, and he needs the bishop of Pavia who is at present excommunicated. The former is a stupid question. Since when does a King of the Romans need papal permission to be crowned king of Italy, and why would you think Gregory would allow it given his legates have just been thrown in jail? Suffice to say Gregory’s response was a resounding Njet. Who knows, Henry would have gone through with his coronation anyway, had it not been for some disconcerting news from Germany.

To explain those, let us talk a bit more about disappointing your followers. Henry IV is not the only one. You remember the German princes who are sitting by their warm winter fires and counting down the days until they are well and truly shot off that troublesome Salian king? Well, they were as surprised and as disappointed about this “reconciliation” as the Lombard bishops.

Gregory had written to the Princes on January 28th, right after the feast in the halls of Canossa. His letter still reads somewhat apologetic since he uses most of the parchment explaining why he could not refuse a king in a hare shirt, fasting and freezing outside his front door.

As for the hard-core anti-Henry faction in Germany, they could not care less if he had turned into a royal icicle. Members of that hard-core faction were first up, the Saxon magnates and bishops who were still in full-on rebellion occupying the Royal castles. Then there were those bishops who had fully bought into the Gregorian model of the papacy, namely Gebhard of Salzburg and Altmann of Passau.  And finally, there were the three Southern German dukes, Rudolf of Rheinfelden, duke of Swabia, Welf IV, duke of Bavaria and Berthold of Zaehringen, Duke of Carinthia.

These guys had expected to see pope Gregory coming across the alps just about now to officially condemn Henry IV. and elect and consecrate a new king. As far as comedowns go, that was a pretty bad one. They must have known that Henry had set out to intercept Gregory, but given time and weather, they could have been confident that Gregory should have made it through.

Just take a look at the timeline, it was really tight for Henry. Gregory was supposed to be in Augsburg by February 2 and he had set off from Rome in early December. Assuming a speed of 20 miles per day even across the alps in winter, the journey from Rome would have taken 30 days. But he only travelled as far as Canossa. From Canossa it was still 400miles or at least 20 days to Augsburg. Gregory should have left Canossa on January 13th if he had wanted to make it. On the other hand, It is unlikely that Henry had already managed to get anywhere near Canossa by January 13th. Henry had been in Besancon on December 25th, when he set off for his 500 mile journey to Canossa, meaning he and his army only arrived there around January 19th. That matches with the date of the reconciliation which happened on January 28th after 4 days of penance in the snow. 

If I was a Saxon noble and would look at these numbers and the letter from Gregory, I would feel a strong whiff of having been cheated. All the guy had to do was to run for Augsburg and they would have got rid of that pesky king.

But that does not mean all is lost. Henry IV. may no longer be excommunicated, but the pope had not explicitly reinstated him as king, at least that was their interpretation. So, they decided to call another Reichstag, this time in Forchheim in March 1077 to decide the fate of king Henry IV. They invited all the princes and bishops, as well as the pope and Henry IV. himself.

The pope said he was planning to come and was negotiating safe passage with King Henry IV. Well, that does not fill one with confidence. A man who did not dare to travel the 50 miles from Canossa to Mantua on this king’s guarantee is not going to travel 500 miles through enemy territory on a promise. Gregory instead sends his legates.

Henry himself is quite keen to go. However, his enemies, the three Southern German dukes are still blocking the passes. He could have taken the route via Mont Cenis as before but that would be pretty much double the distance and would have made it certain he would be late. So, Henry decides to use brute force. He travelled to Aquileia in the Northeast of Italy which was part of the duchy of Carinthia. There he elevates a local magnate to be the new duke of Carinthia and deposes Berthold of Zaehringen. That proves a clever move, because Berthold quickly loses ground in Carinthia and Henry can get through with a new ally in tow.

But he only gets into Germany in April. A month earlier the Reichstag of Forchheim had taken place.

Who went to the Reichstag? Well, it depends on who you ask. According to Lambert and Bruno, our two fully paid-up members of the Saxons fan club, everybody was there. All princes of rank and all the major bishops.  If you ask the chroniclers sympathetic to Henry, ahh, there are none. In terms of actual names quoted, the key participants were Otto von Northeim, Rudolph von Rheinfelden, Welf IV, Berthold von Zaehringen, now no longer duke of Carinthia, the Gregorian bishops, and at least one archbishop who used to be loyal to Henry, Siegfried of Mainz, two papal legates and, yeah, that is it.

This assembly then discussed -briefly- the need to depose king Henry, which they did. Well, they would, wouldn’t they? They then proceeded to elect a new king. Lambert said that the delegates had to choose amongst a multitude of noble and competent candidates. Well, not so sure. Welf IV and Otto of Northeim hated each other since both wanted the duchy of Bavaria, so they are both out. Berthold of Zaehringen had just lost Carinthia, which is not exactly the track record they were looking for. All the other senior guys were, well bishops.  That made the choice of Rudolph of Rheinfelden a foregone conclusion. So foregone, Rudolph had actually ordered a crown to be made months earlier.

Rudolph was of noble stock, descending from the kings of Burgundy and had been married to Henry IV’s sister. He was also a strong supporter of the reform movement. His family monastery in St. Blasien in the Black Forest had become a centre of the left wing of the reform movement. He was also a recognised military leader whose bravery and skills were acknowledged by all sides. What further worked in his favour was that he had established a strong rapport with Gregory VII already in 1073. Gregory rated him and his legates saw him as a man of “outstanding humility, suitable for the honour of Kingship in his age and his morals”.

So, the right man for the job, and a job that needs doing? Well not so quick.

There is not just this one party amongst the German magnates and bishops. When Henry IV was excommunicated and had accepted the conditions imposed in Trebur, his followers had to disperse and find ways to get their own excommunications lifted. But in March that had been done and they formed again as a party around the king. They make up the other committed faction opposing the opposition.

But the majority of the German magnates and bishops were in the middle. They were trying to find a way through this mess that allowed them to honour their obligations under the oaths they have made to the king, that addressed the concerns about expanding imperial power, that maintained their relationship with the pope and that kept them on the right side of the church reform movement.

What is happening here is that the three main strains of the narrative diverge again after they had converged at Canossa.  The fight of the princes against the king is no longer on parallel tracks with the expansion of papal power and church reform is no longer identified with one or other party.

That is why you find some ardent reformers supporting the king, whilst some fully paid-up members of the Imperial Church system support the rebels.

For those in the middle it was on balance ok to require the king to stand trial at a council in Augsburg when the king was still excommunicated, and the pope was presiding. They may even have sided with Rudolph of Rheinfelden had the pope given a good reason why they were no longer bound by their oaths of fealty.

But Gregory did neither get to Forchheim to preside over a trial nor did he declare that the deposition still stood irrespective of the revocation of the ban. In fact the pope could even have immediately reinstated the ban given that Henry did not provide satisfactory safe conduct to Germany as he had promised in Canossa.

To the rebels’ irritation Gregory did not explicitly endorse the election of Rudolph of Rheinfelden for another 3 years. He maintained a policy of strict neutrality and had even instructed his legates at Forchheim several times to be neutral. His legates ignored him, and he admonished them for that publicly.

Why did he do that? Clearly the frozen feet of Canossa had not turned Henry IV into an obedient son of the church whilst Rudolph von Rheinfelden had immediately sworn allegiance and submission to the pope and was an avowed supporter of the reform movement.

The reason Gregory gives is that he wanted to decide by weighing each side’s argument in a public council in Germany. He would decide once he had (quote) “heard the arguments on both sides and learned whom justice most favoured”. As you may have guessed I am not the world’s greatest fan of Gregory VII, so maybe I am biased, but to me it is clear. Gregory did not endorse Rudolph because he had not chosen Rudolph. His notion of what a pope is and what he can do does not have room for royal assemblies where some mere bishops, dukes and counts choose a king. The raising and deposing of kings is the pope’s job. And so none of you is king until I say so.

And another part of his papal doctrine is now biting its tail. Gregory had declared that the pope never errs, has never erred, and will never err. Let’s test this. In Canossa Gregory believed that Henry IV would honour his promise and be obedient to the Lord Pope, but within less than 2 weeks he realised that was not the case. Further, he believed that Henry would let him travel to Germany to sit in judgement over him, well he was wrong on that too. Gregory was an intelligent man who must have known that he had been played, but because he could not err, he could not admit that he had been played. That is hybris on a scale well beyond what Sophocles or Aeschylus had ever come up with.

It is only in 1080 after a lot of toing and froing that Gregory finally endorses Rudolph of Rheinfelden and excommunicates Henry IV for a second time. But by now the lines have become so entrenched, the excommunication had little effect. The faith in the pope’s omnipotence had evaporated quite quickly after 1077. When Gregory sent a letter declaring neutrality in May of that year, the Saxon chronicler Bruno wrote: “when our countrymen received this letter, they lost the great hope they had placed in the apostolic rock”. So even the so-called Gregorian party was no longer looking to Rome.

With his standing weakened, Gregory felt he needed to up the ante in his excommunication of 1080 and added a curse. Unless Henry would repent and resign by the feast of St. Peter in Chains, i.e., by August 1, he would be struck down by the apostles Peter and Paul. Spoiler alert, they did not.

With that let’s leave developments in Rome and the actions of Gregory for next episode and let us concentrate on events in Germany.

The assembly in Forchheim did not just elect Rudolph von Rheinfelden to be king, it also changed the constitution of the empire. The king conceded that “royal powers should belong to no one by heredity right, as was formerly the custom” and further that “the son of the king, even if he was extremely worthy, should succeed as king rather by spontaneous election than by the line of succession”. And that the “people should have it in their power to make king whoever they wished”.

This is a major tilt of the monarchy in Germany towards the electoral principle, the opposite of developments in France and England where the electoral components are waning away around that same time. In France we end up with the mantra “The king is dead, long live the king” whilst in the Holy Roman Empire the death of the previous ruler leads to the election of a new one. There are other elected monarchs in Europe, most notably the kings of Poland and they do have one thing in common, a weak central authority. The kings of France and England had a strong incentive to strengthen the central authority because they knew that their offspring would automatically inherit this position.  An elected monarch will always be incentivised to strengthen the position of his own family at the expense of central power.  Hence even though there will be dynasties passing the imperial title from father to son, like the Hohenstaufen, the Luxembourgers and the Habsburgs, they will use their position to expand their family’s territories rather than expanding royal power. Some historians, specifically in the 19th and 20th century had drawn a straight line from the events in Canossa and Forchheim to the weakness the Holy Roman Empire, to Prussian militarism, Kaiser Bill’s chip on his shoulder, World War I and World War II.

A bit of a stretch in my view, but I would agree that Forchheim was another fork in the road where the patterns of German history deviated from France and England.

Getting back to more mundane issues, in March 1077 there were now 2 kings. Rudolph of Rheinfelden thought initially he would have the upper hand, with him controlling Swabia himself and his allies controlling Bavaria and Saxony. However, things unravelled somewhat.

Henry had already successfully deposed Berthold von Zaehringen as duke of Carinthia and handed it to one of his followers. He now tried the same with Swabia. He made Frederick Count of Buren duke of Swabia. Frederick held lands in the centre of Swabia and commanded a significant followership amongst the major Swabian nobles. Henry further elevated his status even by marrying him to his daughter Agnes. Frederick then embarked on the construction of a suitable castle befitting his rank near the village of Stuf or Stauf. That castle would be called the Hohenstaufen a name that would be adopted by Frederick’s family, a family that will bring about Frederick Barbarossa, probably the best known of medieval German rulers thanks to a much better PR machine than the one our friend Henry IV. commanded.    

The new duke of Swabia was able to establish himself in part of the duchy, but the Zaehringer family, and their allies controlled most of the lands on the upper Rhine and into German Speaking Switzerland.

Henry was more successful in Bavaria and expelled his enemies from the duchy which he managed directly rather than appointing a new duke. That meant Rudolph of Rheinfelden’s actual power base was Saxony. He controlled most of it, including Goslar and its rich silver mines.

Henry established his main basis of operations in Mainz where the burghers had thrown out their archbishop in another sign that the urban elite is asserting itself in the major trading cities. He could count on the Bavarians, some Swabians, most of the Lotharingians and the duke of Bohemia.

The two armies were equally matched, Henry may have had more resources, but Rheinfelden had the greatest general of the time, Otto von Northeim. The first two major battles followed a simple pattern, where Henry would have the upper hand for the first half until Otto von Northeim appeared out of left field and pushed him back.

In the first of these battles, Henry and Rudolph both fled the field of battle, in the second it was just Henry who fled, but the rebels had sustained too severe losses to pursue the royal army.

Despite the military success Rheinfelden never managed to expand the opposition-controlled territory much beyond the Saxony and his exclave in Swabia.

In between negotiations between the parties and with the pope continued but without any conclusions.

On October 15th, 1080, the two armies met again on the Elster river in Saxony, not far from Leipzig. Henry had been retreating from a pursuing Saxon army. He was outnumbered and tried to combine forces with his ally, the duke of Bohemia. His progress came to a halt when he reached the swollen Elster river that he could not cross. He pitched up camp and prepared for battle. That evening he drew up another donation to the cathedral of Speyer, the shrine to the imperial Salian family seeking the help of the Virgin Mary. It had become a habit of Henry’s to make generous donations to the church of Speyer at pivotal moments of his career and as we have already seen, there is no shortage of such moments, making the cathedral church extremely rich. All that money went into making this already enormous church even bigger.

Here is how the historian I.S. Robinson describes the battle (quote):

At daybreak on 15 October Henry drew up his army west of the Elster, along a stream called the Grune, where the marshy ground would impede the enemy’s approach. His forces included the vassals of the sixteen prelates who accompanied him, Swabians under the command of their duke, Bavarians under the command of count Rapoto IV of Cham and Lotharingians commanded by Count Henry of Laach (future count palatinate of Lothringia).

There were no Bohemians in the royal army; Henry had failed to make contact with Vratislav’s forces. When the Saxons arrived on the opposite bank of the Grune, they were exhausted by their rapid march and were without most of their foot soldiers., who could not keep up. As they approached the royal lines, the bishops in the Saxon army ordered the clergy to sing Psalm 82, traditionally regarded as a prayer against the enemies of god’s church. The two armies picked their way through the marches on opposite banks of the Grune until they reached a safe crossing, whereupon they immediately engaged in close combat. The royal army fought so fiercely that some Saxon knights fled and the rumour that the whole Saxon army was in retreat was so far believed that the clergy in the royal camp began to sing the Te Deum. They were interrupted by the arrival of men bearing the body of Count Rapato IV of Cham.  This sudden reversal was the work of the resourceful Otto von Northeim. When the Saxon knights fled and royal forces pursued them, Otto rallied the foot soldiers and forced back the pursuers. Returning to the battlefield, Otto found the royal contingents commanded by Henry von Laach beginning triumphantly singing the chant of Kyrie Eleyson. Once more the premature celebrations of the royal army were cut short and, the foot soldiers of Otto von Northeim sent the enemy fleeing across the Elster.” (end quote).

But this victory did cost the rebels dearly. When Otto von Northeim returned to the camp, he found his king mortally wounded his right hand cut off. Rudolph of Rheinfelden died that night or in the morning of the next day.

That was a major blow to the opposition. The manner of Rudolph’s death, losing the hand he had sworn allegiance to Henry IV, seriously undermined the standing of the opposition as the “good ones” in the conflict. For once Henry IV is winning the propaganda war.

The other issue was that the opposition was divided. The two major protagonists after Rudolph were Welf IV and Otto von Northeim. These two men hated each other ever since Henry IV had replaced Otto as duke of Bavaria with Welf IV. Both men had drawn pledges from Rudolph that in case of victory they would get the duchy of Bavaria.

Under these circumstances electing a successor for Rudolph as anti-king proved difficult. Henry IV tried to use the situation by making a peace offering to the Saxons. They could elevate his son Konrad as Saxon king, who would reign as their ruler before finally succeeding his father as Emperor. That would bring back the old Ottonian order where the emperor was a Saxon. Otto von Northeim’s response was “I have often seen a bad calf begotten by a bad steer, so I desire neither the father nor the son”.

The opposition kept debating about who to elect, not helped by Gregory VII urging them to wait with the election until he could come down to Germany. The two parties agreed a truce until June 1081. Some fighting resumed and at some point, a much diminished assembly of opposition leaders elected Hermann von Salm, a previously unknown count to be king. Gregory did not endorse the new king and his name was never mentioned by the pope. More importantly, Otto von Northeim took his sweet time acknowledging that he would never be king and finally recognised Hermann. Fighting continued but it was for now on a level that allowed Henry to go down to Rome and go after his other great enemy, Gregory VII.

Rudolph von Rheinfelden was buried in the cathedral of Merseburg in under one of the first full length funerary monuments showing him as a living man with all the royal insignia. The inscription celebrates his kingship and his death as “the sacred victim of war” and who died for the church.

All part of the ongoing propaganda war. Rudolph von Rheinfelden is portrayed as a martyr for the cause of church reform, whilst Henry goes back to Gregory’s curse that the king would die if he had not relented by the day St. Peters Chains – well it did happen, just that the false king died from the false pope’s curse losing his right hand. This hand is still kept at the cathedral of Merseburg – or so they claim.

In 1082 Henry sets off for Rome to follow the propaganda war up with a real war. He can count on the Lombard bishops to help him but will that be enough to subdue Matilda of Tuscany and get into the city of Rome to impose a new pope and finally be crowned emperor. All that in the next episode.

I hope to see you next week. And in the meantime, should you feel like supporting the show and get hold of these bonus episodes, sign up on Patreon. The links are in the show notes or on my website at historyofthegermans.com.