Henry IV

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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.

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, regular blogposts and many other privileges. All that for 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 Connie and Jolana who have already signed up.

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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.

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When Henry IV was excommunicated by pope Gregory VII in 1076, he was initially confident that his bishops would stick with him and that he could bring an army down to Rome to depose the pope. I mean his father had deposed 3 popes and up until recently the appointment of popes was very much an imperial prerogative.

But within just 8 months the support from the bishops crumbled away. There are many solid political reasons such as the bishops being afraid of their urban populations and cathedral chapters siding with the pope. But one specific event turned the tide decisively.

Bishop William of Utrecht, Henry IV. greatest cheerleader had been hurling insults and accusations of lewd behaviour at pope Gregory VII from the chancel of his church. He declared the King’s excommunication null and void and excommunicated the pope in turn.

That same day the cathedral was struck by lightening and the episcopal palace burnt down. And a few days later William had to take to his bed. He had suddenly become terribly ill and succumbed so quickly he could not even make confession and receive the last rites. The abbot of Cluny reported later that bishop William had appeared to him in a dream and had said that he was now suffering in the deepest recesses of hell.

When the magnates met for a Reichstag in Trebur in October 1076, many of the bishops had gone over to the opposite side giving the king an ultimatum that he would be deposed unless he gets released from the anathema before early February 1077.

Henry had to cross the alps in the midst of the coldest winter in living memory and beg for mercy from Pope Gregory VII at Canossa, one of the most famous events of the European Middle Ages.

If you want to hear the whole story, check out the History of the Germans Podcast available on my website www.historyofthegermans.com or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts (link here:https://history-of-the-germans.captivate.fm/listen)

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Emperor henry IV kneels in the snow before Pope Gregory VII

It is time – we are finally going to Canossa. Expect imperial power to go up in smoke, greedy mothers-in-laws, frozen passes, hoisted horses and tobogganing empresses.

All that ends with the enduring picture of a king first kneeling before a woman and then before a pope…..

That is the the episode you have to listen to!

Hello and Welcome to the History of the Germans, Episode 33 – Canossa finally

It has taken a while but today we will finally get to that famous moment reproduced in thousands of German schoolbooks and maybe the only event of the Middle Ages most Germans have heard 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 James, Sean and Stefan who have already signed up.

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Last week we ended with the famous letter of Henry IV to Pope Gregory VII that began with an insult: Hildebrand, at present not pope but false monk and ended with a call for him to step down.

That letter arrived in February 1076 when Pope Gregory had convened bishops from near and far for his annual Lenten Synod in Rome. Gregory steps up to the altar and reads the letter of the king of the Romans. And then he reads another letter, sent by the German bishops making the same points and including the same insults that Henry IV had hurled at the holy father. And finally, he reads another letter sent by Henry IV to the people of Rome asking them to rise up against the false monk. Finally the imperial envoy addresses the congregation and demands the deposition of Gregory VII from the Synod. They promise that Henry IV will personally come to Rome at Pentecost and bring a new Pope.

10 out of 10 for Cojones, but not exactly Mensa-level intelligent. Who will be at the Lenten Synod called by Pope Gregory VII? Wild guess, mostly people who support Gregory VII. The bishops and other prelates who are opposed to Gregory VII have declared him not pope but a false monk, which makes it unlikely they would put in an appearance.

No surprise then that the hostile audience erupts, and the royal envoys are lucky to get out alive. Allegedly they had to hide behind the billowing papal robes to avoid getting stabbed.

Gregory’s response was swift and unflinching.

First, he deposes Archbishop Siegfried of Mainz, the most senior German clergyman. Siegfried is excommunicated and suspended from all episcopal duties. He then lists all other bishops who he suspects of voluntarily supporting Henry IV and declares them equally suspended. The remaining bishops have until August 1 to declare allegiance to the pope by messenger or in person. Failure to do so means automatic suspension. And the bishops of Lombardy are suspended wholesale. To put that into perspective, Gregory has just dismissed 26 bishops out of ~45, some of whom were actually in prison at that point in time. I would call that bold.

As for Henry IV Gregory declares the following: (quote)

O holy Peter, prince of the apostles, mercifully incline your holy ears to us and hear me, your servant, whom you have nurtured from childhood and whom you have delivered to this day from the hand of the wicked, who have hated and hate me because of my fidelity to you.

You are my witness together with my Lady, the Mother of God, and your brother amongst all the saints, St. Paul, that your holy Roman Church has forced me against my will to be its leader; bear witness that I have not thought of ascending your throne by force, and that I would rather have ended my life as a pilgrim than to ascend your throne by worldly means for the sake of earthly glory.

And therefore, I believe that it is by your grace and not by my own deeds that it has pleased you and pleases you that all the Christian people, who are committed to you, obey me, your duly ordained representative on earth. And so to me has been given by your grace the power to bind and to loose in heaven and on earth.

Based on this holy commission, in the name of Almighty God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, for the honour and safety of your Church, I deprive, by your power and authority, Henry the King, son of Henry the Emperor, who has risen up against your Church with outrageous insolence, of dominion over the whole realm of the Germans and over Italy.

And I release all Christians from the bonds of the oath they have taken or will take to him; and I forbid anyone to serve him as king. For it is fitting that he who seeks to diminish the honour of your church should himself forfeit the honour that was his due.

And since he has refused to obey us as a Christian, has not returned to the God whom he had forsaken, has consorted with the excommunicated, has committed manifold iniquities, has spurned  my commandments which, as you testify, I gave him for his own salvation, has separated himself from your church and has strived to tear it asunder – I therefore bind him in your stead with the chain of the Anathema. And I bind him in such a way that people of all nations may know and have proof that you are Peter and that the Son of the living God has built his church on your rock, a rock the gates of hell cannot overpower.(end quote)

This is not the first time a ruler has been excommunicated. The first time was in 390 AD when bishop Ambrose of Milan banned the emperor Theodosius for the massacre of Thessaloniki. And after that, kings are being excommunicated in surprising regularity. French rulers tend to have attracted more excommunications than most, usually for sexual misdemeanours, but equally King Harold II of England, of Hastings fame and Duke Boleslav the Bold of Poland have been excommunicated. By 1076 Gregor VII himself had already threatened to excommunicate Phillip I of France and had in fact excommunicated Robert Guiscard.

So that was not a surprise and probably well within the range of outcomes Henry IV had expected.

What is different in this ban are two things. First, Gregory “deprives” Henry of “dominion over the realm of the Germans and Italy” and he follows it up with: “I release all Christians from the bonds of the oath they have taken or will take to him”. That had not happened before, ever. Because so far, the church had stuck to the words of Jesus reported in Matthew, Mark and Luke: “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s”.

In Gregory’s mind the concept of an all-powerful papacy that is owed obedience by everyone, a pope whose feet are to be kissed by kings and emperors and who can depose bishops, kings and emperors supersedes this quaint New Testament notion.

Henry IV had no lofty concepts. He trusted in the language of spears and swords. Given the Roman populace was unwilling to revolt against Gregory, he decided that he would have to come down by himself to sort things out. He announced that he would raise an army and go down to Rome by Pentecost to receive the long overdue imperial coronation, be it from a chastened Gregory or another Pope.

If I had been a betting man in February 1076, I would have given Pope Gregory a maximum of 6 months in office. Pretty much everything was stacked against him.

  1. Just 30 years before, Henry’s father had deposed not just one, but three popes.
  2. Henry is riding high on a major victory against his internal enemies the Saxons.
  3. The German bishops have nothing good to say about Gregory who he had harangued and harassed them for years. And most of these had been members of the Royal chancery under either Henry III or Henry IV.
  4. In Italy the Lombard bishops would provide an imperial army free passage south.
  5. Matilda of Tuscany may be supportive of the papacy, but if the king would travel in the company of Matilda’s husband, Godfrey the Hunchback, some of her vassals may open their castles.
  6. And the Normans were no use right now as the relationship was a bit tense after they had begun to nibble away at papal territory.
  7. No chance the French king would come to the pope’s aide since Gregory had been on the verge of excommunicating him as well.
  8. Only the German magnates could sway in their loyalty to the king if the king continued in his authoritarian manner. On the other hand, the magnates were the brothers and cousins of the bishops, so they would take their steer from them.

No chance then? Well, the reason I am not a betting man is because my bets never work, and this one would have also spectacularly failed.

That things may not go as planned became clear quite quickly when Henry received note of the ban in March in Goslar. Enraged he asks the bishop Pibo of Toul who happened to be there to excommunicate Gregory at mass the next morning. In the night Pibo of Toul and another bishop fled the royal palace and disappeared from court.

That is just a foretaste of what happens over the next 8 months. The German bishops change their mind, almost all of them, wholesale. Why that happened has been discussed amongst German historians for centuries, starting with Otto of Freising, the 12th century chronicler.

As ever so often, there is not one reason for such a rapid acceleration of the wheel of fortune.

The first issue was that the line of argument that Henry IV and the bishops had taken was flawed. They basically argued that Gregory had not been pope, because he had not been elected using the proper process. That “proper process” was established only very recently at the 1059 Lateran Synod which ruled that the pope should be elected by the cardinals, not by the population of Rome.  Moreover, this proper process had not been fully observed in the 2 previous elections either. Plus, Gregory had been pope for three years already without anyone having made a fuzz about it.

And crucially, when the bishops looked at it in the cold hard light of the day, they realised that this argument could backfire quite badly. You see, Gregory even if his election may have been flawed, he had been properly ordained. And that situation applied to many of the bishops as well who had received their seats by appointment of the king rather than a free election by the cathedral canons. Some may have even given financial compensation to the king in one way or another that could now be seen as Simony. The bishops relied on the fact that they had been correctly ordained, which superseded any election flaws. The fear is that when the bishops establish a precedent that an incorrectly elected pope is no pope, where would they be?

What made this worse was that Henry IV had not been particularly good at choosing bishops who commanded the respect of their congregation. Some he pushed through against significant opposition amongst the cathedral chapter. Furthermore, Cities had grown both in wealth as well as in self-confidence. And as the merchants were getting richer, they found the bishop’s haughtiness and lack of commercial dynamism chafing. At the same time the urban population in general demands a reform of the church. They want properly trained and morally upstanding clergymen looking after their souls. I already mentioned the uprising of the merchants of Cologne in 1074 and the Pataria expelling the archbishop of Milan. If you are a German bishop with a restless urban population, the last thing you want is that the pope appoints a new bishop who brings the city population behind him and expels you for good.

And then there is the simple point that o.k. you say Gregory is not pope. So, who is pope then? If this one is not pope, why did you not appoint a new one? Doesn’t that suggest you may want to reconcile with Gregory after all and where will I, the humble bishop of small Rhenish town, be then. I do not want to be the guy Gregory will come down like a ton of bricks later, so better keep a low profile and see where the wind is blowing.

The before last point comes down to Henry IV’s behaviour. After the battle on the Unstrut he had the opportunity to show mercy and get to 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 finally, there are signs from heaven. Bishop William of Utrecht, Henry IV. greatest cheerleader has been hurling insults and accusations of lewd behaviour at him from the chancel of his church, claiming the excommunication was null and void. Days after he did this at the great easter mass in the presence of the king, William had to take to his bed. He suddenly became terribly ill and succumbed even before he could receive the last rites. The abbot of Cluny reported that bishop William had appeared to him in a dream and had said that he was now suffering in the deepest recesses of hell. Another supporter, the bishop Eppo of Zeits who fell from his horse and drowned in a shallow stream, because Saint Kilian wanted him to drink Water and not always wine.

With the bishops wavering Henry found it impossible to muster an army to push through his claim in Rome. The Reichstag he had scheduled for May took place but many major players like the dukes of Swabia, Bavaria and Carinthia were absent, so were a number of important bishops.

Gregory waded into the debate by sending letters to all and sundry explaining the excommunication and finally putting proper canonical law arguments on the table, presumably developed by his chancery since he himself was no great lawyer. In a smart move he empowered those bishops that had been loyal to the pope to immediately release others from the ban, provided they were repentant and avoided communion with the king henceforth. That allowed the episcopal opposition around the Archbishop of Salzburg to pull in more and more bishops

At the same time the situation in Saxony tensed up. Some of the bishops, unsure where this would all go did release the Saxon leaders that they had held in prison on behalf of the king. Once released these leaders and some who had managed to escape the wrath of the king gathered together and began a guerrilla war. Otto von Northeim changed sides again and handed the Harzburg over to the rebels, wiping out most of the gains of the previous year.

The bishops who had been firmly on Gregory’s side from the start met up with the Southern German dukes, Rudolf of Rheinfelden, Welf IV of Bavaria and Berthold of Zaehringen. These magnates concluded the king had not changed after the Saxon campaign and was still overbearing and autocratic. Something needed to be done to preserve the ancient rights and privileges.

At the heart of the opposition’s debates was the question whether they still owed the King obedience under the oaths they had sworn. The oath of fealty was the glue that held early medieval society together. The lord would give a fief to his knight in exchange for the oath of fealty. That was a good deal because breaking an oath was an unpardonable sin that would condemn you to hell, no ifs or buts.

Around 1070 this line in the sand began shifting.

We already heard in Otto of Northeim’s speech of 1073, that an oath was no longer sacrosanct. Otto said that he was no longer bound by his the oath to Henry IV, because the king had stopped being a king and had turned into a tyrant.

We have also seen Gregory relieving the congregation of Constance from their oath to the bishop in 1075. And now the pope has released everyone from their oath to the king.

This erosion of the value of oaths will be one of the significant outcomes of the investiture controversy that changed Western Europe for ever.

In October 1076 all the magnates and bishops of Germany came together in Trebur to debate how peace and unity of the kingdom could be maintained. Magnates who had been sworn enemies for a long time such as Otto of Northeim and Welf IV reconciled in the interest of peace.

This meeting was the first Reichstag where the king was absent. Not completely absent, he was across the Rhine in the castle of Oppenheim overlooking the gathering. But, as he was excommunicated, he was not allowed in the debates. That fact says more clearly than anything that Henry IV. had lost the argument. If he was seen as excommunicated, the man who excommunicated him, Gregory VII must be the true pope.

Some magnates wanted to go through with Gregory’s order, formally declare Henry IV. deposed and elect a new king. They even mustered their troops to cross the Rhine and attack the King. But, deposing the king and absolving everyone from their sworn obligations was still a step too far for many. There were also the papal legates who advocated for a more measured approach probably getting cold feet over the fundamental change the letters had unleashed.

Hence the conclusion was a compromise: Henry was ordered to write to Gregory and declare that he would henceforth be obedient to the Lord Pope. Further they decided that they would elect a new king, unless Henry would be able to get released from the papal ban within a year and a day from his excommunication, i.e., before early February.  The magnates invited Gregory to come to a Reichstag in Augsburg on February 2nd to decide whether Henry could remain as king.

Until this decision Henry had to give up his royal insignia and dismiss his remaining supporters and live like a private individual. And that he did. He left the site of his humiliation with a small group of supporters and goes to Speyer where he spends the next few weeks thinking what he can still do.

As you can see, within less than a year did Henry IV. go from undisputed ruler to excommunicated private citizen shunned by everyone.

There was only one way out and that was to get the ban lifted. The only person who could lift the ban was pope Gregory VII. Henry needed to meet Gregory before Gregory reached Augsburg or all will be lost.

A few days before Christmas Henry, his wife Bertha and his little son set off from Speyer for Italy. Not a single one of his nobles is with them. And along the way only few of his closest supporters would provide the travellers with food and horses. He is so ostracised that even his bishops and advisors who had also been excommunicated and who also tried to get to Italy and get relief refused to travel with him.

The dukes of Swabia, Bavaria and Carinthia who controlled the main alpine passes had them closed to the king, which is why he diverted to Besancon and further on the Mont Cenis. Mont Cenis you may remember was the one alpine pass not under control of the German duchies but held by Bertha’s parents, the counts of Savoy. I think I said a few episodes ago that this will matter later, and here it does. Without this alpine pass Henry would never have made it to Italy and his reign would have ended there and then. Son-in-law or not, the passage is however not free. Henry has to grant his mother- in-law the last bits of the kingdom of Burgundy that bore some similarity to imperial overlordship.

Lambert of Hersfeld said that the winter of 1077 was so persistently cold that one could walk across the frozen Rhine River from November to March. And that meant the pass across the alps was frozen too.

But there was no time to waste. Henry hired some locals who knew ways to get across even in the depth of winter. The guides led them up to the top of the pass. But on the other side with the road covered with ice, descend became difficult. They slid down the mountain on the hands and knees, held on by their guides. The horses were at times hoisted down the path or slid down the hill with their legs tied up, many died. The queen and her ladies in waiting were put on ox hides and tobogganed down into the valley.

Once the king arrived in the plains of Piedmont, the bishops of Italy flogged to his banner and within a short period of time Henry was in command of a serious army. The Italian bishops were keen for Henry to go down to Rome and remove Pope Gregory by force of arms.

Gregory at the same time had begun his trip towards Augsburg when he heard about Henry’s arrival. Given the king was now in command of an army, the pope was unclear what would happen next. His ever-faithful friend Mathilda of Tuscany suggested for him to go into one of her strongest defences, the castle of Canossa. Canossa is by the way not just one castle as it is often described, but a veritable chain of fortifications consisting of 6 or seven major castles that protect the approaches to Canossa itself.

Militarily we are in a stalemate. Canossa is too well defended for the royal army to overcome. On the other hand, the Pope cannot travel to Augsburg when the royal army bocks his path.

Henry first needed a team that could intercede on his behalf. The main interlocutors were the Abbot Hugh of Cluny, one of the most significant representatives of the monastic reform movement and at the same time godfather of Henry IV. And second, the great countess Matilda of Tuscany. Matilda was loosely related to the emperor and -despite her clear allegiance to Gregory – still his vassal. These two were of immeasurable value to Henry IV. because other than everybody else at his court, Gregory trusted these two. Getting their support was not easy. Henry had to beg them to advocate his case, according to the Italian chronicler Donizio, on his knees. The artwork that I use for this season shows that scene, where Henry IV. begs Matilda and Hugh of Cluny to plead on his behalf before the pope. I doubt that there is another medieval image of a crowned ruler kneeling before a woman for political rather than sexual reasons.

Henry kicked off negotiations by asking the pope to release him from the ban on the grounds that the German princes had slandered him out of greed and that the pope should not believe all they say. To that Gregory responded that if his case was true, he could put it to the Reichstag in Augsburg. There the pope would weigh the claims of the princes and the king justly and according to the laws of the church. What Gregory did not say is that he had received a letter in Henry’s own hand that contained enough attacks on the honour of the papacy as laid down on the Dictatus Papae to depose him three times over.

So, Henry had to change his approach. Henry’s intermediaries, Matilda and Hugh explained that Henry would happily submit to the pope’s judgement but that the Reichstag in Augsburg was too late. By then he would have been under the ban for more than a year and a day and so would no longer be king and hence have no standing in the proceedings. All he asks for is to be released from the ban, after which he would obey the pope in all and everything. Even should the pope decide that he was to lose the kingdom for his sins, he would accept that judgement without rancour and vacate the throne.

Gregory responded to Matilda and Hugh that if Henry was indeed prepared to accept the Papal judgement, why doesn’t he hand over the crown and imperial regalia to him right now und declares himself unworthy of kingship.

That is the moment where Matilda of Tuscany and Hugh of Cluny gain their place in the history books. They appeal to the Holy father’s mercy, quoting Isaiah 42 where God tells his servant: “A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench: he shall bring forth judgment unto truth.” Thanks to the intervention of these two the pope finally allowed Henry to come and atone for his insults to the Holy Apostolic Church by showing obedience to the true Vicar of Christ.

Henry went to the castle of Canossa and I now hand over to Lambert of Hersfeld who describes the scene as follows (quote)

So he came as he was ordered, and since the castle was surrounded by a triple wall, he was taken into the perimeter of the second ring wall, while his entire retinue remained outside; and there he stood, after taking off the royal adornment, without any signs of royal dignity, displaying no pomp, barefoot, fasting from morning to evening, awaiting the pronouncement of the Roman pope. This he did on the second, this on the third day. Only on the fourth day was he let before him, and after many speeches and counter-speeches he was released from the ban. (unquote)

Gregory himself justified his actions by saying that the king’s tears “had moved all of those present there to such pity and compassion” that they wondered “at the unaccustomed hardness of our heart” and some were accusing him of cruelty if not tyrannical ferocity. And finally, he gave in against the constant supplications of those present and the persistency of his compunction.

I think the modern word is social pressure. Having a king kneeling in the front yard is something no 11th century person could ignore. Remember emperor Conrad II kneeling before his son Henry III begging to support him in his case against the duke of Carinthia. And what about emperor Henry II kneeling before his bishops asking for permission to create the bishopric of Bamberg…..it seems that the act of kneeling in the dirt is the sort of safe word in this Game of thrones where all persecution has to stop.

But these acts are very rarely spontaneous. They are -even if all participants claim the contrary – negotiated in the tiniest detail beforehand. The length of the penitence, the amount of crying, the depth of the bow, all that is set. I cannot get my head around the idea that the penitence in Canossa was any different. They had been negotiating for days, and assuming Gregory’s claim that he had exchanged legates since before Henry crossed the alps, probably for weeks before the famous scene took place.

And if that had been negotiated then the second part of the event, the conditions of readmittance had also been negotiated beforehand. Here is how Lambert of Hersfeld describes them (quote)

He (that would be Henry IV.) was to meet in a general assembly on any day and at any place that the pope might determine. After the German princes had been summoned, he was to answer the charges that were brought against him. The pope, if he thought Ito be right, would sit in the judge’s chair to decide the matter. After the judge’s decision Henry was either to keep the kingdom if he cleared himself of the accusations, or to lose it without resistance should the accusations proved to be true, and he was declared unworthy of the royal dignity according to the laws of the Church. Irrespective of whether he would keep or lose the kingdom, he would not take revenge on any man for the humiliation;

Until the day when his case would be heard in open court, he should not use any adornment of royal splendour, nor carry any signs of royal dignity; he should do nothing in regard to the administration of the state according to the usual custom of law, and nothing he did should have validity; finally, except for the collection of the royal income, which he himself and his family need for their maintenance, none of the royal demesne should be used; also, all who have sworn allegiance to him should be released from the fetters of their oath. Rupert bishop of Bamberg and Ulrich of Godesheim and the others, by whose evil promptings he had ruined himself and the kingdom, he should remove forever from his entourage.

If he again becomes powerful and newly strengthened in the kingdom after the accusations have been refuted, he should nevertheless always be subject to the Roman pope and be obedient to his commandments. (and further) …finally, if he were to act contrary to any of these obligations, the release from the ban now so ardently desired will be null and void,….and the princes of the realm should then, without being required to undertake any further investigation, and freed from all obligation of the oath, choose another king….

Hmm, really. Did Henry really sign over all his rights to the pope, agree to be non-king until his judgement is delivered and accept that he would automatically be excommunicated if he were to fail against any of this long list of obligations?

Not likely. Gregory VII wrote to the German princes from Canossa a few days later justifying the loosening of the ban and there he only mentions two commitments,

  1. that Henry swore to stand trial before the pope on the accusations brought by the princes, on a day and time of the Pope’s choosing, and
  2. That he gives safe passage to the pope and all his envoys.

That summary by Gregory is a lot more convincing. After all, Henry had an army waiting below Canossa that could besiege and ultimately depose the pope. So, he wasn’t without options. And equally if Lambert was right and Henry had signed up to these kinds of restrictions, why wouldn’t Gregory mention them to the German princes who were pretty upset about Gregory removing the ban?

This peace agreement was than sworn upon, not by the King himself but by his negotiators, Matilda of Tuscany, Adelheid of Savoy, some German bishops and Italian princes and last but not least Abbot Hugh of Cluny, who as a monk would not swear but promises to guarantee Henry’s future adherence to the agreement.

After that the pope celebrated mass to which Henry was admitted and where he was offered holy communion, whereby his ban was lifted. After that the party set down for a meal, a meal where Henry sat glumly at the popes table, scratching his fingernails into the tabletop.

The next day, Henry travelled back to Germany. Henry himself never mentioned what happened in this forbidding castle in Northern Italy. We do not know what he felt or said when he returned into the cold fresh air of this winter’s morning in January 1077. I have a good idea, but this being a family show, there is no way I can share it.

As we said many times before, images matter and even more so in the Middle Ages. The Image of an emperor kneeling in the snow begging the pope to give him his ancestral kingdom back has been reproduced over and over and will stick in people’s minds until today. Whether Canossa was a clever move by Henry IV. to thwart his enemies or whether it was a capitulation does not really matter. What the world saw was that the spiritual power of the papacy had subjected the most powerful of temporal rulers. That puts a wedge into the notion that the church and the world are one and the same, as had been the belief since Christianity had become the state religion of the Roman empire. The separation of church and state will not take place for another 700 plus years, but it is here in the frozen soil of the Emilia Romagna that the seed of modernity is planted.

I will dedicate a whole episode to the repercussions of Canossa and the events that follow when the season comes to an end. But next week we will first travel with Henry IV. back across the alps to Germany where his enemies do not care one iota that he is no longer excommunicated. They elect another king and the war of words turns into a war of swords. I hope to see you then.

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Henry had appointed a new archbishop of Milan in direct opposition to the Pope Gregory VII’s candidate (see previous post). As a consequence Gregory had sent a letter to Henry admonishing him and threatening excommunication.

Henry then called a synod of 26 German bishops in Worms for the 24th of January. These mighty prelates were tired of being harassed and harangued by the fanatic on the papal throne. No more did they want to be summoned to Rome to atone for things they believed were perfectly acceptable, like letting their canons get married or accepting financial obligations to the king upon investiture. And even more so if the pope himself failed to adhere to his own standards.

And so, Henry IV in agreement with his bishops writes back to Gregory on January 24th, 1076 as follows:

“Henry, king not by force, but by the grace of God, to Hildebrand, at present not pope, but false monk. You deserve such greeting for the disorder you created. There is no rank in the Church which you have not made to partake in shame instead of honour, in curse instead of blessing. For, to mention only a few, most important instances out of so many; you have dared to lay hands on the leaders of the holy Church, the Lord’s anointed – the archbishops, the bishops and priests; you have trampled them underfoot like slaves who do not know what their master is doing.; by crushing them have you endeared yourself to the commonest of people; you have regarded them all as ignorant, but yourself as omniscient.

This knowledge, however, you have used not for edification but for destruction, so that we are justified in believing that St. Gregory, whose name you have arrogated to yourself, prophesied about you when he said, “The pride of him who has power becomes the greater the number of those who are subject to him, and he thinks that he himself can do more than all.”

And indeed we have endured all of this, being anxious to preserve the honour of the apostolic see; but you have understood our humility as fear, and therefore have not been afraid to rise up against the royal power given to us by God, daring to threaten to take it from us. As if we had received our kingdom from you! As if the kingdom and the dominion were in your hands and not in God’s!

And this, although our Lord Jesus Christ has called us to kingship, but has not called you to the priesthood. For you have ascended by the following steps. For by cunning, which the monastic profession abhors, have you obtained money; by money, favour; by the sword, the throne of peace. And from the throne of peace you have disturbed the peace by arming the subjects against those who rule over them; by teaching, that our bishops, called by God, are to be despised; by taken offices from priests and giving it laymen, by permitting them to depose or condemn those who had been ordained as teachers by the laying on of the bishops’ hands.

And you even laid hand on me, who, though unworthy to be among the anointed, yet have been anointed to the kingdom; on me, who, as the tradition of the holy fathers teaches, may not be deposed for any crime unless, God forbid, I have departed from the faith, on me who is subject to the judgment of God alone. The wisdom of the holy fathers even left Julian, the Apostate, not to be tried by themselves, but left it to God alone, to judge and depose him. For even the true pope, Peter, exclaims, “Fear God, honor the King.”

But you, who do not fear God, dishonour Him in me whom He has appointed. Therefore St. Paul, when he spared no angel of heaven if he had preached otherwise, did not exempt even you who teach otherwise on earth. For he says, “If anyone, neither I nor an angel from heaven, preaches any other gospel than that which was preached to you, he will be condemned.

You then, condemned by this curse and by the judgment of all our bishops and by our own, descend and renounce the apostolic chair which you have usurped. Let another ascend the throne of St. Peter, who shall not exercise violence under the guise of religion, but shall teach the sound doctrine of St. Peter.

I, Henry, king by the grace of God, say to you, together with all our bishops, descend, descend or be damned forever.”

Translation by Ernest F. Henderson, Select Historical Documents of the Middle Ages, (London: George Bell and Sons, 1910), adjusted by author

That went down like a lead balloon in Rome. For the follow-up to this story, check out Episode 33 of the History of the Germans Podcast available here or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts from.

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Milan was the largest city in Europe and the most economically advanced. Since about 1057 the lower classes in Milan had demanded an improvement in the corrupt and licentious clergy of the city. Street gangs would harass clergymen they suspected of living with women or had acquired their office through the payment of bribes. Rioting became increasingly intense, and the rebels calling themselves the Pataria began to organise under the leadership of a member of the city nobility called Erlembald.

Erlembald received support from the papacy, and even received a papal banner in his fight with the archbishop. This archbishop, Wido who had been captured by the Pataria resigned in 1070, handing over the reigns of the archbishopric to his deputy, Godfrey. Godfrey travelled to the imperial court for his investiture, as had been the tradition with archbishops of Milan for centuries. Whilst Godfrey received ring and staff from King (future emperor) Henry IV (1056-1105), the Pataria raised one of their own, Atto to be archbishop. Atto was recognised by the pope and civil war in the city ensued.

In one of his last acts, pope Alexander II (1061-1073) put pressure on Henry IV by excommunicating his advisors. That excommunication lingered without much effect whilst the situation in Milan changed in favour of the imperial side. The Pataria suffered the loss of its leader, Erlembald in the fighting and after the city had burned down, the imperial party took control. They asked Henry IV for a new archbishop. Henry IV appointed Tedald, one of the members of his chancery to be archbishop of Milan.

This is where the new pope Gregory VII loses it. In December 1075 he writes a letter to Henry IV admonishing him for his decisions in Milan as well as for retaining his advisors who had been excommunicated 2 years before. He threatens to excommunicate the the king unless he reverses his decisions.

More on this story in Episode 32 of the History of the Germans Podcast available here and on Apple, Spotify as well as any other podcasting platform (link: https://history-of-the-germans.captivate.fm/listen)

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Hildebrand was born sometime between 1020 and 1025 in Tuscany. We know practically nothing about his family. He himself said that he grew up in the bosom of the Roman church, which suggests he grew up in the Lateran palace and was destined for a church career from his very first years. we do not know for a fact whether he joined a monastery upon reaching maturity though it would fit with his papal name, since Gregory the Great had also been a monk.

He first becomes noticed when he acts as chaplain to pope Gregory VI, the pope who famously bought the papacy from Benedict IX for cold hard cash. Hildebrand follows Gregory VI into exile in Cologne. In 1049 Hildebrand returns to Rome as a member of pope Leo IX’s entourage. Hildebrand seems to have made himself useful in Leo’s broad restructuring program that created the college of Cardinals and the role of papal Legate. Hildebrand was one of the few Romans within Leo IX’s inner circle which must have come in useful for this German pope. As Leo IX undertook extensive journeys to France and Germany asserting control over the local bishops, it was Hildebrand’s job to keep control of the city of Rome.

In 1054 we find Hildebrand as a papal legate in France and Germany, harassing bishops for their licentious lifestyle and heretic convictions. He is still technically only a subdeacon but gets into fights with bishops and archbishops. When Leo IX died, he rushed to Rome to ensure the Roman aristocracy does not usurp the throne of St. Peter. He strongly supports the next pope, Victor II, again an appointment by Henry III. Hildebrand actually meets Henry III and retains a huge amount of respect for the emperor. Victor II makes Hildebrand his chancellor, in charge of finances and documentation. By the time the papacy moved from Victor II to Stephen IX, Hildebrand was already one of, if not the dominating figure in the college of cardinals. Hildebrand star keeps rising during the papacies of Stephen IX (1057-1058), Nicolas II (1059-1061) and Alexander II (1061 – 1073).

On the 21st of April 1073, Pope Alexander II died unexpectedly in the palace of the Lateran. The next day as the pope’s body is laid out in the basilica of the Lateran, the people call for Hildebrand to be made pope. As the funeral cortege winds through the city f Rome, the calls grow louder and louder. And when they reach the church of San Pietro in Vincoli, the place where Saint Peter was kept in chain before his martyrdom the masses sweep the archdeacon into the church and enthrone him there and then.

A few minor hitches in that process. First, Hildebrand despite 35 years of service to the papal court had not yet been ordained a priest, something that had to be done at double speed.. And second, the Papacy had just established  that the pope should be elected by the college of Cardinals not raised by public acclaim. That was conveniently forgotten in the melee outside SAN Pietro in Vincoli.

When Hildebrand is coming to, he finds himself on the papal throne. That cannot have been much of a surprise for the now roughly 55-year old. His position inside the church had grown and grown these last 20 years and his modest title belied his actual position. Peter Damian used to joke that some people came to Rome to meet the Lord Pope, but most went to see the pope’s lord, Hildebrand.

Hildebrand takes the papal name of Gregory VII, which must be the wickedest joke of the 11th century. The previous bearer of this papal name had been Gregory VI, the only pope ever proven to have actually paid cold hard cash to get the job, and Hildebrand’s first boss who he accompanied into exile. When Gregory VI had been the symbol of the corruption of the church, his pupil, Gregory VII will become synonymous with the fight against the buying and selling of holy offices.

I have complained many times before that we hardly ever find anything resembling a political manifesto from any of the emperors or popes that have so far featured on the podcast. Historians are forced to deduce their intentions from their actions, rather than measuring their actions against their intentions. Gregory VII is in this, as in so many other things, the great exception.

Gregory filed a register of letters and other documents he deemed important to the library of the Vatican. This register contains a very unusual note, known today as the Dictatus Papae. What its purpose was is unclear. It is not dated , it was definitely not a letter and it was not made public during his lifetime. It may have been a note to structure a collection of canon law, Gregory wanted compiled. Or it was what it sounds and looks like, a political manifesto, outlining the fundamental concepts underpinning Gregory’s papacy.

It contains 27 statements of fact, or of facts as Gregory saw them, which I quote here in the translation by Ernest F. Henderson, 1919:

  1. That the Roman church was founded by God alone.
  2. That the Roman pontiff alone can with right be called universal.
  3. That he alone can depose or reinstate bishops.
  4. That, in a council his legate, even if a lower grade, is above all bishops, and can pass sentence of deposition against them.
  5. That the pope may depose the absent.
  6. That, among other things, we ought not to remain in the same house with those excommunicated by him.
  7. That for him alone is it lawful, according to the needs of the time, to make new laws, to assemble together new congregations, to make an abbey of a canonry; and, on the other hand, to divide a rich bishopric and unite the poor ones.
  8. That he alone may use the imperial insignia.
  9. That of the pope alone all princes shall kiss the feet.
  10. That his name alone shall be spoken in the churches.
  11. That this is the only name in the world.
  12. That it may be permitted to him to depose emperors.
  13. That he may be permitted to transfer bishops if need be.
  14. That he has power to ordain a clerk of any church he may wish.
  15. That he who is ordained by him may preside over another church, but may not hold a subordinate position; and that such a one may not receive a higher grade from any bishop.
  16. That no synod shall be called a general one without his order.
  17. That no chapter and no book shall be considered canonical without his authority.
  18. That a sentence passed by him may be retracted by no one; and that he himself, alone of all, may retract it.
  19. That he himself may be judged by no one.
  20. That no one shall dare to condemn one who appeals to the apostolic chair.
  21. That to the latter should be referred the more important cases of every church.
  22. That the Roman church has never erred; nor will it err to all eternity, the Scripture bearing witness.
  23. That the Roman pontiff, if he has been canonically ordained, is undoubtedly made a saint by the merits of St. Peter; St. Ennodius, bishop of Pavia, bearing witness, and many holy fathers agreeing with him. As is contained in the decrees of St. Symmachus the pope.
  24. That, by his command and consent, it may be lawful for subordinates to bring accusations.
  25. That he may depose and reinstate bishops without assembling a synod.
  26. That he who is not at peace with the Roman church shall not be considered catholic.
  27. That he may absolve subjects from their fealty to wicked men.

I will not get into the debate about what of these statements has already been canonical law before Gregory has put them on paper here or whether he had made them up entirely. Nor can I really give you a steer, which parts are derived from known fakes like the Constantine donation and the papal decretals and imperial laws made up by the so-called Pseudo Isidore in the 9th century.

In the end it does not matter whether these statements are canonical or not, what matters is that Gregory believed these maxims to be true and that it was his job to enforce them across the whole of Christendom. Whatever the cost.

And so, he got to work.

What he does and how he does it would go far beyond the space available here. Check out episodes 32 and following which are all about Gregory VII.

by on

Emperor Henry IV confronts the Pope Gregory VII

The rise of the papacy since 1046 is almost linear. The popes throw off the chokehold of the roman aristocracy, they take over leadership of the church reform movement from the emperors, and by the end of the pontificate of Alexander II the Holy See has become universal with kings hailing the pope and not the emperor as their overlord.

In 1073 Hildebrand, the eminence grise of the last 20 years ascends the throne of St. Peter. His view of the role of the papacy goes even further than his predecessors. We know this because he laid it out in one of the most remarkable documents of the middle ages, the Dictatus Papae.

This ever expanding role of the papacy had to collide at some point with the other universal power, the king and future emperor Henry IV. Letters are exchanged and words are spoken that set events in motion that will destroy them both……

Listen here or on Apple podcasts, Spotify or any other podcasting platform. Link: https://history-of-the-germans.captivate.fm/listen

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans – Episode 32: Hildebrand, Not Pope but False Monk.

Before we start, I want to let you know that there is something to celebrate. It is now almost exactly a year since I started working on the History of the Germans. The first episodes came out on January 14th and your response, dear listeners, far exceeded my expectations. Right now, more than 1500 of you tune in every week and download well over 3000 episodes. The podcast has reached 25,000 pretty much as I speak.

When I started, I said I would take the narrative all the way up to the year 1990. As you can imagine, that was one of those promises that were under the premise that it would ultimately make sense to do that. With that much interest amongst you, it makes a lot of sense and so the Podcast will become a permanent feature in my life, and hopefully in yours.

Podcasting as it happens is a lot of work. I spend roughly 2 to 2.5 full working days on each episode, spread across the week. Most of that is spent on research. For instance I draw on 6 books on the Salians, 3 books on the papacy and 4 books on medieval ages in general plus two contemporary chroniclers and the letters of Pope Gregory VII for this episode. Writing, recording and editing takes another 8-10 hours in total per week. I am not complaining – this is what I call fun. The only thing I do complain about is the endless building work outside my window that you may hear from time to time in the background.

At my current run-rate of 5 years per episode, I still have 183 episodes to go, including this one and the last episode will air on December 4, 2025. We will see whether my German urge for punctuality will prevail or whether 20 years of living in Britain had some impact on delivery against promises.

But in any event, it will be a long run. And I need to make this economically viable, if not for the sake of my sanity than for my marriage. Since I hate advertising breaks in podcasts I and I am terrible at pretending a mattrass or online course has changed my life, the only way to finance this endeavour is by relying on your generosity.

I have set up a Patreon page where you can become a supporter of the podcast by making a monthly contribution. As a patron you get, first and foremost, my heartfelt gratitude, plus access to occasional bonus episodes on German Art, architecture or whatever else comes to my head. You can become a Patron for £2/$3 a month, the cost of a cappuccino. Those of you who feel the History of the Germans Podcast is worth supporting and have the funds please go to my website historyofthegermans.com and you can find the link under support the show or go directly to patreon.com/historyofthegermans.

Special thanks go to Kraig, Donald and Margaretha who have already signed up.

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Now let us get back to our story.

Last week we spent most of our time following one of the three strands of the story of the investiture controversy – the tension between expanding imperial central power and the magnates. In 1075 Henry IV. had managed to gain the upper hand in the conflict with the Saxons.  This came about, not because of a sudden emergence of support for the imperial idea, but because the magnates feared an uprising of the lower classes more than an overbearing ruler. We will leave our young king in the splendour of his achievement and catch up with events in Rome, following the second strand in our narrative, the rise of the papacy.

You may remember that the papacy’s fortune had begun improving with pope Leo IX (1049-1054). Over the following 20 years the papacy had grown even more in stature and when pope Alexander II died in 1073 the Holy See had reached a position that it never occupied before.

Firstly, the papacy had got out of the chokehold of the Roman aristocracy. We heard two episodes ago that the last attempt by the Theophylacts to put one of theirs on the throne of Saint Peter in 1059, had been foiled by an alliance of the reform-oriented cardinals under the leadership of Hildebrand and the support of Godfrey the Bearded.

Godfrey was called upon again in 1062/63 to help pope Alexander II gain access to the holy city that the local aristocrats held on behalf of Cadalus, the antipope installed by empress Agnes.

Godfrey the Bearded died in 1069 and was succeeded in his Italian possessions by his stepdaughter Mathilda of Tuscany. If Godfrey was a staunch supporter of the reform movement, Mathilda was even more committed. The papacy could call upon her almost as if she was a vassal of the church. Why she was so committed to the papacy in general and Hildebrand in particular has kept tongues wagging for centuries, but we should remember that she mostly continued her stepfather’s policies.

Having more or less unlimited recourse on the power of Tuscany was not the only military capability of the Holy See. During the fighting between the supporters of Alexander II and the antipope Cadalus the papacy created its own military capability. Pope Leo IX may well have been the first pope to lead an army into battle, but his army consisted entirely of troops of his supporters, not papal troops. The units Hildebrand created in 1062/63 were papal armies. His detractors would later claim that he had led these troops into war, sword in hand, which was in contravention of canon law.

The next stone on the papal chessboard were the Normans. As of 1073 they had been loyal vassals of the pope, helping out when needed. Otherwise, they had been busy conquering the rest of Southern Italy and the island of Sicily. In 1072 when Robert Guiscard and his next brother, Roger, another fruit of the inexhaustible loins of Tancred of Hauteville, entered Palermo, a city of 50,000 inhabitants, larger than Rome, London, Florence, Naples or Genoa and in Italy only surpassed by Milan in wealth and splendour. Under count and later king Roger of Sicily the island and its capital Palermo experienced a golden age. Roger, whose actual Norman forces may have numbered just a few hundred had to be a tolerant ruler who created a state where Muslim, Jewish, Orthodox Christian and Latin Christian communities lived in relative harmony, not something his feudal overlord the Pope much appreciated.

With the Normans not quite as reliable as the rulers of Tuscany, the Popes would not have minded an occasional imperial journey to Rome as a counterweight. In particular Alexander II offered an imperial coronation several times, but it never happened.

The popes, who a hundred years earlier served literally as the footstools of the Crescenti rulers of Rome have found a degree of political and military independence, never seen before.

In that context it is no surprise that the way a pope is chosen also changed.After the five popes between 1046 and 1058 been directly appointed by the emperor, the 1059 the Lateran Synod established that the pope should be elected by the Cardinals with some, not further defined involvement of the emperor. Imperial involvement in the subsequent elections dwindled to naught. And when empress Agnes tried to appoint her own pope, it ended with the schism of Cadalus, a massive loss of confidence in the imperial religious policy and her losing the regency. When the bishops meet at a synod in Mantua to bring the schism to an end, archbishop Anno of Cologne initially presided over proceedings as the representative of the emperor. But he was soon relegated to the back benches thanks to Hildebrand insisting that the emperor has no longer any say in the choice of who should be pope.

Bottom line 1: The papacy has become an independent political, not just spiritual entity with its own military capability.

What gave the papacy the next push up the ladder was that it assumed the leadership in the church reform movement.

The church reform had started as a grass roots movement. Pious monks, disgusted by the worldly mores of the rich and powerful abbeys had formed communities in remote places like Cluny, Gorze or Moyenmoutier. They wanted to live according to the rule of St. Benedict, focused on praying and doing good works for a reward in heaven. Their efforts were recognised by noble lords, the duke of Aquitaine amongst them, who wanted these holy monks to pray for their souls in the afterlife. So they gave donations to the monks or asked them to set up a new priory or monastery on their lands. In the next step, the emperors, namely Henry II and Henry III embraced the movement and began to roll out reform in the mighty imperial abbeys of Reichenau, Corvey, Fulda etc.

At the same time the urban and rural population who had little interaction with the monks on their remote abbeys, demanded that the priest who administered their sacraments to live up to his billing. That meant initially that the priest should have been chosen for merit, rather than for the amount of kickback he offered the local bishop. But more and more the laity was upset by the fact that most priests, canons and deacons were married or had congress with women. Celibacy had been an ideal and monks and bishops were expected to live celibate since the early times of the church. But ordinary priests were not. I understand that there is no watertight theological reason for celibacy in the clergy, and it is not required for priests in other Christian denominations. But in the first half of the 11th century the demand for a higher standard in pastoral care in Western Europe became associated with celibacy. My non-theological view is that if monks, the most effective communicators with divine, lived in celibacy, than being celibate clearly improved efficacy of the sacraments. And hence the city dwellers and peasants wanted access to the same quality of religious rites as the aristocrats who had their monks.

The education and moral standards of the priests was the responsibility of the bishops. Henry II and Henry III enthusiastically encouraged their bishops to improve the standards of their clergy.

By 1046 when Henry III deposed three popes at the council of Sutri, he was the undisputed leader of the church reform movement. He appointed competent bishops who raised the standards of the clergy and pushed through the reform of the monasteries. And finally, he appointed competent popes.

Leo IX and Victor II got the papacy involved in the work of church reform for the first time. They saw themselves as partners of the emperor in this great endeavour and focused on the parts of the world the emperor had difficulty to reach. In particular the French bishops came in for a drubbing. Simony was rife in France, since investiture of bishops was one of the few sources of income for the king.

The popes travelled endlessly; a level of touristic activity not seen again until Pope John Paul II’s popemobile tours. Leo IX for instance crossed the alps 6 times in the 5 years of his pontificate, holding synods in France, Germany and Italy. The same goes for his successor Victor II. Almost as important as the papal presence North of the Alps was the activity of papal legates, usually prominent cardinals like Pietro Damiano, the later popes Stephen IX, Nicolas II. Alexander II and Gregory Vi. The legates would call and preside over Synods, where again bishops were investigated and condemned for simony or other forms of corruption or misdemeanour. Legates would be sent even to adjudicate in major political issues, like the attempt of Henry IV. to get a divorce. 

Within a span of maybe 20 years, the papacy goes from being almost invisible in the debate over the most important issue of its day to being everywhere.

Even the intellectual epicentre of the church reform shifts. Was the theological underpinning of the reform movement initially devised by the abbots of Cluny, Gorze etc., it is now the college of cardinal and the annual synods in Rome that set the tone. St. Peter Damian, Humbert of Silva candida and others who came to Rome from all over Europe form a new centre that sets the dogma.

At the same time, the imperial leadership role diminishes under the regency of  empress Agnes. Rapacious bishops like Anno of Cologne and Adalbert of Hamburg-Bremen do not add much to the imperial reputation. That reputation completely crumbles when Agnes sides with the conservative forces, the Northern Italian bishops and the Roman Aristocracy, appointing the bishop Cadalus as antipope Honorius III. Even though Anno of Cologne reverses the policy, it is too late to keep the imperial power in the lead.

Some hope is pinned on young Henry IV to step into his father’s footsteps. But that crumbles quickly. Henry IV. is likely a religious man because everybody in the 11th century was. But he showed no particular enthusiasm for the cleaning up of the clergy. And there is even a question whether he could or should have done that, since his bishops, who he relied upon for soldiers and food, felt increasingly harassed by the pope and looked to the emperor for help, an emperor who until 1075 was extremely weak himself.

Bottom line 2: the papacy now leads the church reform movement

Not only has the papacy become a self-determining political organisation, and the leader of the largest popular movement of its time, it has also become universal.

Before 1046 the papacy operated predominantly in Italy and in relation to its neighbours, the emperor and the king of France. Yes, there would be interactions with far flung lands, like when king Canute came from rainy England or pope Sylvester II sent a crown for the coronation of the king of Hungary. But these actions were responsive, rather than proactive.

After 1046, the papacy got busy collecting oaths of fealty from kings and rulers all over Western Europe.

It started off with Pope Nicolas II enfeoffing the Normans Robert Guiscard as duke of Apulia and Richard of Aversa as duke of Capua. Moreover, the popes also granted these Normans the island of Sicily and the parts of Southern Italy still ruled by the Byzantines. That is a ballsy move on behalf of the pope, since it suggests the papacy was the feudal overlord of Southern Italy. Even the Constantine Donation, which we know and many people at the time knew was a fake, did not extend to Southern Italy and certainly not to Sicily. But where there is no plaintiff, there is no judge. The emperor in Constantinople, whose lands these had been before the Muslim and Norman conquest had no standing in Rome any more as the break between the Eastern and the Western church had become permanent in 1054. And the emperor Henry IV. who would be next in line with a claim, well he had other things on his mind.

In 1068 the king of Aragon in Spain came on pilgrimage to Rome and gave his kingdom in the hands of the pope to receive it back as a fief. As usual, he did this only in part out of piety. What he got in exchange was papal support that turned the kings’ wars with the Muslim Emirs into a sort of pre-crusade type endeavour.

One of the great political tools the papacy used were papal banners. These were to be carried into battle as signs that the apostles Peter and Paul were fighting on the side of the flagbearer. That was most valuable to those whose claims to their conquests were weakest. One of these pretenders was William the Conqueror, whose claim to the English throne was, how can I say that most politely, a stretch. Pope Alexander II, upon insistence of Hildebrand gave William the banner and his endorsement. William enjoyed a reputation as a supporter of Church reform, whilst the old regime in England was seen as simonistic and insufficiently focused on enforcing celibacy amongst the clergy.

The reach of the papacy did not stop at England’s shore. In a few years pope Gregory will write letters of advice and admonishment to the great King of Ireland, the bishop of Carthage in North Africa and even the ruler of what is now Morocco.

In just 30 years the papacy’s ambition has grown from being the bishop of Rome to being the universal ruler of all Christendom. In doing so the papacy had simply stepped into a void that the emperors since Otto the great have left wide open.

In 972 when Otto the great died, he was the universal ruler of Christian Western Europe. Though technically he was not King of France or King of Burgundy, the rulers of these lands recognised him as the arbiter of their disputes and came to his assemblies. The same goes for the dukes of Poland and Bohemia. Hungary and Denmark were still mostly pagan, and England was a slaughterhouse of Viking invasions. In other words, there was a universal authority, and that was the emperor. His immediate successors, Otto II and Otto III tried to maintain that universal ambition. Otto III’s policy of a Renovatio Imperii was the most stringent expression of that idea.

But since Henry II’s reign from 1002-1024, imperial focus shifted towards expanding central authority within its own lands and its geographic zone of influence shrunk. France was on its own path since the Capetians had taken control. After Boleslav the Brave Poland could only be brought under imperial control for short periods. This goes even more for Hungary, now a Christian kingdom. Denmark and Norway were on a roll and did not recognise the emperor as their overlord. And let us not forget that Henry II waited 12 years before he went to Rome to be crowned. Konrad II and Henry III may have been quicker in going to Rome, but at that point the train had left the station. The empire was no longer universal.

A few years later, pope Gregory VII will write to the king of Hungary that if he took his kingdom as fief from the emperor, he would only be a regulus, a little king. The emperor is -said Gregory- no different from any other king who owes his rule to God and god’s representative on earth, the pope. The only way to true sovereignty was to receive the kingdom from the hand of the pope and swear fealty to him as the sole universal power in Christendom.

Now this is where we are on the 21st of April 1073, when Pope Alexander II died unexpectedly in the palace of the Lateran. The next day as the pope’s body is laid out in the basilica of the Lateran, the people call for Hildebrand to be made pope. As the funeral cortege winds through the city f Rome, the calls grow louder and louder. And when they reach the church of San Pietro in Vincoli, the place where Saint Peter was kept in chain before his martyrdom the masses sweep the archdeacon into the church and enthrone him there and then.

A few minor hitches in that process. First, Hildebrand despite 35 years of service to the papal court had not yet been ordained a priest, something that had to be done at double speed.. And second, the Papacy had just established  that the pope should be elected by the college of Cardinals not raised by public acclaim. That was conveniently forgotten in the melee outside SAN Pietro in Vincoli.

When Hildebrand is coming to, he finds himself on the papal throne. That cannot have been much of a surprise for the now roughly 55-year old. His position inside the church had grown and grown these last 20 years and his modest title belied his actual position. Peter Damian used to joke that some people came to Rome to meet the Lord Pope, but most went to see the pope’s lord, Hildebrand.

Hildebrand takes the papal name of Gregory VII, which must be the wickedest joke of the 11th century. The previous bearer of this papal name had been Gregory VI, the only pope ever proven to have actually paid cold hard cash to get the job, and Hildebrand’s first boss who he accompanied into exile. When Gregory VI had been the symbol of the corruption of the church, his pupil, Gregory VII will become synonymous with the fight against the buying and selling of holy offices.

I have complained many times before that we hardly ever find anything resembling a political manifesto from any of the emperors or popes that have so far featured on the podcast. Historians are forced to deduce their intentions from their actions, rather than measuring their actions against their intentions. Gregory VII is in this, as in so many other things, the great exception.

Gregory filed a register of letters and other documents he deemed important to the library of the Vatican. This register contains a very unusual note, known today as the Dictatus Papae. What its purpose was is unclear. It is not dated and was definitely not a letter. It was not made public during his lifetime. It may have been a note to structure a collection of canon law, Gregory wanted compiled. Or it was what it sounds and looks like, a political manifesto, outlining the fundamental concepts underpinning Gregory’s papacy.

It contains 27 statements of fact, or of facts as Gregory saw them, which I quote here in the translation by Ernest F. Henderson, 1919:

  1. That the Roman church was founded by God alone.
  2. That the Roman pontiff alone can with right be called universal.
  3. That he alone can depose or reinstate bishops.
  4. That, in a council his legate, even if a lower grade, is above all bishops, and can pass sentence of deposition against them.
  5. That the pope may depose the absent.
  6. That, among other things, we ought not to remain in the same house with those excommunicated by him.
  7. That for him alone is it lawful, according to the needs of the time, to make new laws, to assemble together new congregations, to make an abbey of a canonry; and, on the other hand, to divide a rich bishopric and unite the poor ones.
  8. That he alone may use the imperial insignia.
  9. That of the pope alone all princes shall kiss the feet.
  10. That his name alone shall be spoken in the churches.
  11. That this is the only name in the world.
  12. That it may be permitted to him to depose emperors.
  13. That he may be permitted to transfer bishops if need be.
  14. That he has power to ordain a clerk of any church he may wish.
  15. That he who is ordained by him may preside over another church, but may not hold a subordinate position; and that such a one may not receive a higher grade from any bishop.
  16. That no synod shall be called a general one without his order.
  17. That no chapter and no book shall be considered canonical without his authority.
  18. That a sentence passed by him may be retracted by no one; and that he himself, alone of all, may retract it.
  19. That he himself may be judged by no one.
  20. That no one shall dare to condemn one who appeals to the apostolic chair.
  21. That to the latter should be referred the more important cases of every church.
  22. That the Roman church has never erred; nor will it err to all eternity, the Scripture bearing witness.
  23. That the Roman pontiff, if he has been canonically ordained, is undoubtedly made a saint by the merits of St. Peter; St. Ennodius, bishop of Pavia, bearing witness, and many holy fathers agreeing with him. As is contained in the decrees of St. Symmachus the pope.
  24. That, by his command and consent, it may be lawful for subordinates to bring accusations.
  25. That he may depose and reinstate bishops without assembling a synod.
  26. That he who is not at peace with the Roman church shall not be considered catholic.
  27. That he may absolve subjects from their fealty to wicked men.

I will not get into the debate about what of these statements has already been canonical law before Gregory has put them on paper here or whether he had made them up entirely. Nor can I really give you a steer, which parts are derived from known fakes like the Constantine donation and the papal decretals and imperial laws made up by the so-called Pseudo Isidore in the 9th century.

What is certain is that a number of these statements have not been in use for a long time, should they have ever been church law, and they go directly against the way the world had been run for the last 100 years or so. Let us go through a few:

The pope may depose and reinstate bishops? Without a synod and even when the bishop is absent? So far deposing a bishop was a very rare occurrence and happened if at all at a synod convened by the emperor.

The pope can transfer bishops? Didn’t we hear that transferring a bishop was impossible because the bishop was married to his diocese and when Otto II wanted his advisor to be elevated to be archbishop of Magdeburg he had to suppress the bishopric of Merseburg with the well known consequence of a lost battle in Italy and a pagan uprising in the east?

That the kings have to kiss the feet of the pope and that he can depose emperors (note the plural), and that he can absolve his subjects from their oath of fealty. More on that story later.

And then, my favourite: that the Roman Church has never erred; nor will it err to eternity; that a canonically ordained pope is undoubtably made a saint. Check out your books on rhetoric, you may find that an orator using the word “undoubtedly” is usually riddled with doubt. 

In the end it does not matter whether these statements are canonical or not, what matters is that Gregory believed these maxims to be true and that it was his job to enforce them across the whole of Christendom. Whatever the cost.

And so, he got to work.

He sets out his stall in the synod of 1074 where he summarises the rules for the new reformed church as follows:

  1. Those who are guilty of the crime of fornication may not celebrate masses or minister at the altar in lesser orders. 
  2. Those who have been promoted by the simoniac heresy, that is, with the intervention of money, to any rank or office of holy orders may no longer exercise any ministry in holy church.
  3. No one of the clergy shall receive the investiture with a bishopric or abbey or church from the hand of an emperor or king or of any lay person, male or female.

One of his main tools to implement these new rules were open letters to his bishops. These he would send either say to “all the bishops of France” or an individual bishop, however in copies so that his whole clergy would see them. In the letters he would name and shame an individual bishop for refusing or being slack in the implementation of these rules.

It tended to be a four-step process. First, he would outline the new rules. In the next letter he would admonish the bishop for lack of progress. Then in the third he would become threatening, ordering the bishop to come to Rome and account for himself. Like this letter to bishop Otto of Constance quote:

“O the impudence! O the unparalleled insolence! that a bishop should despise the decrees of the apostolic see, should set at naught the precepts of the holy fathers, and in truth should impose upon his subjects from his lofty place and from his episcopal chair things contrary to these precepts and opposed to the Christian faith! We accordingly command you by apostolic authority to present yourself at our next council in the first week of Lent, to answer canonically respecting both this disobedience and contempt of the apostolic see, and all the charges that have been laid against you.”

And as a final move, Gregory would depose the bishop and tell his congregation the following (quote):

“Accordingly, as we have already said, by apostolic authority we charge all of you, both greater and lesser, who stand by God and St. Peter, that if he is determined to continue in his obduracy you should show him neither respect nor obedience. Nor need you think this a danger to your souls. For if, as we have often said already, he is determined to resist apostolic precepts, we so absolve you by St. Peter’s authority from every yoke of subjection to him that, even if any of you is bound to him by the obligation of an oath, for so long as he is a rebel against God and the apostolic see you are bound to pay him no fealty.” 

Gregory VII writes an enormous amount of letters, 387 of which are held in the papal registry alone. Thanks to a great visualisation by George Litchfield, we can see where they went. Most went to France in these first years. It is there where Gregory sees the biggest issues and the most obstinate bishops.

But Henry IV is also on his mind.

Already in 1073 he writes to his best mate, Mathilda of Tuscany as follows:

Quote “And as to the king: As you have learned from our former letters, it is our intention to send pious men to him, by whose admonitions and the help of God we may be able to bring him back to loyalty to his mother, the Holy Church of Rome, and give him detailed instructions as to the proper form of assuming the empire. But if, contrary to our hopes, he shall refuse to listen to us, we cannot and we ought not to turn aside from our mother, the Roman Church, which has cherished us and has often brought forth other children from the blood of her sons; so God protect us! And surely it is safer for us to resist him even unto death in defence of the truth and for our own welfare than to give way to his will by consenting to iniquity and so rush on to our own ruin.”

As far as linear history goes, this story of the ascent of the papacy is about as linear as it can get. Every step along the way the papacy gains in stature until it is now in the hands of a driven, almost fanatic pope hell bent on establishing his supremacy over the whole of the Roman world.

Whilst the king of France gets out of his way and the kings of Denmark, England, Hungary and Poland are either too weak or too far away to put up any resistance, the clash had to happen with the empire, and its still not crowned emperor in waiting, Henry IV.

From Henry’s perspective Gregory is very much off the reservation. Not being involved in papal elections is something that could irritate an imperial government, but it is certainly not the first time that the empire had let things in Rome slack a bit.

But a pope who runs round in Germany, admonishing and deposing bishops left right and centre. That is not on. And what is certainly not on is #3 of Gregory’s stated political objectives, that no laymen should be allowed to invest a bishop or abbot.

This would be the death nail in the Imperial Church system. The Imperial Church System is built on the idea that the king/emperor can appoint bishops and abbots, usually from his own chancery. In particular the emperor would invest the bishop or abbot into his worldly possessions, i.e., the lands and counties that had been granted to him by the emperors long ago. Thanks to that investiture the bishops in particular were obliged to provide the military and financial resources to support the regime. You may remember that already under emperor Otto II, 100 years earlier, nearly 2/3 of the imperial army in Italy was provided by the Imperial church. By now this number is in all likelihood even larger since church had received even more land and privileges from the intervening emperors.

I did say last episode that Henry IV had lost faith in the reliability of the Imperial Church system, which is not a surprise having watched Anno of Cologne plundering the imperial purse. But that does not mean he could afford to give up on it. His territorial power in Goslar was clearly no match for his enemies as we have seen. And reliance on his magnates was not really an option, since they did effectively what they wanted.

What is also noticeable is that this ban on lay investiture came a bit out of the blue. Yes, Humbert of Silva Candida had suggested it as far back as 1059 and it had sneaked into some papal decrees. But it had never been implemented. All the way into the 1070s did first Agnes and later Henry IV. invest bishops across the empire. All three of the last popes, including Gregory VII himself had been witnesses to imperial investitures during their time as papal legates to the imperial court, but none of them ever said a peep about it being uncanonical.  

Things came to a head over the investiture of the archbishop of Milan. Milan had been internal turmoil since the days of the Valvassore uprising under Konrad II. It was the largest city in europe and the most economically advanced, which meant they were about 50 to 100 years ahead of their time when it came to social and political developments.

Since about 1057 the lower classes in Milan had demanded an improvement in the corrupt and licentious clergy of the city. Street gangs would harass clergymen they suspected of living with women or had acquired their office through the payment of bribes. Rioting became increasingly intense, and the rebels calling themselves the Pataria began to organise under the leadership of a member of the city nobility called Erlembald. Erlembald received a lot of support from the papacy, and even received a papal banner in his fight with the archbishop. This archbishop, Wido who had been exiled and was even at some point captured by the Pataria resigned in 1070, handing over the reigns of the archbishopric to his deputy, Godfrey. Godfrey travelled to the imperial court for his investiture, as had been the tradition with archbishops of Milan for centuries. Whilst Godfrey received ring and staff from Henry IV., the Pataria raised one of their own, Atto to be archbishop.  Atto received recognition from the pope and civil war in the city continued between the supporters of Atto and the papacy on one hand and Godfrey and the emperor on the other.

In one of his last acts, pope Alexander II, under guidance of the future Gregory VII, tried to put pressure on Henry IV by excommunicated some of his advisors.  That excommunication lingered without much effect whilst the situation in Milan changed in favour of the imperial side. The Pataria suffered the loss of its leader, Erlembald in the fighting and after the city had burned down, the imperial party took control. They asked Henry IV for a new archbishop, even though Godfrey was still around. Henry IV agreed to this demand and appointed Tedald, one of the members of his chancery to be archbishop of Milan.

This is where Gregory loses it. In December 1075 he writes a letter to Henry IV admonishing him for his decisions in Milan as well as for retaining his advisors who had been excommunicated 2 years before. The letter is a not very veiled threat to excommunicate the king.

We are in step 3 of the Gregorian deposition process. Like with the bishop Otto of Constance the process is, letter 1, information about the new rules, letter 2, call to implement, letter three, do it or else, and letter 4 deposition.

Henry IV sure had heard about this process. And he should know that Gregory was serious. For one, the letter was delivered by two papal legates who also brought a verbal message from the pope and were supposed to bring an account of the king’s informal response back to Rome.

And Gregory VII had form in excommunicating kings. He had threatened to excommunicate King Henry I of France unless he took action on simony and had actually excommunicated the Norman leader Robert Guiscard, not for any spiritual failures, but for attacking papal land.

Henry’s reaction to the first two letters had been to play for time since, as you may remember, he was in the midst of getting his proverbial handed to him by the Saxons in 1073 and 1074. But when the third letter arrived in 1075, Henry IV had just won his great victory against the Saxons. No way is he going to yield to this rudeness.

He called a synod of the German bishops in Worms for the 24th of January, a mere month after the receipt of the letter. Despite the winter weather 26 bishops come to the synod, including the cardinal Hugo the White, who had fallen out with Gregory. Hugo who came up from Rome tells the synod that Gregory has gone completely out of control.  He says the pope lives in the Lateran in sin with Mathilda of Tuscany a woman in her 20s who had been estranged from her husband and an acclaimed beauty . Moreover, at Christmas the prefect Censius, member of the Roman aristocracy had the pope apprehended, though Gregory managed to escape with the help of the populace.

It was the pope’s alleged hypocrisy that irritated the German bishops. These mighty prelates were tired of being harassed and harangued by the fanatic on the papal throne. No more did they want to be summoned to Rome to atone for things they believed were perfectly acceptable, like letting their canons get married or accepting financial obligations to the king upon investiture. And even more so if the pope himself failed to adhere to his own standards.

And so, Henry IV in agreement with his bishops writes back to Gregory on January 24th, 1076 as follows:

Quote: “Henry, king not by force, but by the grace of God, to Hildebrand, at present not pope, but false monk. S

You deserve such greeting for the disorder you created. There is no rank in the Church which you have not made to partake in shame instead of honour, in curse instead of blessing. For, to mention only a few, most important instances out of so many; you have dared to lay hands on the leaders of the holy Church, the Lord’s anointed – the archbishops, the bishops and priests; you have trampled them underfoot like slaves who do not know what their master is doing.; by crushing them have you  endeared yourself to the commonest of people; you have regarded them all as ignorant, but yourself as omniscient. This knowledge, however, you have used not for edification but for destruction, so that we are justified in believing that St. Gregory, whose name you have arrogated to yourself, prophesied about you when he said, “The pride of him who has power becomes the greater the number of those who are subject to him, and he thinks that he himself can do more than all.”

And indeed, we have endured all of this, being anxious to preserve the honour of the apostolic see; but you have understood our humility as fear, and therefore have not been afraid to rise up against the royal power given to us by God, daring to threaten to take it from us. As if we had received our kingdom from you! As if the kingdom and the dominion were in your hands and not in God’s!

And this, although our Lord Jesus Christ has called us to kingship, but has not called you to the priesthood. For you have ascended by the following steps. For by cunning, which the monastic profession abhors, have you obtained money; by money, favour; by the sword, the throne of peace. And from the throne of peace you have disturbed the peace by arming the subjects against those who rule over them; by teaching, that our bishops, called by God, are to be despised; by taken offices from priests and giving it laymen, by permitting them to depose or condemn those who had been  ordained as teachers by the laying on of the bishops’ hands.

And you even laid hand on me, who, though unworthy to be among the anointed, yet have been anointed to the kingdom; on me, who, as the tradition of the holy fathers teaches, may not be deposed for any crime unless, God forbid, I have departed from the faith, on me who is subject to the judgment of God alone.

The wisdom of the holy fathers even left Julian, the Apostate, not to be tried by themselves, but left it to God alone, to judge and depose him. For even the true pope, Peter, exclaims, “Fear God, honour the King.”

But you, who do not fear God, dishonour Him in me whom He has appointed. Therefore St. Paul, when he spared no angel of heaven if he had preached otherwise, did not exempt even you who teach otherwise on earth. For he says, “If anyone, neither I nor an angel from heaven, preaches any other gospel than that which was preached to you, he will be condemned. You then, condemned by this curse and by the judgment of all our bishops and by our own, descend and renounce the apostolic chair which you have usurped. Let another ascend the throne of St. Peter, who shall not exercise violence under the guise of religion, but shall teach the sound doctrine of St. Peter. I, Henry, king by the grace of God, say to you, together with all our bishops, descend, descend or be damned forever.”

end quote

Translation by myself

This is the theological equivalent of parking tanks of the Vatican lawn. Both sides are fighting for survival. Henry for his control of the Imperial church and hence the resources of the empire, Hildebrand for what he believes are the rights of the holy church and its leader, the bishop of Rome, and a bit about his own survival. I guess. In January 1076 a betting man would have put his money on the Panzerfahrer Heinrich who had the bishops and their resources on his side. But that will turn out a poor bet as we will see.

I know I wanted to get all the way to Canossa today, but that was not to be. This episode is already far too long. So, you will have to wait until next week. I hope you are going to join us again.

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Otto was born into a family of Saxon magnates with possessions in the Harz mountains. He was one of the most accomplished military and political leaders in Germany during the reign of Henry IV. The Empress Agnes made him duke of Bavaria in 1061 to lead a campaign into Hungary. A mere 12 months later he repaid her by becoming one of the leaders in the coup of Kaiserswerth. He and his co-conspirators abducted the 12-year old King Henry IV. Henry IV never forgave him for that.

In 1070 he was accused of having hired thugs to murder king Henry IV. Absent any proof, other than the word of the thug himself, King Henry IV. ordered a trial by combat. When Otto did not show, he was deposed as duke of Bavaria and lost all his possessions. He was captured and imprisoned for 2 years before the king released him. He returned some of his personal property back to him. The Saxon chroniclers claim that all of that was a plot by the king to depose Otto of Northeim.

Northeim’s revenge came when the Saxons had gathered in Hötensleben in 1073 to discuss what to do about the king’s encroachment on to their land and ancient freedoms. The king had built a string of castles, including the famous Harzburg (see previous post) in order to create a new royal territory.

Though the Saxons had been insulted by the king just weeks earlier and had been seething under the Salian rule for decades, outright rebellion is no easy decision. That is when Otto takes a stand and delivers a speech, which must be one of the first political speeches by someone not a king or pope ever recorded in Germany:

“The calamities and disgraces that our king has brought upon each one of you for a long time are great and unbearable, but what he still intends to do, if the Almighty God permits him, is even greater and more severe. Strong castles he has erected, as you know, numerous in places already firm by nature, and has placed in them a great multitude of his vassals, and abundantly provided with weapons of all kinds. These castles are not erected against the heathen, who have completely devastated our land where it borders theirs, but in the midst of our country, where no one ever thought of making war against him; he has fortified them with such great effort, and what they mean for this land some of you have already experienced, and if God’s mercy and your bravery do not intervene, you will soon all experience it.

They take your possessions by force and hide them in their castles; they abuse your wives and daughters for their pleasure when they please; they demand your servants and your cattle, and all that they like, for their service; yes, they even force you yourselves to bear every burden, however odious, on your free shoulders.

But when I imagine in my thoughts what is still waiting for us, then everything that you are now enduring still seems to me to be bearable. For when he will have built his castles in our whole country at his discretion and will have equipped them with armed warriors and all other necessities, then he will no longer plunder your possessions one by one, but he will snatch from you all that you possess with one blow, will give your goods to strangers, and will make you yourselves, you freeborn men, oblige unknown men as servants. And all this, you brave men, will you let it happen to you? Is it not better to fall in brave fight than to live a miserable and ignominious life, being made a shameful mockery by these people?

Even Serfs who are bought for money do not endure the unreasonable commands of their masters, and you, who were born free, should patiently endure servitude? Perhaps you, as Christians, are afraid to violate the oath with which you have paid homage to the king. Indeed, to the king you have sworn. 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. So not against the king, but against the unjust robber of my freedom; not against the fatherland, but for the fatherland, and for freedom, which no good man surrenders other than with his life at the same time, I take up arms, and I demand of you that you also take them up. Awake, therefore, and preserve for your children the inheritance which your fathers have left you; beware lest through your carelessness or slothfulness you yourselves and your children become serfs of strangers”

(Rough translation based on W. Wattenbachs translation of Bruno’s Buch vom Sachsenkrieg)

Now before you go and think that here is the first outburst of German nationalism, I have to stop you there. When Northeim talks of “patria” or “fatherland” he talks about Saxony, not Germany. And when he talks about freedom, he is not talking about human rights, but ancestral privileges, the “Freedoms” as they will be later called.

The speech was successful, and the Saxons rebelled, a rebellion that was ultimately crushed in the first of many brutal battles of the ensuing 50 years of civil war. Success in this first battle encouraged young King Henry to take the fight to the papacy and its most formidable leader, Pope Gregory VII, a fight that neither side would win, but would leave Germany on a path towards a weaker centre controlled by the princes, a structure known as the Holy Roman Empire (again see previous post).

Otto was, despite his great oratory, a turncoat. Once the rebellion had failed, he joined the king and became his administrator in Saxony. In a twist of irony, he was put in charge of rebuilding all these castles he had railed against.

He changed sides again in 1078 and joined the anti-king Rudolf of Rheinfelden in his campaign against Henry IV. That was the last time he swapped sides. Even after Rudolf had lost and died, Otto remained in arms against the now emperor Henry IV. Otto of Northeim died in 1083.

Otto is a typical example of a magnate of the 11th century. He was not opposed to the dynasty as such or the king specifically. What he fought against was the rise of territorial kingship that would reduce the senior lords influence on imperial decision making. And in that, despite the regular setbacks, he was successful.

Otto’s speech features heavily in episode 31 of the History of the Germans Podcast that looks more closely at the conflict between Henry IV and his magnates. To listen for free on Apple, Spotify, Google Podcast, Podbean etc., follow this link: https://history-of-the-germans.captivate.fm/listen or go to my website www.historyofthegermans.com where you can also find ways to support the Podcast and Blog.

Picture: From Froissart’s Chronicles, so clearly not a depiction of Otto of Northeim, but the only picture of a medieval speech I could find.

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The Nobles Rebel against “the Imperial Tyrant” Henry IV

In 1065 king Henry IV begins his personal rule. After 9 years of regency imperial power is much diminished. Under the rule of Anno of Cologne and Adalbert of Hamburg-Bremen prelates and lords are raiding the imperial purse. When the barons force the young king to dismiss his main adviser, he realises that the previous model of kingship no longer works. He cannot rely on the oaths of fealty sworn by his counts and dukes, nor can he put faith in the Imperial Church System his predecessors could draw on.

The royal lands around the rich silver mines of Goslar are the nucleus for his new, territorial power base. Mighty castles on the tops of mountains project royal power, a governor, rather than a count heads his administration, and most of the castles’ garrison and administrators are ministeriales, unfree men trained in war.

This new policy clashes with the Saxons, the stem that already stood in opposition to Henry’s father and plotted to murder him when he was a child. In 1073 Otto of Northeim delivers his famous speech that turned disaffection into outright rebellion. In 18 months, Henry IV’s Saxon War will become a rollercoaster hurtling from unconditional surrender to triumph – but is the triumph going to last?

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans – Episode 31 The (second) Saxon War

I think I have to apologise for last weeks oversized episode. I am trying to keep the length to 25-30 minutes with a tolerance up to 35 minutes. 43 minutes was definitely too long. The problem came about because we reached one of these moments of high drama when the three strands of the Investiture Controversy come together. The struggle between imperial power and the magnates, the popular movement demanding church reform and the expanding role and conception of the papacy.

Today’s job should be a touch easier because we will predominantly focus on the first of these three, the escalating tensions between the young king Henry IV. and his Saxon barons. I say should, because it is not that simple.

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One of the problems are the sources. Up until now most of the sources, be it Widukind, Liudprand of Cremona, Thietmar of Merseburg, Wipo, Hermann of Reichenau etc were usually supportive of the emperors but not excessively biased. Some had to be taken with a grain of salt as they skipped bits or put their favourite ruler into a better light. But they did not as a rule make things up. The chroniclers we have for the second half of the 11th century are different. Since the controversy between emperor and pope goes to the heart of people’s identity and beliefs, there is no neutral or semi neutral observer.

The main sources, namely Bruno who wrote the Book of the Saxon Wars and Lambert of Hersfeld whose annals provide a detailed account of Henry IV. reign are both heavily biased against the emperor. And when I say biased, I really mean biased. Bruno in particular accuses Henry IV. of all sorts of all sorts of treachery and licentiousness up to the rape of nuns, incest with his sister and premeditated murder. Henry IV. much less effective PR machine retaliates with accusations of papal love affairs with Matilda of Tuscany etc.

As for the protagonists themselves we have a register of 387 letters and notes written by pope Gregory VII between 1073 and 1084, whilst we have just 8 letters from Henry IV, and it can be assumed that whilst Gregory likely dictated them himself whilst Henry’s are the work of his chancery.

With almost all the sources painting a negative picture of Henry IV. and a big black hole where his own PR machine should be left historians with a serious dilemma. It is hard to dismiss the accusations entirely, since one of the consistent demands of Henry IV.’s enemies was for him to be subjected to an enquiry into his “crimes”. They would not have done that if he had had been whiter than white. But how much of that are we to believe? And if we do not believe it, what was he like instead?

In the 19th century German historians tried to dismiss the notion of Henry IV. as a debauched and incompetent ruler. Modern historians like Gerd Althoff have concluded that there was something, even to Bruno’s accusations and attribute at least some of the difficulties in his reign to his personality. Stefan Weinfurter highlights the unwillingness of Henry IV. to adhere to the traditional methods of imperial rule and conflict resolution as a major contributing factor to his failures.

Well, I will try to stay as close to the current consensus as I can, but with the sources as they are, I am likely to fall for my own biases as we go through this story. Apologies in advance. All angry comments please DM me, if you like what you hear, feel free to put it on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc.

With this let’s get into the story.

Henry IV. had begun his personal rule in 1065 after he had been declared an adult at the ripe old age of 15. But as was the case with Otto III 70 years earlier, the transition to personal rule was not like flicking a switch. It was a gradual process whereby the dominant figures during the regency are gradually phased out and new advisors are phased in.

As we heard last week, imperial power had been receding under the regency of Agnes of Poitou. But once Anno of Cologne had abducted the young king and created a new government, things became nearly anarchic. Archbishop Anno of Cologne and his co-conspirators could not retain control unchallenged. They had to concede a role to their archenemy, Archbishop Adalbert of Hamburg-Bremen. That does not stop regular conspiracies aimed at removing Anno and/or Adalbert. It seems that all that the magnates cared about was to expand their personal power as quickly as possible, presumably thinking that once the king would get a handle on the levers of state, the party would be over.

We have little evidence about the rapaciousness of the secular lords, but there are some juicy stories about our two archbishops. Our friend Anno was accused of putting his family members into the plum bishoprics all across the country, and indeed one of his brothers became archbishop of Magdeburg, a cousin became bishop of Halberstadt and another was earmarked to become archbishop of Trier. That latter one did not make it though. The people of Trier were sufficiently irritated about not having any say in the matter who their bishop should be that they captured the pretender upon arrival and had him thrown down from the highest cliff.

Adalbert was no better. He tried to take over some of the most storied and richest imperial monasteries like Malmedi and Kornelimuenster. When he tried to take over Lorsch, south of Frankfurt, he had to contend with a bunch of very angry monks. They, quite understandably, argued that they cannot see any reason why the church of Hamburg, 550km north would be a suitable spiritual overlord.

With the government split right down the middle, imperial policy effectively seized to function. After the debacle of the papal schism that Agnes had created, a journey to Rome and a lavish coronation would have been paramount to restore imperial prestige. As part of the settlement of the schism, pope Alexander II was happy to crown young Henry IV. He might also have hoped to entice the emperor into a campaign against the Normans who had become a little too full of themselves after helping to end the schism.

Equally the Northern Italian bishops wanted their king to come and sort out the Pataria uprisings in Milan and other cities. I mentioned this popular movement last week. The citizens of Milan and elsewhere had requested a clean-up of their diocese where literally all priests had paid for their offices and the canons lived in luxury with their wives and children. When the archbishop refused he was thrown out and lacked the military resources to get back in. What did not help the bishop was that the Pataria enjoyed the support of at least parts of the papal administration.

Basically, it was high time to go down to Rome. Twice did the imperial army muster in Augsburg, and twice did they ultimately decide not to go. Squabbling amongst the magnates was the main reason.

Even though Henry IV had nominally become the effective sole ruler of the kingdom in 1065, he was shown in 1066 that his power was for naught when his magnates gang up on him. The one thing that changed upon Henry’s maturity was that power shifted away from Anno of Cologne to Adalbert of Hamburg-Bremen. Adalbert had no difficulty in convincing the king that Anno did not have any interest in his well-being. As we heard before, Henry IV. never forgave Anno the hijacking in Kaiserswerth. One of the few things that most historians agree is that this event caused a massive trauma in Henry IV. Having been held at sword point by his barons aboard the vessel was one thing but watching his own mother failing to come to his aid, even siding with Anno over time must have created a sense of abandonment. And most of his resentment was directed at the architect of the coup, Anno of Cologne. Based on the mantra that my enemies are my friends, Adalbert became Henry IV. Go-to person.

The anti-Henry propaganda machine accused Adalbert of spoiling the child-king, telling him that he could do whatever he desired, as long as he manages to get absolution on his deathbed. According to the super biased chronicler Bruno, Henry IV maintained 2-3 mistresses at any time and had ordered all the pretty girls to be brought to him, if necessary, by force.

I would not doubt that a sixteen-year-old with no parental supervision would indulge himself in bad behaviour. And I can also see that Adalbert would not admonish the young king too severely for transgressions since he was his only political asset.

However, I doubt it needed all that for Henry IV. to support Adalbert against the hated archbishop Anno of Cologne. Adalbert had been a close associate of his father and was supporting a strong central imperial power. Anno and his associates represented the powers that wanted to expand the baronial prerogatives at the expense of the empire.

In 1066 it came to a showdown in Trebur. There the magnates had come together in one of these now regular conspiracies and decided to put an ultimatum to the young king: Either he gives up on archbishop Adalbert, or he will be deposed as king.

Henry IV. and some of his followers raced to Trebur to confront the princes. To give you an idea how precarious the position of the king already was, let me tell you the story about what happened the day before that meeting. This is the story as it was told by Lampert of Hersfeld, the other main chronicler and opponent of the Salian policies. 

According to him, the king stayed not in his own royal palace at Trebur, but in a nearby village that belonged to the abbey of Hersfeld. It seems there was nothing there to feed the royal party and the peasants refused to hand over the goods. A bloody fight between the royal soldiers and the local population ensued. In the fight either a peasant or -shame of shames- a dancing girl felled the count Werner who commanded the royal bodyguard. Werner was brought before the king. And whilst he lay on the ground in mortal agony, the bishops present refused the dying man the last rites, until he handed back an estate he had received from the king but which the abbot of Hersfeld claimed was his.

All this happened in front of the king. His man was lying there, and the churchmen refused him the last sacraments until some money issue was settled. And not just any money issue, but the reversal of a donation the king had made himself. And why was his man lying there. Because the abbey of Hersfeld had refused to feed the royal troops, something they were obliged to as an imperial abbey. Nothing shows more clearly the powerlessness of the young king and nothing explains better his deep-seated animosity to his magnates.

Not much has to be said about the fate of Adalbert of Bremen. A king who cannot feed his men and protect his wounded soldiers cannot decide who should be his main advisor. Adalbert was to go, or more precisely to run back to Hamburg protected by the few soldiers the impecunious king could spare.

A few weeks later Henry IV falls severely ill. So severely ill the doctors give him up and the magnates begin discussion about who should succeed the king. But he recovers and by Pentecost he is back in health.

No chronicler says it, but my sense is that it is right after the meeting in Trebur and his recovery when Henry IV. decides that enough is enough. No longer can an emperor rely on oaths of fealty from his dukes and counts, nor can he rely on the support from the Imperial Church as his father had been able to. A new form of royal administration is required.

It is around now, 1066 that Henry IV. begins his major castle building project around Goslar. His father had already begun the process of creating a coherent royal territory around the silver mines in the Harz mountains. This is a different concept to the 10th century imperial duchies which were administrated through assemblies and vows of fealty.  Not here. These royal lands around Goslar will be administrated by Ministeriales, unfree men trained in war and administration. Mighty castles are built on the tops of mountains and, instead of enfeoffing it to loyal men of noble descent, he manned it with his Ministeriales. He put the administration of the royal territory not into the hands of a count as would have been the case 50 years earlier but appoints a governor (Prefectus) who could be hired and fired at will.

The largest and most important of these new castles was the Harzburg, not far from the imperial residence in Goslar. Harzburg was not only one of the largest castles built in the 11th century, rivalling Fulk of Anjou’s mighty constructions, it was also designed as an imperial residence and administrative centre. Nothing indicates more clearly the change of times than the fact that the emperors are leaving their indefensible palaces on the plains and move behind 10-metre-high walls on mountaintops. The Harzburg contained an imperial palace as well as a monastery. Henry IV had his brother Konrad who had died very young as well as his first son buried in this richly decorated chapel. He also transferred the imperial regalia, i.e., the imperial crown, the Holy Lance etc. onto the Harzburg. 

The Harzburg was designed by one of Henry IV. closest confidants, a man that would be by his side for a long time, bishop Benno of Osnabrück. Benno came from a family of Ministeriales, i.e., was not a free man. He joined the clergy and got an education in Strasburg and Reichenau before joining the career path through the imperial chancery.  He was made bishop of Osnabrück in 1068. He was a smart and effective administrator and, above all, a gifted architect. He not only built the Harzburg and other castles, but he was also the architect of the final remodelling of the astounding Speyer Cathedral. He was also a brutal taskmaster who had labourers beaten if they failed to work hard enough.

Back to the castles. They were designed to project royal power. But they were nothing new, not even in Saxony. The nobles of Saxony had engaged in the construction of mountaintop castles decades before Henry IV. started his building program. As I said before, the construction of castles is a clear indicator of deteriorating central power. And since the last years of Henry III and then even more under the regency, central power had declined and castles have risen in unison. And you may have noticed that the names of people have changed. Otto of Northeim, Rudolf of Rheinfelden are all named after their main possessions, aka their castles. Up until then major aristocrats were referenced by their ancestry, the Ezzone Konrad or the Konradiner Eberhard etc. If that was not distinctive enough, they were named after their title, margrave Ekkehard of Meissen, duke Godfrey the Bearded.  Some made it even easier, by calling themselves just Welf I, II, II or IV. But from now on, aristocrats are referred to first and foremost by the name of their main castle, rather than their family or title. What this castle-building also means is that the model of peace by edict of Henry III had ended, making the life of the peasants in the empire just  that little bit harder.

Whilst the walls of the Harzburg and other fortifications are going up, the empire is shaken by a sequence of scandals that further undermine the imperial reputation.

The first one is entirely of Henry IV. making and concerns his marriage. Long ago, when Henry IV. was a child, his father had engaged him to marry Bertha, daughter of the Count of Savoy. That seems a rather odd choice, since as future emperor he should get married to a byzantine princess or absent that, at least the daughter of a king, not a mere count. Bertha’s family had however one key asset, which will become important as we go further, and that was the alpine pass of Mont Cenis. This pass, south of Mont Blanc was of major strategic importance as the connecting road between France and Italy. As the empire already controlled all other Alpine passes, Mont Cenis was the missing link that made sure no other power could get into Italy. In principle the emperor should not need the Count of Savoy for that since Mont Cenis was in Burgundy and Henry was already king of Burgundy. But Burgundy was a kingdom very much in principle, in practice Mont Cenis was held by the count of Savoy. And the count’s price for the pass was to become grandpa of an emperor.   

To make sure Bertha was at least brought up to an imperial standard, she was delivered aged 6 to the imperial court where she grew up in the household of Henry’s mother, the empress Agnes of Poitou.

In 1066, shortly after Adalbert had been sent packing and the king had recovered from his illness it was deemed time for Henry IV to finally marry little Bertha as had been agreed all these years ago.

By 1069 Henry IV. wants a divorce. At the Reichstag in Worms he stands up and declares that he simply “does not think he and his wife are a good match”.  He says that he is simply tired of pretending that the relationship was ok., when it was not. He does not accuse her of anything, that would warrant a divorce. But he, be it by fate or divine order, cannot be in a marital relationship with her. He therefore asks for the grace of God to be released from these chains. He hopes that she would find a happier life in another marriage and if needed, he would swear that the marriage had never been consummated.

This strikes me as a very modern grounds for a divorce. The fact that two people just simply are not meant to be together. But an 11th century royal marriage is not an agreement between two adults looking for fulfilment and happiness. It is a political contract, and that meant, liking each other is not a requirement. The pope sends Peter Damian up to Germany to explain these simple facts to the young king and he accepts the verdict. Henry and Bertha will from then on have a strong relationship where she will stand by him even in the most challenging moments and be more loyal than his own mother was. The couple had 5 children.

Step back. What was that. Henry IV. asks for a divorce because he does not think a relationship is possible and wants her to be happy with someone else. And then -when forced- fulfils the marriage and things turn out ok.

I am going out on a limb here, but it seems as if the most obvious point is completely overlooked by most historians Bertha and Henry have grown up together since they were five. They have grown up in a super tense environment where empress Agnes was clearly out of her depth most of the time. His older sisters have been sent away to become abbesses or have died early. It is not impossible that Henry and Berth felt more like siblings than marital partners. That would explain his insistence on her being blameless and his wish that she would be happy with someone else. It would also explain why the couple could maintain a relationship of trust and friendship despite his attempt at divorce.

That was scandal number one. Now for the second one which involves the recently appointed duke Otto of Northeim. Otto was a Saxon noble of the highest rank. He was put in as duke of Bavaria by Agnes in 1061, which is an odd choice to start with.

As we have heard before the Saxon nobles had been on a roll with attempts at the life of the Salians. The brother of the duke of Saxony may have tried to murder Emperor Henry III in 1048 and in 1057 the Saxon nobles conspired to have Henny IV. killed, a child of 7 at the time. There is no indication that Otto of Northeim was involved, but it is unlikely the Saxons kept him in the dark. The attempt on Henry’s life was foiled as allies of the king encountered the Saxon contingent by chance outside the royal palace and killed them.

Northeim then appears again as a co-conspirator in the coup at Kaiserswerth, something that cannot have endeared him to Henry IV.

In 1069 a mysterious event happens. At a stay on one of Otto of Northeim’s estates, one of Henry’s Ministeriales is ambushed and killed. Things are being investigated, but nothing comes of it. Since life is cheap and Ministeriales are still serfs, nobody ascribes much significance to that event.

In 1070, a certain Enigo, a thug of ill repute, claims publicly that Otto of Northeim had tried to hire him to murder the king. Otto of Northeim strenuously denies the claim. In classic 11th century fashion, when it is one man’s word against another’s, the resolution has to be through trial by combat. Otto of Northeim initially accepts the ruling but does then not appear on the set dates in Goslar to fight for his honour. Under the circumstances Otto could demand a judgement in default, which the Saxon nobles assembled as the jury granted. Otto of Northeim was stripped of the duchy of Bavaria, all other fiefs and of his allodial possessions. Northeim is also declared an outlaw.

According to the chronicler Bruno, this was all a plot by Henry IV. to strip Northeim of his possessions. Bruno even alleges that Northeim would have been killed on the king’s orders even if he had won the trial by combat. I find in particular the latter hard to believe. The trial would have taken place in full view of the Saxon nobles and if Henry would have wanted to pull a stunt like this, his reputation would have suffered immeasurable damage. That in combination with the string of assassination attempts by Saxon nobles and the mysterious death of his Ministeriales the year before makes it likely that there was something to this allegation.

Guilty or not, Otto finds support from other Saxon nobles, including from Magnus, son of the duke of Saxony in his fight with the king. But he failed to bring the whole of the duchy behind him and had to submit to the emperor after a year of fighting. Henry IV. imprisons him and Magnus. Otto of Northeim is released in 1072 and some of his inherited lands are returned to him, minus the chunk henry wanted to keep. Magnus, who after his father’s death had become the duke of Saxony, is kept longer, presumably as insurance against another Saxon uprising.

After Northeim’s fall, the duchy of Bavaria had been given to Welf IV upon recommendation of Rudolf of Rheinfelden, the powerful duke of Swabia. Over the years Rheinfelden and the duke of Carinthia, Berthold of Zaehringen had mended their relationship that had been strained when Rheinfelden was made duke of Swabia, a role Zaehringen thought was his. That now created a major political block in the south where Rheinfelden could rely on support from both the duke of Carinthia and his old friend Welf IV the newly appointed duke of Bavaria.

In 1072 Henry IV. accused Rheinfelden and his two dukes of a conspiracy against him. The three dukes, he claims, have tried to assassinate him and make Rheinfelden king. Lampert and Bruno, as one would expect, declare that this was again a plot by the king to bring down another of his magnates. Egon Boshof brings up a theory that blames Henry’s concerns down to the reform of the monastery of St. Blasien, which affected imperial prerogatives.

Again, who knows what went on. Maybe Henry Iv. looked at the comparatively easy win over Otto of Northeim and thought, hey this is a brilliant tool to break the power of his magnates. Or Rheinfelden looked at the events in Saxony and thought to himself, time to strike now before this king gets ever more powerful. Or it was indeed a misunderstanding over the indeed gorgeous monastery of St. Blasien.

Anyway, this time Henry IV. does not succeed in deposing Rheinfelden or the other two dukes. In 1073 they sign some sort of “let’s forget about all that and be friends again” agreement.

That came just in time, because events are now accelerating.

In the summer of 1073, the Saxon had enough of Henry’s castles. What had fuelled the flames was that Henry, cash strapped as he was, did not pay the Ministeriales who manned the castles. The Ministeriales hence forced the local peasants to bring food to them, and if they failed to do so, would see their villages burned and wives and daughters raped. At least that is the story told by the biased chroniclers Bruno and Lambert. It may also be that the villages belonging to the castles were obliged to bring the produce by law and custom, as was the case with the castles the mighty Saxon lords had built. The only difference was that the soldiers manning Henry’s castles weren’t Saxons, but from elsewhere, possibly Swabia.

In June of 1073 the magnates of Saxony, including the bishops of Magdeburg, Halberstadt, Hildesheim, as well as Hermann Billung, uncle of the incarcerated duke Magnus of Saxony and Otto of Northeim appear before the emperor in Goslar demanding an audience to discuss the castle building program.

Henry IV. does not grant an audience. In fact, he leaves the Saxon magnates stand outside the castle whilst he is playing dice with is mates inside. This is often seen as an unnecessary insult that justifies the upcoming rebellion and put Henry IV. in the wrong. On the other hand, imperial dignity required that the king would not yield to such explicit demands. Henry IV. remembered what happened when he rushed to Trebur in 1066 when the princes met to discuss the fate of Archbishop Adalbert, an experience he was not too keen to repeat. Henry also had been assembling an army for a campaign against Poland, which he believed he could use to suppress any Saxon uprising.

The Saxon magnates are now infuriated to the max. A month later they meet at Hoetensleben for an assembly. There Otto of Northeim gives his famous speech, which I will try to translate here. Thanks, by the way to deepl.com whose free translation service has become a lifesaver for this podcast. Here is Otto of Northeim:

“The calamities and disgraces that our king has brought upon each one of you for a long time are great and unbearable, but what he still intends to do, if the Almighty God permits him, is even greater and more severe. Strong castles he has erected, as you know, numerous in places already firm by nature, and has placed in them a great multitude of his vassals, and abundantly provided with weapons of all kinds. These castles are not erected against the heathen, who have completely devastated our land where it borders theirs, but in the midst of our country, where no one ever thought of making war against him; he has fortified them with such great effort, and what they mean for this land some of you have already experienced, and if God’s mercy and your bravery do not intervene, you will soon all experience it. They take your possessions by force and hide them in their castles; they abuse your wives and daughters for their pleasure when they please; they demand your servants and your cattle, and all that they like, for their service; yes, they even force you yourselves to bear every burden, however odious, on your free shoulders. But when I imagine in my thoughts what is still waiting for us, then everything that you are now enduring still seems to me to be bearable. For when he will have built his castles in our whole country at his discretion and will have equipped them with armed warriors and all other necessities, then he will no longer plunder your possessions one by one, but he will snatch from you all that you possess with one blow, will give your goods to strangers, and will make you yourselves, you freeborn men, oblige unknown men as servants. And all this, you brave men, will you let it happen to you? Is it not better to fall in brave fight than to live a miserable and ignominious life, being made a shameful mockery by these people.

Even Serfs who are bought for money do not endure the unreasonable commands of their masters, and you, who were born free, should patiently endure servitude? Perhaps you, as Christians, are afraid to violate the oath with which you have paid homage to the king. Indeed, to the king you have sworn. 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. So not against the king, but against the unjust robber of my freedom; not against the fatherland, but for the fatherland, and for freedom, which no good man surrenders other than with his life at the same time, I take up arms, and I demand of you that you also take them up. Awake, therefore, and preserve for your children the inheritance which your fathers have left you; beware lest through your carelessness or slothfulness you yourselves and your children become serfs of strangers” (end quote)

Now before you go and think that here is the first outburst of genuine German nationalism, I have to stop you there. When Northeim talks of “patria” or “fatherland” he talks about Saxony, not Germany. And when he talks about freedom, he is not talking about human rights, but ancestral privileges, the Freedoms as they will be later called.

But rousing the speech is nevertheless and the Saxons raise an army and head towards the Harzburg, where Henry IV. had gone to hold out while his agents bring over the army initially meant for the Poland campaign to defeat these obnoxious Saxons once and for all. The Saxons set up camp on an opposite hill and sent their demands to the king. He was to dismantle all his castles in Saxony and dismiss his false councillors.

The Harzburg was almost impregnable, so the Saxons blockaded the castle’s food supplies whilst throwing large stones down on the fortifications from a new structure built on the opposite hill.

Henry’s hope of support from the army readied for the war in Poland was quickly dashed. The mighty princes shared many of the views Otto of Northeim had articulated in his speech. They could see that if Henry were to prevail in Saxony, he would proceed to build similar castles in Bavaria, Swabia and anywhere else in the country. Rudolf of Rheinfelden and the two Southern dukes also had not forgotten that Henry had tried to nail them just a year earlier. So, the princes withdrew their troops. Some magnates led by the archbishop of Mainz even began negotiations with Otto of Northeim, allegedly offering him the crown.

Henry IV. fled the Harzburg and set up camp in Worms. There he managed to gather some bishops for an attempt to make a military move on Saxony, but his support was far too weak.

On February 2nd, 1074 he signed the peace of Gerstungen, which cannot be described as anything but a complete capitulation. In a near full assembly of the great bishops and princes of the realm, Henry IV. conceded the demolition of all his castles, dismissed his councillors and gave full amnesty to all the rebels.

Henry IV. withdrew the garrison of the Harzburg and immediately the Saxons stormed in. The Saxon troops it is important to note were not just aristocratic knights but comprised a lot of free or half free peasants. These guys were the first through the gate and began the demolition work. In the peace agreement it was specifically stated that the demolition of the Harzburg should be gentle, respecting the imperial chapel on the site. Well, that did not happen. The Saxon commanders could not stop their enraged mob who tore down the chapel, stole the relics and horror of horrors pulled the remains of the Salian princes buried there out of their coffins and threw them in the ditch like vile garbage.

This profound insult to the honour not just of Henry IV. but the realm as a whole led to one of these sudden mood swings that will punctuate the story of the Investiture Controversy.

The Saxon nobles apologised immediately and promised a thorough investigation and harsh punishment for the perpetrators. But that was not enough. The mighty princes, who did not treat their peasants any different to the way henry IV. had the neighbours of the Harzburg suddenly realised that these Saxon armies contained an unsettlingly large contingent of free peasants. And in 1073/1074 there had already been uprisings in major cities, namely worms and Cologne where the bishops had to run for their lives. Our old friend Anno of Cologne was one of them. He only managed to get out because one of his supporters had just put a door into the city walls near his house. This “hole of Anno” can still be seen in Cologne.

Given the choice between supporting a potentially overbearing emperor or a rabble-rousing Saxon, many of the Southern dukes, namely Rudolf of Rheinfelden took the side of Henry IV. Henry IV. could finally muster his army to bring the Saxons to heel. The two sides met at the Unstrut river on June 9, 1075.

What ensued was one of the bloodiest and painful battles of the 11th century. Though in principle it was Saxons against the rest of the kingdom, in reality many families were split. Fathers were fighting sons; brothers were killing each other in the melee. The unity of the kingdom created at the battle king Henry the Fowler had fought against the Hungarians nearby in 934 was trampled into the dust on that early summers day.

Henry IV. prevailed in the brutal fighting. After the battle his troops were let loose across Saxony, murdering and pillaging wherever they went. On October 25th, 1075 the Saxon barons conceded an unconditional surrender.

After a decade of humiliation and defeat, Henry IV. had finally regained the position his father and grandfather had held. The magnates of the land recognised him as his overlord and the Saxons, who had plotted to kill him since he was a child were utterly defeated. Finally, he should now be able to go to Rome and take what had been his since birth, the imperial crown.

That is not what is going to happen. Next week we will find out how it comes that within a mere 18 months Henry IV. will find himself utterly friendless about to lose it all kneeling barefoot in the snow outside the inner gate of the castle of Canossa. I hope you will join us again.