restored Peter, and brought Hungary completely under the power of the
German king. In 1038 Queen Kunigunde had died in Italy, and in 1043 the
king was married at Ingelheim to Agnes, daughter of William V., duke of
Guienne, a union which drew him much nearer to the reforming party in
the church. In 1044 Gothelon (Gozelo), duke of Lorraine, died, and some
disturbance arose over Henry's refusal to grant the whole of the duchy
to his son Godfrey, called the Bearded. Godfrey took up arms, but after
a short imprisonment was released and confirmed in the possession of
Upper Lorraine in 1046 which, however, he failed to secure. About this
time Henry was invited to Italy where three popes were contending for
power, and crossing the Alps with a large army he marched to Rome.
Councils held at Sutri and at Rome having declared the popes deposed,
the king secured the election of Suidger, bishop of Bamberg, who took
the name of Clement II., and by this pontiff Henry was crowned as
emperor on the 25th of December 1046. He was immediately recognized by
the Romans as _Patricius_, an office which carried with it at this time
the right to appoint the pope. Supreme in church and state alike, ruler
of Germany, Italy and Burgundy, overlord of Hungary and Bohemia, Henry
occupied a commanding position, and this time may be regarded as marking
the apogee of the power of the Roman empire of the Germans. The emperor
assisted Pope Clement in his efforts to banish simony. He made a
victorious progress in southern Italy, where he restored Pandulph IV. to
the principality of Capua, and asserted his authority over the Normans
in Apulia and Aversa. Returning to Germany in 1047 he appointed two
popes, Damasus II. and Leo IX., in quick succession, and turned to face
a threatening combination in the west of the empire, where Godfrey of
Lorraine was again in revolt, and with the help of Baldwin V., count of
Flanders and Dirk IV., count of Holland, who had previously caused
trouble to Henry, was ravaging the lands of the emperor's
representatives in Lorraine. Assisted by the kings of England and
Denmark, Henry succeeded with some difficulty in bringing the rebels to
submission in 1050. Godfrey was deposed; but Baldwin soon found an
opportunity for a further revolt, which an expedition undertaken by the
emperor in 1054 was unable to crush.
Meanwhile a reaction against German influence had taken place in
Hungary. King Peter had been driven out in 1046 and his place taken by
Andreas I. Inroads into Bavaria followed, and in 1051 and 1052 Henry led
his forces against the Hungarians, and after the pope had vainly
attempted to mediate, peace was made in 1053. It was quickly broken,
however, and the emperor, occupied elsewhere, soon lost most of his
authority in the east; although in 1054 he made peace between Brestislav
of Bohemia and Casimir I., duke of the Poles. Henry had not lost sight
of affairs in Italy during these years, and had received several visits
from the pope, whose aim was to bring southern Italy under his own
dominion. Henry had sent military assistance to Leo, and had handed over
to him the government of the principality of Benevento in return for the
bishopric of Bamberg. But the pope's defeat by the Normans was followed
by his death. Henry then nominated Gebhard, bishop of Eichstadt, who
took the name of Victor II., to the vacant chair, and promised his
assistance to the reluctant candidate. In 1055 the emperor went a second
time to Italy, where his authority was threatened by Godfrey of
Lorraine, who had married Beatrice, widow of Boniface III., margrave of
Tuscany, and was ruling her vast estates. Godfrey fled, however, on the
appearance of Henry, who only remained a short time in Italy, during
which he granted the duchy of Spoleto to Pope Victor, and negotiated for
an attack upon the Normans. Before the journey to Italy, Henry had found
it necessary to depose Conrad III., duke of Bavaria, and to suppress a
rising in southern Germany. During his absence Conrad formed an alliance
with Welf, duke of Carinthia, and Gebhard III., bishop of Regensburg. A
conspiracy to depose the emperor, support for which was found in
Lorraine, was quickly discovered, and Henry, leaving Victor as his
representative in Italy, returned in 1055 to Germany to receive the
submission of his foes. In 1056, the emperor was visited by the pope;
and on the 5th of October in the same year he died at Bodfeld and was
buried at Spires. Henry was a pious and peace-loving prince, who
favoured church reform, sought earnestly to suppress private warfare,
and alone among the early emperors is said to have been innocent of
simony. Although under his rule Germany enjoyed considerable
tranquillity, and a period of wealth and progress set in for the towns,
yet his secular and ecclesiastical policy showed signs of weakness.
Unable, or unwilling, seriously to curb the increasing power of the
church, he alienated the sympathies of the nobles as a class, and by
allowing the southern duchies to pass into other hands restored a power
which true to its traditions was not always friendly to the royal house.
Henry was a patron of learning, a founder of schools, and built or
completed cathedrals at Spires, Worms and Mainz.
The chief original authorities for the life and reign of Henry III.
are the _Chronicon_ of Herimann of Reichenau, the _Annales
Sangallenses majores_, the _Annales Hildesheimenses_, all in the
_Monumenta Germaniae historica. Scriptores_ (Hanover and Berlin, 1826
fol.). The best modern authorities are W. von Giesebrecht, _Geschichte
der deutschen Kaiserzeit_, Band ii. (Leipzig, 1888); M. Perlbach, "Die
Kriege Heinrichs III. gegen Bohmen," in the _Forschungen zur deutschen
Geschichte_, Band x. (Gottingen, 1862-1886); E. Steindorff,
_Jahrbucher des deutschen Reichs unter Heinrich III._ (Leipzig,
1874-1881); and F. Steinhoff, _Das Konigthum und Kaiserthum Heinrichs
III._ (Gottingen, 1865).
HENRY IV. (1050-1106), Roman emperor, son of the emperor Henry III. and
Agnes, daughter of William V., duke of Guienne, was born on the 11th of
November 1050, chosen German king at Tribur in 1053, and crowned at
Aix-la-Chapelle on the 17th of July 1054. In 1055 he was appointed duke
of Bavaria, and on his father's death in October 1056 inherited the
kingdoms of Germany, Italy and Burgundy. These territories were governed
in his name by his mother, who was unable to repress the internal
disorder or to take adequate measures for their defence. Some opposition
was soon aroused, and in 1062 Anno, archbishop of Cologne, and others
planned to seize the person of the young king and to deprive Agnes of
power. This plot met with complete success. Henry, who was at
Kaiserwerth, was persuaded to board a boat lying in the Rhine; it was
immediately unmoored and the king sprang into the stream, but was
rescued by one of the conspirators and carried to Cologne. Agnes made no
serious effort to regain her control, and the chief authority was
exercised for a time by Anno; but his rule proved unpopular, and he was
soon compelled to share his power with Adalbert, archbishop of Bremen.
The education and training of Henry were supervised by Anno, who was
called his _magister_, while Adalbert was styled _patronus_; but Anno
was disliked by Henry, and during his absence in Italy the chief power
passed into the hands of Adalbert. Henry's education seems to have been
neglected, and his wilful and headstrong nature was developed by the
conditions under which his early years were passed. In March 1065 he was
declared of age, and in the following year a powerful coalition of
ecclesiastical and lay nobles brought about the banishment of Adalbert
from court and the return of Anno to power. In 1066 Henry was persuaded
to marry Bertha, daughter of Otto, count of Savoy, to whom he had been
betrothed since 1055. For some time he regarded his wife with strong
dislike and sought in vain for a divorce, but after she had borne him a
son in 1071 she gained his affections, and became his most trusted
friend and companion.
In 1069 the king took the reins of government into his own hands. He
recalled Adalbert to court; led expeditions against the Liutici, and
against Dedo or Dedi II., margrave of a district east of Saxony; and
soon afterwards quarrelled with Rudolph, duke of Swabia, and Berthold,
duke of Carinthia. Much more serious was Henry's struggle with Otto of
Nordheim, duke of Bavaria. This prince, who occupied an influential
position in Germany, was accused in 1070 by a certain Egino of being
privy to a plot to murder the king. It was decided that a trial by
battle should take place at Goslar, but when the demand of Otto for a
safe conduct for himself and his followers, to and from the place of
meeting, was refused, he declined to appear. He was thereupon declared
deposed in Bavaria, and his Saxon estates were plundered. He obtained
sufficient support, however, to carry on a struggle with the king in
Saxony and Thuringia until 1071, when he submitted at Halberstadt. Henry
aroused the hostility of the Thuringians by supporting Siegfried,
archbishop of Mainz, in his efforts to exact tithes from them; but still
more formidable was the enmity of the Saxons, who had several causes of
complaint against the king. He was the son of one enemy, Henry III., and
the friend of another, Adalbert of Bremen. He had ordered a restoration
of all crown lands in Saxony and had built forts among this people,
while the country was ravaged to supply the needs of his courtiers, and
its duke Magnus was a prisoner in his hands. All classes were united
against him, and when the struggle broke out in 1073 the Thuringians
joined the Saxons; and the war, which lasted with slight intermissions
until 1088, exercised a most potent influence upon Henry's fortunes
elsewhere (see SAXONY).
Henry soon found himself confronted by an abler and more stubborn
antagonist than either Thuringian or Saxon. In 1073 Hildebrand became
pope as Gregory VII. Two years later this great ecclesiastic issued his
memorable prohibition of lay investiture, and the blow then struck at
the secular power by the papacy threatened seriously to undermine the
imperial authority. Spurred on by his advisers, Henry did not refuse the
challenge. Threatened with the papal ban, he summoned a synod of German
bishops which met at Worms in January 1076 and declared Gregory deposed;
and he wrote his famous letter to the pope, in which he referred to him
as "not pope, but false monk." The king was at once excommunicated. His
adherents gradually fell away, the Saxons were again in arms, and Otto
of Nordheim succeeded in uniting the malcontents of north and south
Germany. In October 1076 an important diet met at Tribur, and after
discussing the deposition of the king, decided that he should be judged
by an assembly to be held at Augsburg in the following February under
the presidency of the pope. This union of the temporal and spiritual
forces was too strong for the king, and he decided to submit.
Crossing the Alps, Henry appeared in January 1077 as a penitent before
the castle of Canossa, where Gregory had taken refuge. The story of
this famous occurrence, which represents the king as standing in the
courtyard of the castle for three days in the snow, clad as a penitent,
and entreating to be admitted to the pope's presence, is now regarded as
mythical in its details; but there is no doubt that the king visited the
castle at intervals, and prayed for admission for three days until the
28th of January, when he was received by Gregory and absolved, after
promising to submit to the pope's authority and to secure for him a safe
journey to Germany. No historical incident has more profoundly impressed
the imagination of the Western world. It marked the highest point
reached by papal authority, and presents a vivid picture of the awe
inspired during the middle ages by the supernatural powers supposed to
be wielded by the church.
Scorned by his Lombard allies, Henry left Italy to find that in his
absence Rudolph, duke of Swabia, had been chosen German king; and
although Gregory had taken no part in this election, Henry sought to
prevent the pope's journey to Germany, and regaining courage, tried to
recover his former position. Supported by most of the German bishops and
by the Lombards, now reconciled to him, and recognized in Burgundy,
Bavaria and Franconia, Henry (who at this time is referred to by Bruno,
the author of _De bello Saxonico_, as _exrex_) appeared stronger than
his rival Rudolph; but the ensuing war was waged with varying success.
He was beaten at Mellrichstadt in 1078, and at Flarchheim in 1080, but
these defeats were due rather to the fierce hostility of the Saxons, and
the military skill of Otto of Nordheim, than to any general sympathy
with Rudolph. Gregory's attitude remained neutral, in spite of appeals
from both sides, until March 1080, when he again excommunicated Henry,
but without any serious effect on the fortunes of the king. At Henry's
initiative, Gregory was declared deposed on three occasions, and an
anti-pope was elected in the person of Wibert, archbishop of Ravenna,
who took the name of Clement III.
The death of Rudolph in October 1080, and a consequent lull in the war,
enabled the king to go to Italy early in 1081. He found considerable
support in Lombardy; placed Matilda, marchioness of Tuscany, the
faithful friend of Gregory, under the imperial ban; took the Lombard
crown at Pavia; and secured the recognition of Clement by a council.
Marching to Rome, he undertook the siege of the city, but was soon
compelled to retire to Tuscany, where he granted privileges to various
cities, and obtained monetary assistance from a new ally, the eastern
emperor, Alexius I. A second and equally unsuccessful attack on Rome was
followed by a war of devastation in northern Italy with the adherents of
Matilda; and towards the end of 1082 the king made a third attack on
Rome. After a siege of seven months the Leonine city fell into his
hands. A treaty was concluded with the Romans, who agreed that the
quarrel between king and pope should be decided by a synod, and secretly
bound themselves to induce Gregory to crown Henry as emperor, or to
choose another pope. Gregory, however, shut up in the castle of St
Angelo, would hear of no compromise; the synod was a failure, as Henry
prevented the attendance of many of the pope's supporters; and the king,
in pursuance of his treaty with Alexius, marched against the Normans.
The Romans soon fell away from their allegiance to the pope; and,
recalled to the city, Henry entered Rome in March 1084, after which
Gregory was declared deposed and Clement was recognized by the Romans.
On the 31st of March 1084 Henry was crowned emperor by Clement, and
received the patrician authority. His next step was to attack the
fortresses still in the hands of Gregory. The pope was saved by the
advance of Robert Guiscard, duke of Apulia, with a large force, which
compelled Henry to return to Germany.
Meanwhile the German rebels had chosen a fresh anti-king, Hermann, count
of Luxemburg, whom Henry's supporters had already driven to his last
line of defence in Saxony. During the campaign of 1086 Henry was
defeated near Wurzburg, but in 1088 Hermann abandoned the struggle and
the emperor was generally recognized in Saxony, to which country he
showed considerable clemency. Although Henry's power was in the
ascendent, a few powerful nobles adhered to the cause of Gregory's
successor, Urban II. Among them was Welf, son of Welf I., the deposed
duke of Bavaria, whose marriage with Matilda of Tuscany rendered him too
formidable to be neglected. The emperor accordingly returned to Italy in
1090, where Mantua and Milan were taken, and Pope Clement was restored
to Rome. Henry's communications with Germany were, however, threatened
by a league of the Lombard cities, and his anxieties were soon augmented
by domestic troubles.
Henry's first wife had died in 1087, and in 1089 he had married a
Russian princess, Praxedis, afterwards called Adelaide. Her conduct soon
aroused his suspicions, and his own eldest son, Conrad, who had been
crowned German king in 1087, was thought to be a partner in her guilt.
Escaping from prison, Adelaide fled to Henry's enemies and brought grave
charges against her husband; while the papal party induced Conrad to
desert his father and to be crowned king of Italy at Monza in 1093.
Crushed by this blow, Henry remained almost helpless and inactive in
northern Italy for five years, until 1097, when having lost every shred
of authority in that country, he returned to Germany, where his position
was stronger than ever. Welf had submitted, had forsaken the cause of
Matilda and had been restored to Bavaria, and in 1098 the diet assembled
at Mainz declared Conrad deposed, and chose the emperor's second son,
Henry, afterwards the emperor Henry V., as German king. The crusade of
1096 had freed Germany from many turbulent spirits, and the emperor,
meeting with some success in his efforts to restore order, could afford
to ignore his repeated excommunication. A successful campaign in
Flanders was followed in 1103 by a diet at Mainz, where serious efforts
were made to restore peace, and Henry himself promised to go on crusade.
But this plan was shattered by the revolt of the younger Henry in 1104,
who, encouraged by the adherents of the pope, declared he owed no
allegiance to an excommunicated father. Saxony and Thuringia were soon
in arms, the bishops held mainly to the younger Henry, while the emperor
was supported by the towns. A desultory warfare was unfavourable,
however, to the emperor, who, deceived by false promises, became a
prisoner in the hands of his son in 1105. The diet met at Mainz in
December, when he was compelled to abdicate; but contrary to the
conditions, he was detained at Ingelheim and denied his freedom.
Escaping to Cologne, he found considerable support in the lower
Rhineland; he entered into negotiations with England, France and
Denmark, and was engaged in collecting an army when he died at Liege on
the 7th of August 1106. His body was buried by the bishop of Liege with
suitable ceremony, but by command of the papal legate it was unearthed,
taken to Spires, and placed in an unconsecrated chapel. After being
released from the sentence of excommunication the remains were buried in
the cathedral of Spires in August 1111.
Henry IV. was very licentious and in his early years was careless and
self-willed, but better qualities were developed in his later life. He
displayed much diplomatic ability, and his abasement at Canossa may
fairly be regarded as a move of policy to weaken the pope's position at
the cost of a personal humiliation to himself. He was always regarded as
a friend of the lower orders, was capable of generosity and gratitude,
and showed considerable military skill. Unfortunate in the time in which
he lived, and in the troubles with which he had to contend, he holds an
honourable position in history as a monarch who resisted the excessive
pretensions both of the papacy and of the ambitious feudal lords of
Germany.
The authorities for the life and reign of Henry are Lambert of
Hersfeld, _Annales_; Bernold of Reichenau, Chronicon; Ekkehard of
Aura, _Chronicon_; and Bruno, _De bello Saxonico_, which gives several
of the more important letters that passed between Henry and Gregory
VII. These are all found in the _Monumenta Germaniae historica.
Scriptores_, Bande v. and vi. (Hanover and Berlin, 1826-1892). There
is an anonymous _Vita Heinrici IV._, edited by W. Wattenbach (Hanover,
1876). The best modern authorities are: G. Meyer von Knonau,
_Jahrbucher des deutschen Reiches unter Heinrich IV._ (Leipzig, 1890);
H. Floto, _Kaiser Heinrich IV. und sein Zeitalter_ (Stuttgart, 1855);
E. Kilian, _Itinerar Kaiser Heinrichs IV._ (Karlsruhe, 1886); K. W.
Nitzsch, "Das deutsche Reich und Heinrich IV.," in the _Historische
Zeitschrift_, Band xlv. (Munich, 1859); H. Ulmann, _Zum Verstandniss
der sachsischen Erhebung gegen Heinrich IV._ (Hanover, 1886), W. von
Giesebrecht, _Geschichte_ _der deutschen Kaiserzeit_ (Leipzig,
1881-1890); B. Gebhardt, _Handbuch der deutschen Geschichte_ (Berlin,
1901). For a list of other works, especially those on the relations
between Henry and Gregory, see Dahlmann-Waitz, _Quellenkunde der
deutschen Geschichte_ (Gottingen, 1894). (A. W. H.*)
HENRY V. (1081-1125), Roman emperor, son of the emperor Henry IV., was
born on the 8th of January 1081, and after the revolt and deposition of
his elder brother, the German king Conrad (d. 1101), was chosen as his
successor in 1098. He promised to take no part in the business of the
Empire during his father's lifetime, and was crowned at Aix-la-Chapelle
on the 6th of January 1099. In spite of his oath Henry was induced by
his father's enemies to revolt in 1104, and some of the princes did
homage to him at Mainz in January 1106. In August of the same year the
elder Henry died, when his son became sole ruler of the Empire. Order
was soon restored in Germany, the citizens of Cologne were punished by a
fine, and an expedition against Robert II., count of Flanders, brought
this rebel to his knees. In 1107 a campaign, which was only partially
successful, was undertaken to restore Boriwoj II. to the dukedom of
Bohemia, and in the year following the king led his forces into Hungary,
where he failed to take Pressburg. In 1109 he was unable to compel the
Poles to renew their accustomed tribute, but in 1110 he succeeded in
securing the dukedom of Bohemia for Ladislaus I.
The main interest of Henry's reign centres in the controversy over lay
investiture, which had caused a serious dispute during the previous
reign. The papal party who had supported Henry in his resistance to his
father hoped he would assent to the decrees of the pope, which had been
renewed by Paschal II. at the synod of Guastalla in 1106. The king,
however, continued to invest the bishops, but wished the pope to hold a
council in Germany to settle the question. Paschal after some hesitation
preferred France to Germany, and, after holding a council at Troyes,
renewed his prohibition of lay investiture. The matter slumbered until
1110, when, negotiations between king and pope having failed, Paschal
renewed his decrees and Henry went to Italy with a large army. The
strength of his forces helped him to secure general recognition in
Lombardy, and at Sutri he concluded an arrangement with Paschal by which
he renounced the right of investiture in return for a promise of
coronation, and the restoration to the Empire of all lands given by
kings, or emperors, to the German church since the time of Charlemagne.
It was a treaty impossible to execute, and Henry, whose consent to it is
said to have been conditional on its acceptance by the princes and
bishops of Germany, probably foresaw that it would occasion a breach
between the German clergy and the pope. Having entered Rome and sworn
the usual oaths, the king presented himself at St Peter's on the 12th of
February 1111 for his coronation and the ratification of the treaty. The
words commanding the clergy to restore the fiefs of the crown to Henry
were read amid a tumult of indignation, whereupon the pope refused to
crown the king, who in return declined to hand over his renunciation of
the right of investiture. Paschal was seized by Henry's soldiers and, in
the general disorder into which the city was thrown, an attempt to
liberate the pontiff was thwarted in a struggle during which the king
himself was wounded. Henry then left the city carrying the pope with
him; and Paschal's failure to obtain assistance drew from him a
confirmation of the king's right of investiture and a promise to crown
him emperor. The coronation ceremony accordingly took place on the 13th
of April 1111, after which the emperor returned to Germany, where he
sought to strengthen his power by granting privileges to the inhabitants
of the region of the upper Rhine.