of Hapsburg for King of the Romans (see AUSTRIA: A. D.
1246-1282), was duly approved and confirmed by Pope Gregory
X., who silenced, by his spiritual admonitions, the rival
claims of King Alfonso of Castile. But Rodolph, to secure this
papal confirmation of his title, found it necessary to
promise, through his ambassadors, a renewal of the
Capitulation of Otho IV., respecting the temporalities of the
Pope. This he repeated in person, on meeting the Pope at
Lausanne, in 1275, On that occasion, "an agreement was entered
into which afterwards ratified to the Church the long disputed
gift of Charlemagne, comprising Ravenna, Æmilia, Bobbio,
Cesena, Forumpopoli, Forli, Faenza, Imola, Bologna, Ferrara,
Comacchio, Adria, Rimini, Urbino, Monteferetro, and the
territory of Bagno. Rodolph also bound himself to protect the
privileges of the Church, and to maintain the freedom of
Episcopal elections, and the right of appeal in all
ecclesiastical causes; and having stipulated for receiving the
imperial crown in Rome he promised to undertake an expedition
to the holy land. If Rodolph were sincere in these last
engagements, the disturbed state of his German dominions
afforded him an apology for their present non-fulfilment: but
there is good reason for believing that he never intended to
visit either Rome or Palestine; and his indifference to Italy
has even been the theme of panegyric with his admirers. The
repeated and mortifying reverses of the two Frederics were
before his eyes; there was little to excite his sympathy with
the Italians; and though Lombardy seemed ready to acknowledge
his supremacy, the Tuscan cities evinced aspirations after
independence." During the early years of Rodolph's reign he
was employed in establishing his authority, as against the
contumacy of Ottocar, King of Bohemia, and the Duke of Bavaria.
See AUSTRIA: A. D. 1246-1282.
Meantime, Gregory X. and three short-lived successors in the
papal office passed away, and Nicholas III. had come to it
(1277). That vigorous pontiff called Rodolph to account for
not having yet surrendered the states of the Church in due
form, and whispered a hint of excommunication and interdict.
"Rodolph was too prudent to disregard this admonition: he
evaded the projected crusade and journey to Rome; but he took
care to send thither an emissary, who in his name surrendered
to the Pope the territory already agreed on. ... During his
entire reign Rodolph maintained his indifference towards
Italy." His views "were rather directed to the wilds of
Hungary and Germany than to the delicious regions of the
south. ... He compelled Philip, Count of Savoy, to surrender
Morat, Payerne, and Guminen, which had been usurped from the
Empire. By a successful expedition across the Jura, he brought
back to obedience Otho IV. Count of Burgundy; and forced him
to renounce the allegiance he had proffered to Philip III.
King of France. ... He crushed an insurrection headed by an
impostor, who had persuaded the infatuated multitude to
believe that he was the Emperor Frederic II.
{1450}
And he freed his dominions from rapine and desolation by the
destruction of several castles, whose owners infested the
country with their predatory incursions." Before his death, in
1291, Rodolph "grew anxious to secure to his son Albert the
succession to the throne, and his nomination by the Electors
ere the grave closed upon himself. ... But all his entreaties
were unavailing; he was coldly reminded that he himself was
still the 'King,' and that the Empire was too poor to support
two kings. Rodolph might now repent his neglect to assume the
imperial crown: but the character of Albert seems to have been
the real obstacle to his elevation. With many of the great
qualities of his father, this prince was deficient in his
milder virtues; and his personal bravery and perseverance were
tainted with pride, haughtiness; and avarice." On Rodolph's
death, the Electors chose for his successor Adolphus, Count of
Nassau, a choice of which they soon found reason to repent. By
taking pay from Edward I. of England, for an alliance with the
latter against the King of France, and by attempts to enforce
a purchased claim upon the Landgraviate of Thuringia, Adolphus
brought himself into contempt, and in 1298 he was solemnly
deposed by the Electors, who now conferred the kingship upon
Albert of Austria whom they had rejected six years before.
"The deposed sovereign was, however, strongly supported; and
he promptly collected his adherents, and marched at the head
of a vast army against Albert, who was not unprepared for his
reception. A great battle took place at Gelheim, near Worms;
and, after a bloody contest, the troops of Adolphus were
entirely defeated," and he himself was slain. But Albert, now
unopposed in Germany, found his title disputed at Rome.
Boniface VIII., the most arrogant of all popes, refused to
acknowledge the validity of his election, and drove him into a
close alliance with the Pope's implacable and finally
triumphant enemy, Philip IV. of France (see PAPACY: A. D.
1294-1348). He was soon at enmity, moreover, with a majority
of the Electors who had given the crown to him, and they,
stimulated by the Pope, were preparing to depose him, as they
had deposed Adolphus. But Albert's energy broke up their
plans. He humbled their leader, the Archbishop-Elector of
Mentz, and the rest became submissive. The Pope now came to
terms with him, and invited him to Rome to receive the
imperial crown; also offering to him the crown of France, if
he would take it from the head of the excommunicated Philip;
but while these proposals were under discussion, Boniface
suffered humiliations at the hands of the French king which
caused his death. During most of his reign, Albert was busy
with undertakings of ambition and rapacity which had no
success. He attempted to seize the counties of Holland,
Zealand, and Friesland, as fiefs reverting to the crown, on
the death of John, Count of Holland, in 1299. He claimed the
Bohemian crown in 1306, when Wenceslaus V., the young king,
was assassinated, and invaded the country; but only to be
beaten back. He was defeated at Lucka, in 1308, when
attempting to grasp the inheritance of the Landgrave of
Thuringia--under the very transaction which had chiefly caused
his predecessor Adolphus to be deposed, and he himself
invested with the Roman crown. Finally, he was in hostilities
with the Swiss Forest Cantons, and was leading his forces
against them, in May, 1308, when he was assassinated by
several nobles, including his cousin John, whose enmity he had
incurred.
_Sir R. Comyn,
History of the Western Empire,
chapters 14-17 (volume 1)._
ALSO IN;
_W. Coxe,
History of the House of Austria,
chapter 5 (volume 1)._
GERMANY: A. D. 1282.
Acquisition of the duchy of Austria by the House of Hapsburg.
See AUSTRIA: A. D. 1246-1282.
GERMANY: A. D. 1308-1313.
The reign of Henry of Luxemburg.
The king (subsequently crowned emperor) chosen to succeed
Albert was Count Henry of Luxemburg, an able and excellent
prince. The new sovereign was crowned as Henry VII. "Henry did
not make the extension of his private domains his object, yet
favoring fortune brought it to him in the largest measure.
Since the death of Wenzel III., the succession to the throne
of Bohemia had been a subject of constant struggles. A very
small party was in favor of Austria; but the chief power was
in the hands of Henry of Carinthia, husband of Anna, Wenzel's
eldest daughter. But he was hated by the people, whose hopes
turned more and more to Elizabeth, a younger daughter of
Wenzel; though she was kept in close confinement by Henry, who
was about to marry her, it was supposed, below her rank. She
escaped, fled to the emperor, and implored his aid. He gave
her in marriage to his young son John, sending him to Bohemia
in charge of Peter Aichspalter; to take possession of the
kingdom. He did so, and it remained for more than a century in
the Luxemburg family. This King John of Bohemia was a man of
mark. His life was spent in the ceaseless pursuit of
adventure--from tournament to tournament, from war to war,
from one enterprise to another. We meet him now in Avignon,
and now in Paris; then on the Rhine, in Prussia, Poland, or
Hungary, and then prosecuting large plans in Italy, but hardly
ever in his own kingdom. Yet his restless activity
accomplished very little, apart from some important
acquisitions in Silesia. Henry then gave attention to the
public peace; came to an understanding with Leopold and
Frederick, the proud sons of Albert, and put under the ban
Everard of Wirtemberg, long a fomenter of disturbances,
sending against him a strong imperial army. ... At the Diet of
Spires, in September, 1309, it was cheerfully resolved to
carry out Henry's cherished plan of reviving the traditional
dignity of the Roman emperors by an expedition to the Eternal
City. Henry expected thus to renew the authority of his title
at home, as well as in Italy, where, in the traditional view,
the imperial crown was as important and as necessary as in
Germany. Every thing here had gone to confusion and ruin since
the Hohenstaufens had succumbed to the bitter hostility of the
popes. The contending parties still called themselves Guelphs
and Ghibellines, though they retained little of the original
characteristics attached to these names. A formal embassy,
with Matteo Visconti at its head, invited Henry to Milan; and
the parties every where anticipated his coming with hope. The
great Florentine poet, Dante, hailed him as a saviour for
distracted Italy. Thus, with the pope's approval, he crossed
the Alps in the autumn of 1310, attended by a splendid escort
of princes of the empire.
{1451}
The news of his approach excited general wonder and
expectation, and his reception at Milan in December was like a
triumph. He was crowned King of Lombardy without opposition.
But when, in the true imperial spirit, he announced that he
had come to serve the nation, and not one or another party,
and proved his sincerity by treating both parties alike, all
whose selfish hopes were deceived conspired against him.
Brescia endured a frightful siege for four months, showing
that the national hatred of German rule still survived. At
length a union of all his adversaries was formed under King
Robert of Naples, the grandson of Charles of Anjou, who put
Conradin to death. Meanwhile Henry VII. went to Rome, May
1312, and received the crown of the Cæsars from four
cardinals, plenipotentiaries of the pope, in the church of St.
John Lateran, south of the Tiber, St. Peter's being occupied
by the Neapolitan troops. But many of his German soldiers left
him, and he retired, with a small army, to Pisa, after an
unsuccessful effort to take Florence. From the faithful city
of Pisa he proclaimed King Robert under the ban, and, in
concert with Frederick of Sicily, prepared for war by land and
sea. But the pope, now a mere tool of the King of France,
commanded an armistice; and when Henry, in an independent
spirit, hesitated to obey, Clement V. pronounced the ban of
the Church against him. It never reached the emperor, who died
suddenly in the monastery of Buon-Convento: poisoned, as the
German annalists assert, by a Dominican monk, in the
sacramental cup, August 24, 1313. He was buried at Pisa.
Meanwhile his army in Bohemia had been completely successful
in establishing King John on the throne."
_C. T. Lewis,
A History of Germany,
book 3, chapter 10._
See, also, ITALY: A. D. 1310-1313.
GERMANY: A. D. 1314-1347.
Election of rival emperors, Lewis (Ludowic) of Bavaria and
Frederic of Austria.
Triumph of Lewis at the Battle of Mühldorf.
Papal interference and excommunication of Lewis.
Germany under interdict.
Unrelenting hostility of the Church.
"The death of Heinric [Henry] replunged Germany into horrors
to which, since the extinction of the Swabian line of
emperors, it had been a stranger. The Austrian princes, who
had never forgiven the elevation of the Luxemburg family,
espoused the interests of Frederic, their head; the Bohemians
as naturally opposed them. From the accession of John, the two
houses were of necessity hostile; and it was evident that
there could be no peace in Germany until one of them was
subjected to the other. The Bohemians, indeed, could not hope
to place their king on the vacant throne, since their project
would have found an insurmountable obstacle in the jealousy of
the electors; but they were at least resolved to support the
pretensions of a prince hostile to the Austrians. ... The diet
being convoked at Frankfort, the electors repaired thither,
but with very different views; for, as their suffrages were
already engaged, while the more numerous party proclaimed the
duke of Bavaria as Ludowic V., another no less eagerly
proclaimed Frederic. Although Ludowic was a member of the
Austro-Hapsburg family--his mother being a daughter of Rodolf
I.--he had always been the enemy of the Austrian princes, and
in the same degree the ally of the Luxemburg faction. The two
candidates being respectively crowned kings of the Romans,
Ludowic at Aix-la-Chapelle, by the archbishop of
Mentz--Frederic at Bonn, by the metropolitan of Cologne, a
civil war was inevitable: neither had virtue enough to
sacrifice his own rights to the good of the state. ... The
contest would have ended in favour of the Austrians, but for
the rashness of Frederic, who, in September 1322, without
waiting for the arrival of his brother Leopold, assailed
Ludowic between Mahldorf and Ettingen in Bavaria. ... The
battle was maintained with equal valour from the rising to the
setting sun; and was evidently in favour of the Austrians,
when an unexpected charge in flank by a body of cavalry under
the margrave of Nuremburg decided the fortune of the day.
Heinric of Austria was first taken prisoner; and Frederic
himself, who disdained to flee, was soon in the same
condition. To his everlasting honour, Ludowic received
Frederic with the highest assurances of esteem; and though the
latter was conveyed to the strong fortress of Trapnitz, in the
Upper Palatinate, he was treated with every indulgence
consistent with his safe custody. But the contest was not yet
decided; the valiant Leopold was still at the head of a
separate force; and pope John XXII., the natural enemy of the
Ghibelins, incensed at some succours which Ludowic sent to
that party in Lombardy, excommunicated the king of the Romans,
and declared him deposed from his dignity. Among the
ecclesiastics of the empire this iniquitous sentence had its
weight; but had not other events been disastrous to the king,
he might have safely despised it. By Leopold he was signally
defeated; he had the mortification to see the inconstant king
of Bohemia join the party of Austria; and the still heavier
misfortune to learn that the ecclesiastical and two or three
secular electors were proceeding to another choice--that of
Charles de Valois, whose interests were warmly supported by
the pope. In this emergency, his only chance of safety was a
reconciliation with his enemies; and Frederic was released on
condition of his renouncing all claim to the empire. But
though Frederic sincerely resolved to fulfil his share of the
compact, Leopold and the other princes of his family refused;
and their refusal was approved by the pope. With the
magnanimity of his character, Frederic, unable to execute the
engagements which he had made, voluntarily surrendered himself
to his enemy. But Ludowic, who would not be outdone in
generosity, received him, not as a prisoner, but a friend.
'They ate,' says a contemporary writer, 'at the same table,
slept on the same couch;' and when the King left Bavaria, the
administration of that duchy was confided to Frederic. Two
such men could not long remain even politically hostile; and
by another treaty, it was agreed that they should exercise
conjointly the government of the empire. When this arrangement
was condemned both by the pope and the electors, Ludowic
proposed to take Italy as his seat of government, and leave
Germany to Frederic. But the death [1326] of the war-like
Leopold--the great support of the Austrian cause--and the
continued opposition of the states to any compromise, enabled
Ludowic to retain the sceptre of the kingdom; and in 1329,
that of Frederic strengthened his party. But his reign was
destined to be one of troubles. ... His open warfare against
the head of the church did not much improve his affairs, the
vindictive pope, in addition to the former sentence, placing
all Germany under an interdict. ...
{1452}
In 1338, the diet of Frankfort issued a declaration for ever
memorable in the annals of freedom. That the imperial
authority depended on God alone; that the pope had no temporal
influence, direct or indirect, within the empire; ... it
concluded by empowering the emperor (Ludowic while in Italy
[see ITALY: A. D. 1313-1330] had received the imperial crown
from the anti-pope whom he had created in opposition to John
XXII.) to raise, of his own authority, the interdict which,
during four years, had oppressed the country. Another diet,
held the following year, ratified this bold declaration. ...
But this conduct of the diet was above the comprehension of
the vulgar, who still regarded Ludowic as under the curse of
God and the church. ... Unfortunately for the national
independence, Ludowic himself contradicted the tenor of his
hitherto spirited conduct, by mean submissions, by humiliating
applications for absolution. They were unsuccessful; and he
had the mortification to see the king of Bohemia, who had
always acted an unaccountable part, become his bitter enemy.
... From this moment the fate of Ludowic was decided. In
conjunction with the pope and the French king, Charles of
Bohemia, who in 1346 succeeded to his father's kingdom and
antipathy, commenced a civil war; and in the midst of these
troubled scenes the emperor breathed his last [October 11,
1347]. Twelve months before the decease of Ludowic, Charles of
Bohemia [son of John, the blind king of Bohemia, who fell,
fighting for the French, at the battle of Crecy], assisted by
Clement VI., was elected king of the Romans."
_S. A. Dunham,
History of the Germanic Empire,
book 1, chapter 4 (volume 1)._
ALSO IN:
_J. I. von Döllinger,
Studies in European History,
chapter 5._
_J. C. Robertson,
History of the Christian Church,
book 8, chapter 2, V. 7._
_M. Creighton,
History of the Papacy during the Period of the Reformation,
introduction, chapter 2._
GERMANY: A. D. 1347-1493.
The Golden Bull of Charles IV.
The Luxemburg line of emperors, and the reappearance of the
Hapsburgs.
The Holy Roman Empire as it was at the end of the Middle Ages.
"John king of Bohemia did not himself wear the imperial crown;
but three of his descendants possessed it, with less
interruption than could have been expected. His son Charles
IV. succeeded Louis of Bavaria in 1347; not indeed without
opposition, for a double election and a civil war were matters
of course in Germany. Charles IV. has been treated with more
derision by his contemporaries, and consequently by later
writers, than almost any prince in history; yet he was
remarkably successful in the only objects that he seriously
pursued. Deficient in personal courage, insensible of
humiliation, bending without shame to the pope, to the
Italians, to the electors, so poor and so little reverenced as
to be arrested by a butcher at Worms for want of paying his
demand, Charles IV. affords a proof that a certain dexterity
and cold-blooded perseverance may occasionally supply, in a
sovereign, the want of more respectable qualities. He has been
reproached with neglecting the empire. But he never deigned to
trouble himself about the empire, except for his private'
ends. He did not neglect the kingdom of Bohemia, to which he
almost seemed to render Germany a province. Bohemia had been
long considered as a fief of the empire, and indeed could
pretend to an electoral vote by no other title. Charles,
however, gave the states by law the right of choosing a king,
on the extinction of the royal family, which seems derogatory
to the imperial prerogative. ... He constantly resided at
Prague, where he founded a celebrated university, and
embellished the city with buildings. This kingdom, augmented
also during his reign by the acquisition of Silesia, he
bequeathed to his son Wenceslaus, for whom, by pliancy towards
the electors and the court of Rome, he had procured, against
all recent example, the imperial succession. The reign of
Charles IV. is distinguished in the constitutional history of
the empire by his Golden Bull [1356]; an instrument which
finally ascertained the prerogatives of the electoral college.
See above: A. D. 1125-1152.
The Golden Bull terminated the disputes which had arisen
between different members of the same house as to their right
of suffrage, which was declared inherent in certain definite
territories. The number was absolutely restrained to seven.
The place of legal imperial elections was fixed at Frankfort;
of coronations, at Aix-la-Chapelle: and the latter ceremony
was to be performed by the arch-bishop of Cologne. These
regulations, though consonant to ancient usage, had not always
been observed, and their neglect had sometimes excited
questions as to the validity of elections. The dignity of
elector was enhanced by the Golden Bull as highly as an
imperial edict could carry it: they were declared equal to
kings, and conspiracy against their persons incurred the
penalty of high treason. Many other privileges are granted to
render them more completely sovereign within their dominions.
It seems extraordinary that Charles should have voluntarily
elevated an oligarchy, from whose pretensions his predecessors
had frequently suffered injury. But he had more to apprehend
from the two great families of Bavaria and Austria, whom he
relatively depressed by giving such a preponderance to the
seven electors, than from any members of the college. By his
compact with Brandenburg [see BRANDENBURG: A. D. 1168-1417] he
had a fair prospect of adding a second vote to his own. ...
The next reign, nevertheless, evinced the danger of investing
the electors with such preponderating authority. Wenceslaus
[elected in 1378], a supine and voluptuous man, less
respected, and more negligent of Germany, if possible, than
his father, was regularly deposed by a majority of the
electoral college in 1400. ... They chose Robert count
palatine instead of Wenceslaus; and though the latter did not
cease to have some adherents, Robert has generally been
counted among the lawful emperors. Upon his death [1410] the
empire returned to the house of Luxemburg; Wenceslaus himself
waiving his rights in favour of his brother Sigismund of
Hungary." On the death of Sigismund, in 1437, the house of
Austria regained the imperial throne, in the person of Albert,
duke of Austria, who had married Sigismund's only daughter,
the queen of Hungary and Bohemia. "He died in two years,
leaving his wife pregnant with a son, Ladislaus Posthumus, who
afterwards reigned in the two kingdoms just mentioned; and the
choice of the electors fell upon Frederic duke of Styria,
second-cousin of the last emperor, from whose posterity it
never departed, except in a single instance, upon the
extinction of his male line in 1740.
{1453}
Frederic III. reigned 53 years [1440-1493], a longer period
than any of his predecessors; and his personal character was
more insignificant. ... Frederic, always poor, and scarcely
able to protect himself in Austria from the seditions of his
subjects, or the inroads of the king of Hungary, was yet
another founder of his family, and left their fortunes
incomparably more prosperous than at his accession. The
marriage of his son Maximilian with the heiress of Burgundy
[see NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1477] began that aggrandizement of the
house of Austria which Frederic seems to have anticipated. The
electors, who had lost a good deal of their former spirit, and
were grown sensible of the necessity of choosing a powerful
sovereign, made no opposition to Maximilian's becoming king of
the Romans in his father's lifetime."
_H. Hallam,
The Middle Ages,
chapter 5 (volume 2)._