SAXON AND FRANCONIAN EMPERORS.
He who begins to read the history of the Middle Ages is alternately
amused and provoked by the seeming absurdities that meet him at every
step. He finds writers proclaiming amidst universal assent magnificent
theories which no one attempts to carry out. He sees men who are
stained with every vice full of sincere devotion to a religion which,
even when its doctrines were most obscured, never sullied the purity
of its moral teaching. He is disposed to conclude that such people
must have been either fools or hypocrites. Yet such a conclusion would
be wholly erroneous. Every one knows how little a man's actions
conform to the general maxims which he would lay down for himself, and
how many things there are which he believes without realizing:
believes sufficiently to be influenced, yet not sufficiently to be
governed by them. Now in the Middle Ages this perpetual opposition of
theory and practice was peculiarly abrupt. Men's impulses were more
violent and their conduct more reckless than is often witnessed in
modern society; while the absence of a criticizing and measuring
spirit made them surrender their minds more unreservedly than they
would now do to a complete and imposing theory. Therefore it was, that
while everyone believed in the rights of the Empire as a part of
divine truth, no one would yield to them where his own passions or
interests interfered. Resistance to God's Vicar might be and indeed
was admitted to be a deadly sin, but it was one which nobody hesitated
to commit. Hence, in order to give this unbounded imperial prerogative
any practical efficiency, it was found necessary to prop it up by the
limited but tangible authority of a feudal king. And the one spot in
Otto's empire on which feudality had never fixed its grasp, and where
therefore he was forced to rule merely as emperor, and not also as
king, was that in which he and his successors were never safe from
insult and revolt. That spot was his capital. Accordingly an account
of what befel the first Saxon emperor in Rome is a not unfitting
comment on the theory expounded above, as well as a curious episode in
the history of the Apostolic Chair.
[Sidenote: Otto the Great in Rome.]
After his coronation Otto had returned to North Italy, where the
partizans of Berengar and his son Adalbert still maintained themselves
in arms. Scarcely was he gone when the restless John the Twelfth, who
found too late that in seeking an ally he had given himself a master,
renounced his allegiance, opened negotiations with Berengar, and even
scrupled not to send envoys pressing the heathen Magyars to invade
Germany. The Emperor was soon informed of these plots, as well as of
the flagitious life of the pontiff, a youth of twenty-five, the most
profligate if not the most guilty of all who have worn the tiara. But
he affected to despise them, saying, with a sort of unconscious irony,
'He is a boy, the example of good men may reform him.' When, however,
Otto returned with a strong force, he found the city gates shut, and a
party within furious against him. John the Twelfth was not only Pope,
but as the heir of Alberic, the head of a strong faction among the
nobles, and a sort of temporal prince in the city. But neither he nor
they had courage enough to stand a siege: John fled into the Campagna
to join Adalbert, and Otto entering convoked a synod in St. Peter's.
Himself presiding as temporal head of the Church, he began by
inquiring into the character and manners of the Pope. At once a
tempest of accusations burst forth from the assembled clergy.
Liudprand, a credible although a hostile witness, gives us a long list
of them:--'Peter, cardinal-priest, rose and witnessed that he had seen
the Pope celebrate mass and not himself communicate. John, bishop of
Narnia, and John, cardinal-deacon, declared that they had seen him
ordain a deacon in a stable, neglecting the proper formalities. They
said further that he had defiled by shameless acts of vice the
pontifical palace; that he had openly diverted himself with hunting;
had put out the eyes of his spiritual father Benedict; had set fire to
houses; had girt himself with a sword, and put on a helmet and
hauberk. All present, laymen as well as priests, cried out that he had
drunk to the devil's health; that in throwing the dice he had invoked
the help of Jupiter, Venus, and other demons; that he had celebrated
matins at uncanonical hours, and had not fortified himself by making
the sign of the cross. After these things the Emperor, who could not
speak Latin, since the Romans could not understand his native, that is
to say, the Saxon tongue, bade Liudprand bishop of Cremona interpret
for him, and adjured the council to declare whether the charges they
had brought were true, or sprang only of malice and envy. Then all the
clergy and people cried with a loud voice, 'If John the Pope hath not
committed all the crimes which Benedict the deacon hath read over, and
even greater crimes than these, then may the chief of the Apostles,
the blessed Peter, who by his word closes heaven to the unworthy and
opens it to the just, never absolve us from our sins, but may we be
bound by the chain of anathema, and on the last day may we stand on
the left hand along with those who have said to the Lord God, "Depart
from us, for we will not know Thy ways."'
The solemnity of this answer seems to have satisfied Otto and the
council: a letter was despatched to John, couched in respectful terms,
recounting the charges brought against him, and asking him to appear
to clear himself by his own oath and that of a sufficient number of
compurgators. John's reply was short and pithy.
'John the bishop, the servant of the servants of God, to all the
bishops. We have heard tell that you wish to set up another Pope: if
you do this, by Almighty God I excommunicate you, so that you may not
have power to perform mass or to ordain no one[153].'
[Sidenote: Deposition of John XII.]
To this Otto and the synod replied by a letter of humorous
expostulation, begging the Pope to reform both his morals and his
Latin. But the messenger who bore it could not find John: he had
repeated what seems to have been thought his most heinous sin, by
going into the country with his bow and arrows; and after a search had
been made in vain, the synod resolved to take a decisive step. Otto,
who still led their deliberations, demanded the condemnation of the
Pope; the assembly deposed him by acclamation, 'because of his
reprobate life,' and having obtained the Emperor's consent, proceeded
in an equally hasty manner to raise Leo, the chief secretary and a
layman, to the chair of the Apostle.
[Sidenote: Revolt of the Romans.]
Otto might seem to have now reached a position loftier and firmer than
that of any of his predecessors. Within little more than a year from
his arrival in Rome, he had exercised powers greater than those of
Charles himself, ordering the dethronement of one pontiff and the
installation of another, forcing a reluctant people to bend themselves
to his will. The submission involved in his oath to protect the Holy
See was more than compensated by the oath of allegiance to his crown
which the Pope and the Romans had taken, and by their solemn
engagement not to elect nor ordain any future pontiff without the
Emperor's consent[154]. But he had yet to learn what this obedience
and these oaths were worth. The Romans had eagerly joined in the
expulsion of John; they soon began to regret him. They were mortified
to see their streets filled by a foreign soldiery, the habitual
licence of their manners sternly repressed, their most cherished
privilege, the right of choosing the universal bishop, grasped by the
strong hand of a master who used it for purposes in which they did not
sympathize. In a fickle and turbulent people, disaffection quickly
turned to rebellion. One night, Otto's troops being most of them
dispersed in their quarters at a distance, the Romans rose in arms,
blocked up the Tiber bridges, and fell furiously upon the Emperor and
his creature the new Pope. Superior valour and constancy triumphed
over numbers, and the Romans were overthrown with terrible slaughter;
yet this lesson did not prevent them from revolting a second time,
after Otto's departure in pursuit of Adalbert. John the Twelfth
returned to the city, and when his pontifical career was speedily
closed by the sword of an injured husband[155], the people chose a new
Pope in defiance of the Emperor and his nominee. Otto again subdued
and again forgave them, but when they rebelled for a third time, in
A.D. 966, he resolved to shew them what imperial supremacy meant.
Thirteen leaders, among them the twelve tribunes, were executed, the
consuls were banished, republican forms entirely suppressed, the
government of the city entrusted to Pope Leo as viceroy. He, too, must
not presume on the sacredness of his person to set up any claims to
independence. Otto regarded the pontiff as no more than the first of
his subjects, the creature of his own will, the depositary of an
authority which must be exercised according to the discretion of his
sovereign. The citizens yielded to the Emperor an absolute veto on
papal elections in A.D. 963. Otto obtained from his nominee, Leo VIII,
a confirmation of this privilege, which it was afterwards supposed
that Hadrian I had granted to Charles, in a decree which may yet be
read in the collections of the canon law[156]. The vigorous exercise
of such a power might be expected to reform as well as to restrain the
apostolic see; and it was for this purpose, and in noble honesty, that
the Teutonic sovereigns employed it. But the fortunes of Otto in the
city are a type of those which his successors were destined to
experience. Notwithstanding their clear rights and the momentary
enthusiasm with which they were greeted in Rome, not all the efforts
of Emperor after Emperor could gain any firm hold on the capital they
were so proud of. Visiting it only once or twice in their reigns, they
must be supported among a fickle populace by a large army of
strangers, which melted away with terrible rapidity under the sun of
Italy amid the deadly hollows of the Campagna[157]. Rome soon resumed
her turbulent independence.
[Sidenote: Otto's rule in Italy.]
Causes partly the same prevented the Saxon princes from gaining a firm
footing throughout Italy. Since Charles the Bald had bartered away for
the crown all that made it worth having, no Emperor had exercised
substantial authority there. The _missi dominici_ had ceased to
traverse the country; the local governors had thrown off control, a
crowd of petty potentates had established principalities by
aggressions on their weaker neighbours. Only in the dominions of great
nobles, like the marquises of Tuscany and Spoleto, and in some of the
cities where the supremacy of the bishop was paving the way for a
republican system, could traces of political order be found, or the
arts of peace flourish. Otto, who, though he came as a conqueror,
ruled legitimately as Italian king, found his feudal vassals less
submissive than in Germany. While actually present he succeeded by
progresses and edicts, and stern justice, in doing something to still
the turmoil; on his departure Italy relapsed into that disorganization
for which her natural features are not less answerable than the
mixture of her races. Yet it was at this era, when the confusion was
wildest, that there appeared the first rudiments of an Italian
nationality, based partly on geographical position, partly on the use
of a common language and the slow growth of peculiar customs and modes
of thought. But though already jealous of the Tedescan, national
feeling was still very far from disputing his sway. Pope, princes, and
cities bowed to Otto as king and Emperor; nor did he bethink himself
of crushing while it was weak a sentiment whose development threatened
the existence of his empire. Holding Italy equally for his own with
Germany, and ruling both on the same principles, he was content to
keep it a separate kingdom, neither changing its institutions nor
sending Saxons, as Charles had sent Franks, to represent his
government[158].
[Sidenote: Otto's foreign policy.]
[Sidenote: Towards Byzantium.]
The lofty claims which Otto acquired with the Roman crown urged him to
resume the plans of foreign conquest which had lain neglected since
the days of Charles: the growing vigour of the Teutonic people, now
definitely separating themselves from surrounding races (this is the
era of the Marks--Brandenburg, Meissen, Schleswig), placed in his
hands a force to execute those plans which his predecessors had
wanted. In this, as in his other enterprises, the great Emperor was
active, wise, successful. Retaining the extreme south of Italy, and
unwilling to confess the loss of Rome, the Greeks had not ceased to
annoy her German masters by intrigue, and might now, under the
vigorous leadership of Nicephorus and Tzimiskes, hope again to menace
them in arms. Policy, and the fascination which an ostentatiously
legitimate court exercised over the Saxon stranger, made Otto, as
Napoleon wooed Maria Louisa, seek for his heir the hand of the
princess Theophano. Liudprand's account of his embassy represents in
an amusing manner the rival pretensions of the old and new
Empires[159]. The Greeks, who fancied that with the name they
preserved the character and rights of Rome, held it almost as absurd
as it was wicked that a Frank should insult their prerogative by
reigning in Italy as Emperor. They refused him that title altogether;
and when the Pope had, in a letter addressed '_Imperatori Græcorum_,'
asked Nicephorus to gratify the wishes of the Emperor of the Romans,
the Eastern was furious. 'You are no Romans,' said he, 'but wretched
Lombards: what means this insolent Pope? with Constantine all Rome
migrated hither.' The wily bishop appeased him by abusing the Romans,
while he insinuated that Byzantium could lay no claim to their name,
and proceeded to vindicate the Francia and Saxonia of his master.
'"Roman" is the most contemptuous name we can use--it conveys the
reproach of every vice, cowardice, falsehood, avarice. But what can be
expected from the descendants of the fratricide Romulus? to his asylum
were gathered the offscourings of the nations: thence came these
κοσμοκράτορες.' Nicephorus demanded the 'theme' or province of Rome as
the price of compliance[160]; Tzimiskes was more moderate, and
Theophano became the bride of Otto II.
[Sidenote: Towards the West Franks.]
Holding the two capitals of Charles the Great, Otto might vindicate
the suzerainty over the West Frankish kingdom which it had been meant
that the imperial title should carry with it. Arnulf had asserted it
by making Eudes, the first Capetian king, receive the crown as his
feudatory: Henry the Fowler had been less successful. Otto pursued the
same course, intriguing with the discontented nobles of Louis
d'Outremer, and receiving their fealty as Superior of Roman Gaul.
These pretensions, however, could have been made effective only by
arms, and the feudal militia of the tenth century was no such
instrument of conquest as the hosts of Clovis and Charles had been.
The star of the Carolingian of Laon was paling before the rising
greatness of the Parisian Capets: a Romano-Keltic nation had formed
itself, distinct in tongue from the Franks, whom it was fast
absorbing, and still less willing to submit to a Saxon stranger.
Modern France[161] dates from the accession of Hugh Capet, A.D. 987,
and the claims of the Roman Empire were never afterwards formally
admitted.
[Sidenote: Lorraine and Burgundy.]
Of that France, however, Aquitaine was virtually independent.
Lotharingia and Burgundy belonged to it as little as did England. The
former of these kingdoms had adhered to the West Frankish king,
Charles the Simple, against the East Frankish Conrad: but now, as
mostly German in blood and speech, threw itself into the arms of Otto,
and was thenceforth an integral part of the Empire. Burgundy, a
separate kingdom, had, by seeking from Charles the Fat a ratification
of Boso's election, by admitting, in the person of Rudolf the first
Transjurane king, the feudal superiority of Arnulf, acknowledged
itself to be dependent on the German crown. Otto governed it for
thirty years, nominally as the guardian of the young king Conrad (son
of Rudolf II).
[Sidenote: Denmark and the Slaves.]
[Sidenote: England.]
Otto's conquests to the North and East approved him a worthy successor
of the first Emperor. He penetrated far into Jutland, annexed
Schleswig, made Harold the Blue-toothed his vassal. The Slavic tribes
were obliged to submit, to follow the German host in war, to allow the
free preaching of the Gospel in their borders. The Hungarians he
forced to forsake their nomad life, and delivered Europe from the fear
of Asiatic invasions by strengthening the frontier of Austria. Over
more distant lands, Spain and England, it was not possible to recover
the commanding position of Charles. Henry, as head of the Saxon name,
may have wished to unite its branches on both sides the sea[162], and
it was perhaps partly with this intent that he gained for Otto the
hand of Edith, sister of the English Athelstan. But the claim of
supremacy, if any there was, was repudiated by Edgar, when,
exaggerating the lofty style assumed by some of his predecessors, he
called himself 'Basileus and imperator of Britain[163],' thereby
seeming to pretend to a sovereignty over all the nations of the island
similar to that which the Roman Emperor claimed over the states of
Christendom.
[Sidenote: Extent of Otto's Empire.]
[Sidenote: Comparison between it and that of Charles.]
This restored Empire, which professed itself a continuation of the
Carolingian, was in many respects different. It was less wide,
including, if we reckon strictly, only Germany proper and two-thirds
of Italy; or counting in subject but separate kingdoms, Burgundy,
Bohemia, Moravia, Poland, Denmark, perhaps Hungary. Its character was
less ecclesiastical. Otto exalted indeed the spiritual potentates of
his realm, and was earnest in spreading Christianity among the
heathen: he was master of the Pope and Defender of the Holy Roman
Church. But religion held a less important place in his mind and his
administration: he made fewer wars for its sake, held no councils, and
did not, like his predecessor, criticize the discourses of bishops. It
was also less Roman. We do not know whether Otto associated with that
name anything more than the right to universal dominion and a certain
oversight of matters spiritual, nor how far he believed himself to be
treading in the steps of the Cæsars. He could not speak Latin, he had
few learned men around him, he cannot have possessed the varied
cultivation which had been so fruitful in the mind of Charles.
Moreover, the conditions of his time were different, and did not
permit similar attempts at wide organization. The local potentates
would have submitted to no _missi dominici_; separate laws and
jurisdictions would not have yielded to imperial capitularies; the
_placita_ at which those laws were framed or published would not have
been crowded, as of yore, by armed freemen. But what Otto could he
did, and did it to good purpose. Constantly traversing his dominions,
he introduced a peace and prosperity before unknown, and left
everywhere the impress of an heroic character. Under him the Germans
became not only a united nation, but were at once raised on a pinnacle
among European peoples as the imperial race, the possessors of Rome
and Rome's authority. While the political connection with Italy
stirred their spirit, it brought with it a knowledge and culture
hitherto unknown, and gave the newly-kindled energy an object. Germany
became in her turn the instructress of the neighbouring tribes, who
trembled at Otto's sceptre; Poland and Bohemia received from her their
arts and their learning with their religion. If the revived
Romano-Germanic Empire was less splendid than the Empire of the West
had been under Charles, it was, within narrower limits, firmer and
more lasting, since based on a social force which the other had
wanted. It perpetuated the name, the language, the literature, such as
it then was, of Rome; it extended her spiritual sway; it strove to
represent that concentration for which men cried, and became a power
to unite and civilize Europe.
[Sidenote: Otto II, A.D. 973-983.]
[Sidenote: Otto III, A.D. 983-1002.]
[Sidenote: His ideas. Fascination exercised over him by the name of
Rome.]
[Sidenote: Pope Sylvester II, A.D. 1000.]
The time of Otto the Great has required a fuller treatment, as the era
of the Holy Empire's foundation: succeeding rulers may be more quickly
dismissed. Yet Otto III's reign cannot pass unnoticed: short, sad,
full of bright promise never fulfilled. His mother was the Greek
princess Theophano; his preceptor, the illustrious Gerbert: through
the one he felt himself connected with the old Empire, and had imbibed
the absolutism of Byzantium; by the other he had been reared in the
dream of a renovated Rome, with her memories turned to realities. To
accomplish that renovation, who so fit as he who with the vigorous
blood of the Teutonic conqueror inherited the venerable rights of
Constantinople? It was his design, now that the solemn millennial era
of the founding of Christianity had arrived, to renew the majesty of
the city and make her again the capital of a world-embracing Empire,
victorious as Trajan's, despotic as Justinian's, holy as
Constantine's. His young and visionary mind was too much dazzled by
the gorgeous fancies it created to see the world as it was: Germany
rude, Italy unquiet, Rome corrupt and faithless. In A.D. 994, at the
age of sixteen, he took from his mother's hands the reins of
government, and entered Italy to receive his crown, and quell the
turbulence of Rome. There he put to death the rebel Crescentius, in
whom modern enthusiasm has seen a patriotic republican, who, reviving
the institutions of Alberic, had ruled as consul or senator, sometimes
entitling himself Emperor[164]. The young monarch reclaimed, perhaps
extended, the privilege of Charles and Otto the Great, by nominating
successive pontiffs: first Bruno his cousin (Gregory V), then Gerbert,
whose name of Sylvester II recalled significantly the ally of
Constantine: Gerbert, to his contemporaries a marvel of piety and
learning, in later legend the magician who, at the price of his own
soul, purchased preferment from the Enemy, and by him was at last
carried off in the body. With the substitution of these men for the
profligate priests of Italy, began that Teutonic reform of the Papacy
which raised it from the abyss of the tenth century to the point where
Hildebrand found it. The Emperors were working the ruin of their power
by their most disinterested acts.
[Sidenote: Schemes of Otto III: Changes of style and usage.]
With his tutor on Peter's chair to second or direct him, Otto laboured
on his great project in a spirit almost mystic. He had an intense
religious belief in the Emperor's duties to the world--in his
proclamations he calls himself 'Servant of the Apostles,' 'Servant of
Jesus Christ[165]'--together with the ambitious antiquarianism of a
fiery imagination, kindled by the memorials of the glory and power he
represented. Even the wording of his laws witnesses to the strange
mixture of notions that filled his eager brain. 'We have ordained
this,' says an edict, 'in order that, the church of God being freely
and firmly stablished, our Empire may be advanced and the crown of our
knighthood triumph; that the power of the Roman people may be extended
and the commonwealth be restored; so may we be found worthy after
living righteously in the tabernacle of this world, to fly away from
the prison of this life and reign most righteously with the Lord.' To
exclude the claims of the Greeks he used the title '_Romanorum
Imperator_' instead of the simple '_Imperator_' of his predecessors.
His seals bear a legend resembling that used by Charles, '_Renovatio
Imperii Romanorum_;' even the 'commonwealth,' despite the results that
name had produced under Alberic and Crescentius, was to be
re-established. He built a palace on the Aventine, then the most
healthy and beautiful quarter of the city; he devised a regular
administrative system of government for his capital--naming a
patrician, a prefect, and a body of judges, who were commanded to
recognize no law but Justinian's. The formula of their appointment has
been preserved to us: in it the Emperor delivering to the judge a copy
of the code bids him 'with this code judge Rome and the Leonine city
and the whole world.' He introduced into the simple German court the
ceremonious magnificence of Byzantium, not without giving offence to
many of his followers[166]. His father's wish to draw Italy and
Germany more closely together, he followed up by giving the
chancellorship of both countries to the same churchman, by maintaining
a strong force of Germans in Italy, and by taking his Italian retinue
with him through the Transalpine lands. How far these brilliant and
far-reaching plans were capable of realization, had their author lived
to attempt it, can be but guessed at. It is reasonable to suppose that
whatever power he might have gained in the South he would have lost in
the North. Dwelling rarely in Germany, and in sympathies more a Greek
than a Teuton, he reined in the fierce barons with no such tight hand
as his grandfather had been wont to do; he neglected the schemes of
northern conquest; he released the Polish dukes from the obligation of
tribute. But all, save that those plans were his, is now no more than
conjecture, for Otto III, 'the wonder of the world,' as his own
generation called him, died childless on the threshold of manhood; the
victim, if we may trust a story of the time, of the revenge of
Stephania, widow of Crescentius, who ensnared him by her beauty, and
slew him by a lingering poison. They carried him across the Alps with
laments whose echoes sound faintly yet from the pages of monkish
chroniclers, and buried him in the choir of the basilica at Aachen
some fifty paces from the tomb of Charles beneath the central dome.
Two years had not passed since, setting out on his last journey to
Rome, he had opened that tomb, had gazed on the great Emperor, sitting
on a marble throne, robed and crowned, with the Gospel-book open
before him; and there, touching the dead hand, unclasping from the
neck its golden cross, had taken, as it were, an investiture of Empire
from his Frankish forerunner. Short as was his life and few his acts,
Otto III is in one respect more memorable than any who went before or
came after him. None save he desired to make the seven-hilled city
again the seat of dominion, reducing Germany and Lombardy and Greece
to their rightful place of subject provinces. No one else so forgot
the present to live in the light of the ancient order; no other soul
was so possessed by that fervid mysticism and that reverence for the
glories of the past, whereon rested the idea of the mediæval Empire.
[Sidenote: Italy independent.]
[Sidenote: Henry II Emperor.]
[Sidenote: Southern Italy.]
The direct line of Otto the Great had now ended, and though the Franks
might elect and the Saxons accept Henry II[167], Italy was nowise
affected by their acts. Neither the Empire nor the Lombard kingdom
could as yet be of right claimed by the German king. Her princes
placed Ardoin, marquis of Ivrea, on the vacant throne of Pavia, moved
partly by the growing aversion to a Transalpine power, still more by
the desire of impunity under a monarch feebler than any since
Berengar. But the selfishness that had exalted Ardoin soon overthrew
him. Ere long a party among the nobles, seconded by the Pope, invited
Henry[168]; his strong army made opposition hopeless, and at Rome he
received the imperial crown, A.D. 1014. It is, perhaps, more singular
that the Transalpine kings should have clung so pertinaciously to
Italian sovereignty than that the Lombards should have so frequently
attempted to recover their independence. For the former had often
little or no hereditary claim, they were not secure in their seat at
home, they crossed a huge mountain barrier into a land of treachery
and hatred. But Rome's glittering lure was irresistible, and the
disunion of Italy promised an easy conquest. Surrounded by martial
vassals, these Emperors were generally for the moment supreme: once
their pennons had disappeared in the gorges of Tyrol, things reverted
to their former condition, and Tuscany was little more dependent than
France. In Southern Italy the Greek viceroy ruled from Bari, and Rome
was an outpost instead of the centre of Teutonic power. A curious
evidence of the wavering politics of the time is furnished by the
Annals of Benevento, the Lombard town which on the confines of the
Greek and Roman realms gave steady obedience to neither. They usually
date by and recognize the princes of Constantinople[169], seldom
mentioning the Franks, till the reign of Conrad II; after him the
Western becomes _Imperator_, the Greek, appearing more rarely, is
_Imperator Constantinopolitanus_. Assailed by the Saracens, masters
already of Sicily, these regions seemed on the eve of being lost to
Christendom, and the Romans sometimes bethought themselves of
returning under the Byzantine sceptre. As the weakness of the Greeks
in the South favoured the rise of the Norman kingdom, so did the
liberties of the northern cities shoot up in the absence of the
Emperors and the feuds of the princes. Milan, Pavia, Cremona, were
only the foremost among many populous centres of industry, some of
them self-governing, all quickly absorbing or repelling the rural
nobility, and not afraid to display by tumults their aversion to the
Germans.
[Sidenote: Conrad II.]
The reign of Conrad II, the first monarch of the great Franconian
line, is remarkable for the accession to the Empire of Burgundy, or,
as it is after this time more often called, the kingdom of Arles[170].
Rudolf III, the last king, had proposed to bequeath it to Henry II,
and the states were at length persuaded to consent to its reunion to
the crown from which it had been separated, though to some extent
dependent, since the death of Lothar I (son of Lewis the Pious). On
Rudolf's death in 1032, Eudes, count of Champagne, endeavoured to
seize it, and entered the north-western districts, from which he was
dislodged by Conrad with some difficulty. Unlike Italy, it became an
integral member of the Germanic realm: its prelates and nobles sat in
imperial diets, and retained till recently the style and title of
Princes of the Holy Empire. The central government was, however,
seldom effective in these outlying territories, exposed always to the
intrigues, finally to the aggressions, of Capetian France.
[Sidenote: Henry III.]
[Sidenote: His reform of the Popedom.]
[Sidenote: Henry IV, A.D. 1056-1106.]
Under Conrad's son Henry the Third the Empire attained the meridian of
its power. At home Otto the Great's prerogative had not stood so high.
The duchies, always the chief source of fear, were allowed to remain
vacant or filled by the relatives of the monarch, who himself
retained, contrary to usual practice, those of Franconia and (for some
years) Swabia. Abbeys and sees lay entirely in his gift. Intestine
feuds were repressed by the proclamation of a public peace. Abroad,
the feudal superiority over Hungary, which Henry II had gained by
conferring the title of King with the hand of his sister Gisela, was
enforced by war, the country made almost a province, and compelled to
pay tribute. In Rome no German sovereign had ever been so absolute. A
disgraceful contest between three claimants of the papal chair had
shocked even the reckless apathy of Italy. Henry deposed them all, and
appointed their successor: he became hereditary patrician, and wore
constantly the green mantle and circlet of gold which were the badges
of that office, seeming, one might think, to find in it some further
authority than that which the imperial name conferred. The synod
passed a decree granting to Henry the right of nominating the supreme
pontiff; and the Roman priesthood, who had forfeited the respect of
the world even more by habitual simony than by the flagrant corruption
of their manners, were forced to receive German after German as their
bishop, at the bidding of a ruler so powerful, so severe, and so
pious. But Henry's encroachments alarmed his own nobles no less than
the Italians, and the reaction, which might have been dangerous to
himself, was fatal to his successor. A mere chance, as some might call
it, determined the course of history. The great Emperor died suddenly
in A.D. 1056, and a child was left at the helm, while storms were
gathering that might have demanded the wisest hand.
FOOTNOTES:
[153] 'Iohannes episcopus, servus servorum Dei, omnibus episcopis. Nos
audivimus dicere quia vos vultis alium papam facere: si hoc facitis,
da Deum omnipotentem excommunico vos, ut non habeatis licentiam missam
celebrare aut nullum ordinare.'--Liudprand, _ut supra_. The 'da' is
curious, as shewing the progress of the change from Latin to Italian.
The answer sent by Otto and the council takes exception to the double
negative.
[154] 'Cives fidelitatem promittunt hæc addentes et firmiter iurantes
nunquam se papam electuros aut ordinaturos præter consensum atque
electionem domini imperatoris Ottonis Cæsaris Augusti filiique ipsius
Ottonis.'--Liudprand, _Gesta Ottonis_, lib. vi.
[155] 'In timporibus adeo a dyabulo est percussus ut infra dierum octo
spacium eodem sit in vulnere mortuus,' says the chronicler, crediting
with but little of his wonted cleverness the supposed author of John's
death, who well might have desired a long life for so useful a
servant.
He adds a detail too characteristic of the time to be omitted--'Sed
eucharistiæ viaticum, ipsius instinctu qui eum percusserat, non
percepit.'
[156] _Corpus Iuris Canonici_, Dist. lxiii., '_In synodo_.' A decree
which is probably substantially genuine, although the form in which we
have it is evidently of later date.
[157] Cf. St. Peter Damiani's lines--
'Roma vorax hominum domat ardua colla virorum,
Roma ferax febrium necis est uberrima frugum,
Romanæ febres stabili sunt iure fideles.'
[158] There was a separate chancellor for Italy, as afterwards for the
kingdom of Burgundy.
[159] Liudprand, _Legatio Constantinopolitana_.
[160] 'Sancti imperii nostri olim servos principes, Beneventanum
scilicet, tradat,' &c. The epithet is worth noticing.
[161] Liudprand calls the Eastern Franks 'Franci Teutonici' to
distinguish them from the Romanized Franks of Gaul or 'Francigenæ,' as
they were frequently called. The name 'Frank' seems even so early as
the tenth century to have been used in the East as a general name for
the Western peoples of Europe. Liudprand says that the Greek Emperor
included 'sub Francorum nomine tam Latinos quam Teutonicos.' Probably
this use dates from the time of Charles.
[162] Conring, _De Finibus Imperii_.
[163] Basileus was a favourite title of the English kings before the
Conquest. Titles like this used in these early English charters prove,
it need hardly be said, absolutely nothing as to the real existence of
any rights or powers of the English king beyond his own borders. What
they do prove (over and above the taste for florid rhetoric in the
royal clerks) is the impression produced by the imperial style, and by
the idea of the emperor's throne as supported by the thrones of kings
and other lesser potentates.
[164] The coins of Crescentius are said to exhibit the insignia of the
old Empire.--Palgrave, _Normandy and England_, i. 715. But probably
some at least of them are forgeries.
[165] Proclamation in Pertz, _M. G. H._ ii.
[166] 'Imperator antiquam Romanorum consuetudinem iam ex magna parte
deletam suis cupiens renovare temporibus multa faciebat quæ diversi
diverse sentiebant.'--Thietmar, _Chron._ ix.; ap. Pertz, _M. G. H._ t.
iii.
[167] _Annales Quedlinb._, ad ann. 1002.
[168] Henry had already entered Italy in 1004.
[169] _Annales Beneventani_, in Pertz, _M. G. H._
[170] See Appendix, Note A.