Читать книгу The Empire and the Papacy, 918-1273 - T. F. Tout - Страница 9

Table of Contents

The reign of Otto II.—Break-up of Bavaria—Projects of Crusade—War and Alliance with Greek Empire—The Reign of Otto III.—Regency of Theophano and Bavarian Revolt—Otto and the Bishops—Gerbert of Aurillac—Visionary Schemes of Otto—His failure—Reign of Henry II.—The two Conrads—Reign of Conrad II.—His Italian and Slavonic Policy—Union of Arelate and Empire—Fiefs declared Hereditary—Aribert—Reign of Henry III.—His Policy in the East, France, Germany, and Italy—Synod of Sutri—Death of Henry III.

Otto II., 973–983.

Otto II. was eighteen years of age when the death of his father made him sole ruler. His education and surroundings gave his policy a very different direction from that of Otto I. The elder prince was purely German, and even in winning the imperial crown sought to subserve a Teutonic object. His son, born and reared in the purple, Burgundian or Italian on his mother’s side, and married to a Byzantine Emperor’s daughter, took wider views. To Otto II. Italy was as important as Germany, and his ambition was to weld the two realms together in a solid imperial unity, while constantly keeping his eyes even beyond these two kingdoms. To him the Emperor’s lordship of the world was a reality, and he strove with all the force of an ardent, impetuous, and impulsive nature to give effect to his ideal. But while Otto II.’s short reign witnessed the Empire assuming a more universal character, it also saw the first signs of that essential incompatibility between the position of German king and Roman Emperor which, in after ages, was to bear such bitter fruit.

Despite the quietness of Otto I.’s last years, the difficulties against which the old Emperor had struggled still remained. The separatist spirit of the national dukedoms still lived on in Bavaria, and had only been temporarily glossed over by the good understanding between Otto I. and Duke Henry. Judith, the widow of Duke Henry, now ruled Bavaria in the name of her son Henry II., surnamed the Quarrelsome, while she controlled Swabia through her influence on her daughter Hedwig, and Hedwig’s aged husband, the Swabian Duke Burkhard. Otto II. saw the danger of a close union between the two southern duchies, and, on Burkhard’s death, invested his nephew Otto, Duke Ludolf’s son, with Swabia. Judith and her partisans were instantly aroused. A new civil war was threatened, in which the Bavarians did not scruple to call in the help of the Bohemians and Poles. But the young Emperor’s vigorous measures proved fatal to the attempted rebellion, and Otto took the opportunity of his triumph to lessen the influence of the Bavarian dukes by intrusting, to separate margraves, the east mark, on the Danube (the later Austria), and the north mark between the Danube and the Bohemian Forest. |Break-up of the Bavarian Duchy, 976–8.| The great highland marchland of Carinthia and Carniola, with which still went the Italian March of Verona, or Friuli, was constituted a seventh duchy. The rest of the Bavarian duchy was consigned to the care of the faithful Otto of Swabia. Judith was shut up in a convent. Henry the Quarrelsome fled to Bohemia, whence he made subsequent unsuccessful attempts to recover his position. Thus the Emperor triumphed, but he had simply to do over again the work of his father. It was a thankless business, and showed how insecure were the very foundations of the German kingdom. But for the rest of his short reign Germany gave Otto but little trouble. The extension of Christianity among Wends, Poles, and Bohemians gave Magdeburg and Mainz new suffragans in the Bishops of Gnesen and Prague, though renewed attacks on the marches soon taught Otto that the Christianised Slavs were scarcely less formidable enemies than their heathen fathers had been.

War with France, 978.

In 978 Otto marched with a great army almost to the walls of Paris to avenge on the Carolingian king, Lothair, his attempt to withdraw Lorraine from the imperial obedience [see page 70]. Few of his acts bring out more clearly his imperial position than this long progress through hostile territory. But Italy was the scene of Otto II.’s most famous actions, and best illustrates his high conception of the imperial dignity. Rome was, as usual, a constant source of trouble. A series of insignificant Pontiffs succeeded John XIII.; but above them towered the noble Roman, Crescentius, Duke of the Romans, perhaps the son of the younger Theodora, Marozia’s sister, who aspired to renew the great part played by Alberic II. |Crescentius at Rome, 980.| In 980 Otto crossed the Alps for Italy, and on his approach the opposition was shattered. In 981 he restored the Pope to Rome, whence he had fled from fear of Crescentius, and forced Crescentius himself to withdraw into the seclusion of a monastery, where a few years later he died. The need of protection still kept the Papacy faithful to the imperial alliance.

Otto now assumed new responsibilities directly flowing from his position as Emperor. The Mohammedan lords of Sicily had re-established themselves in southern Italy, and threatened the march of Benevento. Otto marched to the help of the Lombard Duke of Benevento. |Campaigns against Greeks and Saracens, 981–982.| At the same time he sought to make a reality of the cession of Greek Italy, the promised portion of Theophano, but which, owing to the unwillingness of the Byzantines, had never actually come into his hands. In 981 and 982 Otto carried on successful war in southern Italy. A whole series of Greek towns—Salerno, Bari, Taranto—fell into his hands. In the summer of 982 Otto traversed the old road of Pyrrhus, along the Gulf of Taranto, and defeated the Arabs at Cotrone (the ancient Croton), slaying Abul Cassim, the Ameer of Sicily, in the fight. A few days later Otto fell into a Saracen ambush as he pursued his route along the narrow road between the Calabrian mountains and the sea. His army was almost destroyed, though he himself, after a series of remarkable adventures, succeeded in eluding his enemies.

Diet of Verona and projected Crusade, 983.

Germans and Italians vied with each other in their efforts to restore the Emperor’s preponderance. In 983 a remarkable Diet assembled at Verona, in which the magnates of Germany and Italy sat side by side, to show that the two realms constituted but one Empire. The spirit that a century later inspired the Crusades first appeared in this remarkable assembly. It was resolved to follow the Emperor on a holy war against the Mussulmans. That the succession might be peacefully secured during his absence the magnates chose as their future ruler the little Otto, his three-years-old son by Theophano. Preparations were then made for the war against Islam. But the rising commercial city of Venice, jealous of the imperial policy, and already enriching itself by trade with the enemies of the Christian faith, refused to supply the necessary ships for an expedition against Sicily, the centre of the infidel power. Otto sought to block up the land approaches to the recalcitrant town, but, secure in her impregnable lagoons, Venice was able to defy the Emperor. The news of a Wendish invasion now came from Germany; and the disturbed condition of Rome again demanded Otto’s personal presence. There he laboured with feverish earnestness to prepare for his mighty task; but there he was smitten with a sudden and deadly disease, that carried him off on 7th December 983. He was only twenty-eight years old. His body was buried, as became a Roman Emperor, in the Church of St. Peter’s. The difficulties which had proved almost too much for the strong and capable grown man, were now to be faced, as best they might be, by his young widow Theophano, the regent of the new lord of the world, a child scarcely four years of age.

The German Empire rested almost entirely on the warlike character of its head, and any failure of the central military power involved the gravest evils. A wave of heathen reaction burst from the Wendish and Danish lands into the very heart of the Saxon Empire. In the south, Islam, excited by the threatened Crusade, menaced the centre of the Christian world. It seemed as if the Empire of the Ottos was on the verge of dissolution, when Henry the Quarrelsome, the deposed Duke of Bavaria, came back, and, by claiming the regency from Theophano, added the terrors of internal discord to those of barbarian invasion. |Revolt of Henry of Bavaria, 984.| At first Henry made good progress, and, advancing in his claims, began to covet the crown itself. The Dukes of Poland and Bohemia paid him homage, and Lothair of France eagerly supported him. It was more important that Henry had won over many of the bishops, who, as the natural result of Otto I.’s policy, had the balance of power in their hands. He also secured the person of the young Otto III. But, as the Archbishop of Magdeburg favoured Henry, the lay nobles of the Wendish mark, who hated their clerical supplanters, and Archbishop Willegis of Mainz, who still looked with detestation on the mushroom primacy on the Elbe, declared for Theophano. The adhesion of the mass of the Saxon nation at last secured the victory of the Greek. Henry was forced to submit, and was pacified by being restored to his duchy of Bavaria.

Regency of Theophano, 983–991.

Otto III. owed his throne to the clergy. The influence of the bishops kept Germany quiet during the regency of Theophano. The fall of the last of the West Frankish Carolingians, and the accession of Hugh Capet in 987, prevented any further danger from the French side, while on the east, the Margrave Eckhard of Meissen hurled back the Slavonic invaders, and cleverly set the Bohemians and the Poles by the ears. Adelaide, Otto’s grandmother, ruled Italy from the old Lombard capital of Pavia. She was less fortunate than her daughter-in-law, with whom, moreover, her relations were not cordial. Rome fell away almost altogether, so that a French synod at Reims (995) was able, with good reason, to denounce the scandals that degraded the Papacy, and to threaten that France, like the east, might be provoked into breaking off all connections with the See of Peter. John Crescentius, son of the man driven by Otto II. into a cloister, renewed the policy of his father, and, taking the name of Patrician, ruled over Rome with little opposition.

Rule of the bishops and education of Otto, 991–996.

Theophano died in 991. No new regent was appointed, but a council of regency set up, prominent among its members being the Empress Adelaide, Willegis of Mainz, Eckhard of Meissen, and Henry, Duke of Bavaria, son and successor of Henry the Quarrelsome. The composition of this body was a further proof of the extension of ecclesiastical influence. But an even more significant indication of this was the fact that the young king was brought up almost entirely under the direction of highly-placed churchmen. Willegis of Mainz, and Bernward, Bishop of Hildesheim, the future saint, were the two prelates most directly responsible for his education. The result was that, though the young king spent his early years amidst his fierce and half-barbarous Saxon subjects, he became still less of a German than Otto II., and was possessed by ideals that stand in the strongest contrast with those of his predecessors. Bernward caused him to be schooled in the best culture of his time, and gave him an abiding love of letters and learned men. He also strongly inspired the quick-witted and sympathetic youth with the ascetic views and the sacerdotal sympathies of the Cluniacs. Thus Otto became enthusiastically religious, and ever remained a devout pilgrim to holy places and seeker out of inspired anchorites and saints. Moreover, Otto inherited from Theophano all the high Byzantine notions of the sacredness of the Empire, and, seeking to combine the two aspects of his education, his mind was soon filled with glowing visions of a kingdom of God on earth, in which Pope and Emperor ruled in harmony over a world that enjoyed perfect peace and idyllic happiness. Otto’s ideals were generous, noble, and unselfish; but in the iron age in which he lived they were hopelessly unpractical. The young king lived to become the ‘wonder of the world’ and the ‘renewer of the Empire.’ But his early death came none too soon to hide the vanity of his ambitions. At best, he was the first of that long line of brilliant and attractive failures which it was the special mission of the mediæval Empire to produce.

Otto’s coronation at Rome, 996.

In 996 Otto attained his legal majority, and crossed the Alps to seek his coronation at Rome as Emperor. The king and his army marched as though bound on a pilgrimage, or like the crusading hosts of a century later. As they entered the Lombard plain, the news came that the Papacy was vacant, and a deputation of Romans, tired of the tyranny of Crescentius, begged Otto to nominate a new Pope. The young king at once appointed his cousin, Bruno, grandson of Conrad the Red and Liutgarde, daughter of Otto I., a youth of four-and-twenty, and a zealous champion of the Cluniacs, who took the name of Gregory V. |Gregory V., 996–999.| On 25th May 996, Otto was crowned by Gregory at Rome.

Pope and Emperor strove at once to embody their theories in acts. The proceedings of the anti-papal synod of Reims were annulled; its nominee to the see of Reims, Gerbert of Aurillac, was forced to yield up his post to the worldly Arnulf that the synod strove in vain to depose. The whole French episcopate bowed in submission before the new Pope, and Gerbert soon repudiated his earlier teachings. The French king, Robert, was visited with the severest censures of the Church for contracting a marriage within the prohibited degrees. The holy Adalbert, the apostle of Bohemia, but driven from his see of Prague by a pagan reaction, was sternly ordered to return to his bishopric, or, if that were impossible, to engage in a new mission to the heathen. Adalbert chose the latter alternative, and his early death at the hands of the heathen Prussians made him the protomartyr of the new order that Otto and Gregory were striving to introduce. But while the two enthusiasts were busy in the regeneration of the universe, they were unable to maintain themselves in the very centre of their power. A new Roman rebellion brought back Crescentius. |Fall of Crescentius, 998.| Only through the help of the iron soldiery of the Saxon borders, headed by the valiant Eckhard of Meissen, could Otto win back the Eternal City to his obedience. In 998 Rome surrendered, and Crescentius atoned for his rebellion on the scaffold.

Gerbert of Aurillac.

An early death now cut off Gregory V., and Otto raised Gerbert of Aurillac^[3] to the papal throne. Gerbert was quite the most remarkable man of his age. A poor Frenchman of obscure birth from the uplands of the centre, he received his first schooling in a cloister at his native Aurillac, where he took the monastic vows. Borrel, a pious Count of Barcelona, made his acquaintance while visiting Aurillac on a pilgrimage, and took him back with him to the Spanish march. There Gerbert abode some years, and there he acquired that profound knowledge of mathematics which had perhaps filtered into the march from the Mussulman schools of Cordova, and which gave him in the unlearned north a reputation for extraordinary learning, if not for magical skill. Ever eager for knowledge, he accompanied his patron to Italy, and attracted the notice of Otto I. Finally he settled down at Reims, attracted by the fame of a certain archdeacon who taught in the cathedral school. The good Archbishop Adalbero made Gerbert ‘scholasticus’ of the school at Reims. Accompanying the archbishop to Italy, Gerbert received from Otto II. the headship of Columban’s old abbey of Bobbio, and speedily reformed its lax discipline. On Otto II.’s death, the angry monks drove him away, and he went back to Reims and resumed his teaching as ‘scholasticus.’ He dominated the policy of the archbishop in the critical years that saw the accession of Hugh Capet to the French throne [see pages 70–71], but on Adalbero’s death was ungratefully passed over by Hugh, whose interests procured the election of Arnulf, an unlearned but high-born Carolingian, to the great see. A few years later, Arnulf was deposed by the synod of 995, and Gerbert put in his place. But Arnulf still claimed to be archbishop, and Gerbert went to Italy to plead his cause with Gregory V. Finding his chances hopeless, he closely attached himself to Otto III., with whom he had strong affinities in character. Gerbert loved pomp and splendour, was attracted by Otto’s high ideals, and was of a pliant, complaisant, and courtier-like disposition. He was made Archbishop of Ravenna to compensate him for the loss of Reims. When elevated to the Papacy, he chose to call himself Sylvester II. As Sylvester I. had stood to the first Christian Emperor, so would Sylvester II. stand to the new Constantine. Under him the close alliance of Pope and Emperor was continued as fervently as during the lifetime of Gregory V.

Visionary schemes of Otto and Sylvester II., 999–1003.

Otto’s plans grew more mystical and visionary. Rome, and Rome alone, could be the seat of the renewed Empire, and Otto began the building of an imperial palace on the Aventine on the site of the abode of the early Cæsars. He abandoned the simple life of a Saxon etheling, which had been good enough for his father and grandfather, and secluded his sacred person from a prying world by all the devices of Byzantine court-etiquette and Oriental exclusiveness. His court officials dropped their old-fashioned Teutonic titles, and were renamed after the manner of Constantinople. The chamberlain became the Protovestiarius, the counsellor the logothetes, the generals were comites imperialis militiæ, and their subordinates protospatharii. The close union of the Pope and Emperor in a theocratic polity was still better illustrated by the institution of the judices palatii ordinarii. They were of the mystic number of seven, ecclesiastics by profession, and were to act as supreme judges in ordinary times, but were also to ordain the Emperor (a new ceremony to be substituted for coronation) and to elect the Pope. But apart from its fantastic character, the whole policy of Otto depended upon a personal harmony between Pope and Emperor. Even under Otto himself this result could only be secured by the Emperor’s utter subordination of his real interests to the pursuit of his brilliant but illusive fancies.

Opposition to Otto III. in Germany.

Otto’s cosmopolitan imperialism soon brought him in collision with Germany, and especially with the German Church. He set up a new archbishopric at Gnesen in Poland, where reposed the relics of the martyred Adalbert, and surrounded it with the mystical number of seven suffragans. In the same way, Sylvester, in recognising Stephen, the first Christian Duke of Hungary, as a king, established a Hungarian archbishopric at Gran. These acts involved a recognition of the national independence of Poland and Hungary. Wise as they were, they were resented in Germany as being directly counter to the traditional Saxon policy of extending German influence eastwards, by making the bishops subject to the German metropolitans at Magdeburg and Salzburg. The practical German bishops saw with disgust the Emperor giving up the very corner-stone of the policy of Henry and Otto I. The deep differences of sentiment came to a head in a petty dispute as to whether a new church for the nuns of Gandersheim should be consecrated by Bernward of Hildesheim, the diocesan, who favoured Otto’s fancies, or by the metropolitan Willegis of Mainz, who bitterly lamented the outlandish ideas of his old pupil. Sylvester upheld Bernward, but the German bishops declared for Willegis, and paid no heed to the papal censures that followed quickly on their contumacy. They refused even to be present at the Councils in which Sylvester professed to condemn the Archbishop of Mainz. The German clergy were thus in open revolt from Rome, and they were, as we have seen, the leaders of the German nation.

Breakdown of Otto’s system in Italy.

While the outlook was thus gloomy in Germany, the march of events in Italy gave but little encouragement to Pope and Emperor, and demanded the personal presence of Otto, who had been forced to return to Germany in the vain hope of appeasing the general opposition to his policy. Before he crossed the Alps for the last time, Otto went to Aachen, and, if we can believe one of his followers’ statement, visited the vaults beneath the venerable palace-chapel to gaze upon the corpse of Charles the Great, sitting as in life upon a throne, with crown on head and sceptre in hand. When he reached the south, he found to his dismay that lower Italy had fallen altogether from his obedience, and that even Tivoli, in the immediate neighbourhood of Rome, had rebelled against him. Otto made feverish efforts to restore his authority. He clamoured for Byzantine help, and begged for a Byzantine wife. He paid a flying visit to the Venetian lagoons, seeking for a fleet from the great Doge Peter Orseolo. But worse news now reached him. Rome itself now rose in revolt, and Otto, postponing in despair his warlike operations, could only find consolation in visits to the holy Romuald in his inaccessible island hermitage amidst the swamps of Ravenna, and in the practice of penances, mortifications, and scourgings. Recovering his energy, he now sought to obtain an army from Germany to procure, as in the old days, the subjection of Italy; but it was the very moment of the crisis of the Gandersheim struggle, and no German help was forthcoming. A sharp fever now attacked Otto at the very moment of the collapse of all his plans. He died on 23rd January 1002, at Paterno, near Rome, when only twenty-two years old. |Death of Otto III., 1002.| With him perished his lofty ambitions. He had made himself the wonder of the world; but all that he had accomplished was to play the game of the high ecclesiastical party. The tendency of his policy, like the latter Carolings, was to subordinate the visionary Empire to the practical Papacy, thus exactly reversing the ideas of the great Saxons, and bringing out in its most glaring contrast the incompatibility of the union of the German kingship with the imperial claims to universal domination. Within a year Sylvester II. followed him to the tomb.

Henry II., 1002–1024.

For eighty years the Saxon kings and emperors had succeeded from father to son, and even a minority had not broken down the tendency towards heredity which seemed rapidly divesting the German kingdom of the elective character which it had shared with the Empire itself. Otto III.’s death without direct heirs now reminded the German magnates that they still could choose their king, and, in the absence of any strong claimant, there was a whole swarm of aspirants after the vacant dignity. The friends of the Saxon traditions, which Otto III. had so violently set at naught, hoped for the election of the brave and experienced Eckhard of Meissen; but as Eckhard was travelling to the south to pursue his candidature, he was murdered to satisfy a private revenge. His removal secured the appointment of Henry, Duke of Bavaria, the son of Henry the Quarrelsome, and the nearest kinsman of competent age and position to the dead ruler. Thus the throne was retained in the hands of the Saxon house, though it now was held by a branch that had long attached itself to the traditions of its southern duchy. Bavarians, Lorrainers, and Franks accepted Henry at once; the Saxons and Swabians only after a short hesitation.

It was a great thing that the succession had been peaceably settled. Yet the new king had neither the power nor the energy of the Ottos. Raised to the throne by the great magnates, Henry II. never aspired to carry on the despotic traditions of the earlier Saxon kings, but thought to rule with the help of frequent Diets and Councils. He had more authority over the Church, and his personal piety and zeal for good works, in which he was well supported by his wife Cunigunde, procured for him in after times the name and reputation of a saint, and in his own day kept him on good terms with the clergy, though he was never their slave. He used his bishops and abbots as instruments of his temporal rule, and systematically developed Otto III.’s system of making the bishops and abbots the local representatives of the imperial power by granting them the position of Count over the neighbouring Gau. On one great matter he gave much offence to the German bishops. |Henry II. and the Church.| He set up a new bishopric at Bamberg in Franconia, laying in 1004 the foundations of its new cathedral, and conferring on it such extensive privileges that every bishop in Germany was annoyed at the new prelate holding a position next after the archbishops, while the Archbishop of Mainz resented the merely nominal ties of obedience that bound the Bishop of Bamberg to him as his metropolitan. Henry was a friend of the Cluniac monks, and it was through his efforts that these zealous Church reformers first got a strong position in Germany.

Henry II. and the Slavs.

Henry had no trouble with the Hungarians, whose great king, St. Stephen, the founder of the settled Magyar state, was his brother-in-law and friend. But it was among his chief cares to uphold the old Saxon supremacy over the Slavs, which Otto III. had generously or fantastically neglected. Poland was now a formidable state, and its Duke Boleslav, who had become a terror to the marks before the death of Otto, aspired to build up a strong Slavonic power, and drive back the Germans over the Elbe. It was no longer the frontier warfare of the days after Otto the Great’s victories. It was rather a stern fight between two vigorous nations, in which Henry only won the upper hand after long and costly efforts. Even at the last he was forced to hand over the mark of Lausitz to the Poles, to be held as a fief of the German kingdom. Henry’s laborious policy, his shrinking from great efforts, and his fixed resolve to concentrate himself on little objects within his reach, stand in the strongest contrast to the vast ambitions of his predecessor. Yet, in his slow and determined way, Henry brought back the German kingdom to a more national policy, and did much to restore the havoc wrought by Otto’s vain pursuits of impossible ideals. As a German king, he was in no wise a failure, though he raised the monarchy to no new heights of power.

Henry’s success in Germany was closely connected with his failure in Italy. Under his cautious rule the plans of Otto III. were quickly lost sight of. On the death of Sylvester II., the Papacy fell back into its old dependence on the local nobles. At first a third Crescentius, son of Otto III.’s victim, assumed his father’s title of Patrician, ruled Rome at his pleasure, and nominated two puppet Popes in succession. But a stronger power arose, that of the Counts of Tusculum. Before long a series of Tusculan Popes, set up by the goodwill of these powerful lords, again degraded the Papacy, and threatened to deprive it of the obedience and respect of Europe. |Henry II. and Italy.| It was the same in the secular as in the spiritual sphere. Before the German succession had been settled, Ardoin, Marquis of Ivrea, had got himself elected King of Italy, and held his own for many years against the partisans of Henry reinforced by German armies. In 1004 Henry went over the Alps, and submitted to be elected and crowned king at Pavia, though the Ottos had borne the Italian crown without condescending to go through such formalities. Despite this Ardoin long maintained himself. At last, in 1013, Henry went down to Italy again, and on 14th February 1014 received the imperial diadem from Pope Benedict VIII. But no striking result followed this renewal of the Empire. Benedict, who was a zealous partisan of the Count of Tusculum, now sought, by advocacy of the Cluniac ideas, to maintain himself against an Antipope of the faction of Crescentius. In 1020 Benedict visited Germany to consecrate the cathedral of Bamberg, and signalised his visit by taking Henry’s foundation under his immediate care. It seemed as if the old alliance of Papacy and Empire were renewed. Next year Henry crossed the Brenner at the head of a strong German army, which traversed all Italy, in three divisions, commanded respectively by Henry himself, the Patriarch of Aquileia, and the Archbishop of Cologne. But by the time the Lombard dukes of Capua and Salerno had made their submission, and Henry was marching through Apulia, a deadly sickness raged in his host and compelled its immediate retreat. Next year Henry was back in Germany. It is significant that the office of Count Palatine of Italy ceased to exist during his reign. The Emperor was no longer an effective ruler of the peninsula.

In the latter years of his life Henry attached himself still more strongly to the Cluniac party, and, as with Otto III., his friendship for foreign priests brought him into renewed conflict with the German bishops. Aribo, Archbishop of Mainz, led the opposition to Henry and Benedict. But just as the conflict was coming to a head, Benedict VIII. died (1024). He was quickly followed to the grave by Henry himself. With him perished the last king of the male stock of the Ludolfing dukes of Saxony. His dull and featureless reign was but a tame conclusion to the brilliant period of the Ottos.

The two Conrads, 1024.

The ecclesiastical differences that had troubled Germany during Henry II.’s lifetime lay at the root of the party struggles that now raged round the appointment of his successor. As in Henry’s case, there was no specific candidate marked out by birth and special fitness for the choice of the German nation. The bishops, led by Aribo of Mainz and Burkhard of Worms, resolved to take full advantage of this freedom of election to prevent the accession of any prince inclined, like the late Emperor, to favour the spread of Cluniac ideas. They therefore urged the claims of Conrad of Swabia. Conrad was the great-grandson of Conrad the Red and his wife Liutgarde, Otto the Great’s daughter, and consequently nephew of Pope Gregory V., and descended from the Ludolfings on the female side. Though only the possessor of part of his rich family estates in the Rhineland, Conrad had made a lucky marriage with the widowed Gisela, Duchess of Swabia, the granddaughter of Conrad, king of Arles, and a descendant of the Carolingians. This gave him the guardianship of the young Duke Ernest of Swabia, Gisela’s son by her former husband, and secured for him a leading position among the German magnates. Conrad was a valiant and experienced warrior, and an intelligent statesman, possessing a clear head and a strong will, resolutely bent on securing practical objects immediately within reach. He had persistently held aloof from the ecclesiastical policy of his predecessor, with whom he had been more than once in open feud. He was still more hostile to his cousin, Conrad, Duke of Carinthia, the son of another Conrad, a younger brother of his father Henry, who, through the caprice of their grandfather, had inherited the mass of the Rhenish estates of Conrad the Red, usurping the position of the elder line. This second Conrad was now the candidate of the Cluniac party against Conrad of Swabia. But the great prelates were still all-powerful; despite the opposition of the Lorrainers, among whom Cluniac ideas had gained a firm hold, Conrad of Swabia was elected king. His path to the throne was made smooth by the generosity of his rival, who, at the last moment, abandoned his candidature, and voted for his cousin. |Conrad II., 1024–1039.| Aribo of Mainz crowned Conrad in his own cathedral, regardless of the claims of the rival Archbishop of Cologne, the diocesan of Aachen, the proper place for the coronation. But Aribo refused to confer the crown on Gisela, since the Church regarded her marriage with Conrad as irregular by reason of their affinity. Pilgrim of Cologne now saw his opportunity for making terms with the victor. He gave Gisela the crown which Aribo had denied her. Thus Conrad entered upon his reign with the support of all the leaders of the German nation. The younger Conrad remained faithful to his old rival; while his younger brother Bruno, who became Bishop of Toul, soon became one of the greatest supports of the new dynasty.

Italian policy.

When Conrad II. became king, he found everything in confusion: but within two years of his accession he had infused a new spirit and energy into every part of his dominions. His first difficulty was with Lorraine, whose two dukes had opposed his election, and now refused to acknowledge its validity. They sought the help of King Robert of France, whose weak support availed them but little. Conrad soon put down their rebellion, and with almost equal ease quelled the revolt of his ambitious and unruly step-son, Ernest of Swabia. Germany was thus appeased, but Italy, where the imperial power had become very feeble in the later part of the reign of Henry II., was still practically outside Conrad’s influence. His authority was only saved from complete ruin by the policy of the Lombard bishops, who saw in the Emperor their best protection against the proud and powerful lay aristocracy, and especially against the warlike margraves, who now aspired to renew the part played by Ardoin of Ivrea. But conscious that they did not possess sufficient strength to continue successfully a policy in which even Ardoin had failed, the leaders of the north Italian nobility looked elsewhere abroad for help to counterbalance the German soldiery of the Emperor. When King Robert of France rejected their advances, they found what they sought in William V., the Duke of Aquitaine and Count of Poitou, an aged and experienced warrior, and a strong friend of the Cluniacs, who hoped to find in Italy a suitable endowment for his young son William. This was the first occasion in which the policy of calling in the French to drive out the Germans was adopted by the Italians. But the times were not yet ripe for the intervention of a French prince in Italy. William crossed the Alps, but found that he could make but little progress against the vigorous opposition of the Lombard bishops, headed by Aribert of Milan, and tried to make up for his weakness in Italy by uniting himself with the Lorraine rebels, and by stirring up an anti-German party in the kingdom of Arles. But nothing came of his elaborate schemes, and in 1025 he went home in disgust.

Conrad’s imperial coronation, 1027.

Early in 1026 Conrad crossed the Brenner, and in March received the Lombard crown from Aribert in the cathedral of Milan. Pavia, the old Lombard capital, shut its gates on the Emperor, who was thus unable to be hallowed in the usual place. For a whole year Conrad remained in northern Italy, and gradually forced his enemies to make their submission. In the spring of 1027 the way to Rome at last lay open, and on Easter Sunday Conrad was crowned Emperor by Pope John XIX. The function was one of the most striking and memorable ceremonies in the whole history of the mediæval Empire. It was witnessed by two kings—Rudolf III., the last of the kings of Arles, and Canute of Denmark, the conqueror of England and Norway, then at Rome on a pilgrimage. But the clear head of Conrad was not in the least turned by the mystic rite. Content that his twofold coronation gave him a firm hold over Italy, he quickly recrossed the Alps and resumed his proper work as a German king, taking good care that there should be no clashing between his German and Italian interests. Before his return he visited southern Italy, and ensured the obedience of the Lombard dukes, who still guarded the frontier against the Greeks of Calabria.

On his return to Germany, Conrad felt that his power was sufficiently secure to take steps towards retaining the Empire in his own family. In 1028, he persuaded the magnates to elect, and Pilgrim of Cologne to crown, as his successor his eldest son, Henry, who was but ten years of age. |Fall of Ernest of Swabia, 1030.| This act roused the jealousy of the greater nobles, who found in Conrad’s son-in-law, Ernest of Swabia, an eager champion of their views. Ernest again plunged into revolt; and when pardoned, at the instance of his mother the Empress, still kept up his close friendship with the open rebel, Werner of Kyburg, Count of the Thurgau, a district including the north-eastern parts of the modern Switzerland. In 1030 Conrad ordered Ernest to break off from all dealings with his friend, and, as a sign of his repentance, to carry out in person the sentence of outlawry and deprivation pronounced against him. Ernest refused to give up Werner, whereupon Conrad deprived him of his duchy. Bitterly incensed with his father-in-law, the young duke left the palace, and wandered from court to court, seeking help to excite a new rebellion. But Conrad was so strong that neither foreign prince nor discontented German noble would make common cause with Ernest. In despair he took to a wild robber life of adventure, lurking with a few faithful vassals amidst the ravines and woods of the Black Forest. Before the summer was out Ernest was overpowered and slain. His commonplace treason and brigandage were in after ages glorified in popular tales, that make his friend Werner a model of romantic fidelity, and he himself a gallant and chivalrous warrior. After his fall, Conrad reigned in peace over Germany.

Hungary and Poland, 1030–1032.

The inroads of the Hungarians and Poles now forced fresh wars on Conrad. In 1030 he waged a doubtful contest against Stephen of Hungary. In the succeeding years he obtained great successes against the Poles, winning back in 1031 Lausitz and the other mark districts that Henry II. had been forced to surrender to their king Boleslav, and compelling his successor Miecislav, in 1032, to do homage to him for the whole of his kingdom. But great as were Conrad’s successes in the east, they were surpassed by his brilliant acquisition of a new kingdom in the west, where in 1032 he obtained the possession of the kingdom of Arles.

Union of the Arelate with the Empire, 1032.

The kingdom of Arles or Burgundy had fallen into evil days. During the long reigns of Conrad the Pacific (937–993) and Rudolf III. (993–1032) all power had fallen into the hands of the territorial magnates, and now the threatened extinction of the royal house seemed likely to plunge the Arelate into worse confusion. Rudolf III. was old and childless, and had long sought to make arrangements to prevent the dissolution of his kingdom with his death. In 1007 he had concluded with Henry II., his nephew, an agreement by which Burgundy was to fall on his death to the German monarch, but the Burgundian nobles had more than once forced him to renounce his treaty. An increasing sense of his powerlessness drew Rudolf, who was Gisela’s uncle, more closely to Conrad II. He hurried to Rome to be present at his coronation, and he trusted entirely to him for protection against his turbulent nobility. The contract of succession was renewed, and on Rudolf’s death, in 1032, Conrad entered into possession of the Arelate. Count Odo of Champagne set himself up as a rival and national king, but the German portions of the Arelate favoured Conrad from the beginning. In 1033 he was chosen king, and crowned at Ueberlingen, near Constance; and in 1034 Odo was forced into submission, while Conrad triumphantly wore his crown at Geneva and received the homage of the lords of Burgundy. Henceforward the kingdom of Arles was indissolubly united with the Empire. Despite the small amount of power which even the strongest Emperors could exercise in the Arelate, the acquisition was one of no small importance. The Arelate was for the most part a Romance land, and its union with the Empire made the Empire less German, and, for some generations at least, prevented the natural tendency to union between France and the Burgundian lands from being carried out. Moreover, the acquisition of the Arelate, by virtue of a contract of succession, increased the already strong tendency towards hereditary monarchy in Germany and Italy. Again, Burgundy was the chief home of the Cluniacs, and one very important consequence of its absorption by Conrad was a gradual increase of Cluniac influence all over the Empire. And most of all, the new-won kingdom was useful to the Emperors as acting as a sort of buffer-state to protect Italy from French interference. The attempt of William of Poitou had taught Conrad the necessity of thus guarding the Italian frontier. For the next few generations the acquisition of the Arelate made such projects more difficult. Supplementing the final adhesion of Lotharingia to the Eastern Kingdom, the lapse of the Arelate completed the absorption of the ‘Middle Kingdom’ in the German Empire. Of the threefold partition of Europe by the Treaty of Verdun in 843, only the ancient dominions of Charles the Bald—France, in the narrower sense—were outside the powers of the Emperor. Henceforth Conrad ruled not only all the lands that had gone in 843 to Louis the German, but also over the districts that had then fallen to the share of the Emperor Lothair. Two-thirds of the Carolingian Empire were thus concentrated under Conrad.

Feudal benifices declared hereditary.

Ten years of Conrad’s rule had now brought the Holy Empire to a point of solid prosperity that was seldom surpassed. But Conrad saw that there were still great dangers inherent in his position, and foremost among these was the smallness of the number of the feudal dignitaries with whom he had direct legal dealings. There were no longer indeed the five national dukedoms in their old united strength and dignity. There were no longer dukes of Franconia; Lorraine was already divided into two distinct duchies, of Upper and Lower Lorraine. Swabia was showing signs of a similar tendency to bifurcation; Bavaria, after the rearrangement of 976, was in a much less imposing position than under the Saxon Emperors, and even in Saxony the margraves were a strong counterpoise to the more imposing but not more powerful dukes. In the last generations the more vigorous of the counts and margraves had shaken off their dependence on the dukes, and aspired to stand in immediate relations with the Emperor. Yet the whole drift of the time was towards feudalism, and towards making a limited number of tenants-in-chief, whether dukes, margraves or counts, the sole persons with whom the Emperor had any direct relations. Secure in their own hereditary tenure of their fiefs and allodial properties, the great lords of Germany claimed an absolute control over all their vassals. The old tie of national allegiance that bound every subject to his sovereign had fallen into neglect as compared with the new link of feudal dependence of vassal on lord. The leading tenants-in-chief considered that their powers over their vassals were so absolute that it was the bounden duty of a tenant to follow his lord to the field, even against his overlord. With the same object of strengthening their own position, the great lords strove to prevent the fiefs of their vassals from assuming that hereditary character which they had already acquired in practice, if not in theory, for their own vast estates.

Conrad showed a shrewd sense of self-interest in posing as the friend of the lesser tenants against the great vassals of the crown. Whether he also secured the best interests of Germany is not quite so clear. The great vassals were strong enough to maintain order; the lesser feudalists had neither their resources nor their traditions of statecraft. It was too late to revive with any real effect the national tie of allegiance, and the scanty means of an early mediæval king had always made somewhat illusory great schemes of national unity. Conrad did his best for the protection of the under-tenants by establishing for them also that hereditary possession of their benefices which gave them some sort of permanent position over against their overlords. This was secured in Germany by a mere recognition of the growing custom of heredity, though in Italy a formal law was necessary to attain the same end. Another advantage won by Conrad by this action was that in securing the recognition of the principle of heredity in every fief, he made a long step towards securing the heredity of the crown. For Conrad, much more distinctly than his Saxon predecessors, sought definitely to make both the royal and imperial crown hereditary in his house. As a further step towards breaking down the greater nobility, he strove to get rid of the national duchies altogether. He persuaded the Bavarians to elect the young King Henry as their duke, and, on the death of his last step-son, gave Swabia also to his destined successor. On the death of his old rival, Conrad of Carinthia, the great Carinthian mark was also handed over to Henry. At the end of Conrad’s reign, Saxony and Lorraine were the only duchies still held by independent princes. Like his predecessors, Conrad used the bishops as the means of carrying on the government and checking the growth of the lay aristocracy. Following the example of the chief ecclesiastics, he encouraged the development of a new class of hereditary ministeriales, who devoted their lives to the service of the crown, and soon built up a new official body that enabled his successors to largely dispense with the interested help of the episcopate in carrying on the daily task of the administration of the kingdom.

Conrad was so successful with this policy in Germany and Burgundy that he desired to extend it to Italy. But the spirit of independence was already deeply rooted south of the Alps, and the very prelates who had called Conrad to help them against their lay rivals, now looked with suspicion on a policy that deprived churchman and lay noble alike of their cherished immunities. |Conrad’s strife with Aribert, 1036–1039.| Aribert of Milan had long aspired to a position of almost complete independence. His dream was to make the see of St. Ambrose a sort of North Italian patriarchate, and at the same time he wished to combine with ecclesiastical ascendency an organised temporal power. His twofold ambition was exactly that of the Papacy at a later period, and for the moment Milan seemed stronger than Rome. The citizens of Milan, more obedient to their bishops than the turbulent Romans, were zealous partisans of Aribert; but the smaller nobles, who saw in the fulfilment of his plans the destruction of their own independence, rose as one man against him. Civil war broke out in Lombardy between the friends and foes of Aribert. So dangerous was the outlook that in 1036 Conrad again crossed the Alps in the hope of restoring peace in North Italy.

Aribert was summoned to a Diet at Pavia; but he loftily declared that he would surrender no single right of the church of St. Ambrose, and was soon in open war against the Emperor. Conrad saw his only chance of overcoming the archbishop in winning over the smaller nobility to his side. In 1037 he issued the famous edict which made fiefs hereditary in Italy, thus doing for the south by a single stroke what gradual custom and policy had slowly procured for the north. He also promised to exact from his vassals no greater burdens than those already usually paid to him. But these measures, though increasing the party of Conrad in Italy, were not enough at once to overcome Aribert, who, secure in the hearty support of the Milanese citizens, defied not only the threats of Conrad but also the condemnation of Rome, which the Count of Tusculum, who then occupied the papal throne, willingly put at the service of the Emperor. In 1038 Conrad was forced by urgent business to recross the Alps, leaving Aribert unsubdued. Next year he died suddenly at Utrecht. ‘No man,’ says a Saxon annalist, ‘regretted his death.’ Yet if Conrad was unpopular, he was singularly successful. Though he had failed to get the better of Aribert, he had obtained his object in everything else that he undertook. He left the royal authority established on such a solid basis that his son, King Henry, already crowned King of Germany and Burgundy, and already Duke of Bavaria and Swabia, now stepped into the complete possession of his father’s power, as if he were already the heir of an hereditary state. Henry III. was the first German king to succeed without opposition or rebellion.