Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/507

Rh irst 'usadc. lenry V. ,'oncor- .at of Vorms. FRANCONIAV EMrEaoas.] steadily growing up, especially in the Rhine country and in southern Germany, and could not but see that they had far more to fear from the princes than from the crown. Hence, when Henry returned to Germany, Worms, Spires, and , many other towns opened their gates to him, and freely , contributed of their wealth ; and towards his successors they pursued a like policy. After several indecisive battles the rival king, Rudolf, was, in 1080, defeated and slain. Henry then carried the war into Italy, where he was crowned emperor by his own anti- pope, and in 1085 Hildebrand died an exile from Ilome, although with unbroken spirit. In Germany two other rival kings were set up, Hermann, count of Luxembourg, and Ekbert, margrave of Meissen ; but they were only partially successful, and after the death of the latter in 1089, had Germany followed her own impulses, there would have been peace. In the papacy, however, Henry had an impla- cable foe ; and again and again, when he seemed to be on the point of complete triumph, it kindled anew the smould—. ering embers. His son Conrad was stirred up against him in Italy; and in Germany, when he was near the end of his days, his second son Henry was induced to head a dangerous rebellion. During his reign the ﬁrst crusade took place, and he suffered severely from the pious zeal which it expressed and intensified. The movement was not in the end favourable to papal supremacy, but the early crusaders, and those who sympathized with them, regarded the enemies of the pope as the enemies of re- ligion. ' Pope Paschal II. did not doubt, after the death of Henry IV., that he would immediately triumph, but he was mistaken. Henry V. (1106—2-5), who had promised, with unconscious irony, to treat him as a father, went on, like his predecessors, investing prelates with ring and staff, and, when expostulated with, replied that he could not be ex- pected to give‘up a right which had belonged to all pre- vious kings. War broke out anew, and, as in the time of Henry IV., the pope found enthusiastic supporters among the princes. One of the most ardent of these was Lothair, whom Henry V. himself had made duke of Saxony, after the extinction of the Billung line, by which for a century and a half the duchy had been ruled. Henry’s chief friends were the two Hohenstanfen princes, Frederick and Conrad, to the former of whom Henry IV. gave the duchy of Swabia when -ludolf became his rival king, while the latter was created by Henry V. duke of Franconia, a country which had been attached to the crown lands since the time of Otto I. These two brothers were enthusiastic imperialists, and up- held with persistent courage the cause of their sovereign on the repeated occasions on which he went to Italy to chastise the pope. At last, in 1122, peace was restored by the con- cordat of IVorms. By this compromise, which was forced I by exhaustion upon both parties, the right of electing the prelates was'gr-anted to the clergy, and the emperor resigned the right of investing them with ring and staff. 011 the other hand, it was arranged that the elections should take GERMANY place in the presence either of the emperor or of his repre- sentative, and that he should invest the prelates with the seeptre. The papacy was thus very far from realizing the great schemes of Hildebrand ; still, even in regard to the particular question in dispute, it gained solid advantages, and its general authority was incomparably more important than it had been half a century before. For it had waged war on the emperor himself; instead of acknowledging its inferiority as in old times, it had claimed to be the highest power; it had even attempted to dispose of the im- perial crown as if the empire were a ﬁef which it granted of its good will,’ and it had found out that it could at any time hamper, perhaps paralyse, imperial authority, by exciting strife in Germany. 489 The Franconian dynasty (lied out with Henry V., and 1080- Lothair, duke of Saxony, was elected to succeed him. Lothair 1152- (1125-37) excited the enmity of the Hohenstanfen princes Lothair by demanding that they should give up certain crown lands ”‘°' which had been incorporated with their duchies. Unable Saxon’ to defend himself against them without help, he secured a powerful ally by granting his daughter in marriage to Henry Henry the Proud, grandson of V elf, a prince whom Henry IV. “"3 had made duke of Bavaria. As this vehement noble soon Pr°“d° succeeded to Bavaria, and was also invested with Saxony, he became by far the greatest subject in Germany. Never- theless, the duke of Franconia and the duke of Swabia withstood him, and not until within three years of the emperor's death were they forced to crave for peace. A considerable portion of Lothair’s reign was spent in Italy; and Innocent II. claimed that when he received the im- perial crown he did so as a vassal of the pope. Nothing could indicate more clearly than this fact Decay of how much of their old power the German kings had lost. royal It was not past hope that even yet some of their former 1’°“'°" splendour might be restored; a11d for a brief period mon- archy did again stand high. Still, its foundations were sapped. Incessant war, both at home and in Italy, had deprived it of its force; it had lost moral inﬂuence by humiliations of which the scene at Canossa was an extreme type. Steadily, with unwearied energy, letting no oppor- tunity escape, the princes had advanced towards independ- ence, and they might well look forward to such a bearing in regard to the kings as the kings had formerly adopted in regard to them. Later J1 ecliceval 1’e7'z'ocl. Henry the Proud was conﬁdent that he would succeed Hohen- Lothair ; but, by a hasty and irregular election, Conrad, duke -°’1t‘_*“f"’1 of Franconia, was chosen king. Conrad III. (1137-52), an "as? impulsive and not very wise ruler, found himself at once in “Bra serious perplexities. Henry the Proud, knowing that evil was designed against him, rebelled, whereupon he was declared to have forfeited his dnchies; and Saxony was granted to Albert the Bear, a strong and truly great Saxon noble, while Bavaria fell to Leopold, margrave of Austria. Thus again the country was ravaged by war, for Henry the Proud, although he was unpopular in Bavaria—- the duchy he had inl1erited——was powerfully upheld in Saxony, which, ever since Henry [V. had alienated it, had always been ready to join in an attack on the monarchy. Henry suddenly died, but the struggle was continued by his brother Duke ‘.Velf ; and, but for the opportune death of some of the chief combatants, among them Leopold of Bavaria, it seemed probable that it would go hard with the king. Velf, hoping to be made Leopold’s successor, agreed to a com- promise, by which Saxony, with the assent of Albert the Bear, was granted to Henry—afterwards Henry the Lion—— the young son of Henry the Proud. Bavaria, however, was in the end given to Henry J asomirgott (so called from his habit of saying “Ja so mir Gott helfel"), margrave of, Austria, a rough noble, who was afterwards found to have a decidedly inconvenient temper. Welf again took to arms, and for years contended with his rival. Notwithstanding this and many other sources of confusion, Conrad was Second persuaded by the passionate eloquence of St Bernard to (“Isaac- take part in the second crusade. He came back broken, dispirited, and near his end, to find Henry the Lion at the head of a great army, claiming Bavaria in addition to Saxony, ——a claim which Conrad in vain attempted to dispute. Germany now passed under one of the greatest of her Frederick sovereigns, Frederick Barbarossa (1152-90), nephew of King Conrad, and son of the Frederick, duke of Swabia, 05° who had fought along with Conrad against Henry the Proud. He was a man of large and noble nature, c:=.pable,6indee:l, X. —— 2