Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/233

 1920 DATE OF EMPEROR HENRY VIVS BIRTH 225 Henry's death in the year 1313, he says, ' viii Septembrias Kal., hora nona, ipso Sancti Bartholomaei festo expiravit, anno aetatis suae uno et quinquagesimo, Mense uno, diebus xii.' ^ If the emperor was aged fifty-one at the time of his death in 1313, he must have been born in 1262. Mussatus was a contemporary of Henry's, and is said to have been a personal friend ; hence it would appear that this statement was made on good authority, and is worthy of credence. However, notwithstanding this definite statement, there has been from the very beginning a tradition that Henry was not born till many years after 1262. Bertels, writing at the end of the sixteenth century, in describing an episode of the year 1294, says of him, ' Henricus natu maximus proxime tactorum frater, cum in adolescentiae annis aliquos fecisset progressus, et aetatis suae annum circiter decimum octavum ageret '.^ Henri d'Outreman, writing just a little later, states specifically that Henry was born at Valenciennes in the year 1272 or 1273 and was baptized in the church of St. Nicholas.^ Their contemporary, Duchesne, writes, ' Ce prince succeda jeune aux Comtez de Luxembourg et de la Roche '.* In the eighteenth century there are two outstanding examples of historians who carried on this tradition as to the youthfulness of Henry at his succession. Father Jean Bertholet, whose history of Luxemburg wa^ published in 1742, says of Henry, ' Lorsque Henri IV^ succeda a son pere,il n'avait que le titre de Damoiseau, et il ne fut cree chevalier que quelques annees apres,' ^ implying that Henry was still young in 1288. Likewise the authors of UArt de verifier les Dates ' say that Henry became count of Luxemburg en has age. Thus the conviction that Henry was a young man, or even perhaps a child, at the time of his succession pre- vailed through the intervening period and was expressed by the historians of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Moreover this tradition can find support in contemporaneous writings. The biographer of Baldwin of Treves, Henry's youngest 1 Muratori, Script, x. 568 B. " Historia Luxemburgensis (Cologne, 1605), p. 44. to whether the reckoning is made from 1136, when Henry's family succeeded to the county of Luxemburg, or whether it goes still further back and includes the house of Siegfried. In the latter case Henry is Henry VII of Luxemburg as well as the Emperor Henry VII. For the purposes of this article it has seemed best to keep the latter numbering, and to call Henry VII's father and grandfather Henry VI and Henry V respectively. Henry is also sometimes called Henry III (e. g. by Duchesne). This is an error. V. 285. ' Vol. iii (Paris, 1787), 121. VOL. XXXV. NO. CXXXVIII. Q
 * Histoire de la Ville et Comte, de Valentiennes (Douay, 1639), pp. 552, 553.
 * Histoire genealogique de la Maison royale de Dreux, &c. (Paris, 1631), p. 100.
 * The Emperor Henry VII is called Henry IV or VII of Luxemburg according
 * Histoire ecclesiastique et civile du Duche de Luxembourg (Luxemburg, 1742),