Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 5.djvu/116

 66 WORKMEN AND HEROES Henry the Black, Duke of Bavaria ; opinions are divided on the subject of his birthplace, some writers mentioning the castle of Veitsberg, near Ravensburg, others the town of Weiblingen, in Nuremburg ; but since the main interest of his history does not begin until his succession to the paternal duchy of Swa- bia, and his departure for the Holy Land in 1147 ; his marriage with Adelaide, daughter of Theobald, Margrave of Vohburg, in 1149; and finally his acces- sion to the imperial throne in 1152, we must resign ourselves to silence on the subject of his earlier years, and take up his history from the death of Conrad III., and that monarch's choice of him as a successor, to the exclusion of his own son. From every possible point of view, Frederick of Hohenstauffen justified his tsncle's choice : endowed with the most brilliant qualities of heart and mind, he had already earned the suffrages of a great portion of his new subjects by the manner in which he had distinguished himself during the above-mentioned cam- paign in the Holy Land ; moreover, as the son of Frederick of Hohenstauffen and Judith, daughter of Henry the Black, Duke of Bavaria, Ghibelline by his father and Guelph on his mother's side, there seemed good ground for the hope that in him might terminate the differences of the two contending factions. The election diet was accordingly assembled at Frankfort, and it being there decided to confirm Conrad's choice and to invest Frederick with the imperial insignia, he was pro- claimed King of the Romans and of Germany, and anointed at Aix-la-Chapelle on March 5, 1152, the ceremony being performed by Arnoul de Gueldre, Arch- bishop of Cologne. Not lightly or eagerly did the new emperor accept these dig nities, but after mature and careful consideration of his capacity to undertake the responsibility of guiding Germany through shoals and quicksands which had lit-