Heart of Europe: A History of the Roman Empire (13 page)

These measures had effect thanks to a more sophisticated papal bureaucracy that emerged in the second half of the eleventh century, together with a treasury whose resources grew exponentially with the new taxes levied on Christians to support the crusades declared after 1095. The papal library and archive ensured the pope was less forgetful than other monarchs, and could usually produce documentary evidence to support his claims. Simultaneously, the advisory group around Leo IX assumed greater coherence as the
curia Romana
. Staffed initially mostly by Lorrainers closely involved in monastic reform, the curia expanded the pope’s capacity for sustained action and curbed the pernicious influence of the Roman clans. The reformers’ moment came in December 1058 when they got one of their number elected as Pope Nicholas II. Four months later, a reform synod revised papal election rules restricting participation to the (then) seven cardinals, or auxiliary bishops of Rome. Although the rules still contained a vague reference to notifying the emperor, the chances of external manipulation had been severely curtailed.
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Having captured the papacy, the reformers had less need to respect imperial interests.

The wider political context proved a second factor in deteriorating papal-imperial relations. The Salians were at loggerheads with the duke of Lorraine in the 1040s. The duke married into the family ruling Tuscany, a province which had demonstrated great loyalty to the emperor and which occupied a strategic location between Rome and the main imperial centres at Pavia and Ravenna. Although the problem of Lorraine was neutralized, the Tuscan heiress, Matilda of Canossa, remained firmly anti-imperial.
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Tuscany’s subsequent defection assumed importance because it coincided with a still more momentous change to the south. Nicholas II abandoned two centuries of papal support for
ineffectual imperial control over southern Italy by allying with the Normans in 1059. Arriving around 1000, these ruthless freebooters rapidly expunged the last Byzantine outposts and remnants of Lombard principalities to take control of the entire south. By the time the alliance was renewed by Gregory VII in 1080, the Normans were well on their way to conquering Sicily as well. For the first time, the pope had a credible alternative to imperial protection, because the Normans were not only nearby and militarily effective, but as newcomers, they craved recognition and accepted papal suzerainty over their possessions in return for acceptance as legitimate rulers.
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Henry III’s death in 1056 had frustrated an effective imperial response. His son Henry IV, though accepted in Germany as king, was only six and could not be crowned emperor until an adult. Government of the Empire devolved to a regency council until 1065. This remained preoccupied with more immediate affairs and failed to see the dangers ahead. Intervention in the 1061 papal election in favour of Alexander II was particularly ill-judged, leading to the imperial court being condemned for dividing rather than defending the church. Imperial prestige suffered while the pope’s identification with reform was reinforced.
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The next pope, Gregory VII, still saw the emperor as a valuable partner, but a decidedly junior one. Originally from Tuscany and usually presented as of humble origins, Gregory came from a family well connected within the papacy and rose rapidly in the expanding administration. Having embraced reform, he became a prime mover in papal elections from the 1050s before being accepted as pope himself in 1073. Controversial in his own lifetime, he survived an assassination attempt in 1075 to give the reform agenda its later name ‘Gregorianism’.
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While Gregory did not initiate reform, he certainly radicalized it with his uncompromising assumption that his opponents must be agents of the Anti-Christ. His political views were encapsulated in his
Dictatus Papae
of 1075, a set of 27 maxims that were only published later. The church as immortal soul was superior to the mortal body of the state. The pope was supreme over both, entitled to reject bishops and kings if they were unfit for office. However, Gregory’s thinking remained moral, rather than constitutional, and he and his supporters never systematized these ideas or resolved their implications.

Initially well disposed towards Henry IV, Gregory underestimated the young king’s need to appear strong in the face of constant
challenges to his authority in Germany. Scarcely less obstinate, Henry contributed to a series of misunderstandings and lost opportunities between 1073 and 1076 that left both men viewing the other as rival not partner. The clash widened as each buttressed his position with ideological arguments, drawing in others who often had their own, local agendas. The complexity and multiplicity of the issues broke previous bounds, producing an explosive situation that could not be resolved through conventional means.
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The Problem of Investiture

The dispute crystallized over the problem of investiture, which eventually came to name the entire papal–imperial struggle lasting until 1122.
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The trigger was Henry’s investiture of Archbishop Godfrey of Milan, whom the reformers charged with simony in 1073. Investiture proved so controversial because it touched the basis of both material and ideological power in the Empire. The vast endowments to the church were still considered integral parts of the crown lands, particularly north of the Alps. In an age largely without written rules, obligations were affirmed through rituals. The process of appointing an abbot or a bishop involved his investiture. Royal patronage already gave the king a role, while clergy regarded it as a special honour to be invested by the monarch, since this reinforced their place in the social order. Local congregations and clergy did play a role in electing abbots and bishops, but this often rested on royal charters and not yet clearly on canon law. Thus, it was established practice for the king to hand the new cleric a staff, while the archbishop would give him a ring. Under Henry III, both items were presented by the king. Given the heightened sacrality of kingship in the Empire around 1020, this was not immediately contentious. Moreover, it was not entirely clear which item symbolized the cleric’s acceptance of his military and political obligations in return for his lands, especially as these same lands also supported his spiritual activities.
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The problem was that Gregorian criticism extended beyond the conventional (whether Godfrey was a suitable archbishop for Milan) to challenge royal involvement altogether and, in doing so, broke several centuries of unarticulated theocratic consensus. Worse, this occurred precisely at a time when the monarchy was involving bishops and abbots more heavily in the Empire’s governance.

Since the twelfth century, chroniclers have simplified events into a clash between Guelphs and Ghibellines. The former derived from the German aristocratic Welf family, which briefly backed the reform papacy, while the latter was a corruption of Waiblingen in Swabia, which was erroneously believed to be the Salian family home.
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These names did assume importance in the factionalism of later medieval Italian politics, but the Investiture Dispute was waged by loose coalitions rather than disciplined parties. Many clerics opposed Gregorian reform as excessive. For example, the monks of Hersfeld abbey were convinced Gregory divided the church further each time he opened his mouth. Those clergy with female partners considered themselves legally married. The eventual triumph of reform by the 1120s reduced the wife of a priest to the legal status of a concubine, while their children became serfs of the church. Bishops often opposed the cause of church liberty, because this could be used to undermine their authority and withhold tithes at local level.
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Likewise, the attractions of reform asceticism drew many laity to support the papacy.

The Investiture Dispute

The dispute in Milan was the culmination of a decade of bitter, local conflict between the reforming Patarene movement, supported by the pope, and the wealthy, pro-imperial archbishop and clergy.
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Unable to resolve the matter, Henry IV convened a synod at Worms in January 1076, which renounced obedience to Gregory VII and demanded he abdicate. The fact that the assembled bishops stopped short of full deposition implicitly acknowledged they were not entitled to do so, while the whole event lacked credibility as it was too late to complain at irregularities in Gregory’s election three years into his pontificate. The new balance was revealed a month later when Gregory went further than any previous pope by not merely excommunicating Henry, but deposing him, releasing all his subjects from their oath of loyalty.

Henry’s situation worsened across the year with growing opposition in parts of Germany, but he seized the initiative in late December by dodging his opponents in the Alps and crossing the Mont Cenis pass. Allegedly, the snow forced him to crawl up the mountain, while his wife and the other royal women had to slide down the other side on a cow hide. Nonetheless, Henry intercepted Gregory, who was on his way
to meet the anti-royalist German lords and bishops at Augsburg. This was not a royal commando mission to kidnap the pope, but instead an attempt by Henry to force Gregory to rescind his excommunication and deposition by appearing as a penitent. Having ‘waited, clad in wool, barefoot, freezing, in the open air outside the castle’, the king was finally allowed into Canossa, a fortress belonging to Matilda of Tuscany and where Gregory was staying (see
Plate 5
).
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Henry’s action divided contemporary and subsequent opinion. He won considerable sympathy and appeared to achieve his immediate objectives. Gregory was prevented from joining the German opposition and obliged to lift the royal excommunication. Despite the positive spin of some recent interpretations, it is hard not to agree with the earlier perception of royal humiliation, regardless whether Henry performed an act of penance or political submission.
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By going to Canossa, Henry implicitly acknowledged that Gregory had the power to excommunicate and depose him, whereas the king’s own supporters regarded these actions as illegal. The contrast with his father could not have been stronger. Henry III had deposed two popes and appointed his own in 1046, whereas Henry IV had failed even to reverse his own deposition, since Gregory subsequently claimed he had merely absolved a penitent, not reinstated a king.

The political opposition in Germany carried on regardless, electing Rudolf of Rheinfelden as the first ever anti-king at an assembly in Forchheim on 15 March 1077. Although two papal legates were present, the rebel dukes acted independently of Gregory and advanced their own contractual theory of monarchy, arguing that they, not the pope, were responsible for the Empire’s collective welfare. Their actions reveal the complexity of the issues that were emerging as well as an important trend in imperial politics, which ultimately ensured the Empire survived its monarchs’ successive defeats by the papacy.
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Henry’s repeated demands that Gregory condemn Rudolf eventually forced the pope to pick sides and excommunicate him again in March 1080, this time permanently. Henry retaliated by summoning another synod, which not only formally deposed Gregory but elected an anti-pope, creating another schism, lasting until 1100. These actions finally led to open warfare from October 1080. Henry was obliged to operate either side of the Alps, backing his own anti-pope Clement III in Italy, whilst confronting his political opponents in Germany. Initial
successes in Italy enabled Henry to be crowned emperor by Clement in March 1084. Having seen off Rudolf and two further anti-kings by 1090, Henry found himself opposed three years later by his own eldest son, Conrad, whom he had made co-king in 1087. Unlike the previous anti-kings, Conrad was widely shunned as a papal stooge after he made extensive concessions at the expense of imperial prerogatives.
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Meanwhile, Pope Gregory and his reformist successors received strong backing from Matilda until her death in 1115, as well as intermittent assistance from the self-seeking Normans, who burned much of Rome when they rescued Gregory from an imperial siege in 1084. German support was limited, but could prove strategically significant, especially in 1089 with the temporary defection of the duke of Bavaria, who facilitated Conrad’s rebellion by closing the Alpine passes and trapping Henry in northern Italy. Henry only broke out after making concessions to Bavaria in 1096.

Despite his considerable military skill and dogged determination, Henry was defeated and never returned to Italy. His numerous mistakes and chaotic personal life made him an easy target for Gregorian propaganda, especially once his second wife, Praxedis, fled alleging brutality.
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Combined with his prolonged excommunication, these accusations demolished the sacral kingship developed since the later Ottonians and which Henry still claimed to exercise. He remained within established patterns of kingship rather than finding new ways of working with Italian lords, bishops and urban communes, many of which had their own reasons to oppose the pope and Matilda. Henry might have rallied wider European support once Gregory widened his claims to supremacy beyond the Empire to cover all kings after 1078. Instead the French king Philip I outflanked him, forging closer ties to the papacy by backing the First Crusade in 1095, thus assuming the position of Christendom’s defender that many had expected Henry as the emperor to fulfil.

The perception of royal failure was a factor behind another rebellion in Germany, this time led by Henry’s second son, Henry V, whom he had recognized as king and legitimate successor in 1098. Henry IV’s death in 1106 after a year of inconclusive skirmishing opened the possibility for a new direction, but Henry V essentially continued his father’s line towards the papacy and failed to exploit mistakes of the new pope, Paschalis II.
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This contrasted sharply with the success of
the French and English kings in reaching agreements over similar issues with the papacy in 1104 and 1107 respectively. As neither had challenged papal authority directly, compromise was easier, while the agreements also reinforced the pope’s claim that the dispute was entirely the German king’s fault.