Meanwhile a reaction against German influence had taken place in Hungary. King Peter had been driven out in 1046 and his place taken by Andreas I. Inroads into Bavaria followed, and in 1051 and 1052 Henry led his forces against the Hungarians, and after the pope had vainly attempted to mediate, peace was made in 1053. It was quickly broken, however, and the emperor, occupied elsewhere, soon lost most of his authority in the east; although in 1054 he made peace between Brestislav of Bohemia and Casimir I., duke of the Poles. Henry had not lost sight of affairs in Italy during these years, and had received several visits from the pope, whose aim was to bring southern Italy under his own dominion. Henry had sent military assistance to Leo, and had handed over to him the government of the principality of Benevento in return for the bishopric of Bamberg. But the pope’s defeat by the Normans was followed by his death. Henry then nominated Gebhard, bishop of Eichstädt, who took the name of Victor II., to the vacant chair, and promised his assistance to the reluctant candidate. In 1055 the emperor went a second time to Italy, where his authority was threatened by Godfrey of Lorraine, who had married Beatrice, widow of Boniface III., margrave of Tuscany, and was ruling her vast estates. Godfrey fled, however, on the appearance of Henry, who only remained a short time in Italy, during which he granted the duchy of Spoleto to Pope Victor, and negotiated for an attack upon the Normans. Before the journey to Italy, Henry had found it necessary to depose Conrad III., duke of Bavaria, and to suppress a rising in southern Germany. During his absence Conrad formed an alliance with Welf, duke of Carinthia, and Gebhard III., bishop of Regensburg. A conspiracy to depose the emperor, support for which was found in Lorraine, was quickly discovered, and Henry, leaving Victor as his representative in Italy, returned in 1055 to Germany to receive the submission of his foes. In 1056, the emperor was visited by the pope; and on the 5th of October in the same year he died at Bodfeld and was buried at Spires. Henry was a pious and peace-loving prince, who favoured church reform, sought earnestly to suppress private warfare, and alone among the early emperors is said to have been innocent of simony. Although under his rule Germany enjoyed considerable tranquillity, and a period of wealth and progress set in for the towns, yet his secular and ecclesiastical policy showed signs of weakness. Unable, or unwilling, seriously to curb the increasing power of the church, he alienated the sympathies of the nobles as a class, and by allowing the southern duchies to pass into other hands restored a power which true to its traditions was not always friendly to the royal house. Henry was a patron of learning, a founder of schools, and built or completed cathedrals at Spires, Worms and Mainz.
The chief original authorities for the life and reign of Henry III. are the Chronicon of Herimann of Reichenau, the Annales Sangallenses majores, the Annales Hildesheimenses, all in the Monumenta Germaniae historica. Scriptores (Hanover and Berlin, 1826 fol.). The best modern authorities are W. von Giesebrecht, Geschichte der deutschen Kaiserzeit, Band ii. (Leipzig, 1888); M. Perlbach, “Die Kriege Heinrichs III. gegen Böhmen,” in the Forschungen zur deutschen Geschichte, Band x. (Göttingen, 1862–1886); E. Steindorff, Jahrbücher des deutschen Reichs unter Heinrich III. (Leipzig, 1874–1881); and F. Steinhoff, Das Königthum und Kaiserthum Heinrichs III. (Göttingen, 1865).
HENRY IV. (1050–1106), Roman emperor, son of the emperor
Henry III. and Agnes, daughter of William V., duke of Guienne,
was born on the 11th of November 1050, chosen German king
at Tribur in 1053, and crowned at Aix-la-Chapelle on the 17th
of July 1054. In 1055 he was appointed duke of Bavaria,
and on his father’s death in October 1056 inherited the kingdoms
of Germany, Italy and Burgundy. These territories were
governed in his name by his mother, who was unable to repress
the internal disorder or to take adequate measures for their
defence. Some opposition was soon aroused, and in 1062 Anno,
archbishop of Cologne, and others planned to seize the person
of the young king and to deprive Agnes of power. This plot
met with complete success. Henry, who was at Kaiserwerth,
was persuaded to board a boat lying in the Rhine; it was
immediately unmoored and the king sprang into the stream, but
was rescued by one of the conspirators and carried to Cologne.
Agnes made no serious effort to regain her control, and the
chief authority was exercised for a time by Anno; but his rule
proved unpopular, and he was soon compelled to share his power
with Adalbert, archbishop of Bremen. The education and
training of Henry were supervised by Anno, who was called his
magister, while Adalbert was styled patronus; but Anno was
disliked by Henry, and during his absence in Italy the chief
power passed into the hands of Adalbert. Henry’s education
seems to have been neglected, and his wilful and headstrong
nature was developed by the conditions under which his early
years were passed. In March 1065 he was declared of age, and
in the following year a powerful coalition of ecclesiastical and
lay nobles brought about the banishment of Adalbert from court
and the return of Anno to power. In 1066 Henry was persuaded
to marry Bertha, daughter of Otto, count of Savoy, to whom he
had been betrothed since 1055. For some time he regarded
his wife with strong dislike and sought in vain for a divorce,
but after she had borne him a son in 1071 she gained his affections,
and became his most trusted friend and companion.
In 1069 the king took the reins of government into his own hands. He recalled Adalbert to court; led expeditions against the Liutici, and against Dedo or Dedi II., margrave of a district east of Saxony; and soon afterwards quarrelled with Rudolph, duke of Swabia, and Berthold, duke of Carinthia. Much more serious was Henry’s struggle with Otto of Nordheim, duke of Bavaria. This prince, who occupied an influential position in Germany, was accused in 1070 by a certain Egino of being privy to a plot to murder the king. It was decided that a trial by battle should take place at Goslar, but when the demand of Otto for a safe conduct for himself and his followers, to and from the place of meeting, was refused, he declined to appear. He was thereupon declared deposed in Bavaria, and his Saxon estates were plundered. He obtained sufficient support, however, to carry on a struggle with the king in Saxony and Thuringia until 1071, when he submitted at Halberstadt. Henry aroused the hostility of the Thuringians by supporting Siegfried, archbishop of Mainz, in his efforts to exact tithes from them; but still more formidable was the enmity of the Saxons, who had several causes of complaint against the king. He was the son of one enemy, Henry III., and the friend of another, Adalbert of Bremen. He had ordered a restoration of all crown lands in Saxony and had built forts among this people, while the country was ravaged to supply the needs of his courtiers, and its duke Magnus was a prisoner in his hands. All classes were united against him, and when the struggle broke out in 1073 the Thuringians joined the Saxons; and the war, which lasted with slight intermissions until 1088, exercised a most potent influence upon Henry’s fortunes elsewhere (see Saxony).
Henry soon found himself confronted by an abler and more stubborn antagonist than either Thuringian or Saxon. In 1073 Hildebrand became pope as Gregory VII. Two years later this great ecclesiastic issued his memorable prohibition of lay investiture, and the blow then struck at the secular power by the papacy threatened seriously to undermine the imperial authority. Spurred on by his advisers, Henry did not refuse the challenge. Threatened with the papal ban, he summoned a synod of German bishops which met at Worms in January 1076 and declared Gregory deposed; and he wrote his famous letter to the pope, in which he referred to him as “not pope, but false monk.” The king was at once excommunicated. His adherents gradually fell away, the Saxons were again in arms, and Otto of Nordheim succeeded in uniting the malcontents of north and south Germany. In October 1076 an important diet met at Tribur, and after discussing the deposition of the king, decided that he should be judged by an assembly to be held at Augsburg in the following February under the presidency of the pope. This union of the temporal and spiritual forces was too strong for the king, and he decided to submit.
Crossing the Alps, Henry appeared in January 1077 as a penitent before the castle of Canossa, where Gregory had taken
