Tags
Battle of Langensalza, Canossa Castle, Excommunicated, Holy Roman Emperor, Investiture Controversy, King Heinrich IV, King of Germany, King of the Romans, Pope Gregory VII, Walk to Canossa
From The Emperor’s Desk: Generally in history texts Heinrich IV is referred to as Holy Roman Emperor, however, during the time covered in the blog entry Heinrich had not been crowned Emperor and held the title of King and that is how I will address him.
Heinrich IV (November 11, 1050 – August 7, 1106) was Holy Roman Emperor from 1084 to 1105, King of the Romans-Germany from 1054 to 1105, King of Italy and Burgundy from 1056 to 1105, and Duke of Bavaria from 1052 to 1054.
He was the son of Heinrich III, Holy Roman Emperor—the second monarch of the Salian Dynasty—and Agnes of Poitou, the daughter of Duke Guillaume V of Aquitaine (d. 1030) and Agnes of Burgundy and as such a member of the Ramnulfid family.
After his father’s death on October 5, 1056, Heinrich was placed under his mother’s guardianship. She made grants to German aristocrats to secure their support. Unlike her late husband, she could not control the election of the Popes, thus the idea of the “liberty of the Church” strengthened during her rule.
Taking advantage of her weakness, Archbishop Anno II of Cologne kidnapped Heinrich in April 1062 and administered the Empire until Heinrich came of age in 1065.
The Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor had disputed over the precedence of ecclesiastical or secular power since the spread of the Gregorian Reforms in the 11th century.
When Gregory VII, acclaimed Pope by the people of Rome in 1073, attempted to enact reforms to the investiture process by his Dictatus papae decree, he was met by resistance from Henry IV. The king insisted that he reserve the traditionally established right of previous emperors to “invest” bishops, abbots and other clergymen, despite the papal decree.
The conflict became increasingly severe, after King Heinrich IV had been able to suppress the Saxon Rebellion in the Battle of Langensalza in June 1075. In September he installed a new Bishop of Milan, which annoyed Gregory, who openly required obedience.
Shortly afterwards the Pope was attacked while leading the 1075 Christmas celebrations and taken to jail by a mob. The next day his followers mobbed the prison and brought him back to the church, where he picked up Mass where he had left off.
King Heinrich IV adopted an active policy in Italy, alarming Pope Alexander II’s successor, Pope Gregory VII, who threatened him with excommunication for simony.
On January 24, 1076, King Heinrich IV assembled several German bishops in a synod at Worms, where the ecclesiastical dignitaries abandoned all commitments to the Pope.
King Heinrich IV persuaded most of the German bishops to declare the Pope’s election invalid and he demanded Gregory’s abdication, referring to the rules of papal election according to the In nomine Domini Bull of 1059.
Heinrich IV’s most important ally, Godfrey the Hunchback, was murdered on February 22. Godfrey had named his nephew, Godfrey of Bouillon, as his heir, but King Heinrich IV granted Lower Lorraine to his own son, Prince Conrad.
Pope Gregory VII was informed of the decisions of the two assemblies during the synod of Lent in Rome. He excommunicated King Heinrich IV and released his subjects from fealty in a public prayer addressed to Saint Peter.
The deposition of a monarch by Pope Gregory VII was unprecedented, but Pope Gregory VII was convinced King Heinrich IV’s extraordinary arrogance could not be punished otherwise.
On learning of the Pope’s decision King Heinrich IV convoked a synod in Utrecht, but the local bishop, Wilhelm I, was the only prelate willing to excommunicate the Pope. King Heinrich IV wanted to demonstrate that the Pope’s denial of the monarchs’ role in the administration of the Christian community was responsible for their conflict.
German aristocrats who were hostile to King Heinrich IV called for the Pope to hold an assembly in Germany to hear the King’s case. To prevent the Pope from sitting in judgement on him, King Heinrich IV went to Italy as far as Canossa to meet with the Pope.
The Road to Canossa or Humiliation of Canossa or, sometimes, the Walk to Canossa was the journey of King Heinrich IV (later Holy Roman Emperor) to Canossa Castle in 1077, and his subsequent ritual submission there to Pope Gregory VII. It involved the Emperor seeking absolution and the revocation of his excommunication by the Pope who had been staying at the castle as the guest of Margravine Matilda of Tuscany.
When King Heinrich IV reached Matilda’s castle, the Pope ordered that he be refused entry. Waiting at the gates, King Heinrich IV took on the behavior of penance. He wore a hair-shirt, the traditional clothing of monks at the time, and allegedly walked barefoot. Many of his entourage, including his wife, Queen Bertha (of Savoy) and their son, Prince Conrad, also supposedly removed their shoes.
The King waited by the gate of the castle for three full days. Throughout this time, he allegedly wore only his penitent hair-shirt and fasted.
Finally, on January 28, the castle gates were opened for King Heinrich IV and he was allowed to enter. Contemporary accounts report that he knelt before Pope Gregory VII and begged his forgiveness.
Pope Gregory VII absolved King Heinrich IV and invited him back into the Church. That evening, Pope Gregory VII, King Heinrich IV and Matilda of Tuscany shared communion in the chapel of Sant’Apollonio inside the castle, signaling the official end of the King’s excommunication.
Whether King Heinrich IV actually did formal repentance has not been conclusively established. In any case, he regained his freedom to act and quickly returned to Germany, while Gregory remained with Matilda at the castle and in other locations in Tuscany for several months.
King Heinrich IV’s German opponents ignored his absolution and elected an anti-King, Rudolf of Rheinfelden, as King of the Romans-Germans on March 14, 1077.
The Pope was initially neutral in the two kings’ conflict, enabling King Heinrich IV to consolidate his position. King Heinrich IV continued to appoint high-ranking clerics, for which the Pope again excommunicated him on March 7, 1080.
Most German and northern Italian bishops remained loyal to King Heinrich IV and they elected the antipope Clement III. Rudolf of Rheinfelden was killed in battle and his successor, Hermann of Salm, could only exert royal authority in Saxony. From 1081, King Heinrich IV launched a series of military campaigns to Italy, and Clement III crowned him Emperor in Rome on April 1, 1084.