was unwieldy and did not long
survive Charlemagne’s death in 814.
The emergence of a German or Holy Roman Emperor
The Carolingian Empire was unwieldy and did not long
survive Charlemagne’s death in 814.
By the Treaty of Verdun (843), the empire was divided among his three grandsons. One received West Francia (modern France). Another acquired the imperial title and an area running from the North Sea through Lotharingia (Lorraine) and Burgundy to Italy. The third, Louis the German, received East Francia (modern Germany).
The Treaty of Mersen (870) divided the middle kingdom, with Lotharingia going to East Francia and the rest to West Francia. In 881 Charles the Fat of East Francia, heir of Louis the German, received the imperial title. Six years later he was deposed by Arnulf, the last Carolingian emperor.
By the 10th century, East Francia was subjected to attack by waves of pagan Danes, Magyars, and Moravians from the north and east.
In the ninth century, the Carolingians had granted lands as temporary fiefs for their services to the state to tribal military leaders (dukes), appointed officials (counts and margraves) and to many of the high clergy. This resulted in an effective system of government.
However, as royal authority declined especially after the mid-830s, these feudal lords, or princes, provided local government and defence. The secular lords gradually made their fiefs hereditary. The greatest of them were the rulers of five tribal duchies of Franconia, Swabia, Bavaria, Saxony, and Lorraine.
Lesser warriors joined princely retinues out of tribal
loyalty and in exchange for smaller grants of land and other gifts. Common
people lost the right to bear arms. They worked the
fields of warriors and of
the Church in return for protection and a share of the crops.
The Carolingian governmental system blended with the German tradition of free tribesmen to form a society in which a military nobility was supported by an agricultural peasantry of freemen and serfs.
By ancient German tradition, the kings were elected. Because no noble family wanted to be subject to another family or to a strong king, weak kings were often chosen, and none could safely assume the loyalty of his nobles. These conditions delayed for centuries the consolidation of a strong German state. Medieval German kings had three major concerns:
To check the powers of the rebellious princes, usually with the help of the Church.
To control Italy and be crowned emperor of the West by the pope, a policy considered an essential part of the Carolingian heritage.
To expand to the north and east.
The violence and instability of the late tenth
and early eleventh centuries, combined with concerns particularly among the
monks about their own weakness fuelled a movement for monastic reform. Some
early monastic reformers identified their cause with that of the German Ottonian
emperors. St. Romua
ld
of Camaldoli, for example, worked actively in support of the missionary
programme of Otto III in the late tenth century. The empire[1]
represented order and stability and these ideals appealed to those in the
monastic profession. However, it was increasingly clear to some that the
imperial order limited efforts, especially by the Church, to blunt the impact of
competition for rights and lands.
Conrad II (1024-39), the first emperor of the Salian dynasty, permitted and even encouraged the development of competition for rights and land. In three important respects, he sought to strengthen royal authority over princely opposition and lay control over land at the expense of the Church:
He championed the cause of the vavassors (the lesser nobility), who wanted their lands to be hereditary, at the expense of that of the bishops.
At the same time, he supported the interests of the lay aristocracy
He also appointed ministeriales, lower-class men responsible directly to him, as officials and soldiers.
The reasons behind Conrad's actions were political especially the need to establish clear support from the lay aristocracy and other landowners for the Salian dynasty. Although there is no indication that he intended any permanent change in imperial relations with the bishops (his ties to the papacy were very close), his actions certainly served to alert Italian ecclesiastical circles to the possibility. But Conrad’s influence was not sufficient to cause any major adjustment in relations between the bishops and the empire.
Conrad was succeeded by his son,
Henry III (1039-56). Henry was energetic,
strong-willed, and devout. He was no innovator, but
his
attachment to the church served to reduce tensions that developed under his
father. Indeed, he resumed the close relations between the crown and the monastic
reformers that had characterised the reign of Otto III and Henry II. His Italian
policy bears striking resemblance to that of Charlemagne
and Otto I.
But he lived in different times. His efforts to make decisions that would settle differences among the factions disputing the archbishopric of Milan and his intervention in papal affairs in Rome placed him in the Ottonian tradition. He supported reform and reformers in turn supported the empire. This point has been too often overlooked by historians who have portrayed his actions as contrary to the interests of the empire. This view has been especially influential in discussions of his interventions in papal elections. By emphasising Henry’s piety and his attachment to reform, some historians have played down the political aspects of his policy. Actually, there was a consensus between his goals and the desires of the reformers. When Henry arrived in Rome in 1046, he found the papacy in disarray.
Leading Roman families competed for control of the papacy. The Tusculan faction had elected Benedict IX (1032-44), who was driven from the city and replaced by the candidate of the Crescentian faction, Sylvester III (1045). Benedict regained the papacy in 1045 but made way for the election of John Gratian as Gregory VI (1045-46), a strong supporter of reform. Henry was therefore confronted by an uncertain situation just when he was seeking imperial coronation.
The synods of Sutri and Rome resolved the difficulty by deposing the three previous claimants. At the command of Henry, the bishop of Bamberg was elected as Clement II (1046-47). The new pope immediately proceeded to Henry’s coronation on Christmas Day, 1046. Henry III took Gregory VI back to Germany with him, aiming in this way to prevent a revival of internal conflict in Rome. But both Clement and his German successor, Damasus II (1048) soon died. Again Henry intervened and secured the election of Bruno of Toul, who took the name Leo IX (1049-54).
Leo combined strong support for the imperial
cause with dedication to the cause of reform. Profound
ly
influenced by the monastic centres of reform in Germany and Burgundy, he turned
to them for help in rebuilding the
battered prestige of the Roman church.
He brought to Rome men like the theologian Frederick of Lorraine, Hugo Candidus, and Humbert of Moyenmoutier, who became cardinal-bishop of Silva Candida. The deacon Hildebrand, who had accompanied Gregory VI to Germany as his secretary, also returned to Rome and joined the papal entourage.
Under Leo’s leadership, the cardinals were transformed into an effective instrument for administration of the church and promotion of reform.
Leo held synods in northern Europe and Italy aimed at stirring local commitment for the programme of the reformers. That programme was chiefly directed at freeing churches from lay control, especially by the appointment of unworthy candidates to ecclesiastical office through simony (the practice of buying church offices), and at forbidding the pervasive practice of clerical marriage and concubinage (having female 'companions') that threatened the substance of the church.
Leo’s efforts must be viewed against the background of the monastic reform movement, which had already achieved considerable success in regaining control of monastic properties and preventing their further alienation not merely at the hands of the laity but also at those of other ecclesiastics. Although couched in moral terms, the programme of the reformers served eminently practical ends.
Leo remained committed to the imperial ideal.
His opposition to the Normans, who had arrived in southern Italy in the early 11th
century arose not merely from his concern for the threat they posed to Rome and
the papacy but also from his view that they threat
ened
the interests of the German emperor and relations between East and West. The
continued expansion of the Normans in southern Italy and their aggressive
assertion of titles (William de Hauteville, for example, assumed the title of
count of Apulia) led Leo to forge an alliance of papal, imperial, and Byzantine
forces. With himself in the company of imperial troops but without awaiting the
arrival of promised help from the
Byzantines, he met the Normans at Civitate
on June 16th 1053. The ensuing defeat was a deep humiliation for Leo,
though the Normans treated him with respect. The forced peace profoundly
disturbed the balance he had sought in Italy.
The future of his policy also received a
serious setback from the conflict that arose in Constantinople between his
legates, Humbert of Silva Candida, Frederick of Lorraine, and Peter, archbishop
of Amalfi, and the Eastern patriarch, Michael Cerularius. The reasons for this
conflict have been variously described, but it was at least in part due to the
clash between the papal policies of Latinisation of the churches in southern
Italy and the claims of Constantinople to jurisdiction in that region.
The mutual excommunications launched by the legates and the patriarch in 1054,
after the death of Leo, have often been viewed as the beginning of the schism
between the Eastern and Western churches. More particularly, the breach with
Constantinople closed the door to the appro
ach
taken by Leo IX and led to a major shift in papal policy
in favour of the Normans. Leo’s successor, Pope Victor II
(1055-57), formerly the bishop of Eichstätt
(in Bavaria) and the fourth pope chosen under the aegis of Henry III, tried to
follow in the footsteps of his predecessor.
But the death of Henry III (1056) and the failure of Leo’s policies in southern
Italy limited his role.
Maintaining a bankrupt policy 1054-1058?
The Normans continued to strengthen their position in Italy[2]. In 1030 Sergius, duke of Naples, granted the county of Aversa to the Norman Rainulf in return for his support against Pandulf of Capua. Rainulf was able to add Gaeta to his holdings, and his nephew, Count Richard, who had succeeded to Aversa in 1047, added the principality of Capua. The next wave of Normans, led by the sons of a lesser Norman landholder, Tancred of Hauteville, undertook a full-scale effort to conquer the south. Robert Guiscard, Tancred’s fourth son, assumed a commanding role in southern Italian affairs. Victor II thus was constrained not merely by the failed mission to Byzantium but also by the threat from the south. Moreover, on Henry III’s death, the empire came to his six-year-old son, Henry IV (1056-1106), with his mother, Agnes of Poitou, as the regent. Although the succession to the throne was not in doubt, the inevitable intrigues surrounding the regency deprived the papacy of imperial support. When Victor died in 1057, a party of the reformers moved to take advantage of this vacuum. It acted quickly to elect Frederick of Lorraine as pope, under the name Stephen IX (1057-58), without any effort to consult the regency. Stephen succeeded to the papacy while abbot of Monte Cassino and summoned Peter Damian from the monastery of Fonte Avellana to become cardinal-bishop of Ostia. The election of a pope whose brother had been a rebel against the regency suggests that the strong ties that had bound the reform movement to the empire had been somewhat weakened. At the same time, the position of the reformers in Rome was also weakened.
When Stephen died in 1058, the Roman nobles
supported the election of Bishop John of Velletri as Benedict X (1058-59),
thereby attempting a return to the pro-aristocratic and pro-Roman policies of
Benedict VIII and Benedict IX. The reformers were forced to seek support from
the empress Agnes. Their candidate, the Burgundian bishop of Fl
orence,
Gerard, was installed on the papal throne as Pope
Nicholas II (1059-61). The reign of Nicholas has long been
recognised as pivotal.
He presided over a major shift in the papacy’s relations with the Normans.
He also issued a decree in 1059 regulating future papal elections that began the process of concentrating electoral powers in the hands of the cardinals.
A shift in papal relations with the Normans had already tentatively begun after the papal defeat at Civitate in 1053. Leo IX had earlier appointed Humbert of Silva Candida as archbishop in Sicily and in 1059 at the synod of Melfi, Pope Nicholas II entrusted the conquest of Calabria and Arab-dominated Sicily to the Normans with the provision that they should be held from the papacy as a hereditary fief. This assertion of papal overlordship, often read solely in political terms, represented an effort on the part of the papacy to ensure its claims to jurisdiction over the churches of the still unconquered lands. Rather than viewing Nicholas as the author of a dramatic diplomatic revolution, it is better to place his initiative in the context of the changes that confronted the papacy from Civitate onward. The Norman alliance safeguarded papal interests in the south, ensured a measure of stability in Rome during a period of imperial weakness, and promised that independence which the reformers had worked for in their notion of 'libertas ecclesiae' (i.e., immunity from secular control and jurisdiction).
[1] Good general surveys of the period include: Geoffrey Barraclough (edited and translated), Medieval Germany, 911-1250: Essays by German Historians, two volumes, Oxford, 1938, Geoffrey Barraclough, The Origins of Modern Germany, New York, 1946, Horst Fuhrmann, Germany in the High Middle Ages, translated Timothy Reuter, Cambridge, 1986, J. B. Gillingham, The Kingdom of Germany in the High Middle Ages (900-1200), London, 1971, Karl Leyser, Rule and Conflict in an Early Medieval Society: Ottonian Saxony, London, 1979; reprint, 1989. Also see the collections of Leyser’s essay: Medieval Germany and Its Neighbours (900-1250), London, 1982 and Communications and Power, London, 1990. Benjamin Arnold has written several important books on medieval Germany: Princes and territories in medieval Germany, Cambridge University Press, 1991, Medieval Germany, 500-1300: A Political Interpretation, Palgrave 1997 and Power and Property in Medieval Germany: Economic and Social Change c.900-1300, Oxford University Press, 2004. Boyd Hill, Medieval Monarchy in Action: The German Empire from Henry I to Henry IV, London, 1972 includes a variety of sources on the later Ottonian and early Salian monarchs. Theodor Mommsen and Karl Morrison (edited and translated), Imperial Lives and Letters of the Eleventh Century, New York, 1962 contains a variety of sources on the Salian emperors.
[2] Jean Decarreaux Normands, Papes et Moines, Paris, 1974, pages 18-39 remains the best introduction.