 |
MEDIEVAL HISTORY LIBRARY |
 |
 |
 |
BOOK I.
CHAPTER II
|
 |
The advancing Swabians were far more
numerous than the band, that Henry had judged sufficient to seize his
unsuspecting guest; But Frederic, whether in sheer magnanimity, from regard to
the brother of his lost Jutta, or in the hope of conciliating a formidable
antagonist, would not use the advantage as fairly his as it had been unfairly
Henry’s. He now presented himself upon the belfry-tower, and thus addressed the
Duke of Bavaria, “Against right hast thou dealt with me, good Duke, bidding me
hither in peace, but showing thyself more an enemy than a friend. Could neither
thine own fair fame, nor honesty, nor the tie of affinity that connects us,
restrain thee from this deed? But that I may not repay evil with evil, I, as a
friend, faithfully warn thee not to await my trusty vassals, whom I see coming
on all sides.” Henry took his advice, and made his escape; but if he were
conciliated by Frederic’s magnanimity, years elapsed ere the effect was
apparent. In fact, his pride must have been mortified at the disgraceful light
in which the whole transaction placed him.
The only other incident of the civil war in
Germany that seems worth recording is the resolute defence of Spires against
Lothar by Frederic’s new duchess. For six whole months did Agnes encourage the
citizens to hold out against the large besieging army, sharing with them
throughout the siege in every privation, toil, suffering, and danger,
habitually exposing herself upon the wall, whilst animating its defenders,
consoling and tending the wounded. And when, at last, famine, and her husband’s
utter inability to raise the siege, compelled her to listen to overtures for a
surrender, she obtained by negotiation a most honourable capitulation for the
city, whilst for herself she made no terms. All the old rights and privileges,
granted to Spires by the charters of the fourth and fifth Henries, which were
held to be forfeited by the revolt, were again assured to the citizens, the
Duchess herself remaining a prisoner in the hands of the conquerors. But either
in consideration of her sex or heroism, or in the hope of thus regaining her
able, potent, and dreaded uncle, the Archbishop of Mainz, she was soon
afterwards freely released.
About the year 1128, the friends and
partisans of the brothers judged it expedient that they should no longer
content themselves with merely defending their own possessions. They now urged
them to protest against Lothar’s election, as invalid from its tumultuary
character, and to claim the crown, either by hereditary right, or by a new,
assuredly irregular and illegal, election, by their own party, or more likely
by the two rights combined. The brothers assented; but it is somewhat startling
to find the younger the person to assume the kingly title, which the elder
certainly had once deemed his birthright. The motives that induced Frederic to
renounce this birthright in favour of Conrad are not positively known, and many
have been conjectured. Writers hostile to the Swabian dynasty ascribe this
self-abnegation to Frederic’s hopelessness of support, on account of the
offence taken by the friends of the brothers at his harsh temper and
arrogance;—somewhat contradictory to the character given him for the more amiable,
as well as for the loftier, qualities of chivalry. Of writers of the Swabian
party, some explain the cession, not improbably, upon the ground that Frederic,
as Duke of Swabia, had the vote of a national duchy to give Conrad, who, having
been deprived of Franconia, had no such influential support to give Frederic;
whilst others assert that he had been too deeply disgusted by the craft and
intrigues of which he had been the victim at the last election, again to expose
himself to such an encounter. The problem is susceptible of still other
solutions. If his loss of an eye had befallen Frederic in battle since Lothar’s
election, it is very possible that the disfigurement, the defect, might, in
those days, when personal prowess was so important, be esteemed a material
objection to him. But a very probable conjecture seems to be that, having,
however reluctantly, sworn allegiance to Lothar, he shrank from violating his
oath,—self-defence against unjust aggression he could not esteem such a
violation—whilst Conrad, then absent in the Holy Land, whence he returned only
after the civil war had begun, was happily unshackled by such conscientious
scruples. To this may be added that the character of a Palmer and Crusader gave
the younger brother a sort of hallowed dignity, which the partisans of his
house might think likely to weigh with the multitude. But whatever the motive
that decided either the brothers or the choice of heir party, Conrad was
proclaimed King, and as King he fastened to Italy, there to profit by the
good-will he had von as Marquess of Tuscany and Imperial Vicar of the other
provinces. To the Duke of Swabia was left the care of advancing his brother’s
cause in Germany.
Conrad first visited the mightiest of the
Lombard cities, Milan, where he hoped to find the means of establishing himself
upon the throne; and he found her well disposed o support him. These wealthy
and powerful cities, now free from the oppressive yoke of their mesne lords,
and lumbering very many nobles amongst their citizens, were growing every day
more ambitious. Gradually they were likewise assuming a more republican form;
this was, however, in mediaeval ideas, as indeed it had formerly been in Rome,
perfectly consistent with due subjection to an emperor. But as, in the pride of
their self-government, they became every day more impatient of any control by
even that imperial authority which, as yet, they dreamt not of disowning, what
could be so desirable to the Milanese as an Emperor, who, raised by them to the
throne, and dependent for retaining it upon their support, must needs comply
with all their wishes? Nor was this state of feeling the only circumstance
favourable to Conrad’s wishes. The interests and views of the Archbishop of
Milan, which were in general diametrically opposed to those of the
municipality, in the present instance were perfectly consonant with them. This
haughty prelate, like his predecessors, reluctantly bowing to the spiritual supremacy
of the Pope, saw in Conrad’s demand of the iron crown of Lombardy, an
opportunity of successfully opposing a monarch who had ascended the throne of
Germany and claimed the Empire as the creature of the Roman See; and at the
same time asserting the equality of the Earl-Archbishop of Milan in temporal
rights and privileges, with the Prince-Archbishops of Germany. Eagerly he
embraced it, and deciding the question of right by his own sole authority, he,
upon the 28th of June, 1128, crowned Conrad as King of Italy at Monza, and
again at Milan. Honorius, in punishment of his presumption, deposed him from
his archiepiscopal dignity. Tuscany declared very generally for her former
Marquess, as did many of those parts of Lombardy that had learned to value him as
Imperial Vicar.
But the friendship of Milan was not without
its countervailing disadvantages. Her successful attempts at subjugating weaker
cities had by this time provoked so much enmity, that Lombardy was divided
between two factions; of which the one, compulsorily or voluntarily, owned the
supremacy of Milan, the other, headed by Pavia, fiercely combated her
pretensions. Accordingly, Milan’s adoption of the anti-king’s cause determined
the Pavian party to oppose him. Something of the same kind was going on in
Tuscany; though no Tuscan city as yet emulated Milan, not even Pisa seeking
thus to domineer over her neighbours, incessant feuds and broils prevented any
permanent combination in one cause. And thus Conrad, who had hoped with the
combined force of Lombardy and Tuscany to march upon Rome, there to compel
Honorius to crown him Emperor, and, having thus forestalled Lothar in the
Imperial dignity, to lead an Italian army across the Alps to co-operate with
Frederic in Germany, found himself hampered at every step, and involved in all
the petty but sanguinary feuds of Northern and Central Italy.
But if Conrad were disappointed in his
hopes of success, he was yet not defeated; he maintained himself for the
present in Italy, whilst his brother held his ground in Germany, and Lothar’s
attention was occupied by the other concerns of his Empire. In fact such had
all along been the claims upon it, that his having voluntarily provoked the
rebellion of two such princes as the Duke of Swabia and the Duke of Ravenna, if
only nominally, of Franconia, excites as much surprise as his being able
successfully to resist their enmity. He was no sooner elected than he was
called upon, as Lord Paramount, to decide between a claimant of the crown of
Denmark and its actual wearer. The dispute had originated earlier, but the
youth of the claimant had prevented the submission of the question to Henry V.
Eric King of Denmark had at his death declared his legitimate son Canute, his
heir, naming his own illegitimate brother, Niel, regent during the young king’s
minority. But in Denmark the succession to the crown had, as before said,
usually been regulated rather by age than by degree of relation to the last
monarch, whilst little difference was felt between legitimate and illegitimate
offspring of the royal family. It can hardly therefore be called usurpation
that Niel made himself king instead of regent; nor does any opposition appear
to have been made to his assumption of the royal title, until Canute attained
to man’s estate. This was now the case, and he applied to the new Emperor for
justice. Lothar summoned the accused uncle before his tribunal; but Niel
offered to pay tribute, besides doing homage for his crown; and Lothar,
engrossed at the moment with his enmity to his defeated competitor, adjudged
the crown to the uncle, the duchies of South Jutland and Schleswig to the
nephew; who, unable to resist, submitted.
Scarcely was this decision pronounced, when
Henry, the vassal Christian King of the Obodrites, and of most of the Slavonian
tribes occupying the districts comprised in the duchies of Mecklenburg, was
murdered. Thereupon his sons and grandsons contended in arms for his crown,
till all were slain in battle. The Slavonians, freed from control, renounced
both their vassalage to Saxony and the Christian religion, whilst Canute of
South Jutland and Schleswig, whose mother was King Henry’s sister, laid claim to
his maternal uncle’s kingdom. Again he applied to Lothar, both as mesne lord,
as Duke of Saxony, of the principality he claimed, and Suzerain, as Emperor;
and it is said he did not apply empty handed. The Emperor adjudged the
Slavonian kingdom to Canute, in vassalage to the duchy of Saxony; and he
appears to have been acknowledged by the subjects assigned him.
But Canute did not long enjoy his success.
It has been seen that Niel’s possession of the kingdom of Denmark by no means
insured it to his son. Accordingly his eldest son, Magnus, seeing a dangerous
rival in Canute, caused him to be assassinated, and again was Lothar appealed
to. Canute’s illegitimate brother Eric hastened to the foot of the Imperial
throne to demand justice upon the murderers of his brother, whilst the
Obodrites seized the opportunity of the slaughter of their new prince, again to
throw off the yoke of vassalage. Two Heathen princes, named Niklot and
Pribislaff, said to have been also nephews of King Henry, claimed the Slavonian
territories that Canute had held. Lothar summoned a feudal army to avenge his
Slavonian vassal-king; but the murderer, Prince Magnus, found means to allay
his wrath. He offered, in the name of his father, performance of the as yet
unperformed homage for the crown of Denmark,—in his own, a large sum of money
as a fine; and this, the expenses of the civil war and of the impending
expedition to Rome for his coronation as Emperor, rendered peculiarly
acceptable to Lothar. He accordingly pronounced the Imperial justice satisfied
by the atonement the offender had made, and led back his army. He does not
appear to have interfered, even as Duke of Saxony, in the disposal of the
Slavonians feudally dependent upon the duchy, but left Canute’s heir, a
posthumous child, afterwards Waldemar the Great, Eric, and King Niel, to deal
as they best could with Niklot and Pribislaff. This revolt continued for some
time, but in the end these Heathen chieftains agreed to pay tribute to Saxony,
in acknowledgment of feudal dependence.
The island of Rugen had never owned the
Duke of South Jutland as King, and the Pomeranian Slavonians, as far as they
admitted any authority beyond that of their native princes, preferred the
sovereignty of Poland to that of Denmark or Saxony. Boleslas III was
endeavouring to profit by this preference, which he indeed well deserved, since
he had been occupied, even prior to the deaths of the Slavonian King Henry and
of the Emperor Henry V, with the conversion of these Heathen tribes to
Christianity, and that by instruction rather than by force.
This hallowed office had been undertaken,
as far back as the year 1122, by one Bernardo, a Spaniard, who, having been
appointed to a bishopric by the Pope, and learning that the Chapter of the See
had made choice of another person, refused to be forced upon a reluctant flock,
and resolved to dedicate himself to missionary labours. To this end he visited
Boleslas, and offered his services in Pomerania, which were thankfully
accepted; but Bishop Bernardo would not accept any other assistance from the
Polish Duke in his holy enterprise, than the accompaniment of an interpreter to
translate his preaching. In true apostolic humility he went amongst the
Pomeranians, meanly clad, feeding abstemiously, and drinking only water. Thus
he visited the great and wealthy city of Julin, where he began to teach. But
the opulent Heathens laughed at the poverty-stricken missionary, pronounced him
a beggar, whose sole object was their money, and expelled him, sparing his life
partly in contempt, partly because the slaughter of a former missionary, St.
Adalbert, had provoked a war with their Christian neighbours.
Boleslas now invited Otho, Bishop of
Bamberg, since canonized, to undertake the conversion of the Pomeranians; and
he, a man every way fitted for the task, warned by the failure of Bernardo,
prepared himself for the enterprise in a different style. Otho, the son of a
Swabian nobleman of very small estate, had sought his fortune in Poland,
learned the language of the country, and gained the favour of Duke Vladislas.
Him he persuaded to ask the hand of the Queen-dowager of Hungary, sister to
Henry IV, when he became her chaplain, and tutor of the young heir of Poland.
When the Prince’s education was completed, he obtained the bishopric of
Bamberg, probably through his pupil’s connexion with the Emperor.
It was in the year 1124 that Bishop Otho,
in episcopal state, attended and assisted by a body of subordinate
missionaries, and escorted by a troop of Polish warriors, had entered upon the
task assigned him. His appearance inspired respect, and to his instructions the
Pomeranians listened with attention. So successful were his exertions that he
actually prevailed upon the Pomeranian prince, Duke Vratislaff, not only to
receive baptism, but to dismiss his well-peopled harem, and live in Christian
wedlock with a single wife. The example of the prince gave weight to the
prelate's exhortations; and so numerous were the converts, that it was found
necessary to administer the sacrament of baptism wholesale—if the expression
may, without irreverence, be used. For this purpose two pits were dug and
filled with water, one for each sex; and as the catechumens were to be wholly
unclothed upon the occasion, whether as typical of purification, or of
infantine simplicity, or merely to avoid the inconvenience of wet garments,
each pit was inclosed with a wall of cloth, that perfectly concealed its
occupants. Then, when each of these unusual fonts was duly and fully tenanted
by converts, the one by men, the other by women, the officiating priests,
passing their hands through the linen wall, baptized one party after another in
quick succession, till, from heat ana fatigue, the perspiration is recorded to
have streamed down their bodies. According to some authorities a third such
font was prepared for the boys, at which the Bishop officiated in person.
Delighted with, and perhaps somewhat
glorying in, his success, the good Bishop, notwithstanding many and earnest
warnings of danger, ventured into the very stronghold of Slavonian idolatry,
the island of Rugen. But there he altogether failed, and hardly could his armed
escort prevent his receiving the crown of martyrdom as the guerdon of his
zealous temerity. He was however brought in safety back to the mainland; he
there founded several monasteries amongst his neophytes, and then returned to
the duties of his diocese at Bamberg, shortly before the death of Henry V.
Vratislaf proved the sincerity of his
conversion by steadily submitting to the restraints of monogamy, often as much
as the payment of tithes, a main obstacle to the propagation of Christianity.
But his subjects either were more attached to their ancient heathenism, or had
been less carefully instructed. Soon after Otho’s departure they apostatized,
and in 1128 Boleslas again called upon the future saint to take pity upon their
blindness. Again the prelate left the comforts of his episcopal palace, the peaceful
duties of his see, to encounter the toils and hazards of the missionary office,
and again his fatigues and perils were rewarded by success.
The piety that induced Boleslas III so
zealously to promote the conversion of the Pomeranians, could not, in the eyes
of Lothar, balance the offence of subjecting those, whom he esteemed vassals of
the Empire, to Poland; especially when accompanied by the withholding of both
the homage and the tribute that every Emperor held to be his due from the
Polish sovereign, whether Duke or King. The civil wars and contest with the
Popes, by distracting the late reigns, had offered an opportunity of
withholding both, too favourable to be neglected; both had been, and still
were, refused. But Lothar, trusting, perhaps, to Conrad’s absence in Italy, and
Frederic’s aversion to aggressive hostilities against the sovereign to whom he
had taken the oath of allegiance, now, somewhat rashly, deemed himself in a
condition to inforce what he claimed as his due; and at the head of an army he
invaded Poland. His chief supporter in the enterprise was Albert the Bear, who,
impelled by interested motives, assisted him strenuously. As long as Lothar
retained the duchy of Saxony in his own hands, Albert seems to have cherished a
hope of finally obtaining it, and sought to win the favour of him upon whom the
easy realizing of that hope depended; aspiring, moreover, to incorporate Pomerania
with his own margraviate, he looked upon Boleslas as his personal enemy, whom
it was his business to weaken. But Lothar had over-estimated his force. In the
neighbourhood of Kulm he was so completely routed by Boleslas, and fled in such
bewildered disorder, that the Margrave, who led the vanguard, and with his
characteristic temerity had hurried too far forward, was deserted in the midst
of the enemy, and taken prisoner. The Emperor, abandoning, at least for the
moment, all attempts at coercing Poland, opened a negotiation, an made peace
upon terms almost dictated by Boleslas. The Margrave ransomed himself; but
whether merely irritated at having been thus deserted by Lothar, or judging
from his conduct upon this occasion that intimidation was likely to be more
effective with him than wooing his favour, he in 1129 avowed himself
dissatisfied with the compensation made him for his maternal birthright, and
declaring that he acknowledged Conrad as his King, joined the Duke of Swabia in
arms, and married one of the Austrian half-sisters of the Hohenstaufen. Lothar
pronounced the Eastern March forfeited by his revolt.
In the south, Earl William, the last direct
male heir of Otho, who, when Conrad II obtained the kingdom of Burgundy,
established himself and race as Earl of Burgundy, that is to say of the Frey
Grafschaft of Burgundy, subsequently, as a French province, called Franche
Comté, was murdered soon after Lothar’s election, and dying without
children, two pretenders were struggling for his heritage. The one, Renault de
Châlons, was a collateral relation of Earl William’s, descending by females,
from the kings of Upper Burgundy. The other, the Duke of Zäringen, claimed as
next of kin to Earl William, whose mother was the Duke’s sister, but was not of
the blood of Earl Otho. Had Renault merely claimed his deceased kinsman’s
county, of which he seems to have been a vassal, and applied to Lothar for
investiture, there can be little doubt but that, notwithstanding some dislike
to foreign vassals, he would at once have received it. But Renault asserted,
that the sovereignty of the Emperors over the whole of Burgundy, had expired
with the heirs male of Gisela; and seizing the county of Burgundy, he professed
to hold it as an independent principality. It was evident that if he did not
lay claim to the kingdom as well as to the county, it was solely for want of
means. Lothar did not urge against him, that what came through a woman must be
heritable by her female heirs, for that would have made the Duke of Swabia King
of Burgundy; but he maintained that Conrad II having incorporated Burgundy
with Germany, he was sovereign of the whole, and, as such, the judge as to who
was lawful heir of the county, which could be held only by his giving
investiture of it. He laid Renault under the ban of the Empire for seizing the
county in lieu of appealing to him; and committed the execution of the sentence
to the Duke of Zäringen, to whom he adjudged the disputed heritage. The contest
lasted for some years, but may as well be at once disposed of by the statement
that Lothar never was able to give effect to his decision, the Duke never being
able to possess himself of any district to the west of the Jura, though master
of all that lay east of those mountains. In the end the Emperor was glad to
compromise the affair, by investing each with what he held, receiving Renault’s
homage for his county, and making Conrad of Zäringen compensation for his
unfounded pretensions, by given him Zurich and the Thurgau with the hereditary
rectorate, or government of Upper Burgundy.
In Thuringia, which was now in great
measure, if not altogether severed from the duchy of Saxony, though when or how
this severance took place is not very clear, Lothar’s intervention was twice
required, the first time, probably, not to his dissatisfaction. Margrave
Hermann—who, it is to be inferred, was lord of the eastern extremity that had
been the Slavonian frontier—having been convicted of murdering one of his
vassals, the Diet pronounced his principality confiscated. Lothar bestowed it
upon one of the most considerable Thuringian nobles, Graf Ludwig, (Earl
Lewis) who is said to have been related either to himself or to his wife
Richenza, and is also said to have been of the family of the late dynasty of
Franconian emperors, as indicated by his Latin cognomen, Ludovicus Salius, i.e. the Salic. But Lothar did not
create Lewis a Margrave, perhaps because the Slavonian margraviates of Misnia
and Lusatia, now intervened between Thuringia and the alien Slavonians:
inventing, it should seem, a new title for his kinsman he made him Landgrave of
Thuringia, and gave him ducal rights over the whole territory bearing that
name, which then included the later electorate of Hesse. But the Landgrave had
not taken warning by the fate of his predecessor. Falling in love with the
beautiful wife of the Saxon Palsgrave, he had the husband murdered, and seized
the widow. Lothar deposed and imprisoned him, but in lieu of confiscating his
landgraviate transferred it to the son, Lewis II. The father escaped from his
prison by a leap so extraordinary, that some German historians have conceived
his surname of Salius to have been intended to express it, and have designated
him Ludwig der Springer, or the Leaper.
Bohemia, of which Moravia was now a
dependent province, usually the appanage of a younger branch of the reigning
ducal family, was at this period in a state of insurrection, though the
movement does not appear to have been concerted with the Hohenstaufen brothers.
The Bohemian revolt was against the Empire, not against the individual Emperor.
The Dukes of Bohemia had now for some generations held their duchy as a fief of
the Empire; and as Princes of the Empire, though unconnected with any of the
original five duchies, though Slavonians, they had frequently voted at the
election of an Emperor. But the weakness or distraction of the Empire during
the recent contest with the Popes, and consequent civil wars, had encouraged
the Bohemian Czechs—their Slavonian name—to aspire to independence. It may have
been observed that they formed no part of the Electoral Diet, whose measures
resulted in the elevation of Lothar; and in consonancy with their absence upon
that occasion, their Duke, Sobieslas, refused to do homage to the monarch there
elected. Him, however, Lothar was able to reduce to submission, and he
compelled him to do homage for his duchy. But the unruly Czechs were
dissatisfied with such dependence ; dreading most especially, then it should
seem as now, incorporation with Germany. To avert this danger, in a provincial
Diet held by Sobieslas, a.d. 1130, at which burgesses are said to have sat and
voted with nobles, it was enacted that no German or other foreigner should hold
any office, lay or ecclesiastical, in Bohemia, on pain of losing his nose. At
the same Diet it was decreed, as a restriction upon the ducal arbitrary
authority, that if the Duke should violate the rights of any nobleman, no gift
should be granted him, no duty or impost paid him, until he should have either
made full satisfaction to the injured party, or taken a solemn oath so to do.
Meanwhile Conrad, though opposed by every
enemy of Milan, was making fair, if slow, progress towards Rome, where he hoped
to coerce the Pope into crowning him Emperor. He had entered Italy at what
seemed an auspicious moment, when the attention and resources of Honorius, who
still opposed and strove to thwart both brothers, with the same zeal with which
he had helped to baffle Duke Frederic’s hopes and promote the Duke of Saxony’s
election, were much engrossed by the more immediate interests of his own See.
In 1127 the youthful Duke of Apulia had died childless. He was the last male
descendant of Robert Guiscard, by his second marriage with an Apulian princess.
The son of his first, divorced wife, Bohemund, had been set aside as
illegitimate, because the issue of unlawful nuptials; and at all events
Bohemund’s posterity, reigning at Antioch, seemed to have forgotten, and were
pretty much forgotten by, their Italian connexions. Under these circumstances
the son of Robert Guiscard’s younger brother, Roger, Earl of Sicily, claimed
his cousin’s heritage, and hastened over to take possession. To Roger II’s
claim there seemed no objection. But he had not submitted his pretensions to
the Pope, whom his father, his great uncle, and his cousins had acknowledged as
their suzerain, and the indignant Honorius both excommunicated him, and incited
the Prince of Capua and some other great vassals, who regretted the
independence of which Robert Guiscard had deprived them, to revolt.
Whilst the struggle lasted the Pope
concerned himself little about the German civil war or Conrad’s movements. But
in 1129 he had discovered his own inability to resist Earl Roger, and made
peace with him, almost upon his own terms. He admitted him to the succession he
claimed, gave him investiture as Duca di Puglia and Gran Conte di
Sicilia, and received his homage. He asked and obtained his promise to
respect the Prince of Capua, but left him to deal with the other Apulian
rebels, whom he had encouraged to rise, and for whom he made no terms, at his
pleasure. Freed from this important concern, Honorius turned his thoughts
northward, and excommunicated Conrad.
This formidable weapon of the Church had
not then been so lavishly, so desecratingly used in purely temporal concerns as
it soon afterwards was, and it therefore now proved effective. All the lukewarm
amongst Conrad’s partisans deserted him; but Milan as yet felt his cause her
own, and was not easily scared; whilst he, strong in her support, derived new
hope from an event that promised as favourably for him, even beyond relieving
nim from one important enemy, as in its consequences unfavourably for the tranquillity
of Christendom. In February 1130, Honorius II died; and upon the same day a
party of Cardinals elected Cardinal Gregorio Paparescni dei Guidoni, a Roman,
who took the name of Innocent II. The object of this unseemly haste was to
prevent the election of Pietro, Bishop of Porto, the grandson of a converted
Jew, to whom Leo IX had stood sponsor and given his name of Leo at his baptism.
The Bishop had long been canvassing for the tiara; and the majority of the
Cardinals, supported by the people of Rome, apparently on the same day
assembled in St. Mark’s Church, and, professedly ignorant of Innocent’s
election, proclaimed Pietro Leone Head of the Christian Church by the name of
Anaclet II. Internal war broke out, in which the favour of the Romans secured
the possession of the Eternal City to Anaclet; and as the Normans of Apulia and
Sicily acknowledged him as Pope, Innocent judged it expedient to cross the Alps
in search of adherents. In France his high moral character procured him an
able, zealous, and efficient champion in Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux, which
very remarkable person it will here be proper formally to introduce to the
reader.
Bernard, better known as St. Bernard, was
the son of the Sire de Fontaines, head of a noble family of the French duchy of
Burgundy. His mother had been intended for a nun, and although she had not
pronounced the irrevocable vow, she deemed her marriage a sin; as an atonement
for which she led, in her character of a wife, as nearly the life of a nun as
might be, and uniformly dedicated her children at their birth to the Church.
Only her third son Bernard at once accepted this expiatory destiny. His innate
piety was deepened by the ascetic practices amidst which he grew up : but even
these did not prevent him from diligently cultivating the extraordinary
faculties with which he was endowed; being fully convinced that such
cultivation must tend to render those faculties more serviceable to the cause
of religion. At an early age he announced his intention of entering the Order
of Cistercian monks; an Order the extreme severity of which was still so
generally repellent of enthusiasm, that its single abbey was very thinly
inhabited. Young Bernard exerted his utmost eloquence to prevail upon his
kinsmen and friends to adopt his views; whilst to guard against the possible
disgrace, should any novice find the privations and hardships, which in a fit
of enthusiasm he had rashly taken upon himself, too much for his fortitude, of
his recoiling from the binding vow, he at the same time formed for his party a
sort of preparatory school in which the future monk might try his powers of
Cistercian endurance. In this prenoviciate seclusion he induced one by one his
father, uncle, and five brothers, all gallant and highly esteemed warriors of
the Duke of Burgundy’s, to join him. And they were followed by so many kinsmen
and friends that, at the expiration of a six months’ experiment, he presented
himself to the Abbot of the Cistercians with thirty companions, all tried and
approved candidates for the cowl. Several of the thirty were married men, and
took this step in concert with their wives; for whose reception the first
Cistercian nunnery was erected. And in this nunnery, after a long and arduous
battle against her love of the pleasures and vanities of the world, Bernard
finally prevailed upon even his fair and light-hearted sister—his mother the
Dame de Fontaines was dead—to take the veil.
The reputation of the new monk spread
rapidly; his enthusiastic devotion seemed contagious; and such were the numbers
who applied for admission as Cistercian novices, that, shortly after Bernard
had pronounced his vows, it was found necessary to build a second monastery of
this so lately dreaded, and unpopular as unpopulous, Order. For the site of
this second house, Hugues, Comte de Champagne, gave a sullen, darksome valley,
that had been a den of robbers, and was usually called the Valley of Wormwood. Here
a cloister was speedily constructed, and the Superior of the Cistercians, an
Englishman named Stephen Harding, appointed Bernard, though but four-and-twenty
years of age, and a monk of only two years’ standing, Abbot of the new Abbey,
which, irradiated, together with the dark valley, by the fame of the youthful
Superior’s sanctity, was now denominated Clara vallis, Clairvaux.
Bernard himself called it his Jerusalem, and refused bishoprics and
archbishoprics that he might devote himself heart and soul to the government of
the little flock specially committed to his charge.
But he was not thus to give up to a narrow
sphere “what was meant for mankind.” His health, always delicate, sank, under
the exaggeration of Cistercian austerities, privations, and penances, that won
for him unbounded and universal contemporaneous admiration; and the medical
skill of the day pronounced their continued observance incompatible with the
prolongation of his existence. His Superior, the Cistercian Abbot of Abbots,
therefore commanded him to abstain, as from suicide, not only from these refinements
upon the Cistercian Rule, but even from ordinary monastic duties; and, whilst
still governing his monks, to live separate from them. Bernard obeyed
reluctantly; but the use he made of the leisure thus forced upon him enabled
him to become, as he will be seen to be, the most efficient agent of successive
popes in their most important affairs, spiritual and temporal, and, as a
powerless monk, to exercise by his words irresistible influence over princes
and kings. The effect of his eloquence is said to have been heightened by the
appearance of his attenuated frame, through which the “fiery soul” really
seemed to be “eating out its way,” but without impairing his great personal
beauty; whilst the lofty courtesy of his demeanour, his habitual cheerfulness,
and universal benevolence, offered a pleasing as striking contrast to the
austerity of his life.
In truth, St. Bernard’s religion was wholly
a religion of love; the love of God was the one great doctrine that he
preached,—dread of the presumption of human reason, the one great principle
that he inculcated. From these may be deduced all that is told of his character
and conduct; his willing subjugation of his powerful mind to the authority of
his spiritual superiors, his aversion to the subtleties of scholasticism, his
tendency to mysticism—which was, however, merely a participation in the spirit
of the age—his reluctance to argue with heresiarchs, whom he simply referred to
the papal tribunal, and the gentleness, tempering zeal, with which he preached
to, and concerning, heretics, who should, he always asserted, be converted, not
persecuted; even as Mohammedans and Heathen, like the Jews, should be prayed
for, not massacred. And, equally, thence is to be derived the implicit
obedience, with which, notwithstanding these opinions, he at the Pope’s command
preached a Crusade. His general protection and advocacy of the oppressed
extended even to the brute creation ;his delight being to rescue a hare from
the hounds, or a dove from the swooping hawk, which he is reported to have
sometimes effected by a miracle. For the most ticklish point in the history of
the canonized Abbot must not be evaded. He was believed to work miracles, to
heal the sick, the lame, the blind, by his touch, to expel devils, and once to
have recalled the dead to life;—must it be added, once by his prayers to have
prevented the down-pouring rain from damaging his own writings, which were in
his hand. This last absurd story, being recorded, could not with propriety be
omitted, but may assuredly be ascribed to the exaggerating fanaticism of some
of his silly idolaters. As to the excellent Abbot himself, it seems to have
required all the asseveration of his worshippers to persuade him that he was so
gifted. He always averred a perfect unconsciousness of working a miracle, and
seems even to have entertained some vague suspicion of fraud, to judge from one
anecdote related of him. It is, that once, as he entered a church dedicated to
the Virgin, her image audibly addressed a welcome to him, when he, in the words
of St. Paul, roughly rebuked the presumption of a woman speaking in a church.
That fraud there was is manifest, though
assuredly not on the part of the good and pious Abbot, who evidently believed
the wonders he was told that he worked, only through his confidence in the
reporters, and his distrust of human reason, when employed upon any sacred
question; which, with his tendency to mysticism, would render him peculiarly
open to delusion. Neither need we impute the whole to monastic fraud. Many of
the supposed miraculous cures may have been the fruit of the excited
imaginations of the patients; when it is natural to suppose that the admirers
and the flock of the Saint would lavish such attentions and gifts upon the
living proofs of his transcendent sanctity, as might tempt impostors to feign
disease and infirmity in order to be miraculously cured. But it must be owned
likely that amongst the Cistercians there were men who, when such an idea had
been suggested, would not scruple at direct fraud to gain their own ends by
exalting their Abbot’s fame.
A few of St. Bernard’s opinions,
elucidative of his character, may be added. He required the most austere
simplicity in churches. That he objected to mosaic representations of Saints in
the church pavement, where the inevitable trampling upon them must needs impair
the veneration felt for them, is less remarkable than that any one should have
differed from him in opinion upon the subject. But these were not the only
embellishments which he condemned. He objected to carvings and paintings, even
to anything ornamental in church music, that could in any degree divert the
attention of the congregation from their devotion. These refined scruples
involved him in a quarrel with Peter the Venerable, Abbot of Cluny, whose
Order, it will be remembered, was distinguished for the splendour of its
churches, and its cultivation of the arts and of literature. And it is not a
little to the credit of both these eminent abbots, that they were not only
reconciled, but, despite their conflicting opinions, became cordial friends.
But neither the asceticism which these scruples indicate, nor his own devotion
to a monastic life, had so narrowed St. Bernard’s mind as to prevent his seeing
that there were higher duties in the Church than those of a monk. A Danish
prelate, Eskil, Bishop of Lund, in a paroxysm of ascetic devotion, was about to
resign his see, and take the cowl in a Cistercian monastery. But St. Bernard
remonstrated with him, urging that he had no right to seek his own salvation in
the safe seclusion of a cell, to the neglect of the duties which he had
undertaken when he accepted his spiritual dignity; to wit, in the position of
his diocese, those, amongst others, of diffusing Christianity amongst the
neighbouring Heathen, and of protecting his flock against the oppression of
turbulent kings and nobles. Eskil was convinced, and remained Bishop of Lund
for forty years; at the end of which he sought and obtained, from Pope
Alexander III, permission to exchange his mitre for the cowl in the Abbey of
Clairvaux.
Such was the man to whom the superior
purity of the moral character of Innocent II covered the illegality of his
uncanonical election. He decided upon acknowledging him as the true Pope; and
having so decided, he exerted himself with unwearied zeal, and rarely failing
success, in his cause. He conducted this chosen Head of the Church to the
respective Courts of Lewis VI of France and of Henry I of England, and induced
both monarchs to acknowledge Innocent as Pope; in token of which each
separately, walking by his bridle-rein, led the palfrey of the pontiff, whose
existence as such really depended upon their favour or disfavour. From his
interviews with these potent partisans, St. Bernard attended Innocent to Liege,
there to meet Lothar. And upon him he prevailed, not only to acknowledge the
exiled and wandering claimant of the papal crown, as the successor of St.
Peter, but to leave the civil war, in which he himself was involved, to be
managed by deputy and with diminished forces, whilst he in person should lead
an army over the Alps, to escort this true and lawful Pope to Rome, instal him
in the Lateran, expelling the anti-pope Anaclet, and receive in return the
Imperial crown at his hands.
Lothar, obedient to the Abbot’s word,
proceeded at once to prepare for this Italian expedition; and his first
measure was to commit the government of Germany and the conduct of the civil
war to his son-in-law. The letter by which he announced this determination, and
Henry the Proud’s answer, are both extant in the Vienna archives, and are so
characteristic of the men and the times, as to excite the wish rather to give
extracts from Pfister’s translation of them, than merely in a few words to
state their purport. Lothar wrote: “I consider thee as my son. Therefore will I
commit to thy faith the protection of my dominions, that thou mayest defend
them strongly against thy kinsman, Duke Frederic, who is so inimical to me,
although he has often, as I may not conceal from thee, addressed prayers for
peace and alliance to me, through the Archbishops of Mainz and Cologne, the
Bishops of Spires and Ratisbon, and others of my faithful vassals. Do thou beat
him down, in order that thou, as heir of my love, mayest be heir of my Empire.
Moreover, come to me at the Whitsuntide festival, when I think to take counsel
with the Princes touching my Coronation Progress.”
In the Duke’s reply to this letter appear
the following symptoms of reviving regard for his brother-in-law. “Reverently
and promptly will I obey any commands of thine. But I think it too hard to be
enjoined to wage war against the Duke of Swabia, who has ever loved me as a
brother. Therefore I pray thee to make peace with him prior to thy Coronation
Progress, so it may consist with thine and the Empire's honour. Should this
prove impossible I will fulfil thy orders, will fight against him, and so guard
the realm from him that thou shalt not, at thy return, find its condition
deteriorated. But I pray thee to make friends of, and show kindness to, the
Duke of Bohemia and the sons of Margrave Leopold” (the offspring of the second
marriage of Princess Agnes, one of whose daughters had married the Duke of
Bohemia), “of whom Frederic thinks more than of any one. On the appointed day I
will, if alive, attend thee, with my brother, and the pious and faithful
Archbishop of Salzburg. Further I pray thee not to open thy whole heart to the
Archbishop of Mainz, yet to show as if thou lovedst him best of all; for he
speaks crafty words of peace to thee, but his mind is estranged. Read this
letter in private, and when read burn it.”
In compliance with the first request, it
would seem an attempt at conciliation was made and failed; either because
Lothar made it insincerely, proposing terms that could not be accepted, or
because Conrad was not yet willing to abandon, even temporarily, his
pretensions to the crown. Certain it is that the civil war lasted three years
longer, during which Henry took and destroyed one of the most important of
Frederic’s cities, Ulm. But it is not unlikely that these overtures, however
unsatisfactory to the principal parties, afforded the opportunity of drawing
off Albert the Bear from Conrad, and with some additional grants persuading him
to acknowledge Henry the Proud as Duke of Saxony. It is certain that he
attended Lothar upon this Coronation Progress, and proved one of his most
valuable warriors.
But if Conrad were, as he has been accused
of being, the obstacle to internal peace, he acted very unwisely. The broils in
which Milan had entangled him, had prevented his reaping the expected advantage
from the schism. Lothar, notwithstanding the civil war, had assembled a very
respectable army for this double expedition, if it may be so designated, the
Duke of Bohemia for the first time seemingly, and it is likely as the result of
Duke Henry’s judicious advice, forming part of the feudal array upon the Coronation
Progress. When it was announced that, at the head of such an army, Lothar had
crossed the Alps, Milan, perceiving that her anti-king, in lieu of being
useful, was likely to be inconveniently burthensome to her, at once deserted
him; and Conrad, not daring with his small body of faithful Italian followers
to encounter the German army, abandoned the field to his rival. He recrossed
the Alps to join and co-operate with his brother. .
Lothar, relieved by Conrad’s retreat from
all the dangers he had apprehended upon this expedition, easily accomplished
his chief objects. In Lombardy, occupied with intestine broils, he happily
avoided any hostile collision; and leaving St. Bernard there, by his eloquence
to gain Innocent adherents, he himself conducted the pontiff’ safely through
northern and central Italy to Rome. There he expelled Anaclet from the Lateran,
from the Capitol, from all perhaps that should then be properly called the city,
driving the anti-pope across the Tiber, into the Leonine city (so called
because a suburb first enclosed within the walls of Rome by Leo IV), to seek
refuge in the Castle of St. Angelo, whilst Innocent established himself in the
Lateran, and Lothar in the Capitol, amongst the unruly, but for the moment
acquiescent, Romans. St. Bernard during the time had obtained the adhesion of
place after place to the triumphant Pope.
Lothar was now to receive the Imperial
crown, and his services, as he ventured to hope, to be rewarded by the
restoration of some of the rights relative to the election of prelates, that he
had, as the price of his election, been obliged to relinquish. But it was now
Innocent who had to grant: and though he withheld not the crown, he not only
refused the guerdon solicited, supported in the refusal by St. Bernard, a
zealous champion of papal rights, but he further obliged his benefactor to
purchase even his crown by yet more concessions to the popedom, than Honorius
had extorted from the candidate. The Hohenstaufen brothers were still in arms,
and Lothar still felt papal support indispensable to him; as before, he
submitted to everything. He admitted Innocent’s interpretation of the Calixtine
Concordat, according to which consecration must precede investiture with the
temporalities of the see, thus rendering rejection by the monarch impossible;
he swore never to interfere, even by his presence or that of a representative,
with the. election of prelates. In the matter of the Matildan heritage he
proved equally yielding with respect to the Imperial right, obtaining in return
the personal advantage of this large addition to his private domains. He
accepted a grant from the Pope of the territories and suzerainties of the great
Countess, to be held in vassalage of the Holy See, for which he was to pay an
annual tribute of one hundred marks; thus not only acknowledging the lands in
question to be the Pope’s, but actually making the Emperor the Pope’s vassal,
or, in the language of the day, his man. And yet further, he accepted the grant
upon the express condition, that every vassal of the principality should always
swear allegiance and do homage to the reigning pope, and that the whole should
at his own death revert to the Roman See. Exactly what possessions or mere
suzerainties Matilda herself had in Lombardy, does not seem clear, and they are
not even alluded to in this grant. The Lombard cities had so well freed themselves
from all intermediate feudal superiors between themselves and the emperor, that
Innocent probably wished not to advance pretensions to such a hornets nest, and
Lothar’s sovereignty they did not dispute.
All these Papal claims and Imperial
concessions being thus arranged and solemnly confirmed, the coronation
followed. But St. Peter’s, with the Castle of St. Angelo and the whole Leonine
city, was still in Anaclet’s hands, therefore the ceremony could not be
performed in the usual Basilica. It was in St. John’s Lateran that Innocent, in
the year 1133, placed the Imperial crown upon the head of Lothar, as he knelt,
rather at the Pope’s feet than at the altar. The triumph which the Pope had
gained upon this occasion was commemorated by a picture, in which the Emperor
is portrayed so kneeling, with folded hands. And lest this should not be
sufficiently intelligible, the following explanatory distich was inscribed
beneath the figures:
Rex venit ante foras, jurans prius Urbis
honores,
Post homo fit Papae, sumit quo dante
coronam.
The Norman princes and nobles, whom Roger’s
tyranny was driving to revolt, thought this a favourable opportunity to obtain
protection; and a deputation from them hastened to Rome to appeal to Pope and
Emperor. But Innocent probably felt himself as yet too weak to interfere, and
Lothar had affairs of too much importance pending in Germany to prolong his
absence unnecessarily. The only material act of sovereignty he upon this
occasion performed in Italy, was dividing Corsica between Genoa and Pisa, or
rather confirming its previous division by Calixtus II, which had superseded
Urban II’s assignment of the island to the archiepiscopal See of Pisa. Whether
he performed this act as Emperor, or as vassal Marquess of Tuscany, is not
stated, and was, it may be conjectured, purposely left uncertain, to avoid
either offending the Pope or renouncing another pretension. Lothar is indeed
said, further, before quitting Italy, to have remunerated the services of
Albert the Bear upon this expedition, with the northern Saxon March in lieu of
the eastern, which he had forfeited by his rebellion, and of which Lothar had
otherwise disposed; but with this wholly temporal transalpine grant Innocent
could not well interfere. The Pope himself proceeded indirectly to inflict
additional punishment upon Milan and her Archbishop, who had presumed to crown
an anti-king rejected by Rome. To this end he deprived him of several of his
suffragan prelates, raising one, the Bishop of Genoa, to the rank of a
Metropolitan, and assigning some of the suffragans to this new province, others
to that of Pisa.
The Emperor now returned in all haste to
Germany, to prosecute the war against his personal enemies. For two years more
it desolated the country. At length, in 1135, the Swabian domains of the Dukes
of Bavaria and Zäringen being as completely devastated, as Frederic’s and
Conrad’s there and in Franconia, all parties, except Lothar, appear to have
been alike weary of such unprofitable hostilities. The Duke of Swabia had long
sighed for peace; the anti-king was by this time convinced of the hopelessness
of the struggle in which he was engaged for the crown; and the Duke of Saxony
and Bavaria could desire nothing more, than to enjoy his vast possessions
undisturbed by civil war, with leisure to endeavour to secure his future
election as Emperor. Lothar alone, influenced more by temper, seemingly, than
by policy, was bent upon prosecuting the war; urging that the nephews of the
late Emperor and their faction must be crushed, when their spoils would afford
ample compensation to his son-in-law, the Duke of Zäringen, and his other
adherents, for the ravage of their territories, of which he deemed them
unreasonably impatient. Against this unyielding disposition of the Emperor all
combined. The Prince of Capua and his friends, some deprived of their
possessions and exiled by Roger, others, groaning tinder his tyranny, implored
the Emperor’s protection and presence in Southern Italy. Innocent, who again
wanted transalpine support, as well against the turbulent Romans as against
Anaclet and his Norman partisans, earnestly exhorted him to pacify Germany by a
frank reconciliation with the Dukes of Swabia and Franconia. The Empress
Richenza, a woman of masculine intellect and energy, whose advice Lothar
habitually sought and generally followed, and whose kind intervention Frederic
is said to have solicited, warmly inforced the papal exhortation; whilst the
Archbishop of Mainz, to whom he could not but feel that he owed his crown, and
other princely-ecclesiastics, proffered their services as mediators. All
prayed, urged, remonstrated in vain; until, by Innocent’s desire, the Abbot of
Clairvaux visited the Emperor, to instil into him, if possible, sentiments more
beseeming a Christian monarch. His eloquence, as usual, proved irresistible;
Lothar was vanquished, and the conditions of peace were arranged by the
disinterested mediator.
At a Diet held at Bamberg in the month of
March, the Duke of Swabia, according to agreement, presented himself. But even
here disappointment seemed to await the friends of peace. Frederic’s high
spirit revolted against the humiliation required of him; whilst Lothar was more
inclined to run back from, than to increase, his previous concessions.
Fortunately, however, St. Bernard, as if conscious that his task was not yet
completed, had repaired to Bamberg, either to secure or to enjoy his work.
Again he interposed, and again his eloquence, inspired by truly Christian
benevolence, was victorious, triumphing alike over reluctant pride and over an
unforgiving temper. The Duke of Swabia, upon bended knee, made his submission,
and renewed his oath of allegiance to the Emperor; who, on his part, relieved
him from the ban of the empire, under which he lay, and confirmed to him his
duchy and other possessions. Conrad still held back: but at the Michaelmas Diet
he followed his brother’s example; further surrendering his share of his
uncle’s Franconian heritage, which the Emperor immediately granted him in fief;
and while confirming the ducal rights in Franconia to the Bishop of Wurzburg,
authorized Conrad to resume the title he had formerly borne, of Duke of
Franconia. He did not, however, deem it necessary to restore to the Duke of
Franconia either the burgraviate of Nuremberg, which, when he despoiled the
brothers, he had conferred upon Henry the Proud, or the Marquisate of Tuscany,
then in his own hands.
From this time to the end of Lothar’s reign
little is heard of the gallant Duke of Swabia, who appears again to have mainly
devoted himself to the government of his duchy. But the Duke of Franconia, who
had no duchy to occupy his hours and thoughts, attached himself more to the
Imperial Court, where he speedily became a prime favourite. His triumphant,
reconciled antagonist loaded him with wealth and honours, named him
Standard-bearer of the Holy Roman Empire, and gave him precedence of all other
Dukes.
This same year Boleslas III of Poland
having proved unsuccessful in the ever-recurring war between Poland and
Hungary, for sovereignty over the adjacent independent Heathen Slavonians,
solicited the intervention of Lothar; who mediated for him a very fair peace,
and in return received his homage for Pomerania and Rugen; but for Poland it
was still withheld. This business concluded, the Emperor prepared to lead
another army to the assistance of the Pope, who, though he had succeeded in
expelling the anti-pope from St. Angelo, had long been in urgent need of
imperial aid.
Whilst Lothar’s preparations were in
progress—and, requiring the concurrence of the princes to be effective, they
advanced but slowly—the Abbot of Clairvaux was again traversing Italy, to gain
Innocent adherents. In Lombardy, by the joint influence of his eloquence, his
piety, and his virtue, he was very successful. He prevailed upon the Milanese
to mark their adhesion by deposing their excommunicated Archbishop; when they
implored Bernard himself to accept the vacant see. He rejected it, as he had
before rejected the Pope’s offer of the archbishopric of Genoa; and,
notwithstanding this resistance to their wishes, he induced them not only to
remove all paintings and other ornaments from their churches, but, subduing
their vindictive passions, to release all prisoners of war in their hands. He
even mediated a peace between Milan and Pavia, though between Milan and Cremona
he failed to accomplish this object.
Anaclet, meanwhile, upon his expulsion from
the Castle of St. Angelo, had sought the protection of the Norman sovereign;
whose friendship he had recently secured, by sending the Cardinal di Sant’
Eusebio to crown him King of Sicily. And to the court of the new King did the
dauntless Bernard, confident in the justice of his cause, now repair, to argue
before him the question of which was the least uncanonical of the two papal
elections; whether he who had conferred the regal title upon him, had authority
so to do. Anaclet, claiming to be the Head of the Church, could not stoop to
argue in person with the advocate of his rival; but he committed his cause to
the ablest of his staunch partisans, Cardinal Pino. Upon this occasion the
Abbot’s efforts were only in part successful. He did not prevail upon Anaclet
to abdicate, or upon Roger, who called himself King of Sicily and Italy, to
renounce his royalty, by confessing that he who gave it was no pope; but he so
thoroughly convinced his immediate antagonist of the fallacy of the pretensions
he was maintaining, that his Eminence returned with Bernard to Rome, there to
acknowledge Innocent as Pope, implore pardon for his previous adherence to the
anti-pope, and obtain absolution.
Whilst Lothar had been occupied in Germany,
Roger was engaged in quelling a rebellion that his own harsh and violent
conduct had provoked. In the act that caused the immediate outbreak, it may be
questionable whether he were or were not altogether in the wrong. He accused
his brother-in-law, Rainulfo Conte di Airolo e Avellino, of ill-treating his
princess-wife; and attacking his castles whilst he, Rainulfo, was absent in
public service, carried off his own sister and Rainulfo’s brother. The prisoner
speaking somewhat boldly in behalf of his brother, Roger doomed him to lose his
nose and eyes. The Prince of Capua with Sergio Duke of Naples, which was not
yet fully subjugated, now joined Rainulfo, many lesser princely nobles rising
at their instigation ; and when disappointed by the delays of the succours they
had hoped for from the Pope and Emperor, they sought the alliance of Pisa. It
is said that Pisa would not move unless in concert with Genoa and Venice; and
that a league of these three great cities with the Apulian insurgents, against
Roger, was concluded at Pisa, with the full approbation and sanction, even in
the presence, of Innocent. Certainly the Pisans attacked the Apulian dominions
of Roger, and in this invasion it was that they took and sacked Amalfi, and,
according to a prevalent report, found there the forgotten and supposed lost
Pandects of Justinian. If such were the league against Roger, its failure is
evidence of the strength of this Norman Prince. The rebels fought well, the
better for the exasperation produced by his inhuman treatment of the
vanquished. In captured towns he burnt houses and churches, massacring men
women and children, without distinction : those whom he did not massacre he
savagely mutilated; and having taken two noblemen, Tancredi di Conversano and
Ruggiero di Flenco prisoners, he compelled the former to redeem his own life by
acting as the executioner of his comrade. Yet, despite his own barbarity and
the coalition against him, Roger triumphed. Rebel after rebel was taken, or
sued for reconciliation; and he was besieging Naples, which almost alone held
out, when the Emperor’s preparations were at length complete.
It was in 1137 that Lothar crossed the Alps
for the second time. He was now at the head of a formidable army, the efficient
command of which was given to the Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, and he was
accompanied by the Duke of Franconia as Standard-bearer. In the Tyrol he
defeated a body of rebels who opposed his passage, and executed the
ringleaders. Lombardy was at this time in a very disturbed state from the
preaching of Arnold of Brescia, a pupil of Abelard’s, who, imbued with all his
master’s heterodox opinions, but, differently tempered, not like him submitting
them to the papal tribunal, had returned to his native city to disseminate
them. He there pronounced his vows as a monk, but these vows put no check upon
his tongue. He is said to have preached against Infant Baptism, the Mass, the
Eucharist, and prayers for the dead, and to have entertained some heretical
ideas concerning the Trinity. But his heresies are problematical, and excited
little interest in his hearers; that by which he aroused the laity and alarmed
the Church was his preaching against the wealth, the luxurious living, and yet
more against the temporal power of ecclesiastics, who, he alleged, ought to
imitate the contented poverty and humility of the Apostles. High and low
listened eagerly to doctrines, that gratified the jealousy of the first, and
flattered the cupidity of the last; and the Bishop of Brescia complained
vehemently to the Pope. But Lombardy was not therefore in open rebellion; and
Lothar, after taking and tranquillizing some towns that appeared disposed to
insurrection, avoided further interference in their quarrels. He secured the
aid of a Pisan fleet against his or the Pope’s refractory Sicilian vassal, and
hastened to Rome.
The Romans had by this time been appeased,
and were just then loyal; so that the Pope and Emperor proceeded without delay
to invade Apulia. There they speedily arrested King Roger’s victorious career,
obliged him to raise the siege of Naples, and, it should seem, drove him off to
Sicily. St. Bernard, who, if a zealous advocate of what he deemed papal rights,
was a determined opponent of papal encroachment, now advised Lothar to depose
Roger, not for his adherence to the anti-pope, but as an usurper, inasmuch as
he professed to hold nis dominions of the Papacy not of the Empire. But Lothar
was too much a creature of the Pope to follow such counsels, as bold as wise:
in everything he acted with Innocent and under his dictation. Jointly they
adopted Honorius II’s denial of Roger’s right to succeed to his kinsman, Duke
William; and leaving him Grant Conte di Sicilia, they invested his
brother-in-law, Rainulfo with the duchy of Apulia, re-installing Robert of
Capua, and the other princes or nobles not of the Hauteville race, in the
possessions of which they had been despoiled.
Innocent rewarded this submissive behaviour
perhaps as much as the services of the imperial army, when he permitted the
Emperor, conjointly with himself, to give the investiture of, and revive the
homage due for, the duchy and principalities. He further rewarded him with
permission to transfer the marquisate of Tuscany, nominally including the whole
Matildan heritage, to his son-in-law, as heir to Matilda’s second husband,
Welf, to be held of course as it was to have been held by Welf, and was
actually held by Lothar, in vassalage of the Roman See. This grant the Duke of
Saxony and Bavaria had earned by quelling an insurrection in Tuscany, and
reinstating the Imperial Vicar, whom the rebels had expelled, in his post; but
whether his guerdon were to be immediately enjoyed, the Emperor retaining
simply a mesne sovereignty, or were reversionary, only taking effect at
Lothar’s death, is a question still in dispute amongst German and Italian
historians.
This prolongation of the grant of the
marquisate of Tuscany in vassalage may seem a very inadequate return for
Lothar’s services. But Innocent regarded those services as the mere payment of
a debt, and of a debt doubly due, since to the Roman Church Lothar owed his
attainment of the dignity, which made the protection of that Church his
official bounden duty. Moreover the grant acquired additional value, as
implying the disregard, or the sacrifice, of the hatred that Henry the Proud
had incurred from all classes of Italians, from pope, prelates, nobles,
citizens and peasants; from those, by his intolerable arrogance, from these, by
his barbarous mutilation of his prisoners. Their good-will was lavished with
one accord upon the Standard-bearer, who was gallant in the field, lenient in
victory, devout, respectful to the clergy, doubly so to the Pope, and courteous
to all. He is described by historians as a pattern to the army, alike in
prowess and in endurance, although no especial feats are upon this occasion mentioned
as performed by him. Indeed, every opportunity of acquiring fame or commanding
admiration was monopolized by the Duke of. Saxony and Bavaria, all powerful
both as Generalissimo, and as the husband of the Emperor’s only child.
The Imperial authority being now in some
sort acknowledged both in Lombardy and Apulia, Lothar deemed his work done; and
being perhaps somewhat disgusted at the papal encroachments upon his rights, as
well as urged by his vassals, whose period of service had expired, and who were
impatient to escape from the heats, to them uncongenial, of Italy, set forth
for Germany. Forgetting, or unable, to make any provision for the support of
the Apulians whom he had installed in opposition to Roger, he left them wholly
to their own resources and the Pope’s protection. He retraced his steps, to
return by the road by which he had come; and upon reaching the beautiful lake
of Garda, added the town of the same name to the Italian possessions of the
Duke of Saxony and Bavaria.
Lothar’s anxiety to reach Germany was
increased by tidings of the excesses and outrages committed in his absence by
the robber-knights, one band of whom had plundered and burnt the wealthy church
of St. Goar upon the Rhine. But to restore order was not allotted to him.
Whilst traversing the Tyrol at the head of his victorious army, the Emperor was
suddenly taken ill. Speedily it became impossible to transport him further; and
at a small Tyrolese village, upon the 3rd of December, 1137, after having carefully
delivered the ensigns of sovereignty into the hands of his daughter’s husband,
Lothar II. expired. His death was one of those ascribed to poison, although the
usually chief ground of such accusations, to wit, its being premature, was here
wanting. Lothar, who was spoken of as being past his prime when raised to the
throne, which he occupied upwards of twelve years, must now have been at least
an elderly man. In one respect only could it be thought untimely, and that is,
that to himself it was apparently unexpected. He had as yet taken no step
towards securing the crown to his son-in-law; and he had probably hoped that
this triumphant expedition, and the laurels gathered by this candidate for
Empire, would facilitate his election as colleague and successor to himself.
The person accused by hostile historians of administering the poison is the
Duke of Franconia; but to say nothing of his character, there then appeared far
too little chance of carrying his election as successor to Lothar, in opposition
to the Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, Marquess of Tuscany, and Lord of the
remainder of the Matildan dominions, to tempt even a recklessly ambitious man,
far less the chivalrous palmer, Conrad, to perpetrate an atrocious crime.
Election Manoeuvres.—Conrad
elected.—Dissensions with Henry the Proud.—Death of Henry.—Rise of the terms
Guelph and Ghibeline.—The Women of Weinsberg.—Compromise with the Welfs.—Other
German Affairs.—External Affairs.— Italian Affairs.—End of Schism.—Roger's
Conquest of Apulia, and government. —Dissensions of the Popes and the Romans.
|
|
 |
 |
 |