MEDIEVAL HISTORY LIBRARY

BOOK II.

FREDERIC I., SURNAMED BARBAROSSA.

CHAPTER I. [1152—1154.

Election of the Duke of Swabia — His character — Affairs of Germany — Contention for Danish Crown — Ecclesiastical Disputes — Henry the Lion — His Quarrels and Claims — Lodesans at the Diet of Constance — Affairs of Italy — Preparations for the Coronation Progress — Actual State of Italy.

The circumstances under which Frederic Duke of Swabia presented himself as a candidate for the crown were seemingly little different from those under which his father, Duke Frederic the One-eyed, had twenty seven years before been supplanted by the Duke of Saxony; but what difference there was, told in favour of the son. To the high reputation for military skill and prowess which, like his father, he had earned, he superadded the fame of a Crusader, to which perhaps his uncle Conrad had been materially indebted for his election. Like his father, he had enjoyed opportunities of displaying the gentler virtues of chivalry, as well as its valiancy, having in early youth proved his liberality by the dismissal of prisoners, who fell to his private share, unransomed. His prudence and indomitable constancy had appeared upon divers occasions, especially during the late unfortunate Crusade; his conciliatory spirit and love of peace, in his efforts to reconcile his maternal uncle, the discontented Welf, with his probably more highly valued paternal uncles, Conrad and Henry Jasomir. Finally, like his father, he had been designated by an imperial uncle as his successor, and as such intrusted with the ensigns of sovereignty.

But, more fortunate than his father, there was, really as well as apparently, neither rival candidate to oppose, nor crafty hostile faction to circumvent him. The only possible rival would again have been the Duke of Saxony; who, besides that he could at best offer but the promise of what the Duke of Swabia already was, had shocked the feelings of his contemporaries and offended the clergy, by refusing to follow Conrad to the defence of the Holy Land, upon the plea of a home crusade against the heathen Slavonians, which, far from actively performing and promoting, he had rather counteracted than aided; and if he had contributed towards producing a nominal conversion of those Slavonians, he had, with apparent indifference, seen them relapse into their original idolatry. And if nevertheless an adverse party there were who might think of bringing Henry the Lion forward, a fortuitous combination of circumstances, coinciding with the enlightenment of Frederic and his friends by the knowledge of the artifices practised to disappoint his father, would have sufficed to prevent a similar mortifying result.

But in fact the position of affairs allowed no time for manoeuvring. Many of the members of the Diet convoked by Conrad were still on their way to Bamberg, when the sovereign whom they went to meet, was removed from the busy scene. The princes appear thereupon, in concurrence with the official convoker of electoral diets, to have immediately transferred their place of sitting to Frankfurt-on-the-Main; and there, where they seem to have been joined by numbers, constituting themselves an Electoral Diet, to have proceeded to the business of supplying the place of the deceased Emperor. No delay seems to have been caused by deliberation or hesitation as to the choice of a successor; for in little more than a fortnight after Conrad’s death, upon the 5th of March, 1152, Frederic, Duke of Swabia, was by all the princes of the empire present, and large was the number, acclaimed—to borrow the expressive Portuguese word for such impetuously unanimous proclamation— King of Germany and future Emperor.

It may be observed by the way that it was from the epoch of Frederic’s election that Frankfurt superseded Mainz as the regular locality for the sitting of Electoral Diets, as far as actual regularity can then be said to have existed. But what more importantly characterizes this Electoral Diet is, that it was the first in which deputies from cities took part. The words “took part” must however be understood in a qualified sense. As there was no contest, there could be no voting; and it cannot be inferred from the deputies of cities having joined in the acclamation, that the princes would have allowed them a right of suffrage in the Diet: still it was a forward step in the political career of the German cities, and a step never retraced; as it is certain that Frederic I habitually summoned such deputies to his diets. It is likewise said that Italian nobles from Lombardy and Tuscany joined in proclaiming Frederic. But if this were so, it is self-evident that their presence must have been accidental (that is to say, with reference to the Electoral Diet; they might have brought petitions for redress, appeals against ill-usage, to Bamberg), and their acclamations a merely spontaneous acknowledgment of the new monarch on the part of Italy. Italy, though so integral a part of the Holy Roman Empire, had been treated by the Othos and their successors as a conquered country, had been deprived of the electoral rights she possessed, far from being allowed a voice in the election of the Emperors, her future sovereigns;—a principal cause possibly of her alienation from her German Emperors. And even if she had been allowed a vote, as no Italians could have been summoned to the purely German Diet convoked to meet at Bamberg—the affairs of Italy being regularly transacted in Italian Diets—there would not have been time to bring them across the Alps, obstructed by the winter’s snow, when, removing to Frankfurt, the Diet changed its character.

The election carried, no delay was suffered to occur in the performance of all the rites and ceremonies requisite to secure to Frederic the throne of his deceased uncle, and of his, as well as that uncle’s, maternal ancestry, traced back to Charlemagne. Five days after his proclamation at Frankfurt, he was crowned at Achen, in what is believed to have been the chapel of his mighty progenitor.

The new monarch was, at the period of his election, in the very prime of manhood— to wit, in the thirty-second year of his age. He was of middle stature, well made, with curly, fair hair and beard, of a reddish hue—whence the Germans surnamed him Rothbart, and the Italians Barbarossa, which, in the Latin Chronicles of the day, becomes Aenobarbus,—with agreeable features and blue eyes, whose serene yet penetrating look seemed to read the soul of all upon whom it dwelt. His carriage was firm and dignified; and in all the bodily exercises of the tilt-yard, as in the hunter’s craft—both important accomplishments in the middle ages—he was unrivalled. His dress was neither studied nor neglected; and his cheerfulness enlivened the banquet, where he never per­mitted conviviality to degenerate into excess. These qualities, together with the strength and keenness of his understanding, the general superiority of his intellectual powers, the peculiar, unfailing memory—an especial attribute seemingly of princes—which never suffers name or face to escape, and the winning graciousness of his manners, are generally admitted : but with regard to proficiency in scholarship and to moral character, few historical personages have been more contradictorily described.

Writers of the Guelph party assert that Frederic could not read ; those of the Ghibeline, that he could not only both read and write, but was a good Latinist, and delighted in the perusal of the classics. Both parties agree, however, as to his devotion to the study of history—whether he read it himself or employed his chaplains to read it to him—he esteemed a knowledge of the past indispensable to the just appreciation of the present and prevision of the future. That he understood Latin, as well as some living languages, sufficiently for all useful purposes, will appear in the course of this narrative; and there still exist verses composed by him in the Romance language of troubadours, which (easy, if not aiming at poetry) attest his being something of a linguist. In regard to his moral character, Guelphs describe him as of inordinate ambition, of unbridled passions—whether meaning thereby appetites, or simply ambition, seems doubtful—which he gratified reckless of all obstacles, of obstinacy invincible by reason: as the wantonly lawless assailant of free republics— meaning the Lombard cities; as easily provoked to hatred, ever unappeasable; and so inveterately jealous of his kinsman, Henry the Lion, as to have caught at an insufficient, if not absolutely false, plea, to despoil him of his patrimony. Ghibeline writers, on the other hand, represent Frederic Barbarossa as the first of chivalrous heroes, yet waging war only when he saw in victory the best means to insure the stability of peace; stern indeed and terrible to those whom he deemed transgressors of the law, but ever placable towards the penitent ; and never, either in prosperity or adversity, losing his self-possession or the perfect command of his passions; thoroughly religious, and moral even to austerity.

In fact, it is even now difficult to write the history of this reign with perfect impartiality. The accusations, brought by the partisans of the Popes and the Lombard cities against the unflinching assertor of Imperial rights, have, down to the present day (with few exceptions) been adopted by all lovers of liberty— all philosophic contemners of the lust of conquest: influenced by the sympathy which cannot but be felt with Italian struggles for independence of a foreign, although legal, sovereignty, and not unfrequently perhaps by imperfect knowledge, less of facts than of the ideas then attached to words. Later writers have taken the word republic in its classical and modern, rather than its mediaeval sense; when, as has been seen, it was perfectly compatible with loyalty, if not with much obedience, to an emperor. On the other hand, the conservative, who shrinks from the revolutionary horrors with which the last sixty years have teemed, must sympathize with the con­servative and royalist energies of the chivalric Emperor— must recollect the ephemeral character of the liberty at which the Lombards aimed. But, without adopting the extreme opinions of either Guelph or Ghibeline, it is presumed that the history of his actions will show that Frederic’s ruling principle was justice—justice always strictly impartial, and if sometimes too inexorably rigid, sometimes, to the feelings of a milder age, severe, even to barbarity; yet even in this severity tempered with a then unusual degree of leniency, since it was very seldom sanguinary—an opinion in which two of the exceptions amongst liberal historians, above alluded to, Wolfgang Menzel and Simonde de Sismondi, concur. It was this passion for justice, if it may be so termed, that instigated his pertinacious determination not to suffer the Imperial dignity, inherited from the Othos and Charlemagne, to be impaired in his hands by the success of the Lombard insurrection. Italy, he deemed, as, indeed, it deemed itself, still an integral part of the Empire, of which the Pope was primate, supreme in its spiritual concerns, as in those of the whole of Christendom,

An instance of this inflexible justice occurred even at the coronation of the newly-proclaimed monarch. As, returning from the altar, he passed along the nave of the old Cathedral, a servant, whom, for some flagrant offence, he had dismissed, threw himself at his feet, in full confidence that the joy of the moment would insure him the pardon he implored. But with calm sternness Frederic answered, “Justice, not dislike, caused thy dismissal; and I see no grounds for revoking it.”—Did the princes who heard these words feel that they had raised to the throne a monarch who would curb their arbitrary despotism?

Frederic’s first measure was to despatch an embassy to Rome, announcing his election to the Pope, and professing his devotion to the Church, together with all the zeal of his deceased uncle for the defence of the Holy Sepulchre. But neither did he solicit, nor Eugenius III intimate expectation that he should, any papal ratification of his election. The Pope and the Romans, opposed as they were to each other, united, unconsciously it may be presumed, in pressing the new sovereign to hasten to Rome for his coronation; each hoping, through his cooperation, to triumph. But Frederic judged it necessary to pacify Germany, and her dependencies north of the Alps, ere he should cross the mountain-barrier, and touch the tangled skein of Italian affairs, which he, nevertheless, acknowledged it to be his duty, as Emperor, to disentangle.

The feuds and points in dispute chiefly demanding his immediate attention in this northern portion of the empire, were,—the contest for the crown of Denmark, one of the pretenders to which instantly appealed to him;—the affairs of Henry the Lion, as well his quarrels in Saxony, as his claim to Bavaria;—and some questions of ecclesiastical rights.

In Denmark, Sweyn, supported by the Zealanders, and Duke Waldemar, had thoroughly defeated Canute, possessing himself of the kingdom. Canute, after vainly seeking assistance from the connexions of his mother—her second husband, the King of Sweden, and her Polish kindred—and from his German neigh hours—the Duke of Saxony and the Archbishop of Bremen—repaired to Merseburg, where Frederic was then holding his first Diet, and besought him, as suzerain, to adjudge his grandfather’s crown to him. Frederic, who neglected no opportunity of inforcing the rights of imperial sovereignty, invited Sweyn to his court, that he might investigate and decide between the claims of the rival kinsmen; adding to this grave motive of the invitation, a courteous wish to renew his acquaintance with a comrade of his youth.—Sweyn had received knighthood from Conrad III, and passed some years in that Emperor’s court and camp. Accepting the invitation, he had every reason to be satisfied with the friendliness of his reception, as he should have been with the proposed scheme of adjustment. The Emperor and Diet, after investigating the pretensions of the parties, appear to have considered the title of the last king as legalized by the obedience rendered him; and therefore decided that Sweyn, as his son, should retain the kingdom, granting Zealand, as a vassal principality, to Canute. Waldemar, who had accompanied his cousin Sweyn to Merseburg, approved of the sentence; and Canute, at that moment absolutely despoiled and helpless, willingly submitted to it; but Sweyn, who was in possession of the whole, saw no reason for ceding to his adversary the very province to whose attachment and exertions he was indebted for the crown. In all likelihood, however, it was this very attachment of Zealand to Sweyn, that induced Frederic to select, and Waldemar to approve of it, for Canute’s principality, as being the province in which he would find it most difficult to excite a rebellion. Be this as it may, Sweyn was speedily convinced that at Merseburg to resist Frederic’s will; confirmed by that of the Diet, was out of the question. He submitted therefore to the decision; did homage for his kingdom, and, upon Whitsunday, the King of Denmark, in royal array, his crown upon his head, bore the sword of state in procession before his liege Lord. But scarcely had he set foot in Denmark upon his return, ere he declared the convention null, as having been extorted by force, and positively refused to give Canute investiture of Zealand. Waldemar, who had in some measure guaranteed the execution of the Diet’s decree, now interfered. With considerable difficulty, and it is supposed not without the menace, at least, of compulsion, he at length prevailed upon the king—not to cede his favourite province, but—to grant his rival, in compensation for Zealand, several fiefs, collectively of nearly equal pecuniary and military value; but which, from their widely disseminated localities, could not afford him dangerous political power. Frederic appears to have taken no notice of this infraction of the arrangement he had ordered, probably being engrossed with more important affairs; for although in the then existing deficiency, if such a verbal contradiction be admissible, of the present means of rapid communication, he would not be as immediately informed of the violation, as if the date of the transaction had been the nineteenth century, it cannot be supposed that the injured party would neglect to lay his complaint before his imperial protector.

Henry the Lion was one of the first applicants to the Merseburg Diet for redress. But as his grand affair, his claim to Bavaria, was not decided at this Diet, and of his Saxon quarrels, that were, the principal related to ecclesiastical rights, it will be more convenient to speak first of those ecclesiastical questions which were named as the third of the points occupying the new monarch and his Diet. The especial concerns of the Duke of Saxony will find their proper place afterwards.

These ecclesiastical questions again related to episcopal election and episcopal investiture. Utrecht, partly in the arrogance of wealth, partly in devotion to the Papal See, had resisted Conrad’s decision in a double election ; the Imperial right to which, even Lothar’s submissive interpretation of the Calixtine Concordat, confirmed. Frederic’s first care, was to compel obedience to that decision; and upon leaving Aix-la-Chapelle, prior even to the assembling of the Merseburg Diet, he had visited Utrecht, installed the Bishop preferred by the deceased Emperor, and imposed a heavy fine upon the Chapter as the penalty of its contumacy.

A similar contest had taken place in the archiepiscopal see of Magdeburg, where the Dean was chosen by one half the Chapter, the Provost—a high office in German Cathedral Chapters, to which there appears to be nothing analogous in the English hierarchy—by the other; and neither party would give way. Frederic of course interposed; but instead of pronouncing in favour of either candidate, brought forward a third of his own: this was Wichmann, Bishop of Zeitz, who is said to have bribed the Canons, whilst Frederic prevailed upon the Dean to resign his pretensions in favour of this prelate; who was then elected by a large majority. Frederic, without waiting for papal sanction or consecration, immediately invested him with the temporalities, and the new metropolitan at once took possession of his archbishopric. The rejected Provost made his complaints to the Pope, who not only refused to sanction the third election, but addressed a severe reprimand to those German prelates who had solicited the archiepiscopal pall for Wichmann. He reproached them for their concurrence in the translation of a bishop, an act which only the most urgent necessity could justify, or excuse, and for their disregard of the absence of spiritual sanction to the transaction; finally commanding them to obtain from his beloved son Frederic, perfect freedom in the election of prelates, and abstinence from every thing contrary to the will of God, the laws of the Church, and his own royal engagements.

But the lofty language of this admonition to the German prelates, Eugenius III was not prepared to sustain. Embroiled as usual with the Romans, of whom he repeatedly complained to Frederic, imploring his aid against them, and at enmity with his Norman vassals, he was in no condition to risk the loss of the future Emperor’s friendship; and the Magdeburg election was not the only question of the kind then before the papal tribunal, calculated to produce that loss. Henry, Archbishop of Mainz, he whom Conrad III had selected as his son’s Counsellor, whom his friends admired for his ascetic piety, and eulogized as the very type of an apostolic prelate, had, by a part of his Chapter, that had originally and factiously opposed his election, been accused to the Pope of the most unapostolic, the most unclerical conduct,—of well nigh every vice, and especially of simony. The Archbishop sent Arnold von Selenhoven, a Mainz Patrician whom he had made Provost of his Chapter, to Rome,  to vindicate him from these charges before the Supreme Pontiff. Whether they were true or false, which remains problematical, this trusted and deeply indebted friend, proved a traitor. In lieu of refuting, he rather corroborated the accusation, solicited the see for himself, and, it is said, bribed those in the Pope’s confidence high. Eugenius did not hold himself sufficiently informed to decide and act in so nice a question ; and commissioned his Legate in Germany to inquire further into the matter.

Under these circumstances the Pope instructed the same Legate to negotiate as he best could the settlement of these disputes with the Emperor; who on his part, independently of any religious feelings, had too much upon his hands, and in view, not to be very desirous of avoiding a quarrel with Rome. Hence early in the year 1153, whilst a Diet was sitting at Constance, a convention to the following effect was concluded. Frederic engaged to defend the honour, the rights, and the possessions of the Papal See against everyone; to make no treaty with either the insurgent Romans or the King of Sicily, without the Pope’s concurrence; to prevent the Greek Emperor from effecting any establishment in Italy, and to cooperate in subjecting the Romans to the papal sceptre, as of yore. Eugenius, in return, engaged to crown the Kingas Emperor without delay, and in every way to promote and favour the lawful, imperial rights, even excommunicating, if needful, whoever should deny him due obedience.

It is somewhat remarkable that, of the point in dispute, episcopal election, no mention is made. Both parties alike shrinking from a rupture, this question—that is to say, the right reading of the existing Concordat, upon which it was hardly possible they should agree—was, probably by tacit consent, reserved for future discussion, when each might hope to be more advantageously situated. The Pope silently suffered Wichmann to retain his archbishopric; and in the course of the year this prelate, really of the Emperor’s appointing, received his pall, not indeed from Eugenius III, who did not long survive his friend, St. Bernard, but from his successor, Anastasius IV. On the other hand, the Legate, whether influenced by proof or by bribes, affirming the truth of the charges against Archbishop Henry, Frederic, without interfering, saw him deposed, and Arnold substituted in his see, by papal authority. Fie similarly suffered, or connived at, the further proceedings of the Legate, who deposed some other prelates, these for conduct unbefitting churchmen, those as superannuated.

The disputes and complaints brought before the Diet by Henry the Lion and his antagonists are next to be related; and so important is the part played throughout the reign of Frederic and some years of his successor's by this prince—another ancestor of those Hanoverian princes, whom mar­riage with a granddaughter of the Stuarts called to the British throne—that a few words concerning him, his character, and his supposed views, will not be here misplaced. Henry, at this period two-and-twenty years of age, was a remarkably handsome man, an accomplished knight, an able and a daring warrior—in these, and in many other points, as morality and stern resolution, very like, if not quite equal to, Frederic Barbarossa. But he was, upon the showing of the Guelphs themselves, as ambitious, haughty, uncontrollable in his passions, impetuously bent upon attaining his object, and reckless of all interposing obstacles, as his surname of the Lion would seem to indicate, and as those same Guelphs have painted Frederic. That he really repaid with some affection the warm attachment which his imperial kinsman, despite all allegations to the contrary, evidently bore him—since he long proved it by his actions—there seems no reason to doubt; but whether that affection were sufficient permanently to reconcile him to his own subordinate though exalted station, to their reciprocal relations as vassal and Liege Lord, is to say the least problematic. As an independent sovereign, he would in all likelihood have remained Frederic's faithful and efficient friend, as at his accession he was his faithful and efficient friend and vassal. As yet, however, Henry was in no condition to even dream of shaking off his allegiance; and his ambition probably soared not beyond the position of the first and greatest Prince of the Empire, holding in his hand the balance between Emperor and vassalage.

Henry was at this epoch Duke of Saxony, and, in right of his mother and of his paternal grandmother, lord of im­mense domains, allodia and fiefs, within the duchy. The locality of his dominions had constituted him the advanced guard of Christian Germany against Heathen Slavonia; whence conquered tribes generally became his vassals, and thus, through him, members of the Empire. His only possible rivals with respect to them were the King of Denmark, the Polish Dukes, and the Margrave of Brandenburg. Of these possible rivals, the attention and resources of two, the Dane and the Poles, were, if not engrossed, yet habitually diverted from foreign conquest, by intestine broils, and the third was so inferior to him in power, that in every joint conquest of Slavonian provinces, the Lion got the lion’s share. And this mighty, this ambitious prince, deemed himself wronged, unjustly defrauded of his patrimony, the duchy of Bavaria.

But Henry’s first appearance before the Diet was to be as accused, not as claimant. He was involved in serious quarrels with neighbours and vassals, spiritual and temporal, one of them of some standing. Upon the promise of the Slavonians to receive baptism, which had put an end to the recent Slavonian crusade, the Archbishop of Bremen, announcing the restoration of the Slavonian bishoprics—suffragan sees of Bremen—proceeded, without even com­municating his design to the Duke of Saxony—with whom, it will be remembered, he was not upon very friendly terms—to confer the see of Altenburg upon Vicelin. A better, a more appropriate choice could not have been made. Vicelin, now an old man, had in his youth studied at Paris; but finding the subtleties of scholasticism repugnant to his simple piety, he withdrew from the arena of worldly learning, to devote himself to the diffusion of Gospel light amongst the Heathen. As a missionary he had been successful with these same Slavonians, having, by his heroic constancy, his meekness, and other Christian virtues, aided by his ascetic character—e. g., he wore haircloth next his skin, never tasted animal food, to the idolaters impressive proofs of his sincerity—wrought many conversions. It was not the selection of Vicelin, but the manner of his elevation to his see, that was the stumbling block. The Duke, when informed of this act of his former enemy, the Archbishop, had angrily exclaimed that, although fully sensible of the merits of Vicelin, he would not, until he himself invested him with the see, suffer him to be acknowledged as Bishop of Altenburg. Vicelin, perplexed by this unexpected difficulty, applied to his Metropolitan for direction as to his conduct; and the Archbishop pronounced, that of laymen, to the Emperor only, as highest amongst the sons of men, was the right of investing ecclesiastics conceded. The Emperor had earned it by his own acts and those of his predecessors, in endowing the Church with lands and principalities, with wealth and power, and to him the Church might, without degradation, bow. But the bishops, should they stoop to receive investiture of vassal princes, would soon be the servants of those princes whose lords they now were; and he, Vicelin, owed it to his age, and the dignity of his pure life, not to be the first to bring such obloquy upon the House of God. Obeying his ecclesiastical superior, Vicelin repaired to his diocese, and, without paying any regard to the authority of the feudal Lord of the country, Duke Henry, assumed his episcopal dignity and duties. But the revenues of his see were withheld by the Duke’s order; and the stubborn Slavonians proved unmanageable by influence merely spiritual. The prelate was soon convinced that without the temporal support of the Duke he could not so govern his flock as to keep it in the right path, and to do this was, he felt, the one imperative duty to which all other considerations must give way. In this conviction he repaired to Luneville, where Henry then resided, to solicit such support. Henry professed the utmost veneration for him individually, but persisted in his claim. Vicelin then observed, “In the service of Him who humbled Himself for our sake, I would yield me as a thrall to the meanest of thy people; then why not to thee, whom the Lord has placed so high amongst princes?” Upon these grounds the prelate submitted, received investiture of his bishopric from the Duke, and thenceforward, supported by him, had been able, more satisfactorily to himself, to discharge his episcopal functions.

This had been the state of the affair during the last few months of Conrad’s reign, when the Archbishop, who meant not to submit to any ducal usurpation, might naturally expect redress from the army assembling to chastise the Duke’s contumacy toward the Diet and the Emperor. Disappointed by the altered course of events consequent upon the demise of the crown, he now appealed to the Merseburg Diet against such ducal usurpation, bringing the wrongfully invested prelate with him. He urged, in addition to the reasons previously given to Vicelin, that the blood, freely shed in the late crusade, had been shed, not to enrich princes, but to diffuse Christianity, the performance of which great duty must not be suffered to depend upon the caprice of any layman; and finally, he accused the Duke of conduct doubly criminal, as tending both to bind the Church in degrading fetters, and to break the whole­some bonds knitting himself to the Emperor.

The Duke replied, that a very few only of the Slavonians were really converted; and these, but for the terror inspired by his arms, would apostatize or be murdered; wherefore, in a district won and preserved to the Church at the price of his own and his vassals’ blood, he claimed the rights and the authority held by princes in all old Christian countries.

Hard seemed the task assigned the new monarch of settling this dispute without alienating either party, his haughty prelacy or his potent kinsman, and without sacrificing any of the prerogatives of sovereignty. And well did he accomplish it, evading the difficulty. In concurrence with the Diet he pronounced, “The Duke of Saxony, in all those lands north of the Elbe, which he enjoys through our imperial favour, shall, in our name, found and endow bishoprics, and give investiture of their temporalities, as though the act were our own.” Thus the dignity of the Church was saved by the Duke’s acting solely as the Emperor’s representative; and the incorporation of the conquered Slavonian provinces with Germany was affirmed and recognised, whilst Henry got the exercise of the power he claimed, his right to it, if not admitted, being at least not denied. He appeared to be satisfied, and Frederic hoped that he was so.

The next of the Duke of Saxony’s quarrels to be decided was with his Saxon old hereditary enemy and cousin, Margrave Albert. The two noble Saxon families of Plotzkau and Winzenburg were extinct, by the death of the last of each line, and the Duke and the Margrave were at variance for the fiefs that had in consequence lapsed to the feudal superiors. This dispute Frederic settled more easily, by a compromise, assigning to each the domains of one of the extinct families.

But all this was of inferior moment in the eyes of the Lion, whose great object was the recovery of Bavaria. To this duchy he now formally renewed the claim, advanced under Conrad, upon the grounds then alleged. Frederic evidently felt so vital a dispute between two princes, both nearly related to him, the one his uncle, the other his cousin-german, peculiarly irksome and embarrassing. He neither would nor could pronounce against either—despoil either. Neither would he allow’ it to be decided out of hand by the Diet then sitting, but referred it to another Diet to be soon held at Wurzburg, thus hoping, perhaps, to gain time for negotiation.

To this Wurzburg Diet the Dukes of Saxony and of Bavaria were of course summoned, and Henry the Lion promptly obeyed the call. But Henry Jasomir, aware of the attack to be made upon him, and mistrustful probably of his nephew’s predilection for his younger kinsman, upon the plea of some informality in the summons sent him, took no further notice of it, than to allege the inviolability of the act, in Diet, of a deceased monarch, as sufficient answer to his rival’s pretensions. Again and again, to Diet after Diet was the summons to Henry Jasomir repeated, again and again to be by him contumaciously neglected. Whereupon the last of the series, the Easter Diet of 1154, which sat at Goslar, without entering into the question either of Henry the Welf’s hereditary right or of the validity of Conrad’s grant to the Babenbergers, Leopold and Henry, pronounced the duchy of Bavaria forfeited by the contumacy of Henry, Margrave of Austria, and there­fore adjudged it to Henry, Duke of Saxony.

But Frederic took no immediate steps to give effect to this decree of the Goslar Diet, for even whilst the question was pending had his attention been forcibly called to Italy: As early as during the Wurzburg Diet of 1152 had he been urged, as before intimated, by the letters and legates of Eugenius III to visit Rome, in order to receive the Imperial crown from his hand, and to support the Papal authority against the turbulent Romans, amongst whom the Supreme Pontiff’ was really living upon sufferance; whilst they still called the Eternal City a republic, and, under the exciting influence of Arnold of Brescia, daily became more unruly as a flock, more dangerous as subjects, and even as fellow-citizens. Thither too had Apulian exiles, headed by Robert, the despoiled Prince of Capua, brought their complaints of their King’s oppressive government, their claim to protection by the Emperor, as Lord Paramount, and their prayers for aid to recover their property from the tyrant Roger. Frederic promised all that was asked, but observed to his petitioners that he must needs settle the affairs of Germany prior to crossing the Alps, which he could scarcely hope to accomplish in less than two years. He accordingly appointed September 1154 for his coronation progress.

But more urgently yet was the imperial presence in Italy to be implored. In the month of March of the intervening year 1153, during the Diet held at Constance, two citizens of Lodi, named Uomobuono and Albernando, chancing to be present, were so deeply impressed by the thoughtfulness, judgment and strict justice regulating Frederic’s every decision, every measure, that they conceived a sudden lively hope of rescuing through his potent inter­position their native city from the abyss of misery into which it was plunged. They hurried to a church where each grasped a mighty crucifix, bearing which they presented themselves before the monarch in full Diet, and fell, bathed in tears, at his feet. The action excited general surprise; they were raised up, and Albernando then addressed Frederic in German. He called upon him to redress the wrongs long since inflicted upon Lodi by the rapacious as ambitious Milanese, who were endeavouring gradually to enslave the whole of Lombardy; who, envious of the commercial prosperity of the Lodesans, had overpowered them by superior numbers, demolished their town, and driven the inhabitants even from the ruins, forcing them to dwell in six villages, built in the vicinity. Nay, not content with this degree of oppression, Milan, finding that the Tuesday market, which had long been the chief source of that object of their envy—Lodi’s commercial prosperity—still continued to flourish in one of the six villages, had now required its transfer to remote open fields, “where,” as the orator sadly observed in the concluding words of his complaint, “no one resides, no one buys or sells.”

Alike to Frederic’s veneration for justice, and to his lofty sense of the rights and duties of sovereignty, was this tyrannous oppression, this lawless destruction of one of his cities by another, revolting. The words and tears of the Lodesans excited general sympathy in the Diet, and in him provoked a burst of wrath, productive of measures injudiciously precipitate. He promised the petitioners redress for the past and protection for the future, and promised both so eagerly, that he forgot his want of means, until he should be in Lombardy at the head of an army, to afford either. He forthwith addressed a letter to the Milanese, rebuking them for their criminal conduct, threatening retribution, and commanding them instantly to repair the injuries they had unlawfully inflicted upon Lodi. With this letter he despatched Sell wicker von Aspremont to Milan, bidding him take his way round by the ruins of Lodi, to cheer the dispersed citizens with the tidings of imperial protection.

These tidings the Lodesans had already received, and deemed them the very reverse of cheering. Glorying in what they had achieved for their suffering country, Albernando and Uomobuono had hurried home to proclaim their spontaneous patriotic effort and its success, to reap, as they hoped, their reward, in the grateful admiration and joy of their suffering fellow-citizens. Painfully had they been disappointed. At first, no credence being given to their report, they were scoffed at as vain boasters. But when the arrival of Schwicker left no room for doubt, conviction produced only consternation and terror. The promised imperial protection, even if no longer the nullity it had long appeared, was still beyond the Alps, and to have sought it would assuredly provoke the vengeful rage of the implacable tyrant close at hand. The Consuls—the municipal forms seeming to have been retained as a protest against such dispersion—earnestly represented to the imperial commissioner that the appeal of Albernando and Uomobuono had been wholly unauthorized, and implored him both to forbear visiting Milan, and to leave the imperial missive in their custody, to be delivered when the Emperor should be upon his march. The most phi­losophic of the modern historical patrons of Milan and Lombardy allow that this excessive terror of the Lodesans goes far towards satisfying the impartial inquirer that the enmity of Frederic to Milan was the natural fruit of her aggressive ambition and tyranny. The prayers inspired by that terror were unavailing. Already Frederic’s officers knew that it was not for them to examine the expediency or inexpediency of obeying his command; and Schwicker proceeded to Milan.

Sixteen years had now elapsed since an emperor had been seen in Italy, or had actively interfered in the concerns of this portion of the Empire. During so long an interval of virtual self-government, Milan, though still esteeming herself part of the Empire, still professing allegiance to the successor of Charlemagne and the Othos, had, in the pride of her wealth and power, well-nigh forgotten that allegiance implied any restriction upon her independence or her arbitrary proceedings. Her Consuls, anxious probably to secure popular concurrence and support in whatever course they should, in an affair so momentous, adopt, convened the Great Council: there, in presence of the assembled citizens, received the messenger of their acknowledged sovereign, opened his letter, and read it aloud. The burst of democratic fury provoked by its contents may be imagined. The offensive despatch was torn piecemeal and trampled under foot; whilst the bearer—its tenor having been made known to the whole population—was assailed with the reckless brutality of mob-violence, and in imminent danger of a similar fate. Protected, however, as far as safely might be, by the more cautious constituted authorities, he effected his escape, and bore back to the monarch, whose life was dedicated to the maintenance of justice and the rights of the crown, his report of Milanese rebellious insolence.

Frederic needed not this stimulus to quicken his preparations for his coronation-progress or expedition. It is stated that he was actively negotiating with the great vassals, urging them to meet him in force at the appointed time upon the Lech. Hence it must be inferred that he had from the first designed to assert and re-establish the Imperial sovereign authority in Lombardy, since, for the coronation-progress, neither urging nor negotiation, unless as to the proper time for undertaking it, could be needful. All who claimed right of suffrage at the election—which then, it has been seen, included most of, if not all, the Great Vassals and Princes of the Empire—were bound to attend the newly-elected monarch to Rome, and attest his identity to the Pope, lest his Holiness should inadvertently be deluded into placing the Imperial crown upon an usurper’s head. For this purpose the ecclesiastical Princes were, upon this occasion—naturally a progress of pomp and splendour, not an expedition with warlike intentions— bound to head their vassals in person, not vicariously through their Stewards.

In proof that Frederic now sought from the German Princes something beyond the feudal service, so strictly due that its refusal incurred the ban of the Empire, it appears that he was obliged to purchase the assent of the Duke of Zäringen by a promise of favour in respect of his pre­tensions to the county of Burgundy, now the most considerable of the fragments into which the Burgundian kingdom was broken up. It will be recollected that Lothar had, rather as an act of favour than of justice, adjudged that county to Conrad Duke of Zäringen, who having been unable to maintain it against the rightful collateral heir, the homage of Renault de Châlons for it had at length been admitted. But Duke Conrad had never acquiesced in the admission, and hostilities had been well-nigh continuous between him and the Earl during their joint lives. Both were now dead; the Duke’s son renewed the claim against the only child of the deceased Earl, Countess Beatrice. To gain Frederic’s favour in this feud, Duke Berthold promised efficient succours upon the present occasion. The final decision between the claimants appears to have been deferred until after the Italian expedition, during which the tranquillity of the Truce of God, or of the Realm’s Peace, was to prevail throughout , Germany, under pain of the degrading sentence of carrying a dog for its violation.

Amongst other preparations, Frederic endeavoured to secure Greek co-operation against the Normans—a step in perfect consonance with the treaty between the Emperors Conrad and Manuel, if not equally so with that between himself and Eugenius III. But it will be seen that, under existing circumstances, the Pope would hardly object to a Greek alliance. To this end he despatched ambassadors to Constantinople, to announce his accession and approaching departure for Italy, to demand the execution of the treaty, and, in order yet further to strengthen the bonds of friendship and relationship between the imperial houses, to ask the hand of a Greek Princess for the German Emperor. Frederic had been enabled thus to assume the part of a wooer, by a divorce from his first wife, Adelheid, daughter of the Margrave of Vohburg, pronounced by the Legates of Eugenius III at the Constance Diet. Little is known of this lady, or of the time during which she had been Frederic’s consort, and not much more touching the grounds of the divorce. Bishop Otho names the fact without assigning any cause; some writers accuse Adelheid of the habitual violation of her nuptial vow; others allege consanguinity—which, whatever the motive, is almost the only plea upon which a Roman Catholic marriage can be dissolved, or rather declared to have been originally invalid—a true plea in the present case, Frederic and Adelheid being sixth cousins; and those of the Guelph inclining insinuate that the Emperor was merely tired of her. The question is of no moment save as it affects the character of a great man; and in the absence of all means of ascertaining the facts, the judgment must needs be influenced by what is known concerning the parties. In Frederic’s whole life nothing like levity or self-indulgence appears, while it is something against the lady, that very soon after her repudiation she gave her hand to an officer of the household. What is certain is that Frederic had no children by Adelheid, and that, in a political point of view, sterility is a serious fault in a royal consort. The negotiation with Constantinople was still pending, when Frederic was at length able to set forward for Italy.

At the appointed time the feudal army of Germany assembled upon the banks of the Lech. The Duke of Saxony presented himself, prepared to support the Emperor’s views with the energy that was to be expected from an attached kinsman, indebted to him for much favour, and looking for more. But Frederic must have had extraordinary reliance upon the ties of blood, or have been strangely blinded by affection for Henry, if, when he saw him join the army at the head of forces nearly equal to those he could call especially his own he felt no misgivings as to the policy of adding a second national duchy to the Lion’s actual possessions.

As the coronation-progress appears to have been the most regular of all feudal operations in Germany, it may be worth while here to insert the description of the organization of the Imperial army for this occasion, as given by Baumer, as far at least as it is intelligible. It is said to have been composed of seven Heerschilden—a word meaning, literally, army-shields; but which, as it seems to distinguish classes of leaders, or finally of warriors, might perhaps more analogously be rendered in English by Standards. The first Heerschilde was the Sovereign’s own; the second, that of the ecclesiastical princes, who could be liegemen—or perhaps ministeriales, e. g. Chancellor—of the Sovereign alone; the third, that of the temporal Princes, who might be liegemen, or ministeriales, of the ecclesiastical Prince ; the fourth, that of the Earls, who, though their equals by birth, may be liegemen, or ministeriales of the temporal Princes; the fifth, of the highest subvassals or vavassors, nobles inferior to the preceding in birth, but who, nevertheless, had knights and nobles in their service; the sixth, that of the Imperial Chivalry, nobles equal in birth to the last, but having neither noble vassal nor knight in their service; and the seventh, that of all legitimate free men, Anglice free­holders, whether Franklins or Yeomen. But prior to accompanying the army thus constituted over the Alps, it may be well to take a survey of the state of the country which Frederic was preparing to set in order.

Rome was still a self-governed Republic, though Eugenius III had effected a compromise with the republican authorities that enabled him to reside there, at least as spiritual pastor. He had not long benefited by this compromise, dying the 8th July, 1153; and a very few days after his decease the Conclave raised a Roman Cardinal to the papal throne, as Anastasius IV. As their country-man, Anastasius was likely to be upon better terms with the Romans than his predecessor; but a Pope, who was not master of Rome, could hardly feel himself secure there, or strong enough, unless a counterpart of Gregory VII, to volunteer the assertion of the new papal pretensions against a powerful monarch. Accordingly Anastasius had proved, by his above mentioned indulgence in the affair of the archbishopric of Magdeburg, his disinclination to quarrel with Frederic, whilst he endeavoured to conciliate the Romans by forbearing to advance any pretensions at variance with their republican liberty.

In Southern Italy, Roger, King of both Sicilies, insular and continental, Sovereign of Tunis and Tripoli in Africa—powerful at home by the degree of subjection to which he had reduced his baronage, and ever the enemy of both eastern and western Emperors, likewise disappeared from the scene. Upon the 26th of February, 1154, he died, having outlived four able and energetic sons, all unmarried, and left the kingdom that he had so boldly, vigorously, and ruthlessly put together, to his feeble-minded youngest son, William. The new King was no more disposed than his father had been to reinstate any of the despoiled nobles in their possessions; but his want of capacity rendered him of little account in the general affairs of the peninsula. He abolished, or suffered the nobles to abolish, many of his father’s institutions, and dismissed most of his Counsellors. But if he had inherited none of his father’s great qualities, he had succeeded fully to his taste for Oriental magnificence and Oriental forms, and occupied himself chiefly with his court, to which he gave a yet more Oriental aspect than it had previously borne. In this he was probably encouraged by his Queen, a Princess of Navarre, who, like all Spaniards, would be imbued with the Oriental ideas and feelings of their rivals and adversaries, the Spanish Moors. He created a second Grand-Chamberlain, who held the really household office belonging, in modern acceptation, to that functionary, with the title, somewhat varied from the original Gran-Ciambellano, of Gran-Camerario. This office he bestowed, in the first instance, upon a Saracen, through whom he introduced into the interior of his Christian palace the usual guardians of a Mohammedan harem.

The only one of his father’s officers whom William did retain, offers a very remarkable instance of the apparently entire change of character that may be wrought by change of position. Giorgio Maione, the son of an oil manufacturer at Bari, by his extraordinary talents and eloquence had, even in that humble station, attracted the attention of King Roger. He took him into his service, employed him first in inferior legal posts, then, being satisfied with his conduct in these, in matters of greater consequence, and gradually trusted him with the most important affairs of his government. In all Maione acquitted himself with such consummate ability and judgment, such thorough devotion to his benefactor’s interests, and apparently such unimpeachable integrity, that he had finally obtained the office of Vice-Chancellor. But unfortunately to his great and useful Dualities Maione added their too frequent associate, inordinate ambition, in his case never restrained by principle, and no longer, after Roger’s death, by respect for, or fear of, his master. He quickly insinuated himself into the favour of the young King; into the Queen’s so absolutely that he was generally reputed her paramour; thus possessing himself of the whole royal authority. And now he, who to an able monarch had been an excellent minister, as the omnipotent favourite of a weak and indolent voluptuary, displayed rather than betrayed, all the vices usually imputed to upstart minions. William, instigated by him, had already begun the course of violence and oppression, by which he gradually alienated all his nearest connexions, all his highest nobility, and ultimately earned the surname of the Bad.

In northern Italy only the Trevisan march was quietly loyal, and retained its thoroughly feudal character. There the nobles, whose strong castles were planted upon the projecting roots of the mountains, were enabled to preserve their old superiority over their lowlier neighbours; and these nobles were generally more loyal than their German brethren, partly out of enmity to the as generally Guelph aspiring cities, partly because the habitual absence of the German Emperor from Italy insured to them much of the freedom from lawful control which was the usual object of their ambition. In the plain of Lombardy it was different.

STATE OF LOMBARDY.

There the spirit of insubordination—which perhaps origi­nated in Matilda’s seeking, in behalf of the papacy, to excite the cities against their own bishops, who were attached to Henry IV—had made such progress during the civil wars, followed by Lothar’s mutilated authority, and Conrad’s absorption in other affairs, that most of the nobles were by this time reduced to the condition of dependent allies, or citizens of the towns. In this last character, indeed, their fortified mansions enabled them to maintain some degree of independence, even of the municipal magistracy, composed, at least principally, of members of their own body, whilst they overawed the plebeian citizens, who as yet took no part in their private feuds. They enjoyed considerable power in the administration of the cities, being as yet suffered pretty nearly, if not quite, to monopolize all administrative offices; and far from restraining, appear to have not only fully shared, but to have taken the lead, in the republican aspirations of the other citizens. The bishops, where they remained feudal lords of their city, were engaged in constant strug­gles for authority with civil magistrates, resembling, though not actually identical with, the contests then carrying on betwixt the Pope and the Romans. The cities themselves, not content with the tranquil enjoyment of the self-government they had usurped or assumed, were at war amongst themselves. The stronger everywhere endeavouring to inthrall the weaker, and Milan, which at this time could, it is averred, send forth an army of sixty thousand fighting men, all Milanese townsmen (surely her villages and even villeins must be included to domineer over all. A reckless lust of conquest or domination, that might be supposed somewhat to cool the ardent sympathy of philosophers and philanthropists with her struggles to obtain for herself that liberty which she denied to others. But even this ambitious and haughty city did not as yet lay claim to absolute and avowed autocracy. She had not presumed to visit upon Lodi the indiscreet patriotism of Albernando and Uomobuono; and even since the insult offered to the imperial messenger and despatches, hoping perhaps to pass that off as a mere ebullition of popular violence, had sent a deputation to Germany, to congratulate the monarch upon his accession, and present the free-will gifts, customary upon such occasions, as tokens of acknowledging his authority. Her two chief rivals, Pavia and Cremona, had already sent similar deputations, but had annexed to their congratulations and offerings a prayer for imperial protection against the overbearing and aggressive ambition of Milan. These were public and authorized appeals, not to be overlooked like the officious zeal of Uomobuono and Albernando; and Milan, forgetful or reckless in her anger of the deliberate insult she was thus offering to the imperial sovereignty she was acknowledging and endeavouring to propitiate, attacked the offending cities. The war, or more properly the feud, was raging fiercely when Frederic began his march.

CHAPTER II. FREDERIC I. [1154-5]

Coronation-Progress — Roncaglia Diet —Transactions in Lombardy —Siege of Tortona —Adrian IV Pope — Adrian, the Romans, and Arnold of Brescia — Adrian and Frederic —Frederic at Rome —Capture of Spoleto —Return —Guelph Snares.