MEDIEVAL HISTORY LIBRARY

BOOK III.

HENRY VI—PHILIP—OTHO IV

CHAPTER XIV.

OTHO IV. [1208—1212.

Otho’s Election—Fate of the Regicides—Otho3s Measures— Coronation-Progress—Alienation of the Pope—Invasion of Apulia—Return to Germany—Marriage—Frederic invited to Germany. 

The course of events in Germany, consequent upon the murder of Philip, may now be resumed. Of the two rival kings he alone had possessed any portion of the sovereign authority necessary to restrain the turbulence of their countrymen; which, imperfectly restrained at best, upon every interval of weakness in the controlling power, broke out anew, in general hostilities, and disorders of all descriptions. Upon Philip’s death, therefore, even amidst the sorrowing of the Ghibelines and the general horror caused by the inexplicable regicide, such an outbreak occurred, threatening even unwonted calamities. The army, that he had assembled in anticipation of the end of the armistice, at once dispersed. All hastened home; the imperial vassals, either to plunder a neighbour, or to defend themselves against being plundered, as the case might be: the Swabian, Franconian, and other Hohenstaufen vassals, bent on appropriating fiefs that seemed open to the first occupant; since the only claimants were four little girls, destitute of a natural protector, and a boy, not much older, born, bred, and resident in Italy; whom none of the German friends and followers of his father had ever seen, or, since Philip’s election, even thought of.

But Otho was roused to hopeful activity, by his formidable competitor’s unexpected disappearance, in the very prime of manhood, from the stage of existence. He exerted himself energetically and successfully to excite the zeal of his own lukewarm partisans, to confirm the waver­ing, and to gain over such of the Ghibelines, as, being now without any especial object of political attachment, might prefer peace and tranquillity to a mere party triumph. So well was his brother-in-law, the King of Denmark, now satisfied as to his prospect of success, that he prepared to support him vigorously. And last, not least, by a repetition of his former oath to the Papal Legates, now including the explicit renunciation of every sovereign right that had ever been contested by the Roman See, and a promise of active assistance against heresy, Otho prevailed upon the Pope to resume his patronage of a Guelph Emperor. Innocent, whilst lamenting, no doubt sincerely, the fate of Philip, and strongly urging the prompt and severe punishment of the criminals, treated question of the double election as finally settled by the catastrophe. In letters to the German Princes, he vehemently protested against bringing forward any new candidate in opposition to Otho. Rather than expose the Empire to a repetition of the evils caused by the last double election, he declared himself willing to leave the pretensions of his beloved ward, the young King of Sicily, in abeyance. And he prospectively excommunicated any prelate who should presume to anoint or crown an anti­king.

In Germany, the clergy had grown weary of opposing the Pope. The Guelph-elected candidates for the archbishoprics of Mainz and Cologne were now permitted to take quiet possession of their respective sees, and divers prince-bishops gave ear to Otho’s overtures. The Rhine-Palsgrave frankly sought a reconciliation with his brother, and to the utmost of his power promoted the interests of his house, by supporting Otho. Other lay princes gradually followed the example of the bishops; and the Swabian dynasty, even in its native land, and whilst a known heir of the elder line existed, seemed extinct in the death of Frederic Barbarossa’s younger son, Philip.

A Diet was convoked to meet at Frankfort, in the month of November; and was more numerously as well as more brilliantly attended, than any that had been held since the death of Henry VI. At this Diet, Otho, in consideration of divers concessions, public and private, to divers princes, spiritual and temporal, was unanimously elected King of the Romans. A course that confirmed, by recognising, Philip’s election, that rejected Innocent’s intervention, as unauthorized, and stamped Otho’s former election and coronation with invalidity; thus invalidating likewise his previous acts, and making the support hitherto afforded him rebellion. The Bishop of Spires, upon this lawful election, delivered up the regalia, which had remained in his custody, to the now acknowledged sovereign; and then, introducing one of the little daughters of the murdered monarch, seemingly the third, Beatrice, the oldest of the unmarried sisters, in her name demanded justice upon the assassins of her father, and, indirectly, of her mother. The royal orphan was bathed in tears, and her simple childish sorrow touched every heart. The Diet unanimously declared that, were such a crime suffered to escape punishment, no man’s life would be safe; and Otho naturally felt his own peculiarly endangered. The ban of the Empire was therefore denounced against Palsgrave Otho von Wittelsbach, Margrave Henry von Andechs (the Margrave’s flight being taken as a confession of guilt), and their accomplices. And, as upon such an occasion no period of grace was allowed, the condemned were simultaneously outlawed and deprived of both dignities and possessions; fiefs and allodia alike, were pronounced forfeited, as also their heads, which the curiously expressive German t technical form of vogelfrei might seem to assign to the birds of the air as their prey, although simply authorizing every one to act the hangman towards the vogelfrei individual.

The confiscated dignities and fiefs of the criminals were disposed of upon the spot, and most of the Palsgrave’s being allotted to his cousin, the Duke of Bavaria, to him was committed the execution of the decree. In performing his task, the Duke was obliged to level with the ground the Castle of Wittelsbach, whence his family derived their designation—but which had fallen, with the palatinate, to the younger line, when the elder obtained the duchy— building a church upon the site. The Castle of Andechs, the original seat of the Andechs family, was in like manner doomed to destruction. The Bishop of Bamberg was judged as guilty as his brother; and, though no attempt was made to meddle with the person of a church­man, his bishopric was pronounced forfeited, and even the pope-ridden Otho IV seized upon his private property. But Innocent insisted upon the exemption of ecclesiastics from lay jurisdiction, and challenged, for his own tribunal, the investigation into the prelate’s supposed complicity. He summoned all parties to Rome, to present themselves before his own judgment-seat; but neither accuser nor accused appearing, he delegated to the Archbishop of Mainz, assisted by the Bishop of Wurzburg and the Abbot of Fulda, this official inquiry.

That the fate of Palsgrave Otho and his supposed accomplices may not interrupt the regularly connected narrative of events, they may here, if somewhat prematurely, be disposed of. And first, in regard to him of whose guilt no doubt ever could exist. Otho von Wittelsbach long wandered about, a miserable, destitute fugitive, to whom neither town nor castle would afford shelter. He was keenly pursued by the faithful adherents of the murdered monarch, and successfully tracked by Henry VI’s favourite, Marshal Heinrich von Kalenten, or Kalden—said to have been an ancestor of the Pappenheim, so celebrated in the Thirty Years’ war—and by the son of the humbler and earlier murdered, Welf. They at length discovered him lurking in a barn, that belonged to the priory of Oberndorf, near Ratisbon; a house dependent upon the magnificent Abbey of Ebrach, in Franconia; one of the most splendidly endowed amongst the splendid mediaeval monastic establishments. Whether he were there sheltered with the knowledge of the monks seems questionable; certainly they had not taken him into sanctuary. But how that might be, von Kalden and young Welf asked not; instantly striking off Otho’s head, which they flung into the Danube. The mangled trunk remained an object of loathing abhorrence: until, long afterwards, the monks obtained permission to relieve themselves, by burial, from the annoyance.

In regard to the Andechs brothers :—the inquiry ordered by the Pope into the bishop’s complicity occupied some time, and ended in his acquittal; Innocent thereupon ordered him to be reinstalled in his cathedral. But, before this sentence was pronounced the good understanding between the Pope and the Guelph Emperor had been interrupted, and the monarch positively refused to restore the bishopric, of which, as vacant, he was spending the income. Nor did the prelate recover the see of Bamberg; till, at a later period, Innocent extorted that, with the ratification of the acquittal, from Frederic II, whilst papal support was evidently indispensable to the success of that prince’s hard struggle for his patrimonial crown. The conduct of Bishop Egbert during his exile seems little calculated to awaken sympathy or produce conviction of his innocence. Even if he were not, as he was almost universally believed to be, the one of the brothers whose unbridled passions brought ruin upon their sister, the consort of Andreas, he sanctioned both the vices of him who was, and their sister’s unwomanly complaisance. Queen Gertrude had, previously to the murder of Philip, offended the Hungarians, by persuading Andreas, not only to heap lay offices, including the waiwodeship of Transylvania upon the youngest brother, an ignorant profligate, but even to appoint him Archbishop of Kolocz, although not yet in Holy Orders. Innocent refused him consecration, but he retained the revenue of the see, as Administrator. When the Bishop of Bamberg sought refuge in Hungary, he is said to have conceived a sinful passion for the wife of the Ban of Croatia, and the sister is said, at the lover’s request, to have invited the lady to the palace, inveigled her into a remote chamber, and there left her to the mercy of the enamoured prelate. To another Andechs brother, to the Margrave of Istria, has this certain crime by an uncertain criminal, been imputed; who, first flying to Italy, soon left that country for his sister’s court; but he made a very short stay there, and the general opinion of the world pointed to Bishop Egbert. Whichever were the perpetrator, the outrage to the purity of the victim, and the honour of the Ban, was avenged upon her whose sinful’ indulgence of a brother’s lawless inclinations had afforded the opportunity. Not long afterwards, in the absence of the King, upon an expedition designed to conquer the Russian principality of Halitsh, Queen Gertrude was murdered. Margrave Henry had merely visited his sister on his way to the Holy Land, where, for some twenty years he “fought beneath the Cross of God.” At the end of this long Crusade he was allowed to return to Germany and resume his margraviate, whether as being virtually acquitted in the Bishop’s acquittal, or as having expiated his crime by his service in the Holy Land, is not clear.

To return to the Diet that sentenced this Otho, after electing Otho IV. It enacted several laws, amongst which the following deserve notice. One regulated the punishment of homicide, according to the manner in which it was committed; murder with a knife incurring death, as being stealthy assassination ; killing with a sword, as an open attack, only the loss of a hand. The empire was pronounced elective, not hereditary; and an attempt was made to regulate the electoral right. It was now explicitly declared to be vested in, and limited to, those to whom it was, ultimately, assigned; namely, the Archbishops of Mainz, Treves, and Cologne, the Palsgrave of the Rhine, the King of Bohemia, the Duke of Saxony, and the Margrave of Brandenburg. A curious selection, omitting the old national duchies of Bavaria, Swabia, and Lorrain, to say nothing of the new and powerful duchy of Austria, in favour of Slavonian Bohemia, and the patchwork, half Saxon, half Slavonian, margraviate of Brandenburg. For about a century, although this remained a kind of normal law, the individuality, and even the number of the lay electors, occasionally varied, as even in these pages will appear.

But although Otho—reported to have entitled himself King by the grace of our Lord the Pope—was thus unanimously elected, and was freely acknowledged by the Italian vassals and cities—in which last he confirmed most of Philip’s officers—the old enmity subsisting betwixt Guelphs and Ghibelines, still threatened disturbance. Means of prevention were sought by all lovers of tranquillity; and at a Diet held at Wurzburg, in May, 1209, some of the princes suggested, as such, the marriage of Otho to Philip’s daughter Beatrice, who should bring him, for her portion, the duchy of Swabia. To that duchy, indeed, as though none of the original German duchies had yet been inherited by females, the Pope had, previously to laying down the regency, advanced a claim on behalf of his ward, the King of Sicily, as nephew to the last Duke, and sole male representative of the line of Hohenstaufen Dukes of Swabia. But, as the blood of Beatrice, rather than her portion, made the proposed nuptials desirable, and the family fiefs in Franconia and Swabia would still amply endow her, this difficulty seems to have been little regarded. That which Otho started was the consanguinity, she being his second cousin once removed, which must render such a union sinful. The Princes and Prelates thereupon invited the Papal Legates to a conference; and after due discussion and deliberation, the latter ventured again to promise a papal dispensation from this impediment.

Then Leopold the Glorious of Austria, an admired orator, rose, and as deputed by the whole Diet entreated Otho, in the name and for the sake of Germany, to contract this marriage; and if, notwithstanding the papal dispensation, he should still feel any scruples of conscience, to make atonement by building and endowing Cistercian cloisters, leading a Crusade for the recovery of the Holy City, and undertaking the especial protection, as well of the Church as of widows and orphans. To this the monarch answered: “So wise and weighty a counsel will we not gainsay. Let the damsel be invited hither!” The ten or eleven years old Beatrice was then for the second time introduced into the Diet. The Dukes of Bavaria and Austria conducted her to the steps of the throne, Otho rose to receive her, placed the ring of betrothal upon her finger, and then, kissing her as his bride, said: “Behold your Queen! Pay her due honours!” The assembly rejoiced at this union of the factions, whose mutual hostility had proved so detrimental to the empire; and the little bride was, together with her younger sister, committed to the care of her cousin and future sister-in-law, Palsgravine Agnes, of the Rhine, for education. But as the marriage could, from the tender age of the bride, be only prospective, the Swabians regarded the whole as a delusion, and the removal of the two princesses from their patrimonial territories, as the final sacrifice of their ducal race to the detested Welfs.

Nor were these the only Ghibelines whom Otho, despite his betrothal to the Ghibeline heiress, alienated. He rewarded his own partisans, even his foreign supporters, with Philip’s Hohenstaufen fiefs; and not with these alone; with others torn from the murdered monarch’s staunchest friends. He disgusted all, Guelphs included, by the harshness of his temper and the roughness of his manners, unfavourably contrasting with the courteous mildness of Philip, in regard to whom Pfister observes, that “his benignity, generosity, courtesy, uprightness and piety, had won most of the Estates of the Empire.” Even in the discharge of his kingly duties, Otho made enemies by the intemperate severity, not to say violence, with which he repressed the disorders mentioned as reviving upon Philip’s death. But Otho, heedless of the ill-will he had provoked, thought only of hastening the preparations for his expedition to Rome, where he was impatient at length to receive the Imperial crown from the hands of his patron and ally, Innocent. He appointed his brother, the Rhine-Palsgrave, Regent or Imperial Vicar of Lower or northern Germany; the Duke of Brabant, with whose daughter he had just broken his engagement, Lieutenant of Lower Lorrain; and Rudolph Earl of Habsburg, Landgrave of Alsace, Warden of Upper or southern Germany. This, if the second appearance of the Habsburg family in history, being their first in any high political character, deserves the more notice, as the great importance of the office intrusted to the Earl Rudolph in question, grand­father of Rudolph the founder of the present Imperial dynasty, sufficiently refutes a somewhat prevalent idea of the grandson’s utter insignificance, as if little other than a sort of knight-errant, prior to his election as Rudolph I. The princes who were to attend the Coro­nation-Progress were appointed to assemble at Augsburg, by the middle of August of this same year; and symptoms of the changes, gradually taking place in feudal relations, appear in the statement, that, except the princes of southern Germany, who were accompanied by 1500 knights with their men-at-arms and attendants, very few  discharged this once imperative duty; and the King of Bohemia even substituted money for himself and his men. To Augsburg, many Italian cities sent their keys with handsome pecuniary offerings, in acknowledgment of Otho’s sovereignty; and at Augsburg many of the German poets of the day are said to have joined the armament, availing themselves of the opportunity to see the fair land of the South, and of classical reminiscences.

Before the end of August, Otho, passing through the Tyrol, had entered upon the plain of Lombardy; in the eastern portion of which, war was then raging between the houses of Este on one side, of Romano and Salinguerra—whose chief had married a daughter of Ezzelino the Monk—on the other. Azzo di Este—whom the Pope, to be beforehand with Imperial claims, had just invested with the march of Ancona—had taken advantage of a tedious as severe illness, long disabling Ezzelino, to wrest from him Verona, Vicenza, and Padua, and instal himself as Signor of Ferrara. But Salinguerra had since recovered Ferrara; and at the moment of Otho’s appearance in Italy, Ezzelino, in restored health, was about to besiege Mantua in overpowering force.

Innocent, when he assisted Otho to carry his second and lawful election, admonished him to conquer his indolent negligence in business, and actively conduct the government of his empire; and in Germany, Otho, as has been seen, had exerted himself accordingly. He persevered in this course in Italy. Upon entering the Peninsula he charged Ezzelino di Romano to suspend his operations against Mantua, in order to attend him upon his Coronation-Progress, and the haughty Signor obeyed. He in like manner summoned Azzo di Este to attend him, and Azzo, to whom fortune was not just then propitious, gladly obeyed. Otho is highly praised for having, mindful rather of the duties of his high station than of the ties of kindred, received the two rivals with equal marks of favour. But his proceedings in their quarrel are given by old Chroniclers with an almost dramatic detail, well worth translating, or at least compressing.

Ezzelino publicly accused Azzo of threefold treachery: 1st, towards himself, specifying the attempted assassination at Venice; 2dly, towards Drudo, Podestà of Vicenza ; and 3dly, towards Salinguerra; offering to make his words good with his sword. Azzo denied the charge, and refused to fight in the King’s court, but accepted the challenge for any fitting time and place. Otho pronounced no decision between them, but commanded both to be silent. The next day, Salinguerra presented himself in the camp attended by 100 knights, at whose head he rode, as in taunting defiance, past the Marquess’s tent. Then, throwing himself at Otho’s feet, he repeated Ezzelino’s accusation of Azzo, which he likewise offered to make good with his sword, when and where the monarch should appoint. Azzo, whilst again rebutting the charge, sought to evade the duel. Haughtily he said to Salinguerra: “Many men of better nobility than thine have I in my service, and some one of them shall fight with thee, if fight thou needs must.” The wrath, which this speech kindled in Salinguerra, may be imagined; and fierce was the logomachy that ensued. It became necessary to call in Marshal Heinrich von Kalden—the avenger of Philip—with his Germans, to restore order, and conduct the antagonists to their respective quarters. For the moment, Otho only forbade any further mention of quarrel or duel.

But this was a mere temporary palliative, designed to give time for cooling. The monarch was bent upon effecting a reconciliation between them; and, with this object, one day when riding forth, he called the Marquess to his right hand, the Signor di Romano to his left. After proceeding some little way in this order, Otho suddenly said: “Lord Ezzelino salute the Marquess!” Unhesitatingly and respectfully Ezzelino obeyed; uncovering, bowed his head and said: “God save you, Lord Marquess!” the Marquess returned: “God save you, Lord Ezzelino;” but neither uncovered, nor bowed his head. Otho noticed the omission, and quietly resumed: “Lord Marquess, salute Ezzelino.” Azzo repeated his words and the omission; and Ezzelino uncovered to thank him.

For the moment, Otho was baffled by the stubborn arrogance of his kinsman; and all three rode on in silence, till they reached a defile affording room for only two abreast. Each of the adversaries appears to have more dreaded exposing his back undefended to the sword of an enemy, than allowing that enemy an opportunity of private conference with the King. Disguising their apprehensions under a show of courtesy, both fell back, each not only ceding to, but pressing upon, the other, the post of honour at the King’s side, which each, as politely declined. Otho rode forward alone, and the two rivals, remaining together behind, fell into earnest, long unin­terrupted discourse.

The King, surprised and somewhat uneasy at what he saw, upon his return to camp, sent for Ezzelino, and said: “Ezzelino, tell me truly, of what was thy talk even now, with the Marquess?” He replied: “My liege, we spoke of our former friendship.” Otho, unsatisfied, persisted: “Spake ye not also of me?” “Assuredly we did,” rejoined Ezzelino. “And what said ye of me?” again asked the suspicious King. Ezzelino answered: “We agreed that, when it so pleases you, no prince upon earth can compare with you in clemency, condescension, and virtue; but that you likewise can, when it so pleases you, be darker, harsher, and more terrific than any other living man.” Otho apparently distrusted this report of the conversation; for dismissing Ezzelino he sent for Azzo, to whom he put the same questions, and received precisely the same answers. The crafty Italians had most likely perceived that it would be more profitable to unite for the purpose of extorting favours from the German sovereign, than to persist in their efforts to despoil each other, and concerted the account to be given of their conversation. However this may be, the Romanos, Estes, and Salinguerras were now publicly reconciled by Otho, at the cost of considerable grants to the heads of the three houses. The language in which the German monarch conversed with his Italian vassals, is said to have been that of the troubadours.

This work accomplished, Otho proceeded to Milan, exercising there, as wherever he came, all the rights of sovereignty. Milan, enchanted to have a Guelph Emperor, received him with enthusiastic demonstrations of loyalty. There the bishops and other Imperial vassals met him to do homage; and thither came the Doge of Venice., Marino Dandolo, to bid the new Emperor welcome to Italy, and request of him the ratification of old treaties and grants. From Milan Otho prosecuted his march southwards. He did not hold a Diet upon the plain of Roncaglia, but he appeased feuds, administered justice, and every where exercised the established rights of sovereignty. With some difficulty he conciliated the ever Ghibeline Pisa, and, in return for large concessions of privileges, obtained the promise of the use of her fleet when occasion should be. What was the meditated aggression for which he was thus providing means of transport, whether a crusade, the subjection of the Latin Constantinopolitan to the Holy Roman Empire, or an attempt upon Sicily, was unexplained.

Otho now left his army to follow leisurely, hurrying forward in impatience for an interview with Innocent at Viterbo. The Pope went forth in state to meet him ; but welcomed and treated his now successful royal protege with yet more cordiality than ceremony. The spiritual and temporal Heads of Christendom embraced, in presence of both courts and of a concourse of people. Tears are said to have shown the feelings with which the pontiff beheld him—whom he had so long supported when his cause seemed desperate, whom he had once judged it necessary to abandon, merely making the best terms he could for him,—at length triumphant and about to receive the Imperial crow n from his hand. Whether tears similarly bespoke Otho’s gratitude is not said. He spent two days with the Pope, making all requisite arrangements for the approaching ceremony, after which he rejoined his army, to enter the Eternal City at its head. The Holy Father preceded him thither, to make his own preparations for the grand occasion.

But not even perfect harmony between the Pope and the Emperor could insure an untroubled coronation. The King of France had remonstrated against conferring the Imperial crown upon his personal enemy, Otho, and the Cardinals of the French party formally opposed the act. So did the Roman municipality, offended at not having been consulted; and the Pope’s own nominee, the Senator, in order probably to be in unison with his hum­bler brother magistrates; whilst the Roman populace, ever ready for commotion, scarcely needed cause or pretext for a riotous outbreak. If the latter were wanted, a visit which some Germans paid the city, during one of the four days that Otho lay encamped without the walls, prior to his coronation, furnished it. A quarrel broke out between them and the Romans, of which the cause is unknown, but in which several Germans lost their lives, and the Bishop of Augsburg, one of the visitors, was, to say the least, very roughly handled.

The ceremony itself, performed upon the first Sunday of October, passed quietly enough; thanks, partly to the innate and hereditary passion of the Romans for every kind of show, partly, to anticipation of the banquet given by the Emperor upon his coronation-day, to the whole population of Rome; and partly—should it be said chiefly?—to the money scattered by Otho’s orders, according to custom, amongst the crowd. But with the causes ceased the effects. The imperial banquet was eaten, and the imperial liberality is said to have fallen short of Roman expectation. New quarrels broke out between the rough northern strangers, and the arrogant would-be masters of the world; and so likely was this to be the case that the fact hardly needs the explanation suggested—viz., that the former helped themselves to what they pleased in the shops, refusing to pay for anything, whilst the latter demanded exorbitant prices for every trifle. In these quarrels many on both sides were slain. The number of men killed is not stated; but the horses, lost by the Germans, Otho is said to have estimated at 1,100; for which he claimed compensation from the Pope. This the pontiff refused; and advised the Emperor to prevent the recurrence of such broils by withdrawing from Rome and the Campagna, Otho in his turn refused; but erelong scarcity of provisions for his little army enforced compliance.

This dispute about compensation for losses in the Roman disorders, has, by some writers, been considered as the sole germ of the subsequent dissensions betwixt Innocent and Otho, of which others avow themselves unable to divine the origin. But that germ may be conjectured to have lain deeper, even in their relative positions;—that an Emperor should remain a Guelph was impossible. No sooner did Otho cease to depend upon papal protection and assistance; no sooner, in short, was he undisputed Emperor, than he felt, as his predecessors the Swabian and Franconian Emperors had felt, respecting Imperial rights and Papal encroachments thereon ; and those rights, regardless of all previous oaths to the contrary, he forthwith proceeded to exercise. One of his first measures was, to assert his Imperial sovereignty over the march of Ancona, by formally investing Azzo di Este with that province, already granted him in vassalage by the Pope. Innocent would of course be startled and offended by the act; but it being merely a confirmation of his own grant, and his confidence in the Guelphism of the Marquess too entire to be shaken by his accepting, or even by his seeking, such an Imperial sanction of the Papal grant; he contented himself with protesting against this first invasion of Papal rights by the newly crowned Emperor, without stronger opposition. Others, more offensive, followed.

Otho next consulted jurists touching the Imperial claim to whole of that Matildan heritage, which he had, when Papal protection was indispensable to him, so solemnly and explicitly sworn to surrender to the Roman See. The answer was, that to such surrender he could not be bound by an oath taken in ignorance of the real state of the case; whilst, to maintain, not sacrifice, the rights and possessions of the Empire, was clearly his duty. He, in consequence, entered and occupied one district after another. Innocent remonstrated in vain. The Podestas and other magistrates, with the people ever desirous of change, all joyfully acknowledged the Emperor, instead of the Pope, as their liege Lord; the habitual absence of the former from Italy, and engrossment with other affairs, being his chief recommendation. Otho now invested Diephold, the German Earl of Acerra, with the duchy of Spoleto, and Salinguerra with two Matildan fiefs, Argelata and Medicina.

Thus far, Otho, if violating the oath by which he had purchased Papal protection, was only inforcing claims, invariably asserted by his predecessors, and founded in justice; since no fief could be lawfully alienated without the concurrence of the feudal superior. Much the same may be said of his refusal to suffer Papal interference in temporal affairs; and he endeavoured to atone for the ungracious form in which he is reported to have clothed that refusal: “In temporal concerns I have full power, arid it is not for you to judge therein”, by promises of cooperation in the crusade then fiercely raging against the Albigenses. But his next act was one of positive aggression altogether unjustifiable, and this completed the breach with the protector to whom he mainly owed his crown.

Upon the bold assertion of his lawyers, that all the estates of the Church had been dismembered from the Empire during periods of weakness, Otho seized upon Orvieto, Perugia, and other places long acknowledged part of the Papal dominions. Innocent now remonstrated more forcibly. He wrote to Otho: “It is to the Church that thou owest thine exaltation! Strive not against her rights and power, forgetful of the gratitude which is her due; forgetful of Nebuchadnezzar, who, arrogantly confident in his temporal power, was transformed from a man into an ox, and eat hay like a brute beast! In later times thy predecessor, Frederic Barbarossa, is before thine eyes. In his own person and in his son’s, was he punished for his oppression of the Papal See, and, like the children of Israel, was he judged unworthy to set foot upon the promised land!” Otho heeded not the spiritual menace ; in his answer he again denied the Pope any voice whatever in temporal affairs: because, “they who administer the sacraments must not preside over tribunals of blood and thus concluded: “If the Pope will perforce keep the property of the Empire, let him absolve me from the oath to preserve that property, which he himself required of me at my coronation!” But, less careful of the Imperial dignity than of territory, he gave way, seemingly from sheer indifference, to one assumption of Papal superiority, which Frederic Barbarossa had so resolutely and so successfully resisted; namely, the Pope’s addressing him in the familiar second person singular, whilst he used the respectful plural in addressing the Pope.

Otho next advanced a claim to the Sicilies, whether as having been torn from the Holy Roman Empire by the Normans, or as lapsed fiefs upon the extinction of the direct male line of Norman kings, at the death of William II, may be questionable. He was encouraged to attempt the conquest of these realms by Apulian malcontents, amongst whom appears a strangely confused blending of parties and factions, previously inveterate in hostility to each other. Whilst the turbulent Neapolitans and Capuans expelled the officers of their lawful governor, Conte Celano, he, although appointed by the Pope, united with the Pope’s former enemy, the German Diephold, and others of less note, in tendering their assistance to the Emperor for the enthralment of their native land. Nor were less striking changes apparent at Rome, where Innocent complained to the Ghibeline Adolph von Alte­nau, the deposed Archbishop of Cologne, of the ingratitude of that very Otho, for opposing whom he himself had excommunicated Adolph, and deprived him of his see. It should seem, indeed, that the wrath which Adolph’s election had originally awakened in the Pope, had been so materially allayed by the prelate’s submission, that, upon the entire change of his own sentiments towards Otho, he could frankly receive the deprived Archbishop into favour: he now restored him his proper rank in the hierarchy ; but the archiepiscopal principality was not his to restore.

In November, 1210, Otho crossed the Abruzzan frontier. The Sicilian disorders were not yet sufficiently appeased to allow of the young King’s raising insular troops for the defence of his continental realm, or even of his quitting the island in person to arouse the Apulians to defend themselves. The invader, therefore, joined by the traitors who had invited him, overran half the Italian provinces without opposition. Aquino alone offered any resistance; but so resolute was this resistance, that Otho raised the siege, and led back his army to Capua, where he took up his winter quarters. Hence he carried on negotiations, previously opened, with traitors in Sicily; where the mountain Saracens, fearing in Frederic a dependant upon the necessarily intolerant Pope, would gladly have welcomed any other ruler in his stead. Whilst these intrigues were in progress, the Pisan fleet, summoned by Otho to fulfil the engagement made during his progress, anchored off the little island of Procida, there waiting to transport him and his army to Sicily.

But there were still several provinces to be conquered in Italy, ere the Emperor could attempt the island; and early in the spring of 1211 he proceeded to take this preparatory step. Frederic being still necessarily detained in Sicily, and, perhaps, relying in some measure upon the exertions of his ex-guardian, Otho speedily mastered all except Otranto and Tarento, to which cities he laid siege; but whilst so engaged a cloud overshadowed his prospects. Frederic’s trust in Innocent was not idle. The Holy Father, weary of fruitless expostulation, indignant at this reiterated invasion of Church property and of the dominions of a Church vassal, resolved no longer to treat his ungrateful protege with forbearance, but use the powers committed to him, both for the maintenance of the long claimed and often acknowledged Papal supremacy over the Sicilian realms, and for the defence of his ex-ward, the young King of Sicily, from oppression. He now solemnly excommunicated the Emperor Otho; or, if he had hurled the church thunderbolt the preceding autumn—which, strange to say, seems uncertain—he now reinforced it by repetition. He commanded the Patriarchs of Aquileia and Grado, and the Archbishops of Milan, Genoa, and Ravenna to publish the sentence throughout the northern portion of Italy; and, in virtue of his pontifical authority, enjoined all men to forsake the anathematized monarch. He gave a similar commission for Germany, to the Archbishops of Mainz and Magdeburg; and further ordered them, after dispensing with all oaths to Otho, to proceed to a new election: surely again overstepping his own distinction between Papal authority and temporal or sovereign power, how just soever his wrath.

Innocent next called upon the King of France to assist him against Otho, wrongfully entitling himself Emperor; and gladly did Philip Augustus embrace the opportunity of making war under such auspices, upon his old enemy, Otho, towards whom he nourished sentiments of especial animosity. He hated him, not only as the nephew of his hated rival, Richard, and of John, whom he had plundered, but as having given him personal offence; an offence, the puerility of which did not lessen the acrimony of the hatred, thus engendered. The story goes, that Otho, whilst yet a boy, having accompanied his uncle Richard to an interview with Philip, the latter gave a slighting answer to the English King’s inquiry, what he thought of his favourite nephew. The uncle was nettled, and rejoined: “The day may come when you shall see Otho Emperor!” “When I do”, Philip sneeringly retorted, “I will make him a present of Chartres, Orleans, and Paris!” Impetuously Richard cried: “Dismount, Otho, and give his Grace of France thanks for so magnificent a present!” Otho, the boy, obeyed; and Otho, the Emperor, sent an embassy into France, to receive the promised gift. When reminded of his promise, Philip Augustus said, that it had referred to three puppies so named, who, now old dogs, were much at his Imperial Majesty’s service. The rebound of this silly jest may have gone far towards securing to Otho’s rival a useful ally.

In Germany, Archbishop Siegfried, whom Innocent and Otho jointly had forced upon the Chapter of Mainz, now when his patrons jarred, zealously assisted his ecclesiastical against his lay benefactor. He held Diets at Bamberg and at Nuremberg; and if he could not prevail upon the princes who attended them literally to obey the Pope’s injunctions, and proceed to a new election, he secured' to the King of Sicily active supporters, in the Archbishop of Treves, the King of Bohemia, the Dukes of Bavaria and Austria, and the Landgrave of Thuringia. The Guelph Archbishop of Cologne adhered firmly to Otho, even refusing to publish the excommunication; whereupon Siegfried, with Innocent’s concurrence, deposed him, and reinstalled Archbishop Adolph. The offence, given by Otho’s habitually rude manners, now told against him, and his throne tottered, although Palsgrave Henry and the Duke of Brabant raised an army in his behalf, with which they invaded and fearfully ravaged the Mainz principality. Civil war was thus again enkindled. But, the devastation of his dominions, instead of vanquishing the party in its leader, by exasperating the prince-prelate, may, without any want of charity, be conjectured to have increased the energy of his opposition to the Emperor. He, and the princes confederated with him, now resolved to invite the last scion of the Swabian dynasty, Frederic Roger, King of Sicily, of whose existence they had hitherto seemed well nigh unconscious, to join them in Germany, and there claim the crown of his ancestors. For the bearers of their invitation and professions of loyalty to the court of Sicily, they selected two hereditary vassals of the Dukes of Swabia, Anselm von Justingen and Heinrich von Neuffen.

Otho, meanwhile, lord of Tuscany, of most of the Papal dominions, and of nearly the whole of what was after­wards called the kingdom of Naples, was about embark­ing in the Pisan ships, to invade Sicily, when tidings of the proceedings in Germany, consequent upon his excommunication, arrested his career of conquest. He felt, that yet greater interests were at stake, north of the Alps than south; and prepared to return with all convenient speed. The first result of this resolution, was the loss of every acquisition in southern and central Italy. In Lombardy he paused, to insure to himself, as he hoped, the continued support of the steady antagonists of the Swabian Emperors. At Parma, and the once loyal Lodi, he, in January, 1212, held Diets of his strangely mixed party;, and, in these, he retaliated his excommunication, by laying four Ghibeline cities, Genoa, Pavia, Cremona, and Ferrara, under the ban of the Empire, together with the Guelph Marchese di Este. Against him, he moreover set up a rival Marquess, in the person of his youthful uncle, Bonifazio di Este, the son of Azzo’s grandfather, by a second marriage contracted in old age. He named Ezzelino di Romano, Podesta of Verona; courted the favour of Milan during a fortnight’s residence there; and that of divers other towns and divers vassals, by the abrogation of tolls and duties, and the redress of vexations imputed to Imperial officers. Having thus, he trusted, secured friends to oppose the passage of his dreaded rival, he crossed the Alps in the depth of winter, laden with plunder, and with the curses of the Church.

Otho’s early arrival in Germany took the Ghibeline party, who had as yet no answer from Sicily, by surprise, and greatly encouraged the Guelphs. The Duke of Bavaria, at once changing sides, joined him, with the Dukes of Zäringen and Lorrain, and the Margraves of Brandenburg and Misnia. In the Whitsuntide Diet, held at Nuremberg, Ottocar of Bohemia was deposed as a rebel, and his kingdom transferred to his eldest son, Wenceslas, nephew to the Margrave of Misnia. Otho won the Templars by large promises; King John sent him a supply of English money: some of the Ghibeline Princes of the Empire resented the Pope’s assumption of the right to depose an Emperor, even though exercised to free them from a Guelph; and the vassals of other Ghibeline Princes, who excused the assumption in consideration of its object, rose against their mesne Lord in Otho’s favour. In all directions the Imperial cause looked promisingly. In the civil war, to which Otho’s endeavour to maintain himself upon the throne gave birth, a new military engine, called the dreibock, or triple ram, is said to have been, for the first time, employed in Otho’s army. An engine, the' force of which seemed so wonderful to contemporaries, as to have induced in modern Germans a suspicion, that its motive power must have been gunpowder. But no just ground for this idea is stated; and in fact the power of the dreibock, which was insufficient to give Otho the victory, would seem to be much overrated. He so devastated the Archbishopric of Magdeburg, however, that it gave birth to a popular saying: “As by one Emperor Otho and one Archbishop Albert the See of Magdeburg was founded, so by another Emperor Otho and another Archbishop Albert would it be destroyed.” But such destruction of the land over which he aspired to reign, was the limit of Otho’s success.

He was now advised to conciliate, and at least divide the Ghibeline party, by the immediate solemnization of his marriage with Beatrice, notwithstanding the still tender age of the bride. For this purpose a Diet was summoned to assemble at Nordhausen, in the beginning of August; and upon the 7th, with all the splendour of which circumstances admitted, the nuptials were celebrated. For a moment the end appeared to be attained. The most zealous adherents of the Swabian dynasty began to waver, touching the propriety of dethroning the husband of King Philip’s daughter, and with him the future heirs of the blended races, to be hoped from this union, in favour of an unknown boy, the king of a distant land, a vassal, and probably a creature of the Pope.

But speedily indeed were these bright prospects overcast. A few days after the ceremony, four according to some writers, fourteen according to others, Otho was a widower. The general belief was, that one of the Italian “flight of loves,” of whom the Emperor had brought store from the sunny south, had, in a fit of jealousy, poisoned the girlish Empress. Nor is this unlikely; since it were hard to draw the line of criminal excess beyond which the insane violence of Italian passion would not impel a woman, per­haps really attached to her seducer, or flattering herself with the hope that she should persuade her lover to seat her, a “lovely Thais,” beside him on his throne. Some Ghibelines of the time, followed by later Ghibeline chroniclers, have charged Otho with instigating or conniving at the atrocious deed; but this accusation exhibits the very infatuation of party hatred. To him the life of Beatrice was invaluable; by her death he might lose an empire, and he had nothing to gain but a species of liberty for which he had evidently no desire; i. e. liberty to marry a different wife. She died, as another old chronicler justly observes, for his misfortune.

The Swabian, Franconian, and even the Bavarian vassals of the House of Hohenstaufen immediately renounced all allegiance to Otho. The people, at large, looked upon the fate of the hapless bride, as the sentence of Heaven upon the unnatural union of inimical races; and the clergy confirmed the notion, as a weapon to be used against the enemy of the Pope. The Ghibeline princes and higher nobles, who might not regard the wedding or the death of the fair bride in quite so superstitious a light, felt their only tie to an excommunicated Guelph Emperor broken, no one remaining to divide their hereditary attachment with the young King of Sicily. The cities alone, almost always loyal to him whom they deemed the lawful emperor, steadily adhered to Otho, since his second, unani­mous election. The Emperor himself now clearly saw that his only remaining hope lay in the success of his arms; and resumed his place at the head of his army, to wage implacable war against the Landgrave of Thuringia, as Head of the Ghibelines. But he had as yet gained no advantage over that prince, when he was summoned in all haste to Swabia, to provide for guarding the Alpine passes, and thus exclude the greater danger threatening from the south.

Even prior to Otho’s reappearance in Germany the storm was gathering. As, upon his return, he passed through, or paused in, Lombardy, the deputies of his disgusted German vassals were crossing the province in the opposite direction, bearing to the representative of the Swabian Emperors urgent exhortations to claim the crown of his forefathers, in those forefathers’ native land. One of these deputies, Heinrich von Neuffen, by the advice of the Guelph Conte San Bonifazio, remained in northern Italy, there to woo supporters of the cause they had in hand—in which he is said to have been reasonably successful—whilst his colleague prosecuted his journey southward. This deputed Ghibeline visited Rome, where he had an audience of Innocent: the politics of the Papal See, relatively to the Swabian Emperors, being temporarily changed by Otho’s rebellion against the protector to whom he owed everything. Innocent saw that, how much soever he might dread the power of a sovereign who should unite the Sicilies with Germany and the Empire, the only rival he could hope to oppose successfully to the reigning Emperor was he, who, if successful, would be thus formidable; he gave his full sanction to the Ghibeline mission.

From Rome, Anselm von Justingen hastened to Palermo, where Frederic habitually held his court. The young King, who had just completed his 17th year, was rejoicing in his new parental dignity—his first-born, Henry, being then not many weeks old—when the Envoy of the German Ghibelines presented him a letter, running thus : “To the illustrious Lord, Frederick, King of Sicily and Duke of Swabia, the assembled Princes of the German Empire offer greeting. We, the Princes of the German Empire, to whom, from time immemorial, the right is given to elect our Lord the King, and to seat him on the throne of the old Roman Emperors, are met together at Nuremberg, to deliberate upon our common interests, and to choose us a new King. We bend our eyes upon thee, as upon him who is worthiest of the honour; a youth, indeed, in years, but old in judgment and experience; whom Nature has endowed beyond other men with all good gifts, the noblest scion of those exalted Emperors, who spared neither their treasures nor their lives, when required for the aggrandizement of the Empire, or the happiness of their subjects. Upon these considerations we pray thee to arise, quit thy maternal heritage, and hastening to Germany, here contend for the crown of this realm, with the enemy of thy House.”

That a high-spirited youth, whose natural desire for vengeance upon the usurper of his forefathers’ crown, had been recently exasperated by the usurper’s utterly lawless invasion of his maternal kingdom, was eager to accept such an invitation, hardly need be said. But the Sicilian Council saw the matter in a different light. The country was still smarting from the evils of a civil war, imputed to the government’s having been committed to a personally absent Regent; and so recently appeased that Sicily had been quite unable to assist Apulia against a foreign invasion. Moreover, the invader’s being a German, had revived an angry recollection of Henry VI’s tyranny; and, everything German was odious. Earnestly they dissuaded the enterprise. As earnestly they were supported by Queen Constance, to whom her sufferings from rebellion and usurpation in Hungary had taught caution, if not timidity. She urged her fears of the mutability of the German princes, who had deserted Philip and Otho alternately; and by one of whom, long a seemingly attached friend, the former, Frederic’s uncle, had been murdered; and also her apprehensions with respect to the Pope, who, though a momentary interest might induce him to favour the attempt proposed, never could, she was convinced, persevere in supporting a Ghibeline emperor; especially one of the Swabian dynasty, and powerful, as the union of Sicily and Apulia with Germany and the Empire must make Frederic.

All these arguments were unavailing; the last, indeed, respecting the Pope, told both ways; showing this to be an unique opportunity of attaining to a height of power, that, at any other time, the Roman See would oppose. With respect to the German princes, von Justingen pledged himself for the constancy, as well as the zeal, of those faithfully attached adherents of the Swabian dynasty whose representative he was; and who, he affirmed, were actually in force to have insured the triumph of King Philip, when the hand of an unsuspected traitor, by his murder, overthrew all hopes and plans. And Frederic, who felt within himself abilities and energies to cope with every difficulty, who scorned by a dastardly prudence to let his ancestral heritage escape him, accepted the invitation. He appointed his Queen Regent of Sicily and Apulia, caused his infant son to be acknowledged and crowned, as his heir and subordinate colleague; and upon Palm Sunday, March 18th, 1212, much about the time that Otho returned to Germany to prepare for his defence, the youthful King set sail from Palermo upon his adventurous attempt.

BOOK III. HENRY VI—PHILIP—OTHO IV.

CHAPTER XV.

OTHO IV. [1212—1215.