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BOOK IV.
CHAPTER VI.
FREDERIC II. [1227—1232.
Affairs of Palestine—Of Germany—Thuringian Court—St.
Elizabeth—Landgraves—Heresy in Germany—King Henry’s Conduct—Diet of
Aquileia.
Throughout the transactions subsequent to the peace of
San Germano, as narrated in Chapter IV, Gregory appears to have acted the
proper part of the common Father of Christendom, and of the Emperor’s paternal
friend; co-operating with him in the very region where he had so fiercely and
strangely opposed his efforts. Scarcely had Frederic quitted Palestine for
Europe, ere, in Cyprus, the Ibelin family disowned the authority of the
regency, that he, as acknowledged Regent, had appointed to act for him, during the
young monarch’s minority. Again they usurped the power which he had compelled
them to resign; and, hoping thus to facilitate their usurpation, and, when
effected, to strengthen it, they instigated the Queen-dowager, mother of King
Henry, to claim the crown of Jerusalem. Alicia, Queen-dowager of Cyprus, being,
as may be recollected, the daughter of Isabel, by her third marriage with Henry
of Champagne, the grounds upon which she could rest a pretension to be her
mother’s heir, whilst the posterity of Isabel’s eldest daughter still existed,
in the person of her grandson, the infant Corad, are not apparent. But,
however glaringly baseless those pretensions, her cause was eagerly embraced by
all Palestine malcontents, as well as by all connexions of the Ibelins. Acerra was alarmed at the incipient rebellion, and
the adherents of Frederic urgently entreated him to send them his infant son,
their rightful King. Baby as he was, all would, they alleged, see in him the
representative of their deceased, universally acknowledged Queen, his
grandmother, Maria Yolanthe; and thus his presence would assist them to assert
his title, whilst his education amongst his subjects, would insure him their
loyal attachment.
Why the Emperor did not comply with this demand,
Conrad being but a younger son, and his heir, King Henry, if not comporting
himself to his perfect satisfaction, not having as yet incurred his serious
displeasure, is not explained by contemporary writers. He may, indeed, have
seen and heard enough of this eldest son’s conduct, to awaken a presentient
apprehension of the impending catastrophe; but the more probable conjecture
seems to be, that he was reluctant to risk the child, of whom he appears to
have always been exceedingly fond, in a country so distracted, so endangered by
foreign and domestic foes, and where he himself had met with treachery. But, if
he withheld the young King of Jerusalem from his unruly subjects, he again
despatched Marshal Filangieri with a fleet and a body
of troops to Acre, to put down the insurrection.
And now the Pope, in direct contradiction to his conduct
during Frederic’s Crusade, came forward in proper pontifical guise. He required
from the Grand-Masters of the Templars and the Hospitalers obedience to all commands of the Emperor-King, as conveyed to them through his
vicegerents; assuring them that he, the Emperor-King, as Regent for his son,
the lawful sovereign of the Holy Land, had no purpose of infringing upon the
rights of the Church, of the Orders, or of the Estates of the realm. He
severely blamed the dissensions of the Oriental Christians amongst themselves,
as ruinous alike to their own interests and to the cause of Christendom. He
wrote to the Patriarch of Jerusalem, who, to prove himself the most active of
Papal partisans, had been Frederic’s most active enemy during the Crusade, to
reprimand him for the fruits of that very partisanship, to say that the complaints
made by the Emperor-King, of his conduct were perfectly just; that so
blameable, so injurious to the Christian cause, had his actions been, that in
order to protect the Church from suspicion of involvement in the infamy he had
brought upon himself, he must be deprived of the legatine authority; which was
transferred to the Patriarch of Antioch. Gregory further summoned him to Rome
to justify himself, if possible. The Papal authority would seem, in Palestine
at least, to have been less efficient to befriend than to injure; for in this
civil conflict between the partisans of Conrad and those of his grand-aunt, the
Queen of Cyprus, the fortune of war long fluctuated; although, in the end, the
champions of Alicia were vanquished, and her pretensions abandoned.
Although the Pope thus cordially cooperated with the
Emperor, he still professed some dissatisfaction, and new offence daily
occurred, superadded to the peculiarly opposite idiosyncrasies of these heads
of the temporal, and of the, not spiritual but, pontifical interests. The deep
displeasure called forth by the Sicilian code was enhanced, and papal
irascibility enkindled relatively to some contested fiefs of the Matildan gift. Gregory’s epistles at this epoch speak the
language of complaint and reproof; Frederic’s that of apology and argumentative
justification. But, both parties dreading a rupture, conciliation prevailed;
and Gregory again forbade the Lombards to offer any obstruction to the passage
of the Germans summoned to an imperial Diet.
He has been accused, even by writers whose general
bias is Guelph, of having secretly instigated the Lombards, both now and the
preceding year, to disobey the commands he publicly issued; and the imputation
of duplicity will be found repeated upon a subsequent occasion. Duplicity is
not the ordinary concomitant of the headlong violence discovered by Gregory in
his first quarrel with Frederic, or of the known faults of his character, which
appear to be prejudice, honest as obstinate, bigotry, and pride. Great indeed
is the reluctance with which, in such a man, suspicion of political deceit or
even temporizing, can be admitted; yet it is very difficult altogether to
stifle a lurking mistrust, when contrasting his conduct previous and subsequent
to this occasion, with that of the present moment, when he greatly needed the
Emperor’s aid. The Romans had again risen against their priestly Sovereign,
again expelling him from his capital; whilst throughout the Estates of the
Church corresponding movements appeared. Again had the Pope sought assistance
from the Emperor; and, desirous as the latter must have been to cultivate the
good will of the Romans, again was that assistance frankly given. In this
position of affairs, Gregory prevailed upon the Lombards to arrange a meeting
of deputies from the League with the Teutonic Grand-Master, to concert, under
the auspices of the Cardinals whom he should appoint to mediate between them, a
final settlement of their differences with the Emperor. Pending the
negotiations, he insisted upon a suspension of all hostile measures. But now,
the Lombard claim having become actual republican independence, the views of
the negotiators of the opposite parties were too wide apart to authorize any
expectation of their agreeing upon the points in dispute: and, after much
useless discussion, the only accord possible seemed to be, referring the whole
question once more to papal arbitration. Gregory, who was then looking to
Frederic for reinstalment in the Lateran, like Honorius, declined the office;
and more than once repeated his refusal.
The Emperor appears not to have much relied upon
either the Pope’s influence with the Lombards, or the signed armistice, for
preventing the renewed obstruction of the Alpine passes; inasmuch as, to
facilitate the obedience of King Henry and the German princes to his summons,
he removed the seat of the convened Diet from Ravenna to Aquileia, the roads to
which, leading over the Rhaetian Alps, lay beyond the sphere of Milanese
despotism. At Aquileia, in April, 1232, he held a well-attended Diet, of which the
affairs of Germany were the main business. Previous, therefore, to touching
upon the transactions of this Diet, a survey of that kingdom, since the failure
of its princes to reach Cremona, must be taken.
The young King, though only eighteen at the epoch of
the Emperor’s Crusade, already deemed himself fully equal to the task assigned
him; and, as long as the sycophants, who sought to live upon his favour, could
not quite close his ears to the counsels of the Duke of Bavaria, he acquitted
himself of that arduous task tolerably, if not thoroughly, to the general
satisfaction. Arduous it has been called, for arduous must the heavily
responsible office of a sovereign ever be; but nothing had as yet rendered
Henry’s more than ordinarily so: no extraordinary difficulties had arisen to
trouble his government.
The war with Denmark had ended happily. When the
Danish monarch, strong in the dispensation from his oath, so strangely granted
him by Honorius III, attempted forcibly to retain the provinces he had pledged
himself to restore, the Emperor called upon all the German princes. whether or
not individually interested in the execution of the treaty, to assist the young
King in compelling his perjured enemy to fulfil those conditions, to which, as
the only means of recovering his liberty, he had bound himself by oath. Many of
the princes in the vicinity of the theatre of war answered to their Sovereign’s
call; but not all. Otho Duke of Brunswick, nephew of Palsgrave Henry and of
Otho IV, was so far from joining their ranks, that, actuated as much by Guelphism as by the ties of kindred, he at once led his
vassals to reinforce his uncle Waldemar.
The fortune of arms Avas not propitious to perjury.
Upon the 22nd of July, 1227, a pitched battle was fought in Holstein; when the
fate of the day was decided by the desertion of the men of Ditmarsen, who, till
then, had found no opportunity of breaking the detested Danish yoke. Waldemar
was defeated with the loss of 4000 men. He himself, wounded in the eye, and
unhorsed, was upon the point of being slain or again taken, when one of his
knights, seeing the danger of the monarch, caught hold of him, flung him like a
sack of corn across the neck of his own charger, and galloped off. Otho, less
fortunate, was made prisoner by the Duke of Saxony. Waldemar, after this
defeat, abandoning, as hopeless, his attempt to retain the Slavonian provinces,
remained quiet.
Externally, Germany had, since that battle, been at
peace: internally, the usual broils and feuds of princes and nobles were no
longer restrained by the strong hand of a powerful and energetic sovereign. And
still are these feuds and broils, however seemingly insignificant and certainly
uninteresting, an essential feature in the picture of the times, indispensable
to the just appreciation of the Swabian emperors, and their often
ill-understood position.
Whilst for most of these characteristics of the early
and the middle ages, a mention indicating their existence, is enough, a few
occasionally demand, in both points of view, somewhat of detail; none, perhaps,
more than the quarrel of Siegfried, Archbishop of Mainz, with Landgrave Conrad
of Thuringia. Indeed the whole series of events in Thuringia, subsequent to the
death of Landgrave Lewis at sea, when Frederic’s first attempt to fulfil his
crusading vow was so unfortunately baffled, is essential to the first of those
objects. But a few preliminary words respecting Landgrave Lewis, his parents,
and his canonized consort, will be requisite.
This consort was Elizabeth, daughter to Andreas II of
Hungary, and his Queen, that Gertrude von Andechs who
has been unfavourably introduced to the reader’s acquaintance. Elizabeth was
affianced in her cradle, to Landgrave Lewis, and in her cradle carried to
Thuringia, to be educated in the family of her future husband. The Wartburg
court of her bridegroom’s father, Landgrave Hermann—a prince whose patronage of
letters appears to have been his chief merit—was the resort of all the German
poets of the day, the theatre of poetic contests, resembling those of the
troubadours; and altogether one of the gayest in Germany. Amidst these scenes
Elizabeth of Hungary grew up, distinguished for piety and charity to a degree,
which, whilst earning for her the posthumous honours of canonization, provoked,
both before and after the completion of her marriage, the ill-will of all her
husband’s family. Yet Elizabeth’s piety, however exaggerated or misdirected, was
not of the kind to annoy others; interfering neither with her devoted
attachment to a fond husband, nor with the lawful pleasures of the court. She
is said to have been nearly, if not absolutely, the first member of the lay
class of Franciscans; and one of the rules of St. Francis being, that
cheerfulness is indispensable to the consummation of every religious sacrifice,
because a gloomy countenance is offensive to God, her asceticism was dressed in
smiles and a cheerful aspect. Whilst, by choice, spending her time in prayer
and penance, in distributing alms, and tending the sick, about whom she
performed in person all the most menial and disagreeable offices, she
cheerfully shared in, and, when Landgravine, presided at all court festivities,
even dancing at the balls; and concealing the haircloth next her skin, under
garments of princely splendour: the rule of lay Franciscans being, in these
points, either relaxed in favour of her princely and conjugal duties, or not
yet, at this early epoch of the Order’s institution, fully established.
This compliance with the festive habits of the Wartburg,
could not avert from Elizabeth the dissatisfaction of her mother-in-law, the
Landgravine Sophia of Bavaria, or her two younger sons. And under Sophia’s
undivided control, the death of Landgrave Hermann, in 1215, left his son’s
affianced bride, until, in 1220, Landgrave Lewis, having completed the
twenty-first year of his age, assumed the government and married the future
saint, then still only in the fourteenth year of hers. Landgrave Lewis’s own
piety, which earned him, if not canonization, yet, the surname of the Holy, was
of the same character as Elizabeth’s, if less violently ascetic, being
moderated, either by his masculine nature, or by his important avocations, as
the ruler of men. His temperance and his avoidance of temptation, are somewhat
comically exemplified, in his recorded invincible determination never to taste
salt herrings, lest the artificial thirst they excite should betray him into
intoxication—the habit of all around him. And he further marked the depth of
his devotion, by accepting the same confessor, who, as ascetically as was
compatible with her position, governed his wife’s conduct. This Confessor was
the nobly born Conrad of Marburg, secular priest, as appears from his title of Magister attached to the Dominican Order; who is said, by some authorities, to have been
sent Elizabeth in that capacity by Innocent III, upon her writing him a
lamentation over her ignorance of the Bible; and from whose directions
proceeded the excess of her austerities and charities.
But Landgrave Lewis, despite his piety, love for his
wife, and obedience to the same spiritual director, either thought she too
little regarded her princely dignity, or was anxious to guard her from the
ridicule of his family and court. Thus actuated, he endeavoured to restrain the
publicity of her personal share in the dispensation of charity, and is said to
have forbidden her carrying food herself to the poor. Her disregard of his
prohibition, in the fervour of her charity and humility, gave rise to one of
the more fanciful amongst the legendary tales that celebrate St. Elizabeth, and
of which the very childishness heightens the value, as illustrating some of the
moral and social views then prevalent. One of her modern biographers,
Montalembert, relates, that Lewis the Holy chanced one day, as he returned from
the chase, to meet his consort, with a basket on her arm, descending the lofty
hill crowned by the Wartburg. Mistrustfully he asked what her basket contained.
She, more charitable than veracious, and, it would almost seem, like some less
saintly ladies, more fearful of displeasing than of disobeying her husband,
answered “Flowers.” She probably blushed in consciousness of uttering a
falsehood; for disbelieving her, he alighted and opened her basket; when lo!
the bread and broken meat, that she was smuggling to her pensioners, had been
miraculously changed into roses, to save the future saint from detection in her
charitable disobedience and falsehood.
Far different were Elizabeth’s next trials, a portion
of her history which, though recorded by all her biographers, and apparently
undisputed, excites an unwilling suspicion, that the desire of exalting through
her sufferings, the merits of their saint, tempted the old chroniclers to
colour high. But ere proceeding to her reverses, an anecdote of her court,
illustrating the chivalrous fancies of the day, near akin to the extravagancies
of knight-errantry, may not inaptly follow the strangely imagined miracle. An
assembly of the Saxon princes, including, of course, the Thuringian, being
summoned to meet at Merseburg, the Landgrave and Landgravine, attended by their
whole court, repaired thither. In their train rode a knight, named Walter von Settelstadt, accompanied by a wellmounted damsel—whether kinswoman or lady-love is not said—bearing, in token of her
noble birth, a hawk upon her wrist. Upon the road to Merseburg and the return, Sir
Walter halted every few miles, and challenged all knights whatsoever to break a
lance with him, upon the following conditions: if he, the challenger, were
unhorsed, his armour and equipments, including the
damsel’s hawk, were to be the victor’s prize, the damsel herself redeeming her
liberty with a gold ring; if the challenger unhorsed his antagonist, the
vanquished tilter was merely to present a gold ring
to the damsel. Terms so advantageous to the challenged were irresistible; the
challenge was habitually accepted, and, such was Sir Walter’s prowess, that,
when the Landgrave and Landgravine again reached the Wartburg, all the damsel’s
fingers were laden with rings, which the good Knight of Settelstadt there distributed amongst the ladies of the court.
Elizabeth had borne the Landgrave one son and three
daughters when, in 1227, at twenty-eight years of age, he fell a victim, as
before said, to the fatal epidemic, that interrupted the Imperial Crusade. With
her husband she as completely lost everything, as though she had had no royal
father to protect her, and assert her son’s rights; had been, in the words of
our James I to his Queen, “a cook’s daughter instead of a king’s.” Lewis, at
his departure for the Holy Land, had committed his family and his dominions to
the guardianship of his next brother, Henry, surnamed Raspe. This surname,
variously explained to signify valiant, savage, or sullen, is said to have been
given to every Henry in the princely family of Thuringia, for no apparent
reason except that the first Henry, so designated, built Raspenburg:
but the present Henry Raspe well justified his claim to the title, whichever
its sense. He, when the sad tidings of the Landgrave’s death reached the
Wartburg, not content with the regency for his infant nephew, usurped the
landgraviate. The sorrowing widow, who had no friend or advocate present to
champion her cause, (her Confessor, Magister Conrad, had accompanied the Landgrave,)
pleaded in person her son’s right to succeed to his father; and Henry Raspe’s
answer was, not only the expulsion of herself and her children from the palace,
but, according to general belief, a proclamation declaring that whoever should
afford the expelled family shelter or relief, would be considered as doing the
new Landgrave ill service.
The widowed Princess wandered forth with her helpless
babes, not knowing how to obtain for them a morsel of bread, or where to lay
her own head. The hospitals, in which she had personally nursed the patients,
durst not afford her an asylum, and her sufferings were sharpened by the
ingratitude of those upon whom she had lavished acts of kindness. This,
unhappily, is but too credible. Exultation over fallen greatness seeming, by
coarse minds, to be felt as compensation for past pangs of envy and
mortification. The Landgravine’s petitions for assistance were harshly, often
scoffingly repulsed; a beggar-woman, upon whom she had showered alms and
consolations, pushing her aside with a rudeness that threw her down in the
kennel; so defiling her garments, that this daughter of the proud Magyar kings,
was obliged, with her own royal hands, to wash them in the river, ere, with her
forlorn offspring, she sought refuge in a church, where she and they were in
danger of perishing from cold and hunger. But the innately humble piety, with
which she there offered up thanksgivings for chastisements paternally
inflicted, found acceptance, and her sufferings were alleviated. An obscure but
compassionate priest, who revered her character, braving the wrath of the
usurper, withdrew the desolate princely outcasts from the comfortless church,
to shelter them under his own lowly roof. Soon afterwards, the Abbess of Kitzingen offered the widowed and persecuted Landgravine
the hospitality of her convent; and there she remained until her maternal
uncle, the Bishop of Bamberg, now re-installed in his see, provided her with a
suitable residence in Bodenstein Castle, one of his episcopal palaces.
Why the ejected Landgravine did not appeal to her
royal father, to protect and redress his disinherited grandson, is not
explained; but her piety may, perhaps, have shrunk from the risk of provoking a
war. Her devout resignation did not, however, go the length of abandoning her
son’s cause and birthright; therefore, when the noble and knightly vassals, who
had attended Landgrave Lewis to Brindisi to share the Crusade with him, brought
back his corpse to Thuringia, she met and adjured them, not to see the son of
their lost Lord robbed of his inheritance, but to remonstrate with the
triumphant usurper, upon the wrong done to his dead brother. The chivalrous
spirit of her deceased Lord’s vassal-comrades scarcely needed the supplications
of the young, beautiful, and saintly widow, to awaken their zeal for the
despoiled orphan. Those wrongs they prepared to redress; and no sooner were
they in presence of Henry Raspe, than Rudolph von Varila,
or Vargula, as the name is variously written,
hereditary cupbearer, or butler, of Thuringia, thus addressed him:— “Lord
Landgrave, my friends, your vassals, here present, have prayed me to speak to
you. In Franconia and in Thuringia, by strangers and by acquaintances, have we
been told of such uncharitable deeds, wrought by you, that our hearts are
pierced and our faces crimsoned with shame. What have you done, young Prince?
Who could dare advise such an act, as to drive from your gates, from your towns
and castles, your dead brother’s wife, the sad widow, the daughter of a right
noble king, treating her like a beggar-woman, her whom you most ought to have
honoured and consoled? Where was your brotherly fidelity when you harshly
discarded your brother’s orphans, whom, as their nearest kinsman and appointed
guardian, it was your duty to educate and cherish? Of a truth, you learned not
this of your deceased brother, that virtuous prince, who would not have so
dealt by the meanest of his vassals,” &c. &c.
In this strain Rudolph harangued, longer than the
English reader would care to read his remonstrances. But so effective proved
his eloquence, supported, as it was, by the menacing aspect of his warlike
comrades, that the Landgrave wept, imputed his cruelty and usurpation to evil
counsellors, and authorized the free-spoken cupbearer to negotiate his
reconciliation with his injured sister-in-law. As the terms, he agreed to
acknowledge his nephew, her son, as Landgrave, retaining the regency during his
minority, and to assign Elizabeth a suitable provision for the maintenance of
herself and her daughters. In short, so completely did the usurper submit in
every point, that it might be supposed he had sinned solely for want of some
one to suggest that he was doing wrong. But history gives him credit neither
for previous innocence nor present repentance, laying the death of his
troublesome nephew, just before the legal time for resigning the authority to
him, to his charge; if an unproved accusation, one far less improbable than
many that have been, and still are to be mentioned.
However this may be, for the moment all looked smooth,
and Elizabeth’s residence was, by her own desire, fixed at Marburg, a retired
place in western Thuringia. There, chiefly under the direction of her
Confessor, who seems to have accompanied the body of Lewis the Holy back to
Thuringia, she devoted herself to works of piety and charity, to penance and
privations, carried to such an excess of ascetic austerity, as appears to have
shortened her life, whilst producing the hallucinations in which she found solace.
She gave away her whole income, supporting herself by spinning. She separated
herself from her children, because they often withdrew her thoughts from
Heaven. She dismissed her faithful maids of honour, who not only
uncomplainingly, but admiringly, submitted to share her voluntary poverty—one
of whom has recorded the virtues she revered—to be served only by an ill-tempered,
disgusting old crone. Because venerated at Marburg, she left the place for a
neighbouring village. The blows and merciless scourgings that Magister Conrad—for what sins who shall guess?—thought fit to add to these
sacrifices, she accepted joyfully; finding obedience difficult only when he
required her to renounce the indulgence of giving her alms in person, or
forbade her to risk her life, by tendence upon infectious diseases, in the hospital
she had built at Marburg. With her personal discharge of those offices,
necessary in a sick-room, but painfully revolting to delicacy, how slightly
soever developed, he did not interfere; and though he is not supposed to have
enjoined, he silently sanctioned, the penance of drinking the water in which
she had washed ulcers and other sores, in expiation of involuntary sensations
of disgust whilst performing those offices.
The King of Hungary, if he had strangely remained ignorant,
or regardless of the as strange ill-usage of his daughter and grandchildren by
her brother-in-law, heard with anger of the humiliations to which she
voluntarily subjected herself; and sent one of his magnates to carry her his
paternal commands, that she should abandon so unprincely a mode of existence,
and return, escorted by the deputed nobleman, to her native home. But the
poverty, toil, and servile occupations, in which the widowed Landgravine passed
her hours, were cheered by constant visions. In these, her excited imagination
showed her the Virgin-Mother of the Saviour and his best-loved Disciple in
intimate relation with herself; the first acting the part of her maternal
friend, the last of her confessor. Need it be said she was happy? And Ban Panyas, who raved at, whilst he wept over, the voluntary
sufferings and degradation of his Sovereign’s daughter, found the task of
persuading her to exchange them for the pleasures of her father’s court, or the
scene of more enlarged, and, therefore, more useful, benevolence there
offering, hopeless. To yet more splendid invitations she proved equally inflexible.
The Emperor Frederic II, despite his suspected deficiency of religion, was
enamoured of her reputation, and solicited her hand; but Elizabeth had vowed
fidelity to the memory of her deceased consort, and refused as positively to
share the Imperial throne, as to return to the Hungarian court.
Such a course of life as she had embraced, blending
the hardships and privations of the austerest order
of cloistered nuns, with the actively laborious duties of a Soeur de Charité,
and with earning her bread, could not last long. In November, 1231, in the
twenty-fourth year of her age, Elizabeth expired, bequeathing her charitable
institutions to the Teutonic Order, then powerful in Thuringia, lest her
brother-in-law, the Regent, who disapproved, should, as extravagant, abolish
them; Magister Conrad, however, extorted their confirmation from him. Such was
the fame of Elizabeth’s sanctity, that the Archbishops of Mainz and Treves, and
the Bishop of Hildesheim, repaired to Marburg to officiate in her obsequies.
She had been reputed to work miracles during her life, and miraculous cures
were immediately averred to be wrought at her grave.
This episode has run into greater length than was intended,
but seemed essential to a portraiture of the age. Soon after the death of its
extraordinary heroine, occurred the feud above alluded to, between Mainz and
Thuringia. Archbishop Siegfried, having much increased the debts by which he
had found his see oppressed, sought means of discharging them in a heavy tax
laid upon all his clergy, regular as well as secular. The Landgrave of
Thuringia, as hereditary Steward of the Abbey of Reichardsbrunn,
founded by his ancestors, bade the Abbot plead the exemption of his Abbey from
the authority of bishop or archbishop, as ecclesiastical superior. The Abbot
willingly complied; the Metropolitan excommunicated him, and threatened
deposal. The Abbot defied the Archbishop. But the hereditary Steward, whilst
ordering resistance, had neglected to provide the means. The Abbot and his
monks were speedily overpowered; the Abbey was compelled to pay the tax at
which it was rated; as also to acknowledge subjection to the archiepiscopal
see; and the Abbot to submit to such penance as his aggrieved Superior should
enjoin. And what was that penance? The vindictive Archbishop summoned the Abbot
to Erfurth, where he commanded him to kneel, stripped as far as decency
permitted, three long days at the door of the Chapter-house, to be then and
there scourged, under the eye, if not by the hand, of the conqueror.
The government of the western half of Thuringia, Henry
Raspe, as Regent, had committed to his younger brother, Landgrave Conrad, a
haughty, irascible, and reckless profligate. He, amidst his rude orgies,
hearing of the treatment to which a Thuringian immediate vassal was subjected,
flew to the scene of priestly vengeance, and beheld the unapostolic prelate in
the act of scourging, with his own hand, him whom he esteemed a vanquished
rebel. The rage enkindled in the prince by the sight, would not be allayed by
his consciousness, that, to his ow n neglect, was the opportunity of offering
such an insult due. By the hair of his head Conrad dragged the archiepiscopal
executioner from his prey, and could hardly be prevented from slaying him upon
the spot.
War between Mainz and Thuringia of course ensued, and
Conrad, though excommunicated by the Pope, successfully devastated the
ecclesiastical principality. Around Fritzlar he had
burnt some mills and a bridge, but probably deemed his force insufficient for a
regular siege, as he was turning away from the town; when the inhabitants,
exulting in their apparent security, insulted him in the same indescribable
mode, in which the citizens of Bardewick, half a
century earlier, had insulted Henry the Lion; but with the unimaginable
difference, that upon this occasion, it was the female portion of the
population that thus set modesty and decency at defiance, to flout an enemy by
the exposure of their own persons. Whatever might be thought of such
proceedings in the nineteenth century, in the thirteenth, Conrad felt the act
as intended; and the fury excited in his men as in himself, both superseding
prudence, and supplying energies that superseded its necessity, the town was
instantly assaulted, stormed, and sacked. The outrages, common upon such
occasions, are said, in the present instance, to have far exceeded all sackings
of towns ever heard of, and not to have been confined to the laity; churches
and convents were plundered, some destroyed, and consecrated nuns were
subjected to the same brutal violence as their worldly sisters. Though Conrad
was, as before intimated, one of the wildest libertines of the day, horror at
these sacrilegious atrocities, now that his thirst of vengeance was slaked,
overpowered him. He repented of his war against a prelate; commissioned
Magister Conrad to negotiate his reconciliation with the Archbishop, and made a
pilgrimage to Rome to solicit absolution. The terms upon which he obtained it
were, 1st, contributing very largely to the rebuilding of the holy edifices,
destroyed by his fault; 2ndly, walking barefoot and bareheaded through the
streets of Fritzlar, to the portal of a specified
church; and, 3rdly, there, prostrate, both imploring the pardon of every
passer-by, and offering every one a rod with which to scourge him. This humble
confession of his offence by a prince, was accepted as ample expiation by the
whole town, with the solitary exception of one old woman, who taking the
offered rod, struck the Landgrave several sharp blows. Who shall say what she
might not have suffered in her children?
This end of the feud has been somewhat prematurely
narrated, and, such being the case, the anachronism may as well be continued,
and the next change in Landgrave Conrad, occurring soon afterwards, be here
added, as serving, though historically unimportant, to complete the Thuringian
picture. Conrad was, even beyond his contemporaries, a creature of impulse. The
penance and absolution completely relieving his conscience, he returned to his
licentious pleasures, in which he revelled with a hard-heartedness, that
renders them yet more revolting. In this disgraceful career, he, one day,
inhumanly ill-treated a young woman, of that wretched class, who may be termed
the victims of civilization. The unhappy creature, in palliation of her infamy,
humbly pleaded the sufferings of utter destitution and hunger, that had driven
her to procure bread through such bitter degradation. Her words struck upon a
yet untouched chord in the young profligate’s heart. During the sleepless night
that followed, his thoughts dwelt on the sister-in-law, whom he had helped
Henry Raspe to wrong, to reduce to distress, analogous to that described by the
girl, who had thereby been, it might almost be said, forced, rather than
tempted, to seek relief from vice; distress, that, but for her own innate
piety, might similarly have doomed the saintly princess to perdition. He arose
next morning a true penitent. To penance and expiation he resolved to dedicate
the remainder of his life; choosing, however, the form of expiation most
agreeable to his temper. With two of the companions of his vices, who—struck
like him by the words of the poor sinner—became the companions of his
penitence, or, according to some writers, with twenty-four Thuringian nobles,
he pronounced the vows of a Teutonic Knight. With the sanction of his nephew,
the minor Landgrave Hermann, and of the Regent, Henry Raspe, he endowed the
Order with his appanage, including Marburg; which, in token of respect for Elizabeth’s
memory, he made his habitual residence. The European headquarters of the Order
were, not very long afterwards, transferred thither.
In further token of respect for his deceased
sister-in-law, Landgrave Conrad immediately took measures for obtaining her
canonization. At his request, his reconciled enemy and Elizabeth’s admirer, the
Archbishop of Mainz, drew up a memoir of her life, with a record of the
attested miraculous cures, thirty-seven in number, including the fully attested
resuscitation of a dead child, wrought by her, whether during her life, or
since her death. This document, Conrad, in person, carried to Rome, laid before
Gregory, and vehemently pressed for the enrolment of his sister-in-law among the
recognised Saints of the Church. The preliminary inquiries appear to have been
immediately instituted.
These Thuringian transactions have been detailed as
marked features in the portraiture of the times, which to preserve is one
object of history; and two or three other feuds may, on the like account, be
worth mentioning. As, for instance, in the Netherlands, the Bishop of Utrecht
and the Steward of his see, the Earl of Gueldres, being about to attack a
rebellious vassal of the see, were lured by him into a morass and there slain.
Again, in the northeast, a prelate of different spirit from him of Mainz, is
found. The two, young, brother-Margraves of Brandenburg having causelessly
attacked the Archbishop of Magdeburg, suzerain of part of their dominions, he
defeated them in a pitched battle, and pursued them to the very walls of their
capital, Brandenburg. The gates being here closed against the fugitive
Margraves, they continued their flight in dismay. The Archbishop was pressed by
the leaders of his troops to make himself master of the city, which was
evidently at his mercy; but he replied: “The brothers are my vassals, and as
yet mere boys; they will grow wiser as they grow older, and may then be useful
friends to the Church.” So saying, he led his army home. The war which the
Bishop of Strasburg, reinforced by the Earl of Habsburg, was waging against his
own kinsman, the Earl of Pfirt, only deserves notice,
from the interest attaching to every early appearance of a family, that, before
the close of the century, had risen,
ultimately for a permanence, to the height of imperial power and dignity.
The contest in which Otho Duke of Brunswick was
engaged, involved more positive material interest. His position, at the moment
of his capture by the Duke of Saxony, was such as rendered imprisonment
peculiarly inconvenient. The death of his uncle, Palsgrave Henry, left him, the
son of the youngest brother, the sole, direct male representative of Henry the
Lion, but by no means the undisputed heir of even his reduced possessions. It
has been seen that, after the Rhine-Palsgrave had lost his only son, the
Emperor had arranged marriages for his two daughters, as his heiresses, with a
son of the Duke of Bavaria, and the Margrave of Baden, assigning the palatinate
to Duchess Agnes, the rest of his heritage to Margravine Irmengard. With the
latter lady he had since made an exchange, giving her lands in Swabia
conveniently adjacent to Baden, instead of fiefs and allodial property in
Franconia. Thus the rights of the princesses to their patrimony, were in fact
the Emperor’s own concern, whilst some sword fiefs lapsed, he asserted, to the
crown.
But Otho of Brunswick had been no party to these
arrangements, and maintained that, as his uncle’s lawful heir, he was entitled
to the whole heritage; whilst his right, even to part of the remaining Saxon
patrimony, was disputed. The illegitimate Danish Waldemar, as Archbishop of
Bremen, claimed the county of Stade, formerly contested between his predecessor
and Henry the Lion; and the Archbishop of Magdeburg advanced similar
pretensions to other districts. Under such circumstances, the Duke of
Brunswick, after three years of captivity, gladly surrendered Lauenburg and Hitzacker to the Duke of Saxony, as his ransom. No sooner
was he at liberty, than, with the assistance of his brothers-in-law, the young
Margraves of Brandenburg, and relying upon the hereditary vassals’ attachment
to his family, he prepared to assert in arms, his right, to at least all that
his uncles, Palsgrave Henry and Emperor Otho, had held at their death.
Meanwhile Archbishop Waldemar had, since King Waldemar’s
last defeat, mediated peace between the Empire and Denmark, on condition of the
Danish monarch’s absolutely and finally renouncing all claim to any territory
south of the Eider; leaving Holstein an undisputed German county. The prelate
thought, by this service, both to secure to himself King Henryks support, and
to deprive the rival Archbishop of King Waldemar’s. His hopes were so far
fulfilled that King Henry led troops to aid him in asserting his pretensions to
Stade; in which the rival Archbishop concurred. But Duke Otho successfully
repulsed King and Archbishops, maintaining his ground, although disappointed of
the succour he demanded, as his due, from the Pope; who, prior to the peace of
San Germano, had sought the friendship of all German opponents of the Emperor.
But, in fact, he had no right to expect such assistance, unless Gregory’s
interests were thereby promoted; since he and his friends had previously disappointed
the Pontiff’s hopes, avowing themselves too weak to attempt an insurrection
against the young King.
But these feuds were not Germany’s only troubles: two
others’ had arisen out of papal proceedings. The first and least important was
of a pecuniary nature, and of recent origin. Gregory, when he had made peace
with Frederic, found, like most belligerents, that war, especially unsuccessful
war, is an expensive pastime; and he had to seek for money to free himself from
his embarrassments. His Legates were accordingly everywhere striving to wring
contributions from both clergy and laity. With the latter they failed
altogether; with the former their success was partial. In England, indeed, the
clergy were at first scared by threats of excommunication and interdict into
submission; but the burthen quickly became so intolerable, as to overbalance
their fears of the consequences of resistance; and the stout Earl of Chester
declared, that his clergy should, no more than himself, be plundered to pay for
the military amusements of the self-entitled vicegerent of the Prince of Peace.
In Germany, where Cardinal Otho, as Legate, summoned a Diet at Wurzburg, in
order to assess the empire, for the relief of the Holy Father’s necessities,
few, even of the ecclesiastical princes, obeyed his call. Of these few, yet
fewer showed any disposition to comply with the Legate’s demands; and the
languid, even if honest, efforts to do so of those who professed willingness,
were easily baffled by the lay princes present. The Duke of Saxony, in concert
with the, usually Guelph, Saxon great vassals, spiritual as well as temporal,
made a more active opposition to this experiment upon the temper of the
country. They put forth a proclamation, exhorting all prelate-princes to
recollect that they were Princes of the Empire and Germans, as well as churchmen;
therefore, bound to resist papal usurpation and extortion. The young King,
guided by the Duke of Bavaria, was, if not the instigator or open promoter of
all this opposition, assuredly its underhand abettor.
A more permanent cause of disturbance was heresy. That
heterodox opinions, in other words, opinions, whether rational or insane,
differing from the Romish creed, had crept into Germany, as well as into other
countries, there can be no doubt. The temperament of the nation, at once
dreamy, speculative, and argumentative, peculiarly tends both to mysticism, and
to metaphysical ratiocination upon that, which is, and must be, inscrutable to
human, i.e. finite, intellect; whilst the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries were ages of religious excitement. Hence, on the one hand, orthodox
Romanists were impelled by enthusiastic devotion into the excesses that have
been seen in St. Francis and St. Elizabeth; hence, at Viterbo, a child of ten
years old publicly harangued her fellow-countrymen in defence of the absolute
sovereignty of the Pope; and harangued them with such effect, that, by the time
she was fifteen, Frederic thought it necessary to banish her; and,
subsequently, the Pope judged her canonization, as St. Rosa, expedient: on the
other, whilst some persons, rationally as acutely, impugned divers dogmas of
the Church of Rome, others advanced such extravagant and absurd fancies, too
often immoral in their folly, as have been noticed amongst those agglomerated
as the creed of the Albigenses; and some pseudo-heresiarchs were downright maniacs.
To make this last assertion good, the statement, that one female heresiarch
professed herself a votary of Satan, who had, she averred, been unjustly
expelled from Heaven, may suffice.
Such heresies certainly did exist, and had long
existed in Germany, causing anxiety to former pontiffs. Innocent III had, as
the first step towards remedying the evil, charged all bishops to investigate
its extent and nature, each in his own diocese; and when he appointed Magister
Conrad confessor to the future Saint in Thuringia, is said to have given him a
commission, to inquire into the matter of heresy, as far as might be compatible
with his duties at the Thuringian court. Honorius III, either enlarged this
commission, or was the original giver. Conrad, whose narrow bigotry has been
apparent in the history of his royal shriftchild—if
that pretty German expression may be adopted for such as can hardly be termed
their Confessor’s penitents—was one, to whom accusation was nearly identical
with proof; and he reported to Rome abundance of heresies and heretics, to whom
he imputed, in addition to their erroneous opinions, all the licentiousness of
which the Albigenses were accused; and also, the ludicrous as horrible,
sacrilegious indecencies, then believed to characterize the nocturnal meetings
of witches. These heretics, whatever their doctrines, chiefly abounded in the
archbishopric of Treves, and Theodore von Wied, then Archbishop, had laboured
zealously at their conversion. But he, in the opposite extreme to Magister
Conrad, received their oaths to the orthodoxy of their opinions as proof, and
they duped him; for here again appears equivocation, if not direct falsehood,
strangely associated with fervent piety. The heretics elected a Pope Gregory IX
and an Archbishop Theodore of their own; and readily swore that their faith was
in exact conformity with the faith of Pope Gregory and Archbishop Theodore. The
stratagem that had deluded the prelate, being about this time detected, naturally
provoked the most violent indignation at Rome. The impetuous Gregory, without
further inquiry or hesitation, committed the investigation, and the extirpation
of heresy, to Conrad of Marburg; whose character was too congenial to his own,
though yet more reckless of human life and human suffering, not to inspire him
with confidence. That Conrad might execute this office the more efficiently,
the Pope invested him with full powers, for whose use he was accountable only
to himself; and authorized him to have a crusade preached, if necessary,
against obstinate heretics and their abettors.
In proportion as the functions of an uncontrolled inquisitor
into, and judge of, heresy, were agreeable to the mind and temper of Magister
Conrad, was he unfit to discharge them. The fierceness of his zeal in the cause
amounted to what might be termed monomania; and so completely did he,
apparently, consider accusation as equivalent to proof, that the course of
proceeding he adopted, as best calculated to elicit the truth, was this. All
accused persons were required, without any form of trial, to confess, recant,
and voluntarily undergo divers humiliating penances; or to avouch their
orthodoxy upon oath; in which last case, to prevent any repetition of the
deception practised upon the Archbishop of Treves, they were forthwith burnt as
obstinate heretics. A couple of profligate vagabonds of either sex, whose
names, Amfried and Alaidis,
though scarce worth being “damned to everlasting fame,” are recorded, appear to
have early perceived a mine of wealth in such power, intrusted to such a
disposition; and took upon themselves the office of purveyors for the stake. Alaidis first won his confidence by accusing herself of
past heresy, in expiation of which, though long abjured, she offered to be
burnt; or, if spared, to denounce her deserted accomplices. The offer of her
person to the stake was received as irrefragable proof of her sincerity; and
she vouched for that of her male associate. The first accusations brought by
these informers, appear to have been prompted by ordinary covetousness; and
possibly it was their success in these, that tempted them to trade in human
blood. The first sacrificed were relations of their own, whose property they
expected to inherit, or who had offended them. But independently of such
contingent gains, the rewards allowed by Honorius III to informers and
witnesses against heretics—a definite portion of the confiscated property—made
this horrid profession amply remunerative; and these persons manifestly adopted
it, without a single impulse of honest bigotry. They laid their accusations
indiscriminately, often without any grounds whatsoever, against persons of all
ranks and both sexes; against respectable citizens and their wives, against
priests, against nobles and their ladies, and even against princes of the
Empire; amongst others, against the Earls of Sayn, Solmes, and Henneberg, and
the Countess of Lotz.
Of the persons thus inculpated many boldly asserted
their orthodoxy, and were immediately burnt. Such a result of professing faith
in strict conformity with that of the Church, spread terror around; and now
numbers, the above-named Princes of the Empire amongst the rest, caught at the
alternative offered; confessed any opinion that their accusers chose to impute
to them, publicly recanted opinions they had, perhaps, never before heard of,
and underwent the penances imposed by Magister Conrad; the final one being invariably
the shaving of the head—a degradation, as well as a personal mortification, in
an age that looked upon long, flowing tresses, as the mark of high birth and
dignity. Success fanned the flame of this frantic zeal. Erelong Conrad, deeming
his past proceedings dilatory, pronounced sentence the very day on which the
accusation was laid; and, henceforward, he treated as accomplices, obnoxious to
the same punishment, not only all who offered evidence of the orthodoxy of the
accused, but all who showed them goodwill, or betrayed pity for them. Fear,
fanaticism, and worse motives assuming their garb, now produced rival
informers. Charges of heresy, innumerable and revolting, poured in; servants
criminated their masters, brothers their sisters, wives their husbands,
children their parents. In this state of things, the hitherto deferred crusade
against German heretics, was preached by the Bishop of Hildesheim; the same who
had assisted the two Archbishops to celebrate the funeral rites of St.
Elizabeth.
King Henry, meanwhile, had really attained to manhood;
but his passions naturally ripening earlier than his judgment, his flatterers
and sycophants, the associates of those licentious pleasures into which they
seduced him, daily gained more influence. Easily they taught him to regard the
loyal Duke of Bavaria as a pedagogue, whose tuition he needed not, obtruded upon
him as a counsellor, by the Emperor. The Duke saw his advice slighted; and, disgusted
alike at the state of public affairs, and at the treatment he himself met with,
retired to his own duchy, devoting himself entirely to its government. Freed
from all counterpoise, the adulatory intriguers swayed Henry at their pleasure,
and stimulated his ambition as the means of gratifying their own. They excited
his jealousy of his younger brother, Conrad, who, being more with their father,
had ample opportunities of insinuating himself into that father’s affection,
and using it to supplant him—a scheme still perhaps to be frustrated by
boldness. They fomented his resentment of his father’s interference with his
government—since the murder of the Archbishop, the Emperor had, more than once,
modified if not cancelled decisions and other measures of his son’s. They represented
that the Emperor, having pledged himself to sever his northern from his
southern dominions, had in fact resigned the crown of Germany to Henry, and had
no longer any right to dictate to him, or attempt controlling his authority.
Such reasonings were too agreeable to a hot-headed
youth of twenty, not to be accepted as just; and he and his friends prepared to
shake off an usurped and tyrannical yoke. Of the Princes of the Empire there
was only one whom, though he had seemingly abandoned the field to them, they
dreaded, as a formidable and inflexible opponent—to wit, the Duke of Bavaria.
But from this inconvenient censor, one of those crimes, that, perplexing contemporaries,
remain topics for dispute amongst historians, delivered them. In the month of
September, 1231, the Duke, during an evening stroll, was suddenly assassinated
upon the bridge at Kelheim. The murderer, who was instantly seized, proved to
be an utterly unknown individual. His account of himself and his motives seemed
neither satisfactory nor sufficient; but the rack, upon which he is said to
have expired, failed to extort any name of instigator or accomplice. The crime
was, of course, variously imputed, as passion or prejudice dictated; and is so
still. King Henry and his partisans boldly accused the Emperor, averring the
murderer to have been a Syrian assassin, sent by the Old Man of the Mountain,
at his urgent request; and some writers have adopted their opinion, although
what possible inducement the Emperor could have, to incur so much trouble and expense,
in order to deprive himself of his most loyal and most trusted German vassal,
they have omitted to explain, probably finding none. The Imperialists taxed the
young King with being the instigator, equally without proof, though not equally
without plausible grounds of suspicion; since the Duke was obviously an
obstacle to success, in the rebellion that his flatterers had long, and by this
time he himself, evidently meditated. This theory is still adopted by some
Bavarian historians. Another opinion,
advanced, even amidst the clashing passions of the times, was that the assassin
might be an idiot or a lunatic, whom the Duke had irritated by laughing at him.
But whoever instigated, or whatever motive led to, the murder of Duke Lewis, no
one benefited by the deed. Duke Otho shewing himself as inflexibly loyal as his
father, whom he surpassed in abilities.
Meanwhile Henry, guided by his sycophants, was courting
the favour of those upon whom his hopes of success depended; but the wisdom of
his counsellors not being equal to their ambition, his wooing was often
injudicious. To win the princes, he, at their desire, published laws, designed
to check, if not crush, the growing power of the cities, despoiling them of
their newly acquired rights and privileges. Upon a complaint of the Archbishop
of Mainz, he had, as far back as in 1226, forcibly dissolved the first
confederation of German cities for mutual protection, mentioned in history;
namely, a league between Mainz, Bingen, Worms, Spires, Frankfort, Friedberg,
and Gelnhausen. That the right to make war implies a
right to make alliances, must never be forgotten. He had since compelled
Oppenheim to restore to the Archbishop some of his villains, who had taken
refuge there. Thus he had alienated the cities; and as, in his fear of giving
offence, he acceded to all requests, he granted to ecclesiastics and laity, to
princes and nobles, to prelates and inferior clergy, privileges, reciprocally
encroaching upon each other’s rights, making at least as many enemies as
friends.
Save that the Duke of Bavaria was not as yet murdered,
this was the condition of Germany, when the Emperor, disquieted by what he
learned of his son’s government, summoned him, together with the German
princes, to a Diet at Ravenna, in 1231. Though the summons would be unwelcome
to the young King, he did not venture to disobey; but there can be little doubt
of his satisfaction at finding the Alpine passes so guarded, as to justify his
at once yielding to the obstruction. Some few princes and nobles, faithful to
the Sovereign to whom they had sworn allegiance, made their way through,
however, and fully explained to the imperial father, the disloyal conduct and
menacing attitude of his son. Frederic convoked another Diet for the ensuing
April, 1232, and, as before said, misdoubting Lombard obedience to a papal
injunction, when contrary to inclination, selected Aquileia for the place of
meeting, as in itself and its approaches beyond the sphere of Milanese control.
Either Henry had not yet quite made up his mind to
open rebellion against his father, or was insufficiently prepared to avow his
purpose without imprudence; for again he obeyed the summons, of which, upon
this occasion, no obstacles facilitated the evasion. The Estates of the Empire
attended in great numbers, almost all bringing complaints of the young King;
princes and prelates, of his general misgovernment; deputations from German
cities, of specific wrongs and ill-treatment.
Frederic listened attentively to all, and saw that the
dissatisfaction was, for the most part, well founded. His previous suspicions
of his son’s aspirations after independence were confirmed; but the remedy was
less evident than the evil. He could not at this moment leave Italy to assume
the government of Germany in person. If the idea of a modern inquirer into the
social and political relations existing under the Swabian Emperors be adopted,
that Frederic II had conceived the gigantic project of making himself, as
Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, really suzerain of Europe, he had indeed
still much work before him in Italy. Such a project could be carried out only
by first gaining in the south through the new organization of the Sicilies,
strength equal to crushing the Lombard League, thus reducing central and
northern Italy to subjection. Then, with the whole power of Italy, must the
authority over Germany, possessed by his father and grandfather, be recovered.
Only with this accumulated force, could he attempt to establish the Imperial
suzerainty, supposed to have been his object. And, if these views be rejected
as extravagant, still, the hostility of the self-emancipated Lombards so
clearly increased the difficulty of governing his severed dominions as a united
whole, that they must needs be reduced, if not to obedience, at least to the
condition of loyal dependent allies, before he could quit the Peninsula for
Germany.
On the other hand, neither could Germany be suffered
to remain under misgovernment; nor could an elected King of the Romans be
displaced, like an Imperial Vicar, for incapacity or ambition, even had
Frederic, apparently an affectionate father, been willing so severely to punish
his son’s boyish follies. Nay, he judged it imprudent to rescind all the young
King’s objectionable laws and concessions; feeling that the power acquired, and
the consequent assumption of autocracy, by the princes, during the late period
of Imperial weakness, prolonged by his own unavoidable absences, had rendered
the necessity of courting them, for the moment at least, imperative.
In this embarrassing predicament, the Emperor sought
to steer a middle course. He cancelled the most objectionable, only, of his
son’s acts; and ordered some castles, unjustly included by Henry, amongst the
robber-fortresses justly sentenced by the Diet to destruction, to be rebuilt.
He confirmed some of the concessions that he disapproved, and some of the laws
injurious to towns; amongst others, those depriving them of the right of
forming guilds, and electing their own magistrates. And the cities proved their
confidence in him, their conviction that in so doing he yielded to the coercion
of circumstances, by discovering no resentment of this conduct. It is alleged,
that these very concessions gave the princes the position at which they had so
long aimed, of actual territorial sovereigns. Amidst the long series of
concessions, torn by different princes from successive emperors, the individual
act, which transformed the Empire into a federation under an Emperor, is not
easily selected. But if this really were the turning point, it would be a
curious proof that extent of dominion is no measure of power. If this were so,
the acquisition of the Sicilies forced the ablest and greatest of German
emperors, most to debilitate the imperial authority.
With respect to Henry himself, his deeply grieved
father remonstrated with him upon the folly of such inconsiderate concessions,
pointed out to him the probable injurious results of such conduct, and, as he
hoped, convinced him of the errors, into which flatterers had, for their own
selfish ends, betrayed him. He gave him instructions for his future guidance,
and obtained from him a solemn oath to conform to those instructions, and
dismiss the fawning sycophants who had misled him. But full confidence in his
son’s solemnly plighted word, the Emperor evidently did not feel; for he
required the Dukes of Saxony, Carinthia, and Meran, the Patriarch of Aquileia,
the Archbishops of Salzburg and Magdeburg, and the Bishops of Wurzburg,
Bamberg, Ratisbon, and Worms, to guarantee its observance. They pledged themselves
for the King’s good faith, engaging, in case of failure, at once to forsake
him, and adhere faithfully to the Emperor. Such orders and regulations as
seemed expedient were then decreed by the Diet; after which it was dissolved,
and Henry dismissed to resume his regal functions.
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