BOOK III.

HENRY VI—PHILIP—OTHO IV.

CHAPTER VII.

PHILIP—OTHO IV.

1199—1208.

 

Negotiations touching the Double Election—Innocent’s Decision—Civil War in Germany—Fluctuations of Success—Change in Innocent’s Views—New Negotiations—Murder of Philip. 

 

The return of the Crusaders from Palestine brought pretty nearly equal advantages to both of the parties then distracting Germany. If Otho was powerfully reinforced by the arrival of his brother the Rhine-Palsgrave, Philip was scarcely less so by the return of his cousin-german, Hermann Landgrave of Thuringia, and of the Ghibeline Archbishop of Mainz, Conrad of Wittelsbach. This prelate, visiting the Papal Court upon his road home, was commissioned by Innocent to strain every nerve to persuade the two irregularly elected monarchs to resign; if successful in this arduous task, he was to conduct a new election, taking care that the name of the prince so chosen should be submitted to his, Innocent’s, approbation prior to his being generally acknowledged. Should he find this radical cure for the existing disorders impossible, he was to endeavour to prevail upon one of them to abdicate in favour of the other; and, should it prove impracticable, to obtain either a double or a single abdication, he was to inquire into the circumstances of the double election of Philip and Otho, and address a report thereupon to the Pope, for the guidance of his judgment. Marquess Boniface of Montferrat, brother to Conrad of Tyre and Jerusalem, appears to have been joined with the Archbishop in this commission.

The prelate, aided by the Marquess, exerted himself earnestly and diligently to prevail upon both rivals to resign, in order that a new election, conducted according to all the forms of law and custom, might put an end to the civil war. Failing in an attempt so unlikely to succeed, he seems to have thought more of the interest of Germany than of the Pope’s directions. He endeavoured to negotiate a five years’ truce, during which the princes of the opposite factions should meet, deliberate in common, and so decide which of the two irregularly elected kings had most claim to be considered as the lawful sovereign of the country. He could obtain a truce but for a fifth of the time proposed, one year, and even that imperfectly, the Saxons refusing to be bound by any such convention. The Archbishop-Arch-Chancellor nevertheless summoned a Diet to meet at Boppart, upon the Rhine, during this year of greater tranquillity, to consider the question; but he did not make the report enjoined him to Innocent; which he felt would, in fact, be to submit the question, and with it the rights of free Germany, to the Pope. The competitors for the empire, being more personally interested in the results, were less independent in their proceedings than the prelate. Both applied to Innocent, severally soliciting his support at Boppart. Otho and his party, in letters signed by one king (of England), two prince-archbishops, one duke, three prince-bishops, and divers earls, abbots, and nobles, asserted the regularity of his election and coronation, and promised all concessions that could be required. Philip and his party, on the other hand, urged the all but unanimity with which he had been elected, merely promised, according to the usual oath, to respect and protect all the rights of the church; and ended by asking for the Imperial Crown, to receive which he would as early as possible visit Rome. But his missives bore the signatures of one king (of Bohemia), five prince-arch­bishops, seven dukes, five margraves, twenty-one prince­bishops, besides palsgraves, earls, abbots, and nobles of inferior rank.

Again Innocent returned answers, so far vague, as that he recognised not the right of either claimant to the crown; but the pretension of the Diet, summoned by the Archbishop of Mainz, to decide between them, he utterly denied. If the Princes of the Empire could not save their country from the evils of a double election, and the two competitors would not, by abdicating, put an end to those evils, then with the Vicar of Christ upon earth, who had already transferred Empire from the East to the West, and with him alone must it rest to interpose his authoritative decision.

Both Kings were disappointed at these answers, and neither attended at the Boppart Diet, whence several of the chief princes likewise absented themselves, as though feeling its proceedings invalidated beforehand. The assembly separated without pronouncing any decision; the subsequent endeavours of the reverend mediator proved equally fruitless, and civil war again raged in Germany.

Archbishop Conrad, despairing for the moment of effecting a reconciliation amongst his countrymen, proceeded to execute a second commission with which the Pope had charged him. It was, to visit Hungary, where, if a worse civil war between two brothers, Emmeric and Andreas, for the crown of their deceased father, Bela III, no longer raged, the reconciliation on the part of the younger appeared to be so imperfect and reluctant, as to induce apprehension that a renewal of this fraternal conflict might impede the passage of the Crusade, which Innocent was labouring to raise, organize, and despatch to the relief of the Holy Land. The Archbishop’s mission was to wring from the conscience of the refractory younger, Andreas, a frank submission to the lawful sovereignty of the elder, Emmeric; and so well did the good prelate succeed, that both brothers received the cross from his hand, solemnly pledging themselves to join the crusading army upon its passage through Hungary, and to commit the government of the kingdom, during their joint absence, to their kinsman and neighbour, the Duke of Austria. Pleased with this success, the Archbishop hastily left Hungary for Mainz, where, independently of his anxiety to resume his negotiations with the rival Kings during the continuance of the truce, his presence was much wanted. But, visiting the Duke of Austria in his way back, he incautiously disturbed the plan he had so happily arranged by persuading that prince likewise to assume the cross, instead of remaining at home as guardian of Hungary. Soon after taking leave of the Duke, Archbishop Conrad was seized with a malady that detained him at Passau; and there he died. His death was speedily followed by renewed hostilities betwixt the Hungarian brother rivals for the crown of Hungary.

As might be anticipated under the circumstances, a double election ensued at Mainz. Philip was then residing in the city, and in his presence, of course somewhat under his influence, the Chapter elected Leopold von Schonfels, Bishop of Worms, a faithful adherent of the Imperial family, who had accompanied Henry VI through all his Italian and Sicilian expeditions. Philip immediately invested the translated Archbishop-elect with the temporalities, and installed him in his archiepiscopal see. Some three or four partisans of Otho’s, amongst the Canons, refused to concur in this election; and, withdrawing to Bingen, there elected Siegfrid, Provost of St. Peter’s at Mainz. The Guelph Archbishop-elect hastened to Otho, who similarly invested him with the temporalities, but, Mainz being Philip’s, could not instal him in the see.

This schism in the German Church, combined with the irrepressible civil war, convinced Innocent of the absolute necessity of placing a generally acknowledged sovereign upon the German throne. He now, therefore, pronounced in favour of the competitor to whom he had always been inclined, drawing up a long statement of the reasons upon which his decision was founded. And this paper he sent to Germany, by legates who were also charged with separate, monitory epistles, addressed to various Princes of the Empire, spiritual and temporal. Innocent, who evidently prided himself upon his skill as a dialectician and a writer, was a somewhat prolix reasoner; and to translate this Deliberatio Domini Papas Innocentii, or even one of the several abstracts thereof, made by divers German historians, w ould severely tax the patience of English reader or English writer. But, the document being valuable, as illustrative of the opinions and feelings characterizing the age, even in one of its master minds, a summary, as condensed as may be consistent with the object in view, will hardly be unacceptable.

In this paper, drawn up in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, the Pope first proves—by references to the Old Testament, by argument, and by the self-evident superiority of him who gives over him who receives, of him who anoints and crowns over him who is anointed and crowned—the supremacy of the spiritual over all temporal authority. The Papal right to select the sovereign of the Holy Roman Empire thus established, he proceeds to exercise it. He regrets the triple election of his own ward, Frederic, of Philip, and of Otho, but, the evil having occurred, each claimant must be tested by the criterion of what is allowable, what is seemly, and what is expedient. To begin with Frederic King of Sicily. He was freely elected; homage was generally done to him, the oath of allegiance to him was unanimously taken; and he is the ward of the Holy Church, whose part it therefore is to maintain him in all his rights, not, by despoiling him of any, to incur his enmity in lieu of his gratitude, when he shall be of man’s estate. Nevertheless it is allowable, seemly, and expedient to reject Frederic’s election. The Princes had elected and sworn allegiance to a person incapable of Empire; a two-year-old infant, not yet received by baptism into the Church; and they had done so trusting that the father would live and govern at least till the son’s majority. The Emperor’s premature death, by annulling these expectations, had annulled the election and the oath. If the Princes thought to govern the Empire by the substituted authority of a regent, the Church required an actual efficient Emperor for her protection. It was no part of a guardian’s duty to maintain a ward in unlawful rights; and, if Frederic’s were lawful, the Church did not despoil him of them. It was his maternal inheritance, the Sicilian realm, that she had undertaken to preserve for him, and this engagement she would fulfil: if he were entitled to the Empire, his uncle, the Duke of Swabia, was the person who robbed him of it.

Secondly, as to Philip. It appears unallowable to object to him who is elected by, and has received the homage and the oaths of, a great majority of the German Princes; unseemly Tor the Pope to visit upon him injuries suffered from his brother and his forefathers; inexpedient to oppose one so powerful. But, again, the election has fallen upon, homage been done, and allegiance sworn to, a person incapable of Empire, the Duke of Swabia, lying at that very time under excommunication. The revocation of the sentence by the Bishop of Sutri was illegal, and is therefore void; and, had it been valid, the Duke has incurred the sentence anew by supporting an enemy of the Church, Markwald von Anweiler. His election was unseemly, be­cause he was perjured, having broken his oath of allegiance to his nephew, in order to usurp what he himself called that nephew’s birthright. And it is inexpedient alike to place supreme power in the hands of one whose whole race have been enemies and persecutors of the Church and, by permitting one brother to succeed to another, immediately after a son has succeeded to his father, to suffer the Empire to become hereditary, and the Princes to lose their right of election.

Thirdly, as to Otho. If his election appear unallowable on account of the small number of his electors, yet of the especial electors the numbers were equal (evidently, Innocent, recurring to the original five nations, considers the Duke of Brabant as representing the Duke of Lorrain, and disallows the Margrave of Brandenburg, notwithstanding his arch-chamberlainship, as not being at the head of a distinct nation), and he was regularly crowned by the proper prelate at the established place. His person is unobjectionable, and if he be less powerful than his antagonist, this is immaterial to the Pope, who is exalted above all human fears.

Upon these considerations, Innocent permits his ward’s claim to drop, and positively rejects the Duke of Swabia’s. He advises the German Princes either to unite in a new election of an unobjectionable person, or to refer the whole to his decision. If neither of these courses be adopted, His Holiness will be under the necessity of recognising Otho, Duke of Brunswick and Earl of Poitou, as King of the Romans, supporting him in every way, and inviting him to Rome to receive the Imperial crown.

This Papal Deliberation is said to have offended even Otho’s party, as a flagrant encroachment upon the rights of the Princes of the Empire. Certainly it did not induce a single Ghibeline to desert Philip, but elicited from his party an earnest remonstrance against the Holy Father’s usurped pretensions, and provoked from the King of France a strong protest against such an invasion of the rights of monarchs. Otho felt very differently as to an usurpation, by which he was likely to obtain possession of the royal rights to be so invaded; and after some months of fruitless negotiation and exertion on the part of the Legate to prevail upon both Kings to abdicate, he endeavoured to secure Innocent’s future protection, whilst repaying the decision in his favour, by taking, upon the 8th of June, 1201, the following singularly circumstantial oath in the Legate’s hands: “I, Otho, by the Grace of God King of the Romans, &c., assure, vow, promise, and swear to thee, my Lord Pope Innocent, and to thy successors, that all the possessions, honours, and rights of the Roman Church, I will, to the best of my power, and in good faith, protect and preserve. The possessions that the Roman Church has already recovered, I will suffer her freely and quietly to retain, and faithfully assist her so to do. Those which she has not yet recovered, I will, to the best of my power, assist her to regain and to keep, and those that may come into my hands, I will, without delay, deliver over to her. Herein are comprehended all the territories between Radicofani and Ceperano, the exarchate of Ravenna, the Pentapolis, the march of Ancona, the duchy of Spoleto, the county of Bertinoro, and the domains of the Marchioness Matilda, and all adjacent lands, as described in divers charters from the time of the Emperor Lewis. Also, I will assist the Roman Church to preserve and defend the Kingdom of Sicily. Further, I will render to thee, my Lord Pope Innocent, and thy successors, all the obedience and reverence that pious and Catholic Emperors are wont to render to the Apostolic See. I will govern myself by thy counsel and direction in maintaining and confirming the customary privileges of the Roman people, as also in the affairs of the Lombard and Tuscan Leagues. Even so will I obey thy counsel and direction respecting peace and alliance with the King of France. Should the Roman See be involved in war on my account, I will assist her, as her need may require. And all here promised, I will confirm by oath, and in writing, when I receive the Imperial crown.”

There is here, it may be observed, no specific renunciation of such right of interference in episcopal elections as the Calixtine Concordat left to the emperors. Such renunciation was either held to be comprehended in some of the vague expressions used, or more probably none was thought necessary, all right of the kind whatever, being assumed by the Popes to have been always illegal usurpation, and long since abandoned to them. The Bishop of Palestrina, then Papal Legate in Germany, delighted with this cession of all the long disputed territory, and probably deluding himself into the belief of what he wished, wrote to Innocent that Philip was no more to be heard of, his few remaining partisans only awaiting an opportunity of deserting him, whilst Otho would forthwith take the field at the head of 100,000 men. So far were these statements from being realized, that their self-evident falsehood might serve to shew how much Innocent had been deceived by the mis­representations of his legates, with respect to this double election, as he will be seen, in the course of the narrative, to be upon more than one other occasion.

It were tedious and uninstructive to relate in detail the hostilities and intrigues that filled Germany during the next few years; whilst to dwell upon the concomitant atrocities, were both painful and revolting. The main incidents and results will be fully sufficient. The first point of interest is the effect of the Pope’s intervention; and it is not a little astonishing to note the disregard displayed by the German Princes, spiritual as well as temporal, for excommunications and interdicts, such as had blighted the reign and virtually overturned the throne of Henry IV. Not a single partisan of Philipps, though all were cumulatively, hypothetically, and prospectively anathematized, did the thunders of the Church scare from his side. When he was deserted, the lure was palpable. In defiance of the interdict, all rites of the Church were everywhere celebrated; bishops-elect were consecrated by excommunicated prelates; the Chapter of Magdeburg refused to depose their Ghibeline archbishop at the Pope’s command, in order to substitute a Guelph; the Archbishop of Besanson invited the excommunicated Philip to visit him, and receive in his Cathedral the homage and oaths of allegiance of the Burgundian vassalage; the Bishop of Spires seized and imprisoned two Papal messengers, &c. It would, indeed, be surprising if a contempt of his authority, so strikingly contrasted to the implicit submission he generally met with, had not embittered Innocent’s feelings towards Philip.

The fortune of war and negotiation at first favoured Otho, who took the field in both more actively than his rival. If he failed to make himself master of the great object of his father’s ambition, Goslar, he built a fortress over against it that kept the citizens in constant alarm, besides obstructing their trade. His relations with Den­mark, though costly, were satisfactory. To Canute, the husband of his half sister, succeeded Waldemar, who married his full sister, Richenza, giving his own sister Helena to Otho’s younger brother, Duke William. Waldemar celebrated his coronation at Lubeck, as King of the Danes and Slavonians, Duke of Jutland, and Lord of all the German lands north of the Elbe; by this last title asserting his sovereignty over the whole district from the frontier of Holstein to the Oder, from the sea to the margraviate of Brandenburg, including all the Slavonian territories left to the Lion when he was reduced to the dukedom of Brunswick, but which his heirs had been unable to defend against Denmark. Waldemar further took advantage of the weakness of the divided and disputed Imperial authority, to renounce all vassalage to the Emperor, not only for Denmark, but even for these German provinces. But Otho felt this impairing of a patrimony, only part of which could be his, and of an Empire that he still had to win by the sword, compensated by the secu­rity derived from having a firm friend and powerful ally in his rear. Two of Philip’s adherents Otho moreover seduced from him. The Landgrave of Thuringia, who was somewhat unstable in his political attachments, he bribed with the promise of two or three towns, and of assistance to subdue the Free Imperial city of Nordhausen. The second, the King of Bohemia, was yet more disgracefully won. Ottocar, having grown weary of his Queen, a sister of the Margrave of Misnia, by whom he had a large family, sought to repudiate her, and marry a young Hungarian princess, sister to the rival brothers, Emme- ric and Andreas. His Bohemian clergy, freely or coerced, sanctioned these licentious proceedings; but it should seem that the intended bride’s royal brothers, warned by the contested legality of the marriage of Philip Augustus with Agnes von Andechs, required more certainty of the wooer’s being at liberty to offer his hand. For this, a Papal sanction of his divorce was indispensable, which Ottocar hoped to earn by supporting the Pope’s favourite candidate; and Otho warmly recommended his suit to Innocent’s kind consideration. The Holy Father, accord­ing to his usual practice upon such applications, directed certain Cardinals to repair to the residence of the parties, inquire into the facts of the case, and report to him whether there were or were not grounds for annulling the marriage, that is to say, whether the husband and wife were or were not related within the prohibited degree. A step seemingly indispensable under the circumstances, though held by Ghibelines to indicate undue partiality to Ottocar, or rather to his patron, Otho. The inquiry lingered through years, without doubt purposely prolonged through such partiality, by the Cardinals, who were reluctant to alienate Ottocar by speaking the truth; and during its continuance, Ottocar managed to accomplish the nuptials he desired. Innocent certainly never sanctioned this second marriage; he complained to the Archbishop of Salzburg of Ottocar’s wedding another wife without waiting for his decision, and never spoke of the Hungarian Princess but as Ottocar’s concubine; but he does not appear to have taken any steps towards compelling the unlawfully united pair to separate.

Philip, himself an attached and constant husband, a devout, moral, and domestic man, was disgusted by the King of Bohemia’s conduct, and willingly listened to the family of the wronged Queen, amongst whom were some of the mightiest of the German princes. Upon the complaint of her brother, the Margrave of Misnia, he pronounced that Ottocar had by his misconduct forfeited his kingdom; which he at once granted, strangely enough, not to the deposed monarch’s son by his discarded wife, the nephew of the Margrave, but to a nephew of that deposed monarch’s, named Ladislas, Germanicé Theobald, then a student at Magdeburg, and likely, he perhaps thought, to introduce German civilization among the Czechs. At the same time, seeing that only force could decide the contest for the empire, Philip assembled troops and invaded Thuringia, to begin by chastising his own renegade nephew the Landgrave. Hermann applied for succour to his brother deserter, the King of Bohemia, who hastened to his aid with an army against which Philip was, at the moment, unable to make head. He evacuated Thuringia, escaping in person from Erfurt under cover of the night. Ottocar now resumed his original title of Duke of Bohemia, not certainly as acknowledging his deposal by Philip, but as considering the grant of his regal dignity void, because the act of an unlawfully elected sovereign. Otho repaid the efficient assistance of his new adherent, and the sacrifice, by a grant of the title that Ottocar had laid aside, and crowning him king at Merse­burg. But the atrocities that marked the Czech line of march in Thuringia, by disgusting the Germans with such partisans, ultimately proved as beneficial to Philip, as the seasonable aid had momentarily been to his adversaries.

And here Otho’s success ended. His grand reliance, Richard of England, was no more; and though John equally professed himself the champion of his nephew’s right to the Empire, neither in power, valour, ability, nor yet in influence or inclination, could he supply the place of his lion-hearted brother. The English money promised to the Archbishop of Cologne, as well for himself as for Otho’s service, was not forthcoming; and even this fac­tious prelate gradually became lukewarm in the cause of which he himself had been the originator. Philip meanwhile profited by the growing unpopularity of Otho, whose arrogant yet coarsely rough demeanour presented a contrast, offensively striking to his own cour­teous deportment and general affability. Again Philip led an army into Thuringia, when evacuated by the Bohemians. Several of the Thuringian great vassals joined him, and the Landgrave now returned to his natural allegiance, giving one of his sons as a hostage for his fidelity to the nephew of his own mother. The next desertion from Otho to Philip, was one more painful to the feelings, and inauspicious to the hopes of the deserted. Palsgrave Henry, now the head of the Welfs, was a warrior of known prowess, an approved skilful diplomatist, and a returned Crusader. If he had felt hurt at being passed over—because absent in the performance of a sacred duty—in favour of his yet untried young brother, he had not discovered any such sentiment, strenuously supporting Otho. In resentment of this support, Philip had invaded and occupied the Palatinate, of which he now threatened to dispossess his cousin’s husband; and Henry, therefore, demanded a new division of the territories left to the three brothers by their father, of which he, though the eldest, appears to have had a very small portion, probably because deemed amply endowed as Rhine Pals­grave. Being threatened with the loss of his wife’s patrimony, the Palatinate, as the penalty of his aid to Otho, he now claimed Brunswick, with some other towns, in compensation. This Otho resisted, upon the plea that any such measure, before he should be undisputed master of the Empire, would look like weakness, and be prejudicial to his interests. Henry, in his anger at the ungrateful refusal, recovered the far more valuable Palitinate, by doing homage and swearing allegiance to his own as well as his wife’s kinsman, Philip, whose army he reinforced with all his vassals. Otho was marching upon Goslar to renew the siege, when he learned his brother’s defection, and he immediately abandoned the attempt. Philip committed the government and defence of that key of Saxony, as Goslar was esteemed, to the Rhine-Palsgrave.

Philip, at the head of the army with which he had recovered Thuringia, now invaded the principality of his most dreaded opponent, the Archbishop of Cologne; and Adolf, who had sickened of the task he had undertaken, ever since his disappointment of the promised pecuniary supplies from England, now became seriously alarmed for the result. The Archbishop of Treves thought this a favourable opportunity for prevailing upon his former colleague to give up his enterprise; and, in concert with the Earl of Juliers, like himself a seceder from the anti­Swabian faction, he made overtures both to the now vacil­lating Archbishop of Cologne, and to the Duke of Brabant; who was at once irritated by Otho’s non-completion of his marriage contract, and less desirous of its completion, as clouds seemed more and more to overshadow his intended son-in-law’s prospect of the Empire. Philip upon this occasion lavished money, of which his lay negotiator, William of Juliers, was greedy; and in November, 1204, the Earl, conjointly with his archiepiscopal colleague, concluded treaties with both Archbishop and Duke. Philip restored to the see of Cologne all the territories he had conquered from it, with some small addition ; the Duke of Brabant obtained the admission of women’s right of inheritance to Utrecht, Nimeguen, and some other of his Imperial fiefs. Each received a sum of several thousand marks, as well for himself as professedly to buy off Lotharingian partisans of Otho’s; and both did homage to Philip before the end of the month. Their example was of course followed by many of Otho’s prelates and nobles.

The two Archbishops, Philip’s original enemies, now appointed a Diet to meet at Achen upon the 6th of January, 1205, for the purpose of remedying the irregularities that had been held to invalidate that Prince’s election. The Diet was most numerously attended, even of the Lotharingian princes only the Duke of Limburg appearing to have absented himself. Philip laid down his crown, and as Duke of Swabia and Tuscany solicited the suffrages of the assembled Estates of the Empire. All present having repaired to Achen for the express purpose of giving them, deliberation was needless. He was at once unanimously elected, and, with his wife Irene, duly crow ned in Charlemagne’s Cathedral, with the proper regalia, and by the proper prelate, the Archbishop of Cologne. In his election and coronation there was no longer a flaw in the estimation of Germany, where a papal sentence of excommunication was not then allowed to incapacitate for any dignity.

Innocent and Ottocar were Otho’s only remaining efficient supporters, Waldemar II taking no active part in behalf of his brother-in-law. Far otherwise the Pope. He exhorted Otho to be firm; he wrote to King John to send his nephew the money promised him by Richard; he upbraided the German princes, by letter, with their desertion of their lawful sovereign for the excommunicated Duke of Swabia. He excommunicated the Archbishop of Cologne, and authorized Siegfrid, the Guelph Archbishop-elect of Mainz, whose election he had instantly confirmed, but who was yet unconsecrated, jointly with the Archbishop of Cambrai, to depose Adolf and procure the election of a successor to that see. The two Guelph prelates willingly obeyed, and the choice of the equally Guelph Chapter fell upon Graf Bruno von Sayn, Dean of the Bonn church, and his election again the Pope instantly confirmed. But so offensive were these measures to the German Hierarchy, that no compatriot prelate of adequate dignity could be found to consecrate these doubtfully elected anti-archbishops, Siegfrid and Bruno; and it became necessary to invite over two English prelates to perform the indispensable ceremony.

This deposal of Archbishop Adolf is the most arbitrary act recorded of Innocent, and little estimable as that, fickle, as well as factious, prelate may appear, it is one difficult to reconcile to the thorough singleness of purpose, ascribed to this pontiff, since he deprived a canonically elected, lawfully installed prelate, of ecclesiastical office and dignity for a cause purely political With respect to Mainz the case was different; there a double election having occurred, he might, not very unfairly, argue that the exercise of the acknowledged Imperial right of intervention by Philip, whom he did not recognise as a sovereign, vitiated Leopold’s election by the great majority of the Chapter, thus leaving Siegfrid the only candidate elected. Apparently, the tendency of the human mind to adhere to any purpose, opinion, or feeling, with a pertinacity increasing in proportion to the opposition en­countered, and to give the reins to passion when temperate measures fail of success, really blinded the Pope to the injustice he was committing.

Philip raised an army to reinstall Adolf; Otho despatched what troops he could collect, under the Duke of Limburg, to assist Bruno in defending Cologne, of which he was in actual possession; the usual political opposition between every prelate and his episcopal city having over­balanced, in the Archbishop’s flock, the usual loyalty of towns to the Swabian Emperors. The archbishopric was ravaged by the allies of the rival archbishops; and Philip besieged Cologne, where Otho had joined Bruno. After some alternations of success, Philip won over the Duke of Limburg to his side; and the Duke, aided perhaps by the fact that the Archbishop present in the city was a Guelph, persuaded the citizens to follow his example. Otho, upon discovering this defalcation, fled, accompanied by Prince Walram of Limburg, who had formerly betrayed Philip’s trust; Bruno was detained as a prisoner, and Cologne sued for pardon and peace. Both were freely granted, Adolf was reinstalled, and this important city was Philip’s.

Much about this time he recovered his other deserter, Ottocar of Bohemia, who having at length obtained his Hungarian princess, without a papal ratification of his divorce, cared little about obtaining it; though, whilst his matrimonial sin was incomplete, the dilatory proceedings of Innocent are said to have so angered him, as to have indisposed him towards the cause favoured by the Pope. And this, whilst Ghibelines aver the dilatoriness to be an unfair mode of avoiding to displease a supporter of Otho’s, and severely censured Innocent for not compelling Ottocar, as he did Philip Augustus, to take back his lawful wife. The fact seems to be that the Holy Father was perplexed by unsatisfactory reports: for as late as in 1810, after Philip’s death, judges in the matter were again appointed both at Rome and in Germany. Ottocar’s new brother-in-law, Lewis Duke of Bavaria, who had married another Hungarian princess, negotiated his reconciliation with Philip, one condition of which was the marriage of Ottocar’s eldest son and heir, Wenceslas, with Philip’s eldest daughter, Cunegunda. Her son’s alliance with the Imperial House possibly tended to satisfy the repudiated Queen of Bohemia, and her Misnian kindred, with Philip’s thus leaving her cause wholly to the Pope; and they appear to have made no complaint, when in the year 1206, Ottocar, declaring openly for Philip, was again well received by him, and acknowledged as King.

To countervail all these triumphs of his antagonist’s, Otho had only the capture and plunder of Goslar by his troops; and so helplessly forsaken did he feel himself, that, abandoning the field as it seemed to Philip, he passed over into England. But he went in search of means to renew the contest, by pressing his royal uncle for the promised effective support. John received the Imperial petitioner with a profuse magnificence, in which he wasted the money that might have given an army to Otho, who carried back to Germany only about 5000 marks.

The following year, Philip, at the earnest prayer of Cologne, kept the Easter festival in that reconciled city. It was attended by Burgundian and Italian princes, as the Marquess of Este, though related to Otho, and the Earl of Savoy, who came to do homage and receive investiture of their fiefs, from him, in whom they now acknowledged the undisputed King of the Romans and future Emperor. Upon the same occasion he affianced his second daughter, Mary, to the eldest son and heir of the Duke of Brabant.

In this triumphant condition, Philip earnestly strove to conciliate his only remaining formidable enemy, hitherto so inveterate, the Pope : thus to obtain certain and absolute relief from the sentence of excommunication, under which he and his adherents still lay. For this purpose he sent an embassy, headed by the Patriarch of Aquileia, to Rome, to endeavour to open a negotiation with Innocent. The Patriarch bore a letter addressed by Philip to the Holy Father; narrating and vindicating his conduct generally, ever since the death of Henry VI, and especially in regard to his nephew Frederic; offering to submit all the points, upon which the Pope conceived he had grounds of com­plaint against him to the arbitration of Cardinals and German Princes, good and just men; and referring his own grounds of complaint against His Holiness, to the conscience of His Holiness himself, in whom he acknow­ledged the Vicar of Christ upon earth. It has been alleged that he further offered one of his daughters, with the larger part of the Matildan heritage, to wit, Tuscany, the duchy of Spoleto, and the march of Ancona, as her portion, for one of the Pope’s nephews. Whether the offer were made is very doubtful and that nothing came of it is certain.

Innocent was manifestly pleased with the communication, and appointed two Cardinals, Ugolino di Segni, his own near relation, afterwards Pope Gregory IX, and Leo Brancaleone, to accompany Philip’s embassadors back to Germany, and treat with the monarch—but still only as Duke of Swabia, his second election being vitiated, in papal judgment, by his excommunication. This mission was, however, more of a proper Christian Churchman’s. The instructions of the Legates were, to require the Duke of Swabia’s oath to obey the Pope in those points, disobedience in which had incurred the anathema of the Church, and to abandon his two Archbishops, of Mainz and Cologne, to their fate; upon receiving which oath the Legates were to relieve him from excommunication, and readmit him into the pale of the Church. This done, they were to mediate peace between Philip and Otho.

The required oath was vague, and a reconciliation with the Pope of vital importance to Philip; he therefore took it, and prevailed upon the two prelates to submit their claims, voluntarily, to Papal decision, repairing to Rome, there to plead their own cause. The two Cardinals thereupon relieved Philip, and the now submissive Archbishops, from excommunication; and Innocent, by letter, congratulated Philip upon his readmission into the Church.

The mediation between the rival monarchs experienced greater difficulties; but, the disorders in Germany appearing to be the main obstacle to that chief object of Innocent’s desires, an Imperial Crusade, indefatigable, inextinguishable was the zeal of his Legates. Years before, when the Patriarch of Jerusalem and the Grand-Master of the Templars had attended a Diet at Nordhausen to solicit aid for Palestine, Philip had pledged himself to undertake its relief, as soon as he should be in uncontested possession of the Empire. Stimulated by such a prospect, the Legates journeyed backwards and forwards from court to court; but fruitlessly they journeyed; fruitlessly did they even bring about two interviews between the rivals, and press upon them the terms which the Pope desired both parties to accept. These were, that Philip should be King of the Romans and Emperor, giving Otho the eldest of his still unaffianced daughters to wife, with the duchy of Swabia and some of his Franconian fiefs for her portion; as the price of Otho’s renouncing his pretensions to the crown, and doing homage to his future father-in-law, as King. To facilitate an arrange­ment so desirable the Legates offered the two necessary dispensations; the one, releasing Otho from his inchoate engagement to the Brabant princess; the other, more difficult, and never granted by Innocent but for some urgent political object, such as the present, a dispensation sanctioning the proposed marriage, notwith­standing the consanguinity of the parties—Philip and Otho were second cousins. Philip readily acceded to the Pope’s proposals; but to all the Legates’ arguments, Otho, at both interviews, arrogantly replied, that only with his life would he renounce his crown, but that he would remunerate Philip’s renunciation with gifts far more splendid than what were offered to himself. What the splendid gifts designed for the Duke of Swabia and Tuscany and Lord of nearly half Franconia, by the heir of a third of the duchy of Brunswick, might be, was neither stated nor asked. The proposal was at once declined, and all the Cardinals could achieve was the conclusion of a twelvemonth’s truce, during which to continue their pacific endeavours. Even this armistice was a real concession and sacrifice on the part of Philip, who had a considerable army to disband; a gain on Otho’s, who had only the vassals of Brunswick and Lüneberg in arms.

During this year of truce, negotiations were carried on at Rome, under the mediation and arbitration of Innocent in person. Their tenor is unknown, having been kept secret whilst in progress, and their significance being annihilated by the course of events. Otho professed apprehensions of an unfavourable papal decision, and loudly complained that, in Germany, the Legates had been bribed; an accusation abundantly refuted by the character of one of them at least, namely of him who was to be Gregory IX. Otho’s apprehensions might likewise have been allayed by the letters Innocent addressed to him, which spoke the language of encouragement. Philip, equally and more justly, distrusted the arbitrator to whose sentence he had submitted his claims; and this, although the Legates had more than insinuated that the Holy Father had nearly made up his mind to abandon Otho’s cause, both as hopeless, and as the principal obstacle to the ardently desired Crusade. Meanwhile, as the year of truce drew towards a close, Philip summoned the Princes of the Empire again to assemble around his standard, in order to crush the anti-king. Otho, on the other part, had obtained a promise of active support from Waldemar, whom he now called upon to fulfil his engagements, and take the field with him. On neither side, were the military preparations interrupted by the intelligence that the Legates—who appear to have been recalled to Rome there to assist in the negotiations—were on their return, charged with the result of all these diplomatic labours, and the Pope’s own decision.

All the horrors of civil war were again impending over Germany, in addition to the evils inflicted by ten years of not only virtual interregnum, in the want of an efficiently controlling, sovereign authority, but of struggle for that authority. This last was a fearful calamity, since it obliged the contending monarchs to court partisans; and therefore to connive at the transgression of those wise laws, by which their predecessors had laboured to suppress intestine wars, and the plunder of the week by the strong. Again, princes and nobles were deluging the land with the blood of their vassals, shed in their private quarrels; again, robber-knights sought the maintenance of themselves and their followers upon the high roads, whilst the rival kings endeavoured not to see evils they were powerless to remedy. An instance or two of this will sufficiently shew the state of the country. Palsgrave Otho of Wittelsbach, a younger branch, it will be recollected, of the ducal house of Bavaria, having some quarrel with a nobleman bearing the name of Welf, though quite unconnected with the great Welf family, murdered him in the very court of the Duke of Bavaria; and the only notice Philip durst take of the crime, by no means the single deed of violence laid to the Bavarian Palsgrave’s charge, was to revoke a promise previously given him of the hand of one of his little daughters. And for this step he alleged a different motive, namely, consanguinity within the prohibited degrees, for which it was most unlikely that the Pope would grant the requisite dispensation. Again, a brother of the Bishop of Wurzburg, upon some alleged idle suspicion, seized the Dean of the Chapter of Magdeburg, upon the public road, and put out his eyes. And the Bishop of Wurzburg, himself, upon his way to church, was assaulted by private enemies—whom his endeavours to repress robbery are supposed to have provoked—murdered, and after death brutally mangled. These atrocities were perpetrated prior to the negotiations conducted by the Legates. Innocent, in his epistles, dilates upon such crimes, as the inevitable consequences of the schism in the Empire, caused by Philip’s pertinacious retention of the usurped crown. The Germans, with the sole exception of the now very small Guelph faction, imputed the schism itself, and the consequent disorders, to the Pope’s unjust protection of Otho, in which they saw no object, but the weakening of the Imperial power.

Philip had promised his niece Beatrice, the only child of his deceased brother Otho Earl or Duke of Burgundy —his title seems uncertain—to Otho Duke of Meran. But the lady, though an only child and a princess, does not appear to have inherited her grandmother’s county of Burgundy, with the vicariate of the whole of Burgundy thereto annexed; bringing her bridegroom, already the first Tyrolese nobleman, only some Burgundian and Tyrolese domains, to which her royal uncle added the Burgundian palatinate, as her portion. The Bishop of Bamberg, Egbert von Andechs, being a brother of the Duke of Meran, requested that a marriage, so flattering to his family, might be celebrated in his own Cathedral, and invited Philip, with his whole court, to visit him for the purpose at his magnificent episcopal fortress-palace, the Altenburg. Philip accepted the invitation, and the nuptial festivities being so arranged as immediately to precede the end of the armistice, he appointed Bamberg as the place of assemblage for his Ghibeline army. Upon the 21st of June, Philip, though somewhat indisposed, led his niece, attended by his whole Court, to the high altar of the Bamberg Cathedral, and there bestowed her upon his reverend host’s brother. The marriage solemnized, the royal party returned to the Akeriburg.

The Altenburg is, or was, one of the most remarkable of the fortress-palaces adjoining episcopal cities, which, in addition to the intramural episcopal palace annexed to the Cathedral, the prince-bishops of Germany appear to have very generally possessed. These external castles served for an asylum from the violence of the prelate’s often tumultuary, even rebellious flock; whence, when situated like the Altenburg, they, in a military sense, commanded the city. But its military strength was not the only merit of the Altenburg, the original ancestral castle of the Babenberg race, prior to their connexion with Austria. The position was majestically beautiful. Standing upon the Eastern extremity of a range of hills, although protected in its rear by yet loftier heights, so elevated is its site, that the almost panoramic view thence enjoyed is only in one place interrupted. Upon three sides, it overlooks an undulating country covered with villages, gardens, vineyards, woods, and cornfields, watered by the serpent-like winding Main, and its tributary the Regnitz, and bounded by the distant mountain ridges of Saxony and Bohemia. Immediately at the foot of its precipitous acclivity, appears, in what looks like a hollow, the singularly hilly city of Bamberg, running up and down, at least five steep, if not very lofty, hills, one of which is crowned by the Cathedral, with its four distinguishing towers.

To this Altenburg the bridal party returned, when the ceremony was over; and Philip, his malady somewhat increased by the exertion he had made to do his niece honour, retired to his own apartment. There, whilst his Queen sat down with the company to the wedding banquet, he was bled, and remained with two favourite companions certainly, his Chancellor, Conrad Bishop of Spires, and Heinrich von Waldburg, his Sewer, and perhaps a Chamberlain. Philip is said to have been a patron of the Arts, a lover of poetry. As such he could hardly be insensible to the beauties of nature; and may be supposed to have been reposing in untroubled enjoyment of the smiling prospect, and of friendly conversation, when disturbed by a tap at the door. The King’s domestic tastes and habits rendered the restraints of court ceremonial irksome to him, and little regular attendance seems therefore to have been exacted of his household officers. Upon the present occasion, all would be drawn away from their posts, by the nuptial celebration and pleasures. Neither page, chamberlain, nor even a menial servant was in waiting upon the retired King. The tap was therefore followed by the unceremonious entrance of Palsgrave Otho of Wittelsbach, newly arrived to join the army, who has already been mentioned as a faithful adherent of Philip’s, though so recklessly violent in character and conduct that even in his administration of justice, he acted more like a savage than the officer of an organized society. The Bavarian Palsgrave’s occasional outrages, if they had caused Philip to revoke his acceptance of him as a son-in-law, had not, seemingly, impaired the intimacy to which the monarch had admitted his vassal; an intimacy resulting rather from mutual admiration on the battlefield, where both shone conspicuous for prowess and valiancy, than from any congeniality of disposition. The scene, that ensued upon his entrance, is so astounding, as well as unaccountable, the two, or at most three witnesses must have been so bewilderingly agitated, that the few discrepancies occurring in the narratives of different contemporaneous writers cannot be matter of surprise. Nor are they very material, since, respecting the principal facts, no doubt has ever existed. These are authenticated by the report which the Legates, then on their way to Philip’s Court, transmitted to the Pope, relating what, upon their arrival, they had learned.

The scene is as follows. The Palsgrave unannounced, entered the King’s chamber, his sword either in his hand, or immediately drawn, flourishing it about, and fencing —if making passes without an antagonist may be so called—much as he was wont, it is said, to do, for the amusement of Philip, who took much pleasure in observing his great dexterity in the use of his weapon. The King, whether in his invalid condition he felt the flashing of the steel an annoyance, or because the Bishop, as has been supposed, was frightened—though Churchmen were in those days no strangers to the use of arms—desired him to sheath his sword, the place not being suited to such play. The Palsgrave answered, “Nor is it play! Thou shalt now pay for thy falsehood!” rushed upon Philip and struck him in the neck. This is the most general account; but one old Chronicler says, that Otho entered with a drawn sword concealed under his garments, and, instantly brandishing it, fell upon the King, thus rendering the introductory dialogue impossible. Whichever were the previous course, no sooner was the blow struck, than Waldburg springing upon the assassin, grappled with him, and was cut in the cheek—the sear, an honourable monument of his loyalty, he bore till his death. Upon feeling the wound, he momentarily relaxed his grasp, when the Palsgrave, breaking from him, fled. Philip had started from his couch, he took a step or two forward, and fell dead upon the floor, the main artery being cut.

The tumult and confusion in the castle may be better imagined than described. The King’s death once ascertained, his faithful friends thought, for the moment, only of rescuing, from what seemed the explosion of a formidable conspiracy, the imperilled remaining scions of the Imperial house of Swabia, Philip’s infant daughters and pregnant widow, upon whom—the Sicilian Frederic being little known and less considered—rested well nigh the last hopes of the Ghibelines. Irene, stupefied by the suddenness of the overwhelming calamity, was removed, scarcely conscious, by her attendants, to the ancestral castle of the Hohenstaufen; where, sinking under the blow, she prematurely gave birth to a dead child, and died. The Bishop of Spires carried off the two children to what he judged a secure asylum—the two affianced princesses appear to have been previously delivered over to their respective future fathers-in-law, to be educated at the courts over which they were to preside; no unusual or unwise practice of early times. These measures of precaution on the part of the Ghibelines are very intelligible, and not unreasonable; but what is absolutely incomprehensible is the conduct of two brothers of the bridegroom just received into the Imperial family, the Bishop of Bamberg and the Margrave of Istria. They—whether Otho, after the deed was done, did or did not seek a refuge in the Bishop’s apartments, whether he were or were not accompanied to Philip’s door by ten or fifteen of the Andechs men-at-arms, the story is told all four ways— fled, as precipitately as the murderer.

The possible motives impelling the Palsgrave to the regicide, and the complicity or non-complicity of the fugitive Andechs brothers, are questions that have exercised the ingenuity of innumerable historians, and have been, and can only be conjecturally answered. A very remarkable circumstance is, that no one appears to have even suspected the sole person who could profit by the crime, Otho IV, of having instigated it. To individual resentment only, can it therefore be ascribed; and the purity of Philip’s moral character puts the usual cause of resentment against princes, jealousy, out of the question. The vindictive feelings of the Palsgrave are attributed by some writers to Philip’s retracting his promise of the hand of his infant daughter; by others, to his disappointing him in regard to another matrimonial project. According to these, Palsgrave Otho, w hen he had lost all hope of an imperial and royal wife, desiring to wed a daughter of Henry the Bearded, Duke of Lower Silesia, by Hedwig von Andechs, sister to the Duke of Meran, the Bishop of Bamberg and the Margrave of Istria, asked the King for a letter of recommendation to the Duke. He received a sealed packet; in a somewhat indecorous fit of curiosity, broke the seal; and found a statement of the conduct which had prevented Philip from fulfilling his own engagement to give him one of his daughters; and, it has been added, advice to make away with the suitor. No part of this story is generally credited, whilst the sanguinary portion is almost unanimously rejected. If the other part be true, such a revelation of his faults—though seemingly due to a father whose child he sought in marriage—not being the recommendation Otho had asked, might well exasperate such a man to a sudden passion of revenge. But only by one of those who thus account for the Palsgrave’s fury, is the transaction represented as recent; and the very manner of its perpetration proves, that neither symptoms of resentment on Otho’s part, nor consciousness of having given cause for such feelings on Philip’s, had interrupted their habitual familiar intercourse. Again, this story, if true, affords no light relative to the Andechs brothers. The bride, whom the Palsgrave lost through the letter, was the daughter of their sister, the canonized Hedwig; and a warning of the ungovernable temper, and reckless disregard of human life in him who sought her, might be expected to awaken her uncles’ gratitude. Assuredly, it could never provoke them to conspire with the disappointed wooer, in the very palace of the Bishop, against his royal guest, who was even then receiving their elder brother, the head of their house, into his own family. That historians so generally admit their complicity as certain, is not the least strange part of this singular regicide. Would not the bewilderment of terror, produced by the sudden catastrophe in the episcopal palace—especially if the assassin did, in the first instance, seek shelter in his reverend host’s private apartments—be a more rational explanation of the flight of the brothers? And that flight is not only the sole proof against them, but the solitary suspicious circumstance. The whole affair s so unaccountable, that, with Raumer’s remark— “A veil still hangs over the crime, which none of the sources of information at our command enable us to lift”— the problem must be left, unsolved, to future investigation, with the chance that some as yet unknown document may be found to throw light upon Palsgrave Otho’s motives.