Henry V, Holy Roman Emperor
Henry V was King of Germany and Holy Roman Emperor, as the fourth and last ruler of the Salian dynasty. He was made co-ruler by his father, Henry IV, in 1098.
In Emperor Henry IV's conflicts with the imperial princes and the struggle against the reform papacy during the Investiture Controversy, young Henry V allied himself with the opponents of his father. He forced Henry IV to abdicate on 31 December 1105 and ruled for five years in compliance with the imperial princes. He tried, unsuccessfully, to withdraw the regalia from the bishops. Then in order to at least preserve the previous right to invest, he captured Pope Paschal II and forced him to perform his imperial coronation in 1111. Once crowned emperor, Henry departed from joint rule with the princes and resorted to earlier Salian autocratic rule. After he had failed to increase control over the church, the princes in Saxony and on the Middle and Lower Rhine, in 1121 the imperial princes forced Henry V to consent with the papacy. He surrendered to the demands of the second generation of Gregorian reformers, and in 1122 he and Pope Callixtus II ended the Investiture Controversy in the Concordat of Worms.
Life
Imperial crisis
Henry V was probably born on 11 August in 1081 or 1086. However, only the date of his accolade at Easter 1101 can be confirmed. This ceremony usually took place at the age of 15.Three children of Henry IV and his wife Bertha of Savoy, Henry and his two older siblings, Conrad and Agnes, survived childhood; two other siblings had died early. Henry seems to have spent the first years of his life primarily in Regensburg. His mentor was Conrad Bishop of Utrecht.
At the time of Henry's birth, his father, emperor Henry IV, had already been engaged in many years of drawn out conflicts with the pope, the imperial bishops, and secular princes for the preservation of his rule. Henry IV had never paid much attention to the advice, or the rights and privileges of the landed nobility. Saxony, as the centre of resistance, was joined by the southern duchies of Bavaria, Swabia and Carinthia. These southern duchies again sought the support of Pope Gregory VII, the chief advocate of church reform ideas. Gregory's central demand was that the emperor must refrain from investing abbots and bishops, a practice that had been essential for the Imperial Church System since Emperor Otto I. Gregory VII excommunicated Henry IV in 1077. By repenting at Canossa, Henry managed to get absolved. In 1080 and 1094, however, Henry IV was excommunicated again. In 1102, the church ban was again declared over him and his party, including his son, Henry V. The conflict divided the empire from the church.
Henry IV therefore sought to strengthen his influence in the south. His daughter, Agnes, was engaged to Friedrich, who in 1079 obtained the Duchy of Swabia. The emperor also sought to secure his royal succession. Henry IV chose his eldest son, Conrad, to be his heir and arranged to have Conrad crowned king in Aachen in 1087. After Conrad defected to the Church Reform Party in Italy in 1093, his royalty and inheritance were revoked at a court in Mainz and transferred to his younger brother, Henry V, in May 1098. The latter had to take an oath never to rule over the father. On 6 January 1099, Henry V was crowned king in Aachen, where he was required to repeat the oath. His brother, Conrad, died in Florence on 27 July 1101. The continued existence of the Salian dynasty now depended on Henry V, the only living son of the emperor. The co-regency of son and father proceeded without obvious problems for six years. Contrary to previous ruling sons, Henry V was not involved in government affairs. His father's policies proceeded to be extremely cautious after the death of his older son, Conrad.
Assumption of power
The causes and motives that led to the deposition of Henry IV by his son remain debated among modern researchers. Stefan Weinfurter argues that religious reform motives and the corrosive influence of a group of young Bavarian counts – Margrave Diepold III von Vohburg, Count Berengar II of Sulzbach and Count Otto von Habsburg-Kastl – are the primary causes. These nobles succeeded in convincing the young Henry V of his father's lost cause and the eventual triumph of reform. If he did not act and waited until his father died, someone else would attempt to ascend the throne and would find many supporters. Out of concern for his salvation, Henry then abandoned his father and joined the "salvation community" of the young Bavarians.Another line of research supports the theory that the murder of Sieghard of Burghausen in February 1104 by ministerials and citizens of Regensburg was the trigger for the overthrow of Henry IV. According to Burghausen's relatives and other nobles, the emperor had failed to punish the perpetrators appropriately, proving that Henry IV viewed aristocrats with disdain. Henry V had attempted in vain to mediate an amicable settlement between Burghausen and the ministerials in the dispute that led to the murder, and he also would have had a reason to resent his father's inaction. A flaw in this theory is that there was a very long time lag between the murder of Burghausen and when Henry V turned his back on his father.
In November 1104, Henry V joined his father's army on a punitive expedition against Saxon Reformers who had opposed the election of the Archbishop of Magdeburg. On 12 December 1104, Henry V broke away from his father, thereby breaking the oath of allegiance to the ruling king. Henry V made his way to Regensburg, where he celebrated Christmas with his followers. While there, his father's enemies sought to convince him to revolt. Henry considered their arguments, but he was restrained by the oath he had taken to take no part in the business of the Empire during his father's lifetime. At the turn of the year 1104/05, he sent messengers to Rome to seek absolution from his loyalty oath by Pope Paschal II, The Pope promised Henry V, on condition that Henry be a righteous king and a promoter of the Church, not only absolution from the sin of breaking this oath, but also support in the struggle against his father.
Between 1105 and 1106, supporters of Henry IV and Henry V each disseminated arguments in letters and historiographic texts in order to build support among the people of the empire, while father and son each accused the other of disregard for the divine and earthly orders. Henry V began to strengthen his ties with Saxony, where the opposition against his father was particularly strong due in part to his absence from the duchy since 1089. In the spring of 1105, Henry V stayed in Saxony for two months and showed his willingness to work with the church on the basis of Gregorian ideas by removing the bishops, Friedrich von Halberstadt, Udo von Hildesheim, and Henry von Paderborn, who had been appointed by his father. In Quedlinburg, he entered the town barefoot on Palm Sunday, thus demonstrating his humility, an elementary Christian virtue of rulers. His stay concluded with the celebration of the Pentecost festival in Merseburg and the confirmation of the Magdeburg metropolitan.
Henry V promised the hand of his sister, Agnes, in marriage to the Babenberger, Leopold III, thereby convincing Leopold to abandon his father's party. At the end of October 1105, Henry V arrived at Speyer, the centre of Salian rule. Here he installed Gebhard, a fervent opponent of his father, as Bishop. In the fall of 1105, the armies of father and son faced each other at the Regen river. However, a battle was prevented by the princes of both sides who wished to find a peaceful solution. At Christmas 1105, an agreement was to be reached at a diet in Mainz.
Henry IV advanced to Mainz for the announced diet. According to the Vita Heinrici IV On 20 December 1105 in Koblenz Henry V "fell around his father's neck", "shed tears and kissed him" – public expressions of reconciliation that were morally binding during the 12th century. Henry IV then disbanded and released his army as father and son left for the diet in Mainz on 21 December. On 23 December in Bingen, Henry persuaded his father to retreat to a castle for his own protection, as Archbishop Ruthard of Mainz would refuse to let him into the city. Henry agreed and was led to Böckelheim Castle, the property of Bishop Gebhard, not for his protection, but for custody. Henry was thrown into the dungeon and was held there "unwashed and unshaven and deprived of any service" over Christmas. At the Reichstag in Mainz, Henry prompted his father to hand over the imperial insignia. Henry IV then was transferred to Ingelheim where he personally was to hand over the imperial insignia and was forced to abdicate on 31 December 1105. Henry V subsequently spread the narrative in which his father had ceded the insignia and his rule to him voluntarily. This distortion of the events implied his strong desire to feign dynastic continuity.
On 5 or 6 January 1106, more than fifty imperial princes were present when Henry V was anointed and crowned king. According to the Annals of Hildesheim, Archbishop Ruthard of Mainz presented the imperial insignia with the cautionary words: "If he does not prove to be a just leader of the empire and a defender of the church, he will end like his father." The beginning of his reign was marked by a lengthy time of unusual harmony between the king and the princes. Unlike his Salian predecessors, Henry V would count his reign only from the day on which he received the imperial insignia and was chosen for royal duty by the election of the princes. The reference to Saint Mary and the divine mandate was no longer the legitimate basis for Salian rule.
However, Henry IV escaped from prison in Ingelheim and fled to Liège. His son feared a reversal of the balance of power and summoned a Reichstag for Easter 1106. Henry IV had already begun to organize resistance against his son, but suddenly died on 7 August 1106 in Liège, where he received an honorable funeral. The princes opposed a funeral in Speyer, but Henry V overruled this decision. On 24 August, he had his father's body dug up and transferred to Speyer, since in Liège some form of veneration of the deceased as a saint was about to begin. The re-burial at the Speyer crypta would imply continuity and help stabilize the position of the rebel son, who could present himself as a legitimate force of conservation and progress. On 3 September 1106 the body was once again temporarily buried in a still unconsecrated chapel north of Speyer cathedral. An appropriate funeral among his ancestors was only admissible and indeed performed in 1111 after the abolishment of Henry IV's pending excommunication.