Spanish ceremonies at the Viennese court. Emperor Henry IV

Henry IV(German Heinrich IV; November 11, 1050, Goslar, Germany - August 7, 1106, Liege, Belgium) - German king, Holy Roman Emperor, representative of the Salic dynasty.

Trying, like his ancestors, to establish undivided power over the entire empire, he was the first of the emperors to enter into a struggle with the papacy for investiture, as a result of which he was unable to win it (humiliation at Canossa). Having dealt with numerous rebellions with great difficulty, Henry IV was removed from power by his own son. He died, cursed by both clergy and vassals: the first - as a man who challenged the representative of God on earth, the second - as a ruler who encroached on the rights and privileges of his subjects.

Life

Birth, early years

Henry was born in imperial palace in Goslar. His parents, the emperor Henry III and Agnes de Poitiers, already raised three daughters and passionately desired a boy. Henry III was 33 years old when his wife finally gave birth to the long-awaited heir to the throne. The newborn was named Conrad - in honor of his grandfather, Conrad II. However, under the influence of a friend and advisor imperial family Abbot Hugo of Cluny, the boy was named Henry. The baptism took place on Easter 1051 in Cologne. The godfather of the future emperor was the same Hugo, an active supporter of the Cluny reform, which was also supported by Henry III. The name Conrad went to younger brother newborn, the future Duke of Bavaria, born two years later.

Even before his baptism, on Christmas Day 1050, Henry III demanded that his subjects take an oath to the future emperor. Three years later, in November 1053, three-year-old Henry was elected king at the Diet in Trebur. The princes present at the Sejm, however, made a reservation: they were ready to serve the new emperor only if he showed himself to be a true ruler.

A month later, Henry IV was granted the Duchy of Bavaria, which belonged to him for only six months: on July 17, 1054, Archbishop Hermann solemnly conferred on him royal crown in Aachen, and Bavaria went to his younger brother Conrad.

At Christmas 1055, five-year-old Henry was betrothed in Zurich to Bertha of Turin. By tying his son by marriage to the Canossa dynasty, Henry III thus tried to create a political counterbalance in the fight against his rival Godfrey the Bearded.

Shortly before his death (October 5, 1056), Henry III forced the imperial princes to once again swear allegiance to his son and, already on his deathbed, transferred him under the protection of Pope Victor II. Thanks to Victor II, power passed unhindered to the young king and his mother Agnes: the Pope was able to arrange a reconciliation of the imperial family with Godfrey the Bearded, again crowned little Henry IV in Aachen and made sure that the South German princes swore allegiance to Henry. In February 1057, Victor returned to Italy, where he soon died.

However, all the precautions taken by Henry III and Victor II did not guarantee young Henry a cloudless reign.

Coup d'etat. April 1062

Formal power in the period from 1056 to 1061 was in the hands of Henry IV's mother, Agnes of Poitiers, a woman who did not have the gift of rule and quickly lost her main levers of influence. Thus, in 1060, she was unable to turn the struggle for the Hungarian throne into her favor, and the choice of Pope Alexander II and antipope Honorius II led to another schism and confrontation between the See of St. Peter and the Holy Roman Empire. Agnes easily distributed fief possessions to the German princes: Rudolf of Rheinfelden received the Duchy of Swabia and the right to rule Burgundy, Otto of Northeim - the Duchy of Bavaria, Berthold I - the Duchy of Carinthia. Later, when the now adult Henry IV tried to regain control of these possessions lost by his mother, these dukes would become enemies of the emperor.

Henry IV Holy Roman Emperor

Henry IV
Drawing from Max Barak's book "Portraits of Kaisers", 1888

Henry IV, King of Germany, Holy Roman Emperor
Henry VIII, Duke of Bavaria

The Leonine Wall is a medieval fortification in Rome, erected
in 848-852 at the direction of Pope Leo IV for protection against the Arabs.
The residential area inside the wall was called the Lion City or Leograd ( "Civitas Leonina").

After the death of his father, Henry remained a six-year-old child. His upbringing, as well as the administration of the state, was taken over by his mother, the Empress. She began to provide patronage to some princes, thinking that she would find support for herself in them. She was especially trusted by the Augsburg Bishop Henry, who gained great influence on affairs and thereby aroused the envy and hostility of other princes. The head of the dissatisfied became Archbishop Hanno of Cologne, an intelligent, ambitious man, but of a gloomy and stern disposition. Having planned to gain influence over the king and at the same time the helm of the reign, Hanno in 1062 took the boy away from his mother and settled him in Cologne. But he did not know how to attract the young sovereign to himself, and on the contrary, he soon aroused disgust in him with his strict, commanding and arrogant disposition.

In the summer of his adolescence, Henry showed great abilities, both physical and moral. He was ardent, unusually quick in his decisions, had a lot of chivalry in him and generally showed a lot of promise; but the fiery ardor of character turned into irritability and vindictiveness, and what remained from sublime feelings was pride and lust for power. In addition, he early experienced a craving for sensual pleasures, carelessness and laziness. A flash of goodness was often replaced in Henry by some bad deed. He could never acquire firm calm and that sense of proportion, which constituted the true greatness of sovereigns. Throughout Henry's life these contradictions in his character were evident. From happiness he quickly passed to misfortune, from greatness to weakness, from arrogance to humiliation, and this anxiety continued until his death.

Hoping to put an end to the king's dissolute life, Hanno encouraged him to marry Bertha, the daughter of the Margrave of Susa, who had been betrothed to him during her father's lifetime. Henry agreed to this with great reluctance. Chroniclers say that Bertha was educated, modest, and virtuous; she loved her husband with unfailing devotion; in my own way high birth from one of the most noble Italian dynasties she was worthy of royal dignity. But Henry looked at her with hostility from the very beginning. At the Würzburg congress, Bertha was declared queen, and two weeks later she was married to Henry in Tribur. The king then began to treat his wife with hostility and did not have any marital relations with her. His lifestyle remained the same: he spent all his time in entertainment, hunting, debauchery, feasting and doing all sorts of capricious tomfoolery. According to contemporaries, Henry at one time had two or three concubines.

When he heard about the beauty of a girl or young woman, he first tried to get her by deception or seduction, and if this method failed, then he used open violence. He himself attacked the houses of his victims at night, often putting his life in danger. This passion for women also led him to crimes, as he mercilessly took the lives of those husbands who dared to resist him. Having abused noble women and girls, he later passed them off as his servants.

His soldiers lived without any rules and without fear carried out robberies throughout all the provinces, and the complaints of the unfortunate were either rejected with contempt or did not reach him at all. He was surrounded only by dishonest servants and vile servants of his amusements, so that no one at court dared to be virtuous. He knew how to hide his anger and more than once contributed to the death of even his closest friends, as soon as he began to suspect them of infidelity, but then he pretended to regret their death and even cried. Henry granted bishoprics and other spiritual positions only for money. Wanting to have the greatest benefit from these transactions, he sometimes appointed two bishops to one place. Leading such a life, Henry became increasingly burdened by decency, the observance of which was required in the palace where the queen constantly lived. In June 1069, he convened a congress in Worms and declared that he could no longer live with Bertha, since he felt an insurmountable disgust for her, and therefore could not fulfill the duty of marriage with her. Henry demanded a divorce.

The congress decided to ask the pope's opinion on this matter. But dad reacted to Henry’s plans with great displeasure. He sent Peter Damiani, a stern defender of church laws, to Germany, who spoke very strictly to the king and threatened him with church punishment. Henry became timid because his intention to divorce his wife aroused general indignation in the country, and he abandoned his intention. The king summoned his wife to him in Goslar, received her kindly, made peace with her and little by little began to appreciate her selfless love for him. After some time, he stopped shunning her as a woman: they had several daughters and sons, and until the end of her life she was loving wife. Thus ended Henry's early youth.

In the following years, Henry had to experience such shocks and humiliations that no German king had experienced before. It all started with the Saxon uprising. For many years the king lived in Saxony, ruining it with his extortions. In addition to this, he covered the country with his castles and threatened the original freedom of the Saxons. There were persistent rumors that Henry wanted to destroy the power of the dukes, distribute all of Saxony to his vassals, and make free Saxons into serfs. He actually captured the Saxon duke and forced him to renounce his rights to Saxony. This was the end of the Saxons' patience. In 1073 they all rose at the call of their princes. In June, their representatives arrived in Goslar to convey the demands of the people. Henry did not even want to listen to the ambassadors. Then the knights and the villagers swore an oath to each other to defend their freedom and property with weapons. In the number of 60 thousand they appeared before Goslar and besieged the royal residence. Henry retreated and wanted to take refuge in the fortified Harzburg.

The rebels pursued him there too, and the king could only seek salvation in flight. On the night of August 8-9, Henry, accompanied by several close associates, secretly left Harzburg. He was surrounded on all sides by enemies and therefore made his way to Franconia furtively along unknown paths. For three days the king rode through dense forests that covered the country for many miles around. Exhausted by hunger and the difficulties of the journey, sleepless nights, he finally arrived in Eschwege, strengthened himself with food and sleep, went to Gerofeld and began to prepare for war. He sent messengers throughout Germany with orders to arm themselves against the Saxons. But the Saxons did not waste time and meanwhile managed to take possession of many castles, including the heavily fortified Luneburg with its entire garrison. In order to save 70 captured knights, Henry had to exchange them for a captive. The uprising soon spread to Swabia and Thuringia.

All of Southern Germany rebelled against the king, and even Archbishop Siegfried of Mainz took the side of the rebels. People began to talk everywhere about the election of a new king, and Siegfried sent out invitations to the princes to appear in Mainz for this purpose. Not wanting to completely lose power, Henry in February 1074 made peace with the rebels in Gerstungen on conditions that were very painful for him: he had to agree to the destruction of all royal castles in Saxony, pledged to respect the old rights of the Saxons and the independence of their court and gave forgiveness to all those who rose up against him with arms in hand.

The loss of his beloved Harzburg was especially sensitive. All of Henry’s requests to leave him at least this castle were not respected, since the royal palace aroused particular hatred among the Saxons. Without the knowledge of their princes, the mob took possession of the royal residence, devastated and burned it, not even sparing churches and altars, destroyed the imperial family crypt and scattered the bones of his brother and his son Henry, who died in infancy. Upon learning of this blasphemy, the king loudly complained of his humiliation, and his voice was heard: many of those who sympathized with the Saxons were now unpleasantly surprised by the riotous riots. Little by little public opinion began to lean towards Henry. He felt this, announced that he was breaking the Gerstungen peace and ordered the collection of a militia against the Saxons.

This time no one dared to disobey his will - knights and captives came to him from all over the country, even from Bohemia and Lorraine; a strong army was formed, the likes of which had not been seen in Germany for a long time. The opponents met in June 1075 near Hohenburg. The Saxons did not expect an attack so early, but showed their usual courage. However, pressed by three sides, they fled; The Franconians pursued them and mercilessly exterminated those fleeing. The death toll reached 8,000 people. Enriched with booty, the royal army marched through Thuringia and Saxony, devastating everything in its path.

On October 26, the leaders of the uprising surrendered to the king without any preconditions. He ordered the prisoners to be sent to distant castles, and their fiefs and positions were distributed to his followers. But having gotten rid of one enemy, Henry immediately acquired another, and much more formidable and dangerous. This enemy was the Pope.

With its establishment in Rome, the importance of papal power increased enormously. Gregory set himself the goal of freeing ecclesiastical dignitaries from fief dependence on kings by prohibiting investiture (the so-called affirmation of a land owner from the clergy class in his fief, as a sign of which the king sent each bishop a ring and a staff after taking the vassal oath). Gregory dreamed of making Rome the capital of a worldwide spiritual monarchy, replacing the imperial power with papal power, so that the kings would be vassals of the pope, obey him and pay tribute. In February 1075, he convened a church council in Rome, at which simony (trading in church positions) and the marriage of priests were strictly prohibited. Since investiture gave many reasons for simony (especially in Germany and Lombardy, where emperors autocratically appointed bishops, receiving considerable income from this), the Roman Council prohibited it too, giving only the pope the right to appoint all bishops. It was obvious that Henry and Heinrich would not be able to get along together. Many complaints came to Rome against Henry. carefully examined all the accusations and was not slow to express his opinion. At the beginning of 1076, he sent his legates to Goslar and ordered Henry to appear in Rome at the council at the next post and justify himself in the crimes attributed to him. In case of disobedience, the pope threatened to subject him to the apostolic curse and excommunication. Henry was incredibly offended both by the letter itself and by its imperious tone.

In January, Henry convened a council of German bishops in Worms and, with frivolous haste, ordered them to excommunicate the pope himself. The Council of Lombard bishops, which soon met in Piacenza, confirmed the Worms decree and declared that Lombardy would not recognize Gregory as pope. But a large and representative council of bishops meeting in Rome at the end of February expressed unequivocal and complete support for Gregory. The bishops almost tore to pieces the Parma priest Roland, who dared to announce the will of the king to depose the pope. After this, he declared Henry himself excommunicated. The excommunication of the emperor was an unheard of event and made a huge impression.

Henry learned about him in Utrecht, where he celebrated Easter. In irritation, he decided to counter the papal excommunication with a formal act of deposing Gregory; At his request, the council of bishops in Pavia declared the pope deposed. But Henry wanted the deposition to be proclaimed with the same solemnity in Germany. He ordered the German bishops to gather for Trinity in Worms, without doubting that the matter would be easily completed. But here the first serious disappointment awaited him: so few bishops had gathered at the appointed time that there was no way to open the cathedral.

Henry became alarmed and ordered the council to be postponed until Peter's Day and decided to move it to Mainz. He himself sent out invitations to the bishops, written in the form of a request rather than an order. Meanwhile, the papal legates also traveled around the country and used all means to win over the princes. Their efforts were not without success.

But not all of Henry’s former opponents supported this choice. Many cities, as well as the clergy, who feared the lust for power, remained loyal to the old king. German national feeling in general was offended by the humiliation to which the king was subjected in Canossa. In addition, Henry’s abdication was lifted, and he could demand the same obedience from his vassals. In the spring he returned to Germany. He had few troops with him, but he carried large sums of money received from the Lombards and was therefore able to quickly increase his forces. The joy with which the citizens of Regensburg greeted the king encouraged him. Bishops and princes came to Henry from everywhere, assuring him of their devotion. After several small battles on the Upper Danube and the Neckar he was forced to withdraw from Southern Germany to Saxony.

Henry convened a congress of princes in Ulm and at it, according to the Allemantic law, he declared the dukes of Swabia, Bavaria, Carinthia and other princes who were in the army rebels, took away their fiefs, family estates, titles and distributed them to his followers.

He made the brave count Duke of Swabia, betrothing his little daughter Agnes to him. Thus was the beginning of the power of this family. Soon terrible war spread throughout Germany. According to contemporaries, murders, robberies, fires and devastation swept the country from Denmark to Apulia and from France to Hungary. The corpses lay in heaps without burial, given to the wolves as food. As expected, the strongest support was found in Saxony. He also had many supporters in Bavaria and Swabia. But all other regions of Germany took Henry's side. In August 1078, at Marlichstadt there was bloody battle. Soon after the battle began, the left wing of the rebels fled. The Archbishop of Magdeburg was killed, the Archbishops of Mainz and Worms were captured by the king. The Duke of Saxony was also captured. But on the other hand, the left flank royal troops was also broken. The outcome of the battle remained unresolved: the opponents dispersed, and each considered himself the winner.

In January 1080, a second battle took place in Thuringia, near the village of Flarchheim. It was also very stubborn, and by the evening Henry, having suffered heavy losses, had to retreat to his camp. The victors, on the shoulders of those retreating, burst into the royal camp and plundered it. The general outcome of the battle was very unfortunate for the king; his opponents celebrated victory. During all these civil strife, I tried to maintain neutrality, although I clearly sympathized with him with all my heart. Having learned about the Flarchheim victory, he cast aside all hesitation and announced that he considered the only legitimate ruler of Germany. A church council was just taking place in Rome, and at one of the meetings the pope again declared Henry excommunicated and deprived of his royal rank. This second excommunication did not make the same impression as the first. Henry learned of the papal curse in Bamberg, where he was celebrating Easter. The princes who came to see him for the holiday immediately unanimously announced that they ceased to recognize him as pope.

At the end of May, Henry convened a council of German bishops in Mainz, which declared the pope deposed. They were joined by the Brixen Council of Italian prelates. In June, Archbishop Vibert of Ravenna was elected pope and took the name. in turn, he was excommunicated and damned. In October of the same year, Henry invaded Thuringia, sacked and burned Erfurt, reached Elster, but was overtaken here and forced to fight on inconvenient marshy terrain. The royal cavalry was tired of the difficult movement on the sticky soil, but still Henry defeated that part of the enemy army that was opposite him. The bishops accompanying the king had already begun to serve thanksgiving prayer, but then the Saxon infantry unexpectedly attacked the horsemen, who had disrupted their ranks in pursuit of the vanquished. Henry's entire army was captured panic fear; The cavalry galloped to the river, many warriors drowned in Elster, others were killed by the Saxons during their flight. The royal camp was taken, and the victors received rich booty. However, to the great misfortune of the victors, their king received mortal wounds in this battle and soon died.

Inspired by this, Henry left in his place in Germany in March 1081, and he himself set out on a campaign to Italy. All of Lombardy, which had long been at enmity with the pope, took his side. In Tuscany he also found many supporters who were dissatisfied with the imperious rule. Lucca, Pisa and Siena opened their gates for Henry. Near Trinity, the German army approached Rome and on May 21 set up its camp on Nero’s Field near the Vatican.

The Romans remained faithful to the pope. Troops from Tuscany and Normans from Southern Italy came to the rescue. Encountering stubborn resistance, Henry set out to devastate the domain. He spent the winter in Ravenna, and in the spring of 1082 he approached Rome for the second time. He attacked the walls several times, but all attacks were repulsed. A long siege began. Only on June 2, 1083, the Germans managed to climb the mountain, killing all its defenders. On the streets of the city, Henry also met desperate resistance, but the balance of forces was not in favor of the besieged.

Ten days later, the new pope solemnly crowned Henry with the imperial crown. Henry then began the siege of the castle of St. Angel, but, having learned that the Norman duke was in a hurry with large army to help the pope, he left Rome in May. Soon after his retreat, the Normans took Rome and subjected it to such a brutal defeat that this city had not experienced since the time of the Goths. after that he could not stay in Rome, where everyone cursed his name. Together with him he went to Southern Italy and died in May 1085 in Salerno.

Meanwhile, Henry returned to Germany, which continued to be torn apart by civil strife. In his absence, hostile princes elected the Count of Luxembourg as king. With the arrival of the emperor, the war resumed with new strength. All order was broken; lawlessness reigned everywhere; riotous troops plundered, devastated, slaughtered, and no one dared to demand discipline or respect for the law from them. In August 1086, Henry fought the rebels at Pleichfeld, near Würzburg. The emperor himself fought very bravely, but the Cologne and Utrechtians retreated at the very beginning of the battle. Following them, the knights and infantry fled, so that Henry was once again completely defeated. In the same year, having quarreled with his allies and tired of the war, he resigned as king. After this, the young Margrave of Meissen became the emperor's most formidable opponent. In December 1088, he inflicted a heavy defeat on Henry near Gleichen Castle in Thuringia. The emperor fled and barely managed to take refuge in Regensburg. However, a few months later he himself died in battle.

An equally fierce war took place in Italy, where adherents elected Abbot Desiderius of Monte Cassinus as pope, who took the name. He was supported by the Margravine. Henry's supporters acted together with. Both popes betrayed each other to mutual excommunication, so that the entire Western christian world found itself split into two camps. After his death in 1088, his supporters elected Otto, Bishop of Ostia, as pope, who took the name. It was a worthy successor who fully shared his ideas. He immediately cursed and excommunicated Henry, who at that time ruled Rome. He managed to arrange a marriage in 1089 between two of Henry's sworn enemies - the margravess and the young man. The news of this greatly alarmed Henry and forced him to make a second trip to Italy. In March 1090, the emperor crossed the Alps and began a war against. For eleven months the Germans besieged Mantua, in which they locked themselves. On Easter 1091, exhausted by hunger, the townspeople opened the gates to the emperor. barely managed to leave. Henry suddenly attacked his brother, who was guarding the lower reaches of the Po, and inflicted heavy losses on him in the battle of Tricontoi. Having learned about this, dad fled to the south of the country under the protection of the Normans.

Henry entered central Italy and besieged Montevio. The besieged skillfully defended themselves, made a sortie and burned all the siege engines of the emperor. Then he went to Canossa and in October 1092 suffered a new defeat under the walls of this castle.

The emperor began to beg them, at least, not to refuse him help, but they silently left his tent. Fearing that he might be captured, Henry and a small detachment fled from his camp to Mainz. His son was chasing him. Seeing that he was unable to withstand the siege, the old man went to Cologne. The townspeople were ready to support him, and in order to avoid the difficulties of the siege, the young king decided to resort to cunning. He agreed to meet his father in Koblenz. When old Henry saw his son, he fell on his knees before him and begged him to stop the enmity. The young man seemed moved, he knelt before his father and with hot speeches convinced him of his innocence. He said that he was ready to immediately relinquish power, if only the emperor would reconcile with the pope. Henry replied that he agreed to reconcile with and that he would submit to the decision of his son and the princes in everything. Then it was appointed that he would come to Mainz for the next congress and all controversial issues would be resolved here.

Henry believed his son. The two of them went to Mainz, talking amicably. One would think that all differences between them had disappeared. In Bingen they spent the evening in intimate conversation. In the morning, a rumor was spread that the Swabians and Bavarians had occupied Mainz and were threatening the emperor with violence. Under this pretext, the son convinced Henry to go to the castle of Bekelheim and wait here until he calmed his allies. But as soon as the emperor and his few companions were outside the castle walls, the guards locked the gates and refused to let his convoy inside. So the emperor became a prisoner of his son. The supervision of him was entrusted to Gebhard, Bishop of Speyer, one of his worst enemies. He forced his prisoner to endure hunger and thirst, and subjected him to ridicule and threats. Henry wrote that he was not even allowed to shave his beard or wash his face. In December, the old man was brought to Ingelheim, and here, in the presence of the princes, he renounced power, declared that he was unworthy of royal dignity, and transferred the state to his son. However, he flatly refused to repent, which the papal legates demanded of him. His son did not have the heart to insist on this, since he saw that many princes were moved to tears by the humiliation of their old monarch. The deposed emperor was sent back to Ingelheim, and his son took his place. A short time later, Henry fled by ship to Cologne. The townspeople welcomed him as the rightful king. He went to Luttich. The citizens of Bonn, Cologne, Jülich and other Rhine cities immediately took up arms. The Count of Limburg defeated the young man at Viset on the Meuse, who was going to capture his father in Lüttich. In the summer, the old emperor moved to Cologne and began to prepare for a new war. In July, his son besieged him in this city, but was repulsed courageous defenders. Soon after this victory, Henry IV died.

Henry IV's discord with the church continued after his death. The Bishop of Lüttich buried the emperor with due honors. But the young man forced the coffin to be dug up and transported to Speyer, where for five years the body of the deceased lay unburied in a wooden coffin in an unfinished and unconsecrated chapel. Only in 1111 did the pope lift his curse from the dead emperor, and his remains finally found their final rest in the tomb of the German kings.

(1050-1106) - son of Henry III. Since he remained a 5-year-old child after the death of his father, the government of the state was in the hands of his mother Agnes. Despite her abilities and the support of Pope Victor II and Bishop Henry of Augsburg, Agnes could not cope with her task. Having appeased some princes, she thereby aroused envy in others, especially in the Archbishop of Cologne Anno, who kidnapped G. in 1062 and seized the regency into his own hands. With his lawless management, lust for power and wastefulness, he, however, very soon aroused displeasure among the princes, which is why he had to offer participation in the rule and education of G. to Archbishop Adalbert of Bremen. G., however, gained little from this change. While Anno had a harmful effect on him with excessive severity, Adalbert spoiled him with too much condescension. Thanks to this latter, G. soon fell under the exclusive influence of Adalbert, who instilled in him ideas about unlimited power, hatred against the Saxon princes, and at the same time tried to seize all actual power into his own hands. In 1065, upon returning from a campaign against the Hungarians, Adalbert achieved the declaration of G. as an adult and ruled for him. Outraged by his arbitrariness, the remaining princes gathered in Triburg and forced G. to transfer the rule to some of them, mainly to Archbishop Anno. G.'s moral licentiousness also caused a lot of censure, as a result of which Anno hastened to marry him to Bertha, the daughter of the Margrave of Susa. Immediately after his marriage, G. sought a divorce, which the pope and the princes prevented; Having separated from his wife, G. then got back together with her. At the same time, Henry’s struggle with the princes begins. Duke Otto of Bavaria, accused of plotting against G.'s life, was deprived of his dukedom, which was given to his treacherous and selfish son-in-law, Duke Welf; his possessions were devastated until he, together with his ally, Duke Magnus of Saxony, submitted to the king. Otto was soon released, but Magnus, on the advice of Adalbert, whose influence had again increased, was left in captivity. At the same time, in order to strengthen his power in Saxony, G. built a number of castles in the country, which he supplied with strong garrisons. The Saxons opposed him with 60,000 troops under the leadership of Otto of Bavaria and besieged Henry in Harzburg, from where he managed to escape. Although other Upper German princes also joined the Saxons, the king was saved by the courageous defense of the citizens of Worms. In 1074, G. was forced to agree to the destruction of castles in Saxony and return the Duchy of Bavaria to Otto (Gerstungen dispute). The destruction of the church that had just been built in Harzburg by Saxon peasants again sparked the struggle. In 10 7 5 G. defeated the Saxons at Hohenburg (on Unstrut) and the following year captured their princes. The Saxon castles were re-erected, and G. demanded from Pope Gregory VII the deposition of the bishops who took part in the uprising; this demand led to a struggle with the pope, who accused G. of simony and demanded that he come to him for justification. In response to this, G. convened a council of German bishops, who (1076) declared the pope deposed. Gregory responded with a curse and an interdict (see). This turn of events prompted the German princes to unite with the pope to depose G., who, in order to avoid this fate, in the harsh winter of 1077 crossed the Alps to Italy under the most difficult conditions and, finding the pope in the castle of Canoss, humbly asked for his forgiveness, promising to recognize his decision in a dispute with the princes. Meanwhile, the princes chose Duke Rudolf of Swabia as king. When, after a two-year struggle, victory began to lean towards G., the pope again excommunicated him; then a meeting of bishops in Brixen convened by the king deposed Gregory and elected Archbishop Vibert (Clement III) of Ravenna as pope. After Rudolf of Swabia fell in an unfortunate battle for G. on the Elster River near Merseburg (1080), G. went with an army to Rome in 1081, entrusting the rule in Germany to his son-in-law Friedrich Hohenstaufen. Only in the spring of 1084 did he manage to capture Rome, where he was crowned emperor. Gregory VII took refuge in the Castle of St. Angel and then fled to Salerno, where he died. Returning to Germany, G. had to again endure a struggle with two opponents: with Count Hermann of Luxembourg, who was elected king in 1081, and with Margrave Ecbert of Meissen, who himself proclaimed himself king; Only their death freed him from both opponents. Meanwhile, in Rome, the Gregorian party proclaimed Victor III as pope, and after his death, Urban II. To restore his influence, G. went to Italy for the third time in 1090; here, during the campaign, he was overtaken by the news that his son Conrad had gone over to the side of his enemies and that the Lombards had united against him with Duke Welf. Only in 1096 did G. return to Germany, where, thanks to various concessions, he managed to reconcile with the princes and even with Duke Welf. According to his wishes, his son Conrad was deprived of royal dignity and his second son, Henry, was proclaimed successor. The calm that followed turned out to be short-lived. The new Pope Paschalis II again excommunicated G., and at the same time some princes incited young Henry against his father. Defeated and captured by cunning, G. fled to Lüttich, where he found adherents, but soon died. The bishop of Lüttich buried him with due honors, but his ashes, at the insistence of his enemies, were dug up and transported to Speyer, where they remained unburied for five years until the excommunication was lifted. Wed. Floto, "Heinrich der IV und sein Zeitalter"; Nadler, “Adalbert of Bremen, ruler of Germany in the young years of Henry IV” (Kharkov, 1867).

"Henry IV Roman-German Emperor" in books

HENRY III HENRY THE CUPPED /LE BALAFRE/, DUKE OF GUYS. MARY OF CLEVES, PRINCESS OF CONDE. HANDSOME GUYS /LES MIGNONS/ /1584-1589/