HENRY IV.

HENRY IV., emperor of Germany, was born at Goslar on 11th November 1050, elected king of the Germans in 1054, and succeeded his father, Henry III., in 1056, his mother being named regent of the empire. She was soon ousted by the Archbishop of Cologne, and he in turn by the Archbishop of Bremen. About 1070 Henry began to act for himself. His first care was to break the power of the nobles of the land; but his measures provoked a rising of the Saxons, who in 1074 forced upon Henry humiliating terms of pacification. In the following year he defeated them in a great battle at Hohenburg, and then proceeded to take vengeance upon the princes, secular and ecclesiastical, who had ventured to contest power with him. The case of the latter gave the pope, Gregory VII., the pretext he longed for to interfere in the affairs of Germany. This was the beginning of the great duel between pope and emperor which has been already recorded under Gregory VII. (q.v.). This conflict between the representatives of secular and ecclesiastical power was marked by several dramatic events. In 1076 Henry declared the pontiff deposed. Gregory VII. retaliated by excommunicating Henry and absolving his subjects from all obedience to him. The king, seeing his vassals and princes gradually falling away from their allegiance, hastened, in midwinter, to Italy to make submission to the pope. For three days in January 1077 he was compelled to stand in the courtyard of the castle of Canossa, exposed to the inclemency of the weather, barefooted, and clothed only in the haircloth shirt of a penitent, before the pontiff consented to remove the ban of excommunication. Then, having found adherents among the Lombards, Henry renewed the conflict, but was again excommunicated. His counter-move to this was to appoint a new pope, Clement III., and to hasten over the Alps and lay siege to Rome. Henry in 1084 got possession of the city and caused himself to be crowned emperor by the antipope. Gregory, who had taken refuge in the castle of San Angelo, was only saved by the approach of Robert Guiscard at the head of the Italian and Sicilian Normans. In Germany, during Henry's long absence in Italy, three rival kings of the Germans successively found support amongst the princes. But Henry managed to triumph over them all. Crossing the Alps for the third time, he in 1090 restored the fortunes of his friend, Clement III., took Mantua, and was rapidly subduing the Guelphic princes and their pope, Urban II., second successor to Gregory, who had died in 1085, when he learned that his son Conrad had joined his enemies and been crowned king at Monza. The wearied monarch, disheartened by this adverse blow, retired to one of his Lombard castles, and abandoned himself to despair. But at length rousing himself from his lethargy, he returned (1097) to Germany. His second son, Henry, was elected king of the Germans and heir to the empire. This prince, however, was induced to rise against his father by Pope Pascal II.; he took the emperor prisoner, and compelled him to abdicate. The emperor escaped from his prison, and found friends and safety at Liège, where he died, August 7, 1106. Henry deserved praise for the endurance and tenacity with which he struggled against the tremendous odds arrayed in opposition to him. That he was able to stand his ground at all, considering the magnitude of the task he took in hand—to break the overweening power of the great feudal nobles of Germany and to withstand papal aggressiveness incorporated in the person of a Gregory VII.—must be reckoned success of no mean character. See Floto, Heinrich IV. und sein Zeitalter (2 vols. 1855-57); Giesebrecht, Geschichte der Deutschen Kaiserzeit (vol. iii. 4th ed. 1876); and Minckwitz, Die Büsse Heinrichs des IVten (2d ed. 1875).