Henry IV became King of the Germans in 1056. From 1084 until his forced abdication in 1105, he was also referred to as the King of the Romans and Holy Roman Emperor.
Background
Henry IV was born on November 11, 1050, probably in Goslar, in the Saxony region of Germany, to King Henry III and Agnes of Poitou. Henry’s father, Henry III, had retained a firm hold on the church and had resolved a schism in Rome (1046), opening new activities for the reformers. At Easter 1051, the boy was baptized after the German princes had taken an oath of fidelity and obedience at Christmas 1050.
Education
The education and training of Henry were under the supervision of magister Anno. Despite the supervision, Henry IV was poorly educated during his childhood amidst the governmental tumult and was consumed by the desire to rule, bringing little wisdom to the throne at 15. His education seems to have been neglected and his ambitious nature developed under the conditions of his childhood years.
Career
In 1056 at Aachen, Henry IV was enthroned as the King of the Germans by Pope Victor II, while his mother, Agnes of Poitou, became regent.
Henry IV's real political independence did not begin until 1070. When he seized the reins of government, thanks to the energetic rule of Adalbert, the condition of the empire was no worse than at the death of Henry III. But, meantime, the papacy had been entirely emancipated from the imperial power, and the German Church, on which Otto the Great had built up his power, had become more closely united to Rome and ceased to be a constitutional state church. Consequently, though this did not appear immediately, the foundations of the Othonian system were undermined. Strong and energetic popes had appeared on the scene and found allies.
Henry attempted, initially, to reassert his father's old imperial rights throughout the empire and also to build up a new, strong imperial domain in Saxony. This led to serious uprisings in 1073 in which Saxons and southern German nobles combined against him. By 1075 he had suppressed these revolts, only to begin a quarrel with Pope Gregory VII over the imperial right to appoint or invest churchmen with their offices. Gregory and Church reformers claimed that neither rulers nor any other laymen could exercise this right - despite long precedent. Angry at Gregory's opposition to his appointing an archbishop of Milan, in 1076 Henry hastily summoned a council of German bishops who declared Pope Gregory deposed. Gregory answered by declaring Emperor Henry excommunicated and suspended from office. His adherents gradually fell away, the Saxons were again in arms, and Otto of Nordheim succeeded in uniting the malcontents of north and south Germany. In October 1076 an important diet met at Tribur, and after discussing the deposition of the king, decided that he should be judged by an assembly to be held at Augsburg. This union of the temporal and spiritual forces was too strong for the king, and he decided to submit.
Crossing the Alps, Henry appeared in January 1077 as a penitent before the castle of Canossa, where Gregory had taken refuge. The story of this famous occurrence, which represents the king as standing in the courtyard of the castle for three days in the snow, clad as a penitent, and entreating to be admitted to the pope’s presence, is now regarded as mythical in its details; but there is no doubt that the king visited the castle at intervals, and prayed for admission for three days until the 28th of January.
Scorned by his Lombard allies, Henry left Italy to find that in his absence Rudolph, duke of Swabia, had been chosen German king; and although Gregory had taken no part in this election, Henry sought to prevent the pope’s journey to Germany, and regaining courage, tried to recover his former position. Supported by most of the German bishops and by the Lombards, now reconciled to him, and recognized in Burgundy, Bavaria and Franconia, Henry appeared stronger than his rival Rudolph; but the ensuing war was waged with varying success. He was beaten at Mellrichstadt in 1078, and at Flarchheim in 1080, but these defeats were due rather to the fierce hostility of the Saxons, and the military skill of Otto of Nordheim, than to any general sympathy with Rudolph. Gregory’s attitude remained neutral, in spite of appeals from both sides, until March 1080, when he again excommunicated Henry, but without any serious effect on the fortunes of the king. At Henry’s initiative, Gregory was declared deposed on three occasions, and an anti-pope was elected in the person of Wibert, archbishop of Ravenna, who took the name of Clement III.
The death of Rudolph in October 1080, and a consequent lull in the war, enabled the king to go to Italy early in 1081. He found considerable support in Lombardy; placed Matilda, marchioness of Tuscany, the faithful friend of Gregory, under the imperial ban; took the Lombard crown at Pavia; and secured the recognition of Clement by a council. Marching to Rome, he undertook the siege of the city, but was soon compelled to retire to Tuscany, where he granted privileges to various cities, and obtained monetary assistance from a new ally, the eastern emperor, Alexius I.
A second and equally unsuccessful attack on Rome was followed by a war of devastation in northern Italy with the adherents of Matilda; and towards the end of 1082 the king made a third attack on Rome. After a siege of seven months the Leonine city fell into his hands. A treaty was concluded with the Romans, who agreed that the quarrel between king and pope should be decided by a synod, and secretly bound themselves to induce Gregory to crown Henry as emperor, or to choose another pope. Gregory, however, shut up in the castle of St Angelo, would hear of no compromise; the synod was a failure, as Henry prevented the attendance of many of the pope’s supporters; and the king, in pursuance of his treaty with Alexius, marched against the Normans. The Romans soon fell away from their allegiance to the pope; and, recalled to the city, Henry entered Rome in March 1084, after which Gregory was declared deposed and Clement was recognized by the Romans. On the 31st of March 1084 Henry was crowned emperor by Clement, and received the patrician authority. His next step was to attack the fortresses still in the hands of Gregory. The pope was saved by the advance of Robert Guiscard, duke of Apulia, with a large force, which compelled Henry to return to Germany.
Meanwhile the German rebels had chosen a fresh anti-king, Hermann, count of Luxemburg, whom Henry’s supporters had already driven to his last line of defence in Saxony. During the campaign of 1086 Henry was defeated near Würzburg, but in 1088 Hermann abandoned the struggle and the emperor was generally recognized in Saxony, to which country he showed considerable clemency.
Although Henry’s power was in the ascendent, a few powerful nobles adhered to the cause of Gregory’s successor, Urban II. Among them was Welf, son of Welf I, the deposed duke of Bavaria, whose marriage with Matilda of Tuscany rendered him too formidable to be neglected. The emperor accordingly returned to Italy in 1090, where Mantua and Milan were taken, and Pope Clement was restored to Rome. Henry’s communications with Germany were, however, threatened by a league of the Lombard cities, and his anxieties were soon augmented by domestic troubles.
In 1089 he had married to Adelaide. Her conduct soon aroused his suspicions, and his own eldest son, Conrad, who had been crowned German king in 1087, was thought to be a partner in her guilt.
Escaping from prison, Adelaide fled to Henry’s enemies and brought grave charges against her husband; while the papal party induced Conrad to desert his father and to be crowned king of Italy at Monza in 1093. Crushed by this blow, Henry remained almost helpless and inactive in northern Italy for five years, until 1097, when having lost every shred of authority in that country, he returned to Germany, where his position was stronger than ever. Welf had submitted, had forsaken the cause of Matilda and had been restored to Bavaria, and in 1098 the diet assembled at Mainz declared Conrad deposed, and chose the emperor’s second son, Henry, afterwards the emperor Henry V, as German king.
The crusade of 1096 had freed Germany from many turbulent spirits, and the emperor, meeting with some success in his efforts to restore order, could afford to ignore his repeated excommunication. A successful campaign in Flanders was followed in 1103 by a diet at Mainz, where serious efforts were made to restore peace, and Henry himself promised to go on crusade. But this plan was shattered by the revolt of the younger Henry in 1104, who, encouraged by the adherents of the pope, declared he owed no allegiance to an excommunicated father. Saxony and Thuringia were soon in arms, the bishops held mainly to the younger Henry, while the emperor was supported by the towns. A desultory warfare was unfavourable, however, to the emperor, who, deceived by false promises, became a prisoner in the hands of his son in 1105.
The diet met at Mainz in December, when he was compelled to abdicate; but contrary to the conditions, he was detained at Ingelheim and denied his freedom. Escaping to Cologne, he found considerable support in the lower Rhineland; he entered into negotiations with England, France and Denmark, and was engaged in collecting an army when he died at Liége on the 7th of August 1106. His body was buried by the bishop of Liége with suitable ceremony, but by command of the papal legate it was unearthed, taken to Speyeres, and placed in an unconsecrated chapel. After being released from the sentence of excommunication the remains were buried in the cathedral of Speyeres in August 1111.