Holy Roman Empire II: History 2
4. The reign of the Hohenstaufen family
In 1125, with the death of Henry V and the end of the Salian rule, the dukes chose not to be king by blood relatives of the king, but to choose Lothair II, an influential Duke of Saxony. When he died in 1138, the dukes once again chose a more influential family. So they did not choose Lorder's preferred heir and son-in-law, The Bavarian and Saxony Duke Henry the Proud of the Welf family, but instead chose Conrad III, Duke of Swabia of hohenstaufen, a close relative of the Salians. This sparked a conflict between the two families for more than a century, almost throughout the Hohenstaufen dynasty, so that after the Pope became the leader of the anti-emperor faction, the anti-emperor faction was still called the "Guilfites" (the Italian spelling "Welfites"). Conrad stripped the Welf family of their property, but after his death in 1152, his nephew Frederick I the Red-bearded succeeded to the throne and shook hands with the Welf family, returning the property of his cousin, Henry the Lion, the son of Henry the Proud, albeit in smaller quantities than in the past.
The rulers of the Hohenstaufen increasingly lent land to their vassals (ministerialia), and Frederick hoped that they would be more reliable than the dukes. This new class was originally primarily in the service of war, and the precursor to their later knightly class was the foundation of imperial power. Another essential change in the Empire during the reign of the Hohenstaufen was the establishment of a new order for the entire Empire in Longcaglia. This was partly to abolish the private fiefdoms of many dukes, and on the other hand, to subordinate the emperor's courtiers to a legitimate system of justice and public prosecution, which was the precursor to the modern idea of the "rule of law". Another new idea was the creation of a new urban system – done by the emperor and the local dukes. This idea was formed in part due to the rapid increase in population, but also to focus economic development on key areas, which in the past only formed the foundations or bishoprics of ancient Rome. Some cities, including Freiburg im Breisgau, were founded in the 12th century and became, to some extent, a template for the economic development of many later cities, such as Munich.
Another important move taken by Frederick during his reign was to try to further establish "imperial power" through legislation. When Frederick was crowned emperor in 1155, he emphasized the "Romanness" of the empire, in part to justify the independence of the (strengthened) imperial power from the ecclesiastical power. Frederick then reaffirmed the rights of the emperor at the Imperial Congress of Longcarria in 1158 in accordance with the Compendium of Civil Codes of the Eastern Roman Empire. The struggle for imperial autonomy has been regarded only as a synonym for Germanic feudal monarchy (Regnum), but for the first time in Longcaglia it was established in the form of statute law as a "natural universal power", a broad range of powers that included road building, customs duties, coinage, punitive fees, and the appointment and removal of public officials, which could clearly find their roots in Roman law. This move was of great significance, as it led to further confrontation between the emperor and the princes and the pope, and laid the groundwork for the later era of great vacancies.
Frederick's policies were primarily directed against Italy, where he clashed with a number of increasingly wealthy and independent cities, notably Milan. He was also embroiled in a conflict with the Holy See for supporting a minority candidate against Pope Alexander III. Frederick supported a series of opposing popes before shaking hands with the Pope in 1177. In Germany, the emperor repeatedly protected Henry the Lion (especially Munich and Lübeck) in front of rivals such as principalities and cities. However, Henry's support for Frederick's policies was not too strong, and when the Italian War entered a critical moment, Henry refused the emperor's request for military support. When Frederick returned to Germany, he was furious that he sued Henry, confiscating all of Henry's possessions except Brunswick-Lüneburg and transferring his titles of Duke of Saxony and Duke of Bavaria to Bernhard of Askany and Duke of Wittelsbach, respectively.
During the reign of the Hohenstaufen family, the German principalities successfully and peacefully facilitated the process of settling into the eastern lands, previously settled by the West Slavs or none of them, relying on the ingenious peasants, merchants, and craftsmen (both Christians and Jews) in the western part of the empire. The gradual Germanization of these lands is a complex phenomenon that could not be rationally explained until racial prejudice emerged in the 19th century. With the eastward expansion of settlements and the intermarriage between local Slavic rulers and Germanic peoples, the influence of the empire continued to rise, eventually reaching Pomerania and Silesia. Meanwhile, the Teutonic Knights were invited to Prussia in 1226 by Duke Konrad of Masovia to promote the Christianization of the Prussians, although the Teutonic Knights and their Germanic successor, the Kingdom of Prussia, were never part of the Holy Roman Empire, although later the Prussian kings continued to participate in imperial politics as Lords of Brandenburg.
In 1190, Frederick the Red-bearded took part in the Third Crusade and died in Asia Minor. During the reign of his son and heir, Henry VI, the Reign of the Hohenstaufen family reached its peak. Henry brought the Norman kingdom of Sicily under his rule by marriage, captured king of England, The Lion, and attempted to establish a hereditary monarchy before his death in 1197. After his death, his son Frederick, although he had been elected king, was only a child living in Sicily, and the German principalities decided to choose another adult king, so philip of Swabia, the youngest son of Frederick the "red beard", and Otto of Brunswick, the son of Henry the Lion, competed for the throne.
In 1208, Philip was murdered in a quarrel, and Otto of the Welf family won a brief victory until he also began to proclaim the throne of Sicily. Fearing a threat from the Empire and Sicily, Pope Enoson III supported his godson, Frederick, King of Sicily, the son of Henry VI, who had been excluded from the throne 10 years earlier, to march into Germany and defeat Otto. Although Frederick passed the Sicilian throne to his son Henry before his expedition to Germany, after his victory Frederick did not fulfill his promise to keep the two countries separate, retaining his de facto control of Sicily.
This continued until Frederick was crowned emperor in 1220. Fearing Frederick's centralized power, the Pope eventually excommunicated him. Frederick, on the other hand, had promised to launch a crusade, but repeatedly postponed it. Despite his excommunication, Frederick led the Crusades in 1228, which ended in a series of negotiations and briefly restored the kingdom of Jerusalem. Frederick regained his canon with the victory of the Crusade and the excellent counterattacks in Sicily, but was still unable to prevent the conflict between the Emperor and the Pope from intensifying, and as a result, frederick trusted Germanic co-king, the eldest son Henry, with the support of the Pope, launched a rebellion against his father in 1234, and after Frederick's death in 1247, the German states, with the support of the Pope, elected a rival king, William II of Holland.
In addition to his imperial demands, Frederick's reign was a turning point in the collapse of the empire's centralization. When he focused on establishing Sicily as a modern centralized state, he was absent from Germany for most of the time and gave the German princes extensive privileges: in the Contract of the Holy Princes (Latin: Confoederatio principibus ecclesiasticis) in 1220, Frederick delegated a lot of power to the bishops, such as customs duties, coinage, and fortification. In the Statutum in favorem principum of 1232, most of these privileges were distributed to the secular regions. Although many of these privileges already existed beforehand, they are now granted broadly and once at once. The Act of SecularIty of 1232 referred for the first time to the German princes As Domini Terr, the masters of their domains, an extraordinary advance in political terminology. In addition, in response to the only substantial kingdom in the empire, the Kingdom of Bohemia, an important regional power, Frederick issued the Edict of the Golden Seal of Sicily in 1212, recognizing the royal titles of King Przemysl Ottoka I (who had used the title of king since 1198) and his descendants, and promoting the Duchy of Bohemia to a kingdom in return for Ottoka's support for his becoming emperor, and the king of Bohemia was henceforth exempted from all obligations other than to participate in the imperial council. Frederick hoped that through such a wide grant of privileges, the German princes would be co-opted so that they could help him maintain order north of the Alps while he was concentrating on Italian affairs. In fact, such policies had at least some success during Frederick's reign: at the time of Henry's rebellion in 1234, the German princes who had been blocking the emperor during the Redbeard period were firmly on the side of the emperor this time, and the rebellion was put down within half a year.
During the early Three Dynasties of the Holy Roman Empire, the emperor's power and prestige in Germany gradually declined, and he was reduced to a small lord who was no different from the general German princes after Frederick II adopted a policy of emphasizing Italy over Germany. With the death of Frederick II, the potential dangers posed by previous policy preferences and the bankruptcy of relations with the Holy See erupted in one fell swoop due to the lack of a capable emperor. After the era of the Great Vacancy, between the 12th and 13th centuries, the emperor could only rely on a small amount of family power to obtain the throne and the throne by political means and marriages, lacked a strong royal territory as a source of taxation and the basis for the expansion of royal power, and the only thing that the emperor could nominally collect from the members of the empire was a fixed military tax, and this loose form of political confederation was completely destroyed in the Thirty Years' War.
5. Emperor
Ever since Otto I (the first emperor of the Otto family) was crowned by the Pope, every king of the Roman people has wanted to receive the title of Emperor. But the empire founded by Otto I derived its emperor title from the title of "Emperor of Western Rome" conferred by the Pope, who gained legitimacy as "Emperor of Rome" by conquering Italy. The so-called electors of the Empire were directly elected as "kings of the Romans", not emperors. Thus, not every German ruler could become emperor, and only a strong man who marched into Italy and was crowned by the Pope could receive this honor.
The territory of the Holy Roman Empire, under the continuous incorporation and union of Otto I and his descendants, stretched from the Germanic plains north to the Baltic Sea, east to present-day Part Poland, and south to present-day Switzerland, Bohemia, Austria, and northern Italy. From the very beginning, the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire faced the same dilemma of how to maintain control over two different regions, Germany and Italy, because the two places were separated by the Alps and were not easy to integrate.
The success of the Holy Roman Empire was largely due to the two main members of The Germania and Italy. The Germanic peoples did not eliminate much barbaric character. They were conquered by Charlemagne very early. The Empire also profited greatly from Italy's culture, technology, and trade. The Italians gladly accepted the peace and stability ensured by the Empire, for they had been invaded five hundred years earlier. The protection provided by the Empire defended the Holy See and allowed the Italian city-state to begin to develop.
The Emperor's army was held by tenants of the Church lands, who were obliged to serve the Emperor, and these soldiers were the majority of the Emperor's army before the Emperor broke with the Church and lost his authority. The second important unit was a corps of manor serfs, some of whom would become knights after receiving the best training and equipment, but not free men. The third freedmen, military households, peasants, and knights of the lands given to them by the Empire were also obliged to obey the call. All the forces of the outer empire were theoretically commanded by the emperor, and the principalities offered military service at the request of the emperor. These armies were used to suppress rebellions or political strife involving nobles and peasants in the empire, and had to resist invasions by vikings from the north and Mazars from the east.
In the Otto and Salian dynasties, the emperor still had de facto power, and the guidance of the imperial army gave the emperor the power to control the members of the empire.
However, the confrontation between the Emperor and the Pope indirectly shaped the future destiny of Germania. The confrontation was about the emperor's granting of bishoprics and the appointment of clergy in other churches in Germanic territory. Pope Gregorian VII opposed this measure, which led to the sale of positions among the clergy of the church as a major source of corruption. Clergy positions often fall into the hands of the highest bidders. In a long period of competition between several popes and emperors, the pope won the right to choose bishops. During this dispute, the Empire broke out into a civil war in Germania.
Weakened the emperors' dominion in Germania and Italy. By the time the Emperor was temporarily expelled from the Church and placed in the war against Rome, the Imperial regime had lost its effectiveness. Without the intervention or help of the emperor, the local Germanic princes united their forces and fought against the Vikings. In Italy, the rising city-states united to form the Lombard League and refused to recognize the status of Holy Roman Emperor.
Therefore, as the centrifugal tendencies of the German princes intensified, the status of the emperor continued to decline. After charles IV of the Luxembourg family issued the Golden Seal (Golden Edict) in 1356, the emperor was actually elected by the seven electors in the kingdom, who were the oldest and most powerful of the three ecclesiastical princes: the Archbishop of Mainz, the Archbishop of Cologne, and the Archbishop of Trier; the four secular lords: the King of Bohemia, the Count of Rhine-Palatinate, the Duke of Saxony-Wittenberg, and the Marquis of Brandenburg, who themselves represented the members of the Empire and no longer considered the emperor and the Empire to have practical value.
In Germania and Italy, from the emperor to the local princes and cities. The Emperor's army rebelled, occupying the cities and castles garrisoned by them and declaring these places liberated. In order to retake Italy, the emperor at that time made many concessions to the princes of the Germanic region. By the mid-thirteenth century, the Holy Roman Empire was extinct in name only, and the throne had been vacant for twenty years. The Germanic princes cared only with what they kept. The Italian city-states did not accept Germanic rulers, and they were strong enough to defend themselves.
Emperors in the Middle Ages were elected by Germanic princes, but with no name in vain, their control over the place was far less than their control of their own family estates. For centuries, Germania could only be regarded as a small force in Europe.
In the 16th century, the Habsburgs attempted to regain imperial power, but this was abandoned by the combined opposition of European countries and German princes.