HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 



at Salerno, where he died (1085). The remainder 

 of Henry's life was imbittered by the rebellions of 

 his sons, at the head of the partisans of the suc- 

 cessors of Gregory. At last, his second son, 

 Henry, defeated his father, stripped him of his 

 robes, and turned the aged monarch adrift on the 

 world. He was refused admission into a church 

 built by himself, and died a beggar at Liege (i 106), 

 where his body lay for long in a cellar, no one 

 daring to bury an excommunicated man. 



The peace of the empire continued to be dis- 

 tracted by the controversy between popes and 

 emperors about the right of investiture. The 

 papal party in Germany were headed by the Duke 

 of Bavaria, the opposing nobles by Conrad of 

 Hohenstaufen. After a great battle fought in 

 1140, the house of Hohenstaufen secured the 

 imperial crown. It is from this battle that the 

 lames of Guelphs and Ghibellines, so famous in 

 Europe during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, 

 ire said to have taken their rise. The war-cry of 

 the army opposed to Conrad on this occasion was 

 * Welf ' or ' Guelph,' the name of their leader, and 

 the family name of the house of Bavaria ; that of 

 Conrad's army was ' Waiblingen,' the name of a 

 small town in Franconia from which the Fran- 

 conian dukes traced their origin. Hence, ever 

 afterwards these names were used to distinguish 

 the two great parties into which the inhabitants of 

 Germany and of Italy were divided a partisan of 

 the popes against the emperors being called a 

 Guelph, and a partisan of the emperors against 

 the popes, a Ghibelline. 



The most prominent figures in the remaining 

 history of the struggle are Frederick I. of Hohen- 

 staufen better known as Barbarossa (' Redbeard') 

 Pope Innocent III., and Frederick II. Bar- 

 barossa was an emperor of extraordinary energy 

 and ability, and devoted himself to the re-establish- 

 ment of the imperial supremacy in Italy, where he 

 subjugated the most of the Lombard towns, which 

 had become almost independent republics. At 

 the invitation of Pope Adrian IV. he marched to 

 Rome, and put down an insurrection that had 

 arisen against the papal rule ; on this occasion, 

 the emperor held the pope's stirrup, and the pope 

 in return placed the imperial crown on the head 

 of the emperor. But the feud again broke out ; 

 "ic emperor appointed anti-popes, and the real 

 >opes and their partisans enabled the Lombard 

 :ities to assert the right of self-government. 



On the death of Henry VI. son of Barbarossa 

 '1197), there were two claimants for the imperial 

 crown, and the struggle between them is chiefly 

 interesting as having been contemporary with the 

 papacy of Innocent III. (1198-1216), the greatest 

 pontiff, after Gregory VII. that ever sat on the 

 papal throne. No pontiff carried his prerogative 

 higher than Innocent III. He affirmed even 

 more explicitly than Gregory VII. had done the 

 maxim, that 'the pope, as the successor of St 

 Peter, was set up by God to govern, not only the 

 church, but the whole world.' He was the first 

 also to promulgate the doctrine, that the popes 

 have a plenary power, enabling them to dispense 

 with established laws, and to overrule them. Nor 

 did he confine his views to theory. He issued 

 decrees, and sent legates to all parts of Christen- 

 dom ; he summoned lords and bishops to Rome, 

 to answer for their conduct; he compelled the 

 kings of France and Leon to put away their wives ; 



and the kings of Portugal, Aragon, and England 

 paid him tribute as vassals. 



The reign of Frederick II. (1215-1250) was the 

 dying struggle between the empire and the church. 

 Frederick was a man of strong character and of 

 considerable culture, but the partisans of the 

 papacy have represented him in a dark light 

 Frederick's exertions, continued over a period of 

 thirty-five years, were all in vain. In the complex 

 wars in which he was engaged in Italy wars 

 in which the Sicilians, the Lombards, and the 

 popes had all a share he often gained great suc- 

 cesses, but always suffered in the end a greater loss. 

 Ever in the midst of the turmoil, the popes were 

 present to watch the progress of the conflict, and to 

 interpose with their excommunications. Frederick 

 was excommunicated so often, that he became 

 accustomed to it ; and very probably the scepticism 

 of which he was accused arose from the necessity 

 thus imposed upon him of going through life as 

 an outcast from the church. But the sentence of 

 excommunication, though it did not terrify Fred- 

 erick himself, never lost its power over the majority 

 of his subjects. Even the Ghibelline cities and 

 houses wavered in their allegiance, and his own 

 son rebelled against him. When he died (1250), 

 the struggle may be considered to have ended. 



Italy had in like manner by the end of the 

 thirteenth century become studded over with a 

 multitude of independent city-republics, divided 

 between the Guelph and Ghibelline interests, and 

 in continual hostilities with one another. Two of 

 these republics were the great maritime powers in 

 Europe. Venice, whose constitution was rather a 

 permanent oligarchy than a republic, conquered 

 the coast of Dalmatia, and the islands of Corfu, 

 Cephalonia, and Crete, and was the acknowledged 

 sovereign of the Adriatic. Genoa, the commercial 

 rival of Venice, had possession of several islands 

 and ports in the Grecian Archipelago and the 

 Black Sea, as well as numerous commercial sta- 

 tions in the Mediterranean. In Central Italy, the 

 temporal sovereignty of the popes had been defi- 

 nitely established over ' the Patrimony of St Peter,' 

 by Innocent III. (1198-1216). The kingdom of 

 Naples and Sicily, which had passed by marriage 

 to the German emperors of the Hohenstaufen line, 

 was wrested from them, at the instigation of the 

 pope, by Charles of Anjou (1265), who brought 

 with him a great retinue of Frenchmen. But the 

 insurrection known as the Sicilian Vespers, in 

 which 8000 French were massacred, deprived 

 Charles of Sicily, which was taken possession of 

 by the king of Aragon. 



In France, as elsewhere at this period, the chief 

 subject of interest was the struggle carried oil 

 between the kings and their great vassals. During 

 the reigns of the earlier monarchs of the line of 

 Hugh Capet, France was in reality a cluster of 

 independent sovereignties. Philip- Augustus (i 180- 

 1223), the seventh of that dynasty, was the first 

 that curbed the power of the nobles, and became 

 to some extent the head of the French nation. In 

 the reign of his successor occurred the final per- 

 secution of the Albigenses in the south of France 

 a sect who, among other heretical opinions, dis- 

 owned the supremacy of the pope. Louis IX. 

 (1226-1270) was one of the most exemplary and 

 conscientious monarchs that ever reigned. Under 

 his wise government, the royal prerogative gained 

 strength. 



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