18) The State of the Kingdom in 1122

The 5 decades of civil war that erupted in the 1070's were perhaps the most destructive internal conflict Germany underwent in the middle ages. The Salian cause was thrown into disarray again in 1114/15 after having been rebuilt in the 1080's and 1090's. At the end of 1114, the Saxons rebelled again and inflicted a devastating defeat onto Henry V's army. But Henry's cause was weakened above all by his attempt to remove Adalbert, archbishop of Mainz. Henry justified the imprisonment of Adalbert by a general letter to his magnates accusing the archbishop of enriching himself at his own expense. But, Henry was forced to release Adalbert again after 3 years when Mainz rebelled. On his release, Adalbert joined the effort with Lothar of Supplinburg, the Saxons, and the archbishop of Cologne, Frederick I, against Henry V. It was this powerful coalition that forced Henry to come to terms with the pope in 1121.

When Henry finally died without leaving a son, the coalition worked to ensure the Salian dynasty was removed from the throne. The Salians wanted Henry's nephew to become king, Duke Frederick II of Suabia. But the archbishops rigged the election. Adalbert pursuaded the aristocracy to delegate the right of election to a college of 40 electors, 10 drawn from each of the peoples that made up the kingdom (Lotharingians and Franconians being treated as a single people). This college went on to choose Duke Lothar, who succeeded to the throne as King Lothar III. A branch of the Salians regained the throne in 1138, when Frederick's younger brother, Conrad, Duke of Franconia, was elected as king.

The crisis greatly accelerated and completed the eclipse of the 5 great 'Stem-Duchies' as the basic units for the organisation of the kingdom. These units had been in the basis of the organisation of the kingdom in the 10th century. Presiding over each were the dukes who were public figures and officials over their duchies.

In the first half of the 11th century, the role of the dukes as public officials was gradually hollowed out by the rise of ‘seigneurial’ forms of lordship which removed significant units of land and people from the jurisdiction of royal agents, like the counts and dukes. Lords were using castles and their own retainers to protect their lands and their people. They were accumulating the various types of jurisdiction that pertained to their lands, and strengthening their hold of the labour services of the peasantry.

There was a rise in the new style of lordship in the 11th century, the keenness of which can be seen in the magnates in the ecclesiastical sphere, as various chroniclers and clerics wrote at length about the suffering the trend imposed on the clergy.

The wars of c.1073-1122 completely eclipsed the stem duchies, and this can be seen in comparing the ways the war was fought in the 1070s and 1110s. There were also not enough free men to replenish the armies anymore. At the Battle of the Homburg in June 1075, both armies were organised along quasi-ethnic lines, but in the 1110s, the armies were organised almost entirely along feudal lines. Part of the explanation for this is that ducal armies were very quickly depleted, but the main factor was the way aristocratic communities that ruled each duchy disintegrated in the late 1070s and 80s.

The trend is most obvious in Suabia, which was soon sub-divided among the 3 great noble houses who owned the most land in the duchy: the Staufen, the Welfs, and the Zähringen. None of these dukes could claim to represent the Suabians as a whole, so their power rested on their own private resources.

The process took longer in some regions, most notably Saxony, but the older sense of ethnic identity remained as strong as ever. But, the war did greatly accelerate the rise of the territorial principality to the point where it became the basic unit for the organisation of power. By the end of the 1110s, the empire was set on the road to fragmentation that would produce a myriad array of semi-independent principalities.

But, it's hard to show that this transformation substantially altered the way the kingdom was run. Local lords had long made law in the principalities, and their men had long been the mainstay of the king's army.

It was only during the 13th and 14th centuries that the German identity came to be, the older identities persisted until then. During this period, it was the way that power worked that was changed, not the actual common identity of the kingdom.

It's sometimes argued that the main effects of the Investiture Contest was that it forced kings to re-invent the ideological foundations of their claims to authority. Pope Gregory VII and his supporters made savage attacks on the idea that kings had a God-given mandate to rule. The Salians' spokesmen tried to find alternative justifications for their authority that excluded the idea that it was dependent on papal grant or affirmation. For example, they tried to use hereditary right instead of saying it was within the pope's power to gift it. They used Roman law to show it was their right to hold the imperial title.

Similar tendencies were used in the language used by the Salians' enemies among the magnates. In attempts to force the king to behave in ways that suited them, the leading aristocrats resorted to quasi-secular ideas about their own role in the government of the kingdom. But there is little sign that the 12th century kings were willing to give up the sacred aura that had been associated with their office. Kings never resumed investing bishops and abbots with the staff and the ring, but giving the sceptre soon acquired a quasi-spiritual aspect.

The kings continued to itinerate around their kingdoms in accordance with the ecclesiastical calendar so they could take part in the religious festivals associated with its churches. They seemed as keen as ever to take part in religious ceremonies. Their reigns were still being inaugurated with elaborate coronations, and they continued to wear the Reichskrone and other sacred regalia at the great Christian festivals.

The explanation for the persistance of these ideas lies in the demands and the expectations that defined kingship from below. The notion that success and failure were functions of divine approval was so deep-rooted that it was difficult for people to understand how kings enjoyed their power if it was not by the grace of God. The aristocracy and middle ranks of German society wanted a political culture governed by Christian values, where a Christian sense of duty restrained and governed the conduct of kings.

The people wanted moral leaders with Christian values which seemed to point towards elections rather than hereditary kings.

The political discourse may have shifted, but the changes were slight, and the political culture of the kingdom remained essentially the same. Informal negotiation and compromise among an inner circle of magnates and bishops remained the norm. It was bishops and princes who demolished the settlement of 1111, and it was they who forced the king to come to terms with the papacy in 1122. But as soon as peace had been restored, competition amongst them resumed as before.

The main achievement was to rob the crown of the lead the Salians had held over the aristocracy in the development of private material resources. None of the Salians' successors would enjoy the same material advantages the leading princes like Conrad II and Henry III had enjoyed.

There seemed to be some attempts to introduce Roman principles, but these seemed to have little effect. After 1122, elections were used rather than anointing for creating new kings, but there were only around 100 magnates who had the power to take part in these elections.