Since Church offices were not hereditary, this made them a most useful and dependable counterweight to the secular nobles, who often were unreliable and had heirs as well. While Otto was busy in Germany, however, he did not ignore his neighbors. He intervened in the struggle between the French Capetians and Carolingians and thus assured himself of their acceptance of his absorption of Lorraine into the empire.
He kept control over Hedeby in Denmark and over the archbishoprics of that kingdom. He encouraged churchmen and his Saxon subordinates Gero and Herman Billung to begin the conquest of the Slavs beyond the Elbe River, and he forced the Duke of Bohemia to do him homage. It was as master of much of northern Europe that Otto invaded Italy in He and the Pope later quarreled, and Otto with some difficulty replaced him with another candidate, whom he forced upon the clergy and nobles of Rome.
Otto's last years were largely spent in Italy, where he tried unsuccessfully to absorb Venice and southern Italy, which were controlled by Byzantium. Before his death, however, Otto was able to secure Byzantine recognition of his imperial title and a Byzantine princess as a bride for his son Otto II. Imperial and directly held Hohenstaufen land in the empire is shown in bright yellow.
This map shows the patchwork of relatively autonomous principalities that made up the Holy Roman Empire. The shift in power away from the emperor is revealed in the way the post-Hohenstaufen kings attempted to sustain their power. The Reichsgut was increasingly pawned to local dukes, sometimes to raise money for the empire, but more frequently to reward faithful duty or as an attempt to establish control over the dukes. The direct governance of the Reichsgut no longer matched the needs of either the king or the dukes.
Although some procedures and institutions had been fixed, for example by the Golden Bull of , the rules of how the king, the electors, and the other dukes should cooperate in the empire much depended on the personality of the respective king.
It therefore proved somewhat damaging that Sigismund of Luxemburg king , emperor — and Frederick III of Habsburg king , emperor — neglected the old core lands of the empire and mostly resided in their own lands. The Imperial Diet as a legislative organ of the empire did not exist at that time. The dukes often conducted feuds against each other—feuds that, more often than not, escalated into local wars. The medieval idea of unifying all Christendom into a single political entity, with the church and the empire as its leading institutions, began to decline.
The Imperial Diet Reichstag was the legislative body of the Holy Roman Empire and theoretically superior to the emperor himself. It was divided into three classes. The first class, the Council of Electors, consisted of the electors, or the princes who could vote for King of the Romans. Each college had one vote. The precise role and function of the Imperial Diet changed over the centuries, as did the empire itself, in that the estates and separate territories gained more and more control of their own affairs at the expense of imperial power.
A prospective emperor first had to be elected King of the Romans by the prince-electors, the highest office of the Imperial Diet.
German kings had been elected since the 9th century; at that point they were chosen by the leaders of the five most important tribes the Salian Franks of Lorraine, Ripuarian Franks of Franconia, Saxons, Bavarians, and Swabians.
A candidate for election would be expected to offer concessions of land or money to the electors in order to secure their vote. In many cases, this took several years while the king was held up by other tasks; frequently he first had to resolve conflicts in rebellious northern Italy, or was quarreling with the pope himself. The number of territories in the empire was considerable, rising to about at the time of the Peace of Westphalia.
An entity was considered a Reichsstand imperial estate if, according to feudal law, it had no authority above it except the Holy Roman Emperor himself. The imperial estates comprised:. The Investiture Controversy, on the surface a conflict about the appointments of religious offices, was a powerful struggle for control over who held ultimate authority, the Holy Roman Emperor or the pope.
The Investiture Controversy was the most significant conflict between church and state in medieval Europe, specifically the Holy Roman Empire. In the 11th and 12th centuries, a series of popes challenged the authority of European monarchies. At issue was who, the pope or monarchs, had the authority to appoint invest local church officials such as bishops of cities and abbots of monasteries.
It differentiated between the royal and spiritual powers and gave the emperors a limited role in selecting bishops. However, the emperor did retain considerable power over the church. A brief but significant struggle over investiture also occurred between Henry I of England and Pope Paschal II in the years —, and the issue also played a minor role in the struggles between church and state in France.
By undercutting the imperial power established by previous emperors, the controversy led to nearly fifty years of civil war in Germany, and the triumph of the great dukes and abbots. Imperial power was finally re-established under the Hohenstaufen dynasty. Historian Norman Cantor writes of its significance:. The age of the investiture controversy may rightly be regarded as the turning-point in medieval civilization. It was the fulfillment of the early Middle Ages because in it the acceptance of the Christian religion by the Germanic peoples reached its final and decisive stage…The greater part of the religious and political system of the high Middle Ages emerged out of the events and ideas of the investiture controversy.
Investiture: A woodcut by Philip Van Ness , A medieval king investing a bishop with the symbols of office. After the decline of the Roman Empire and prior to the Investiture Controversy, investiture, while theoretically a task of the church, was in practice performed by members of the religious nobility.
Many bishops and abbots were themselves part of the ruling nobility. Since an eldest son would inherit the title of the father, siblings often found careers in the church. This was particularly true where the family may have established a proprietary church or abbey on their estate. Since Otto I the bishops had been princes of the empire, had secured many privileges, and had become to a great extent feudal lords over great districts of the imperial territory.
The control of these great units of economic and military power was for the king a question of primary importance, as it affected the imperial authority. It was essential for a ruler or nobleman to appoint or sell the office to someone who would remain loyal. Since a substantial amount of wealth and land was usually associated with the office of a bishop or abbot, the sale of church offices a practice known as simony was an important source of income for leaders among the nobility, who themselves owned the land and by charity allowed the building of churches.
Otto returned to Rome in and had Pope John deposed by an obedient synod of bishops that he summoned for the purpose. Otto intervened in Rome again the following year when a rebellion broke out against Pope Leo and an alternative pope was chosen. The emperor put a stop to that state of affairs and when Leo died in he returned to Rome yet again to place another candidate of his choosing on the papal throne as Pope John XIII.
When there was a revolt against him in turn, Otto suppressed it. Otto went on to interfere in the territory of the eastern Roman Empire in southern Italy to such effect that in the Byzantines concluded a treaty with him in which they formally recognised his own imperial title. They also bestowed a Byzantine princess, Theophano, on him as bride for his son and heir, another Otto.
The word Holy was not used for another two centuries, but Otto the Great has been recognised by historians as in effect the first of the Holy Roman Emperors and the most powerful European ruler of his time.
He died in and was succeeded by his only son as Otto II. The fact that Otto II had no surviving brothers as rivals was a considerable advantage and the Ottonian line of emperors continued until The name was not finally dropped until , a thousand years after Charlemagne.
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