Yet there was a second achievement. Down in the South he had married off his son to a Byzantine princess. The consequences were significant.
For after the death of Otto the Great, the Roman–German drama quickly rose to heights of tragedy. Upon both son and grandson Otto’s fantastic heritage weighed heavily, and they were crushed by it. Both of these successors were impelled by the idea of world dominion, particularly since they both had foreign mothers who used them to advance their interests. To this romantic dream they both sacrificed the blood of their nobles, their honor, the natural demands of their country, their own personal talents, indeed their very lives. Both languished and died in the neighborhood of Rome while still young. Otto II is the only German emperor who is entombed in the crypt of St. Peter’s, an everlasting symbol of a great German yearning. A thousand German hearts are buried with him.
The dream of world dominion, blending with the universal German southward urge, endangered the young German nation at home and abroad. The great symbol was in the hands of the Pope; and by making political capital of the romantic yearnings of the Germans, the Pope was able to gain a dominant influence over them as a whole—an influence greater than any he exerted upon other nations, including even the Italians. Thus it was in Germany, which was exposed to the strongest pressure, that the protest and opposition existing throughout Christendom against the increasing secularization of the Church mounted to its highest pitch. Nevertheless it took five centuries before this criticism of the Church grew into the revolutionary popular movement of Luther.
The dualism, created from the blending of faith and ambition, led to a fanciful and paradoxical formulation of German power unmatched in any royal title throughout history. The German kings henceforth for more than eight hundred years called themselves “Roman Emperors of the German Nation.”
What, then, was the Pope in Rome? Obviously he too was the successor of the Roman emperors, but of the Roman rather than the German nation. How could he tolerate another prince’s pre-empting this honor? Why had no Frenchman or Englishman ever conceived the thought of becoming Roman Emperor of his nation? True, the Pope needed a secular patron. That he found him in Germany is explained by the fact that the Germans both threatened and flattered him. The dream of world dominion made them desire the Roman crown, and the Pope exchanged his lifetime investment for immense advantages not offered him by any people less visionary.
This was shown by the struggles of the next German dynasty of emperors, the Franks, who succeeded the Ottonians. They reached their pinnacle in Henry IV (1065–1106).
Here is another German emperor whose achievements failed to endure yet who has a secure place in history, because his power-urge was linked to an idea which now hampered, now ennobled his dramatic life. In the struggle of the German State with the spirit, the figure of this ruler was opposed by that of an able adversary.
Pope Gregory VII, son of a Roman artisan, was really named Hildebrand and regarded as of German origin. He was a man of slight stature, ugly and swarthy, and even his contemporary detractors called him the “Holy Devil.” He was thirty years older than King Henry. Gifted with a radiant mind and a contempt for wealth, though by no means for women, he shrewdly handled men he despised. An ambitious plebeian, he matched his passion against the leading clergy whom he castigated for simony and immorality. Had he been born a king’s son, Gregory would have been a conqueror.
Henry, who was the son of a king, was not himself a conqueror. Wavering between arrogance and fear, never quite sure of his dignity and his worth, now despotic, now moody and sensual, he was a typically German character. It took a destiny of greatness for this tall young man with the handsome features to rouse himself.
The new Pope thought he could easily handle a king of this kind, especially since he knew the mood of the princes, who were growing more and more independent and getting ready to depose Henry. The inborn hate of the upstart against the scion inspired him to passionate terms. Henry grew furious and had a German Church Council enjoin the Pope from the Papal Throne. The Pope replied by pronouncing his anathema against the King. Upon the Pope the injunction had no effect; upon the King the excommunication had great effects.
This situation, unique in the history of kings, ripened the nervous youth Henry into full manhood. How would it be if he were to play the penitent knight, thereby turning the embarrassment on the Pope? “Paris is worth a mass,” said another king, also named Henry IV, five centuries later. In deepest winter King Henry set out for Italy to thwart his opponent by pretending penitence. For safety’s sake he took along his wife and children. Gregory, who had set out for the North, retired to the fortified castle of Canossa, where lived his friend, the Countess Mathilda.
The situation bordered on the comic. Neither of the two men knew precisely whether he was still the pursuer or already the pursued. Henry, the crowned king, the handsome, twenty-six-year-old son of a German emperor, entered the snow-covered castle courtyard, evidently alone. A priest came down to receive him, and Henry begged for admission and forgiveness for a repentant sinner. According to custom he wore only a long hair shirt. He was very cold. Up in the vaulted, heated chamber sat a man who had grown up under the lowly roof of an artisan, a dinner guest by the side of the powerful noblewoman to whom the castle belonged. He was fifty-six years old, ugly, brilliant, hungry for power, and for four years he had been Pope of the Christians.
Surely Gregory must have known at once that he must give in. A real nobleman would have ended the grotesque scene the very first hour. But Gregory savored the spiritual defeat of his enemy to the dregs, letting him wait three days outside. He could not forgive Henry his birth, his youth and his grace. On the third day he descended into the castle yard to bestow the kiss of Judas upon the repentant sinner.
From this amazing scene in January 1077, in which two rulers fought, not over territory, but at bottom for the world’s favor, the man who submitted drew victory. None of his contemporaries saw any humiliation in penitence for sins—they all had enough on their conscience as it was. When Henry returned he found the hostile princes plotting new intrigues; but the people were for him.
The Pope had drawn the short end of the bargain. Seven years after the day of Canossa Henry was crowned emperor in Rome. Gregory died in loneliness. Henry’s life was later frittered away in a gigantic struggle with his son. But he was in the mood of a victor when he suddenly died, long after Gregory, his enemy. Here were the two most powerful men of their time struggling less for the substance of power than for the supremacy of the spirit over the State. In typical German fashion these two Germans blended their motives of world dominion with those of their missions, for here spirit and State were not each limited to one of the parties—they existed on both sides.
For decades all these forces were squandered and scattered to no purpose, as though there were no peasants and burghers in the German Reich for whose benefit the Reich had been originally contrived.
4
EMPEROR FREDERIC I (1152–1190) has gone down into history by his Italian name, as Barbarossa, signifying his red beard. His deeds would never have earned him this fame; it must have been the red beard, in addition to his personal courage and his enmity against the burghers, that made this ruler a favorite of the Germans. His fame was enhanced by a lucky chance. The original emperor of the German legend was Charlemagne, asleep in the magic cave, his beard growing through the table, waiting to rise again. It was not until the nineteenth century that German nationalists substituted Barbarossa in the ancient legend.
Six times Barbarossa went to Italy with his armies. Altogether he spent fifteen years there. Like his forebears he squandered Germany’s resources there without achieving anything in the end. To him too world dominion meant the Roman crown, which must be secured by control of northern Italy.
Even at that time, the chronicles report, the Germans invented many new atrocities in keeping with the harshness of the times. At the siege of Crema in 1160 Barbarossa hung baskets full of captured