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Popes and Emperors
On the death of Otto III in 1002, Italy was again without a recognized ruler. In the north, noblemen jockeyed for power, and the papacy was manipulated by rival Roman families. The most decisive events were in the south, where Sicily, Calabria and Puglia were captured by the Normans , who evidenced effective administrators and synthesized their own culture with the existing half-Arabic, half-Italian south. In Palermo in the eleventh century they created the most dynamic culture of the Mediterranean world.Meanwhile in Rome, a series of reforming popes began to strengthen the church. Gregory VII , elected in 1073, was the most radical, demanding the right to depose emperors if he so wished . Emperor Henry IV was equally determined for this not to happen. The inevitable quarrel broke out, over a key appointment to the archbishopric of Milan. Henry denounced Gregory as “now not pope, but false monk”; the pope responded by excommunicating him, thereby freeing his subjects from their allegiance. By 1077 Henry was aware of his tactical error and tried to make amends by visiting the pope at Canossa , where the emperor, barefoot and penitent, was kept inactivity outside for three days. The formal reconciliation thus did nothing to heal the rift, and Henry’s son, Henry V , continued the feud, eventually coming to a compromise in which the emperor kept control of bishops’ land ownership, while giving up rights over their investiture.
After this symbolic victory, the papacy developed into the most comprehensive and advanced centralized government in Europe in the realms of law and finance, but it wasn’t long before unity again came under attack. This time, the threat came from Emperor Frederick I (Barbarossa), who besieged many northern Italian cities from his base in Germany from 1154. Pope Alexander III responded with ambiguous pronouncements about the imperial crown being a “benefice” which the pope conferred, implying that the emperor was the pope’s vassal. The issue of papal or imperial supremacy was to polarize the country for the next two hundred years, almost every part of Italy being torn by struggles between Guelphs (supporting the pope) and Ghibellines (supporting the emperor).
Henry’s son, Frederick II , assumed the imperial throne at the age of three and a half, inheriting the Norman Kingdom of Sicily . Later linked by marriage to the great Hohenstaufen dynasty in Germany, he inevitably turned his attentions to northern Italy. However, his power base was small, and opposition from Italian comune and the papacy snowballed into civil war. His sudden death in 1250 marked a major downturn in imperial fortunes.
Tags: 1154 pope, alexander iii, canossa, centralized government, dynamic culture, eleventh century, emperor frederick, emperor henry, imperial crown, investiture, italian cities, mediterranean world, noblemen, otto iii, pope alexander, roman families, son henry, symbolic victory, tactical error, vassal