The end of the Roman Empire that never was
A History of Europe by Henri Pirenne
University Books, first published 1938 but written during the Great War
Book Six
The Beginnings of the Western States
Chapter III
The Empire
1. Frederick Barbarossa
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p272 It was necessary to determine [following the Concordat of Worms] whether the Carolingian conception was to continue in force: that is to say, whether the Church, regarded as the whole body of the faithful, and also as a political society, should continue to have at its head two principals, mutually independent, the first governing men's souls and the second their bodies: or whether... it was the duty of the Pope to dispose of the Imperial crown -- whether, in the language of the time, both the spiritual and the temporal sword were his, the Emperor receiving the latter from him as a vassal receives a fief from his sovereign. Only a new war could furnish the reply to this question, for no compromise was possible between... the two adversaries.
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p274 ...As [Frederick] Barbarossa conceived it, the Empire was no longer the Christian Empire which was born in St. Peter's, in the year 800, so intimately allied to the government of the Church, and so closely united to the Papacy, that they were indissoluble. As he conceived it, the Empire was in the full sense of the word the Roman Empire... More ancient than the Papacy, it was as independent of the Pope as was the Emperor of Byzantium. The Empire was not contained within the Church, but the Church in the Empire... and... the Pope... was merely a subject of the Emperor. The religious mysticism at the root of the Carolingian conception was here replaced by a sort of political mysticism, boldly harking back... to... Rome...
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p277 ...in Frederick's plans Germany played quite a secondary part... in politics he was as little of a German as it was possible for him to be. His mind was entirely filled with the Imperial ideal. At the very moment when the French and English monarchies were laying the foundations of stable national States he was about to reopen a conflict which was finally to hurl his country into the anarchy of the great interregnum, and leave it for long centuries cut up into feudal subdivisions.
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p281 ... A new campaign [against Pope Alexander III and the Lombard cities, lead by Milan] was opened in 1174... and was suddenly terminated, on May 29th 1176, by the battle of Legnano, when the Imperial army was cut to pieces and dispersed by the Milanese and their allies. The catastrophe was irremediable, as was the humiliation...
This is followed by a resumption of the conflict between Guelfs and Ghibellines that I absolutely refuse to get into.
[The fragmentation of Germany] had already gone so far by the end of the 12th century that Frederick realized that if he was to assure the future of his dynasty he would have to find a territorial base outside the country. Hence the marriage of his son Henry, in 1186, with Constance, the heiress to the Kingdom of Sicily. In order to survive, the House of Hohenstaufen was obliged to denationalize itself, turning from Germany to Italy.
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2. Before Bouvines
p282 To his son Henry VI, Frederick Barbarossa bequeathed an ungovernable Germany... The heritage of the Kingdom of Sicily, which Henry had received in 1189 on the death of his father-in-law William the Good, anchored him to the south of the peninsula and determined his career.
p283 Raised to the rank of kingdom for the benefit of Roger II by Pope Innocent II, in 1130, the Norman State of Sicily was incontestably the wealthiest, and, in point of economic development, the most advanced of all the Western States... Having always been accustomed to the most improved methods of administration, whether those of Byzantium or of Islam, the population allowed itself to be governed with docility; the Norman nobles constituted the only element to be feared. While they had quickly lost their pristine vigor, and were softened by the luxuries of their semi-Oriental life, they were none the less greedy and seditious.
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p286 ...the crushing blow of Bouvines defeated, in the person of Otto, the last representative of the Imperial policy as conceived by all the German emperors since Barbarossa. On November 19th, 1212, Frederick concluded with France a treaty against Otto and England. On July 12th, 1213, at Eger, he recognized all the possessions of the Pope in Italy, and renounced the right of supervising the episcopal elections, in conformity with the Concordat of Worms. The war decided, simultaneously, between him and Otto, between the Empire and the Church, and between France and England.
This was the final end of the chimera which these Emperors had pursued as they dreamed of the revival of the Roman Empire. The Pope was triumphant: he could not suspect, in 1214, that his ward would presently become the most persistent of the enemies of the Holy See. [Shocking development :-| ] But the struggle which was about to begin between the Emperor and the Pope inaugurated an entirely new phase in the relations of Papacy and Empire. In this conflict... Germany was to play no part; since Frederick left Germany for Italy, and the former country, left to herself, finished by falling into a state of political decomposition; before foundering in the anarchy of the great interregnum.
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