Germany

From The Catholic Guide

Contents 1 I. BEFORE 1556 2 II. FROM 1556 TO 1618 3 III. FROM 1618 TO 1713 3.1 (1) 1618 to 1648 3.2 (2) 1648 to 1673 3.3 (3) 1674-1713= 4 IV. FROM 1713 TO 1848 4.1 (1) 1713 to 1763 4.2 (2) 1761 to 1815 4.3 (3) 1815 to 1848 5 V. FROM 1848 TO 1871 6 VI. THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE 6.1 (1) 1871-1888 6.2 (2) From 1888 to 1909

I. BEFORE 1556

From their first appearance in the history of the world the Germans represented the principle of unchecked individualism, as opposed to the Roman principle of an all-embracing authority. German history in the Middle Ages was strongly influenced by two opposing principles: universalism and individualism. After Arminius had fought for German freedom in the Teutoburg Forest the idea that the race was entitled to be independent gradually became a powerful factor in its historical development. This conception first took form when the Germanic states grew out of the Roman Empire. Even Theodoric the Great thought of uniting the discordant barbarian countries with the aid of the leges gentium into a great confederation of the Mediterranean. Although in these Mediterranean countries the Roman principle finally prevailed, being that of a more advanced civilization, still the individualistic forces which contributed to found these states were not wasted. By them the world-embracing empire of Rome was overthrown and the way prepared for the national principle. It was not until after the fall of the Western Empire that a great Frankish kingdom became possible and the Franks, no longer held in check by the Roman Empire, were able to draw together the tribes of the old Teutonic stock and to lay the foundation of a German empire. Before this the Germanic tribes had been continually at variance; no tie bound them together; even the common language failed to produce unity. On the other hand, the so-called Lautverschiebung, or shifting of the consonants, in German, separated the North and South Germans. Nor was German mythology a source of union, for the tribal centres of worship rather increased the already existing particularism. The Germans had not even a common name. Since the eighth century most probably the designations Franks and Frankish extended beyond the boundaries of the Frankish tribe. It was not, however, until the ninth century that the expression theodisk (later German Deutsch), signifying "popular," or "belonging to people" made its appearance and a great stretch of time divided this beginning from the use of the word as a name of the nation.

The work of uniting Germany was not begun by a tribe living in the interior but by one on the outskirts of the country. The people called Franks suddenly appear in history in the third century. They represented no single tribe, but consisted of a combination of Low and High German tribes. Under the leadership of Clovis (Chlodwig) the Franks overthrew the remains of the Roman power in Gaul and built up the Frankish state on a Germano-Romanic foundation. The German tribes were conquered one after another and colonized in the Roman manner. Large extents of territory were marked out as belonging to the king, and on these military colonies were founded. The commanders of these military colonies gradually became administrative functionaries, and the colonies themselves grew into peaceful agricultural village communities. For a long time political expressions, such as Hundreds, recalled the original military character of the people. From that time the Frankish ruler became the German overlord, but the centrifugal tendency of the Germanic tribes reacted against this sovereignty as soon as the Merovingian Dynasty began slowly to decline, owing to internal feuds. In each of the tribes after this the duke rose to supremacy over his fellow tribesmen. From the seventh century the tribal duke became an almost independent sovereign. These ducal states originated in the supreme command of large bodies of troops, and then in the administration of large territories by dukes. At the same time the disintegration was aided by the bad administration of the counts, the officials in charge of the territorial districts (Gau), who were no longer supervised by the central authority. But what was most disastrous was that an unruly aristocracy sought to control all the economical interests and to exercise arbitrary powers over politics. These sovereign nobles had become powerful through the feudal system, a form of government which gave to medieval Germany its peculiar character. Caesar in his day found that it was customary among the Gauls for a freeman, the "client," voluntarily to enter into a relation of dependence on a "senior." This surrender (commendatio) took place in order to obtain the protection of the lord or to gain the usufruct of land. From this Gallic system of clientship there developed, in Frankish times, the conception of the "lord's man" (homagium or hominium), who by an oath swore fealty to his suzerain and became a vassus, or gasindus, or homo. The result of the growth of this idea was that finally there appeared, throughout the kingdom, along with royalty, powerful territorial lords with their vassi or vassalli, as their followers were called from the eighth century. The vassals received as fief (beneficium) a piece of land of which they enjoyed the use for life. The struggle of the Franks with the Arabs quickened the development of the feudal system, for the necessity of creating an army of horsemen then became evident. Moreover the poorer freemen, depressed in condition by the frequent wars, could not be required to do service as horsemen, a duty that could only be demanded from the vassals of the great landowners. In order to force these territorial lords to do military service fiefs were granted from the already existing public domain, and in their turn the great lords granted part of these fiefs to their retainers. Thus the Frankish king was gradually transformed from a lord of the land and people to a feudal lord over the beneficiaries directly and indirectly dependent upon him by feudal tenure. By the end of the ninth century the feudal system had bound together the greater part of the population.

While in this way the secular aristocracy grew into a power, at the same time the Church was equally strengthened by feudalism. The Christian Church during this era -- a fact of the greatest importance -- was the guardian of the remains of classical culture. With this culture the Church was to endow the Germans. Moreover it was to bring them a great fund of new moral conceptions and principles, much increase in knowledge, and skill in art and handicrafts. The well-knit organization of the Church, the convincing logic of dogma, the grandeur of the doctrine of salvation, the sweet poetry of the liturgy, all these captured the understanding of the simple-minded but fine-natured primitive German. It was the Church, in fact, that first brought the exaggerated individualism of the race under control and developed in it gradually, by means of asceticism, those social virtues essential to the State. The country was converted to Christianity very slowly for the Church had here a difficult problem to solve, namely, to replace the natural conception of life by an entirely different one that appeared strange to the people. The acceptance of the Christian name and ideas was at first a purely mechanical one, but it became an inner conviction. No people has shown a more logical or deeper comprehension of the organization and saving aims of the Christian Church. None has exhibited a like devotion to the idea of the Church nor did any people contribute more in the Middle Ages to the greatness of the Church than the German. In the conversion of Germany much credit is due the Irish and Scotch, but the real founders of Christianity in Germany are the Anglo-Saxons, above all St. Boniface. Among the early missionaries were: St. Columbanus, the first to come to the Continent (about 583), who laboured in Swabia; Fridolin, the founder of Saeckingen; Pirminius, who established the monastery of Reichenau in 724; and Gallus (d. 645), the founder of St. Gall. The cause of Christianity was furthered in Bavaria by Rupert of Worms (beginning of the seventh century), Corbinian (d. 730), and Emmeram (d. 715). The great organizer of the Church of Bavaria was St. Boniface. The chief herald of the Faith among the Franks was the Scotchman, St. Kilian (end of the seventh century); the Frisians received Christianity through Willibrord (d. 739). The real Apostle of Germany was St. Boniface, whose chief work was in Central Germany and Bavaria. Acting in conjunction with Rome he organized the German Church, and finally in 755 met the death of a martyr at the hands of the Frisians. After the Church had thus obtained a good foothold it soon reached a position of much importance in the eyes of the youthful German peoples. By grants of land the princes gave it an economic power which was greatly increased when many freemen voluntarily became dependents of these new spiritual lords; thus, besides the secular territorial aristocracy, there developed a second power, that of the ecclesiastical princes. Antagonism between these two elements was perceptible at an early date. Pepin sought to remove the difficulty by strengthening the Frankish Church and placing between the secular and spiritual lords the new Carlovingian king, who, by the assumption of the title Dei gratia, obtained a somewhat religious character.

The Augustinian conception of the Kingdom of God early influenced the Frankish State; political and religious theories unconsciously blended. The union of Church and State seemed the ideal which was to be realized. Each needed the other; the State needed the Church as the only source of real order and true education; the Church needed for its activities the protection of the secular authority. In return for the training in morals and learning that the Church gave, the State granted it large privileges, such as: the privilegium fori or freedom from the jurisdiction of the State; immunity, that is exemption from taxes and services to the State, from which gradually grew the right to receive the taxes of the tenants residing on the exempt lands and the right to administer justice to them; further, release from military service; and, finally, the granting of great fiefs that formed the basis of the later ecclesiastical sovereignties. The reverse of this picture soon became apparent; the ecclesiastics to whom had been given lands and offices in fief became dependent on secular lords. Thus the State at an early date had a share in the making of ecclesiastical laws, exercised the right of patronage, appointed to dioceses, and soon undertook, especially in the time of Charles Martel, the secularization of church lands. Consequently the question of the relation of Church and State soon claimed attention; it was the most important question in the history of the German Middle Ages. Under the first German emperor this problem seemed to find its solution.

Real German history begins with Charlemagne (768-814). The war with the Saxons was the most important one he carried on, and the result of this struggle, of fundamental importance for German history, was that the Saxons were brought into connexion with the other Germanic tribes and did not fall under Scandinavian influence. The lasting union of the Franks, Saxons, Frisians, Thuringians, Hessians, Alamanni, and Bavarians, that Charlemagne effected, formed the basis of a national combination which gradually lost sight of the fact that it was the product of compulsion. From the time of Charlemagne the above-named German tribes lived under Frankish constitution retaining their own old laws, the leges barbarorum, which Charlemagne codified. Another point of importance for German development was that Charlemagne fixed the boundary between his domain and the Slavs, including the Wends, on the farther side of the Elbe and Saale Rivers. It is true that Charlemagne did not do all this according to a deliberate plan, but mainly in the endeavour to win these related Germanic peoples over to Christianity. Charlemagne's German policy, therefore, was not a mere brute conquest, but a union which was to be strengthened by the ties of morality and culture to be created by the Christian religion. The amalgamation of the ecclesiastical with the secular elements that had begun in the reign of Pepin reached its completion under Charlemagne. The fact that Pepin obtained papal approval of his kingdom strengthened the bond between the Church and the Frankish kingdom. The consciousness of being the champion of Christianity against the Arabs, moreover, gave to the King of the Franks the religious character of the predestined protectors of the Church; thus he attained a position of great importance in the Kingdom of God. Charlemagne was filled with these ideas; like St. Augustine he hated the supremacy of the heathen empire. The type of God's Kingdom to Charlemagne and his councillors was not the Roman Empire but the Jewish theocracy. This type was kept in view when Charlemagne undertook to give reality to the Kingdom of God. The Frankish king desired like Solomon to be a great ecclesiastical and secular potentate, a royal priest. He was conscious that his conception of his position as the head of the Kingdom of God, according to the German ideas, was opposed to the essence of Roman Caesarism, and for reason he objected to being crowned emperor by the Pope on Christmas Day, 800. On this day the Germanic idea of the Kingdom of God, of which Charlemagne was the representative, bowed to the Roman idea, which regards Rome as its centre, Rome the seat of the old empire and the most sacred place of the Christian world. Charlemagne when emperor still regarded himself as the real leader of the Church. Although in 774 he confirmed the gift of his father to the Roman res publica, nevertheless he saw to it that Rome remained connected with the Frankish State; in return it had a claim to Frankish protection. He even interfered in dogmatic questions.

Charlemagne looked upon the revived Roman Empire from the ancient point of view inasmuch as he greatly desired recognition by the Eastern Empire. He regarded his possession of the empire as resulting solely from his own power, consequently he himself crowned his son Louis. Yet on the other hand he looked upon his empire only as a Christian one, whose most noble calling it was to train up the various races within its borders to the service of God and thus to unify them. The empire rapidly declined under his weak and nerveless son, Louis the Pious (814-40). The decay was hastened by the prevailing idea that this State was the personal property of the sovereign, a view that contained the germ of constant quarrels and necessitated the division of the empire when there were several sons. Louis sought to prevent the dangers of such division by the law of hereditary succession published in 817, by which the sovereign power and the imperial crown were to be passed to the oldest son. This law was probably enacted through the influence of the Church, which maintained positively this unity of the supreme power and the Crown, as being in harmony with the idea of the Kingdom of God, and as besides required by the hierarchical economy of the church organization. When Louis had a fourth son, by his second wife, Judith, he immediately set aside the law of partition of 817 for the benefit of the new heir. An odious struggle broke out between father and sons, and among the sons themselves. In 833 the emperor was captured by his sons at the battle of Luegenfeld (field of lies) near Colmar. Pope Gregory IV was at the time in the camp of the sons. The demeanour of the pope and the humiliating ecclesiastical penance that Louis was compelled to undergo at Soissons made apparent the change that had come about since Charlemagne in the theory of the relations of Church and State. Gregory's view that the Church was under the rule of the representative of Christ, and that it was a higher authority, not only spiritually but also substantially, and therefore politically, had before this found learned defenders in France. In opposition to the oldest son Lothair, Louis and Pepin, sons of Louis the Pious, restored the father to his throne (834), but new rebellions followed, when the sons once more grew dissatisfied.

In 840 the emperor died near Ingelheim. The quarrels of the sons went on after the death of the father, and in 841 Lothair was completely defeated near Fontenay (Fontanetum) by Louis the German and Charles the Bald. The empire now fell apart, not from the force of national hatreds, but in consequence of the partition now made and known as the Treaty of Verdun (August, 843), which divided the territory between the sons of Louis the Pious: Lothair, Louis the German (843-76), and Charles the Bald, and which finally resulted in the complete overthrow of the Carlovingian monarchy.

As the imperial power grew weaker, the Church gradually raised itself above the State. The scandalous behaviour of Lothair II, who, divorced himself from his lawful wife in order to marry his concubine, brought deep disgrace on his kingdom. The Church however, now an imposing and well-organized power, sat in judgment on the adulterous king. When Lothair II died, his uncles divided his possessions between them; by the Treaty of Ribemont (Mersen), Lorraine, which lay between the East Frankish Kingdom of Louis the German and the West Frankish Kingdom of Charles the Bald, was assigned to the East Frankish Kingdom. In this way a long-enduring boundary was definitely drawn between the growing powers of Germany and France. By a curious chance this boundary coincided almost exactly with the linguistic dividing line. Charles the Fat (876-87), the last son of Louis the German, united once more the entire empire. But according to old Germanic ideas the weak emperor forfeited his sovereignty by his cowardice when the dreaded Northmen appeared before Paris on one of their frequent incursions into France, and by his incapacity as a ruler. Consequently the Eastern Franks made his nephew Arnulf (887-99) king. This change was brought about by a revolt of the laity against the bishops in alliance with the emperor. The danger of Norman invasion Arnulf ended once and for all by his victory in 891 at Louvain on the Dyle. In the East also he was victorious after the death (894) of Swatopluk, the great King of Moravia. The conduct of some of the great nobles forced him to turn for aid to the bishops; supported by the Church, he was crowned emperor at Rome in 896. Theoretically his rule extended over the West Frankish Kingdom, but the sway of his son, Louis the Child (899-911), the last descendant of the male line of the German Carlovingians, was limited entirely to the East Frankish Kingdom. Both in the East and West Frankish Kingdoms, in this era of confusion, the nobility grew steadily stronger, and freemen in increasing numbers became vassals in order to escape the burdens that the State laid on them; the illusion of the imperial title could no longer give strength to the empire. Vassal princes like Guido and Lamberto of Spoleto, and Berengar of Friuli, were permitted to wear the diadem of the Caesars.

As the idea of political unity declined, that of the unity of the Church increased in power. The Kingdom of God, which the royal priest, Charlemagne, by his overshadowing personality had, in his own opinion, made a fact, proved to be an impossibility. Church and State, which for a short time were united in Charlemagne, had, as early as the reign of Louis the Pious, become separated. The Kingdom of God was now identified with the Church. Pope Nicholas I asserted that the head of the one and indivisible Church could not be subordinate to any secular power, that only the pope could rule the Church, that it was obligatory on princes to obey the pope in spiritual things, and finally that the Carlovingians had received their right to rule from the pope. This grand idea of unity, this all-controlling sentiment of a common bond, could not be annihilated even in these troubled times when the papacy was humiliated by petty Italian rulers. The idea of her unity gave the Church the strength to raise herself rapidly to a position higher than that of the State. From the age of St. Boniface the Church in the East Frankish Kingdom had direct relations with Rome, while numerous new churches and monasteries gave her a firm hold in this region. At an early date the Church here controlled the entire religious life and, as the depositary of all culture, the entire intellectual life. She had also gained frequently decisive influence over German economic life, for she disseminated much of the skill and many of the crafts of antiquity. Moreover the Church itself had grown into an economic power in the East Frankish Kingdom. Piety led many to place themselves and their lands under the control of the Church.

There was also in this period a change in social life that was followed by important social consequences. The old militia composed of every freeman capable of bearing arms went to pieces, because the freemen constantly decreased in number. In its stead there arose a higher order in the State, which alone was called on for military service. In this chaotic era the German people made no important advance in civilization. Nevertheless the union that had been formed between Roman and German elements and Christianity prepared the way for a development of the East Frankish Kingdom in civilization from which great results might be expected. At the close of the Carlovingian period the external position of the kingdom was a very precarious one. The piratic Northmen boldly advanced far into the empire; Danes and Slavs continually crossed its borders; but the most dangerous incursions were those of the Magyars, who in 907 brought terrible suffering upon Bavaria; in their marauding expeditions they also ravaged Saxony, Thuringia, and Swabia. It was then that salvation came from the empire itself. The weak authority of the last of the Carlovingians, Louis the Child, an infant in years, fell to pieces altogether, and the old ducal form of government revived in the several tribes. This was in accordance with the desires of the people. In these critical times the dukes sought to save the country; still they saw clearly that only a union of all the duchies could successfully ward off the danger from without; the royal power was to find its entire support in the laity. Once more, it is true, the attempt was made by King Conrad I (911-18) to make the Church the basis of the royal power, but the centralizing clerical policy of the king was successfully resisted by the subordinate powers. Henry I (919-36) was the free choice of the lay powers at Fritzlar. On the day he was elected the old theory of the State as the personal estate of the sovereign was finally done away with, and the Frankish realm was transformed into a German one. The manner of his election made plain to Henry the course to be pursued. It was necessary to yield to the wish of the several tribes to have their separate existence with a measure of self-government under the imperial power recognized. Thus the duchies were strengthened at the expense of the Crown. The fame of Henry I was assured by his victory over the Magyars near Merseburg (933). By regaining Lorraine, that had been lost during the reign of Conrad, he secured a bulwark on the side towards France that permitted the uninterrupted consolidation of his realm. The same result was attained on other frontiers by his successful campaigns against the Wends and Bohemians. Henry's kingdom was made up of a confederation of tribes, for the idea of a "King of the Germans" did not yet exist. It was only as the "Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation" that Germany could develop from a union of German tribes to a compact nation. As supporters of the supreme power, as vassals of the emperor, the Germans were united.

This imperial policy was continued by Otto I, the Great (936-73). During his long reign Otto sought to found a strong central power in Germany, an effort at once opposed by the particularistic powers of Germany, who took advantage of disputes in the royal family. Otto proved the necessity of a strong government by his victory over the Magyars near Augsburg (955), one result of which was the reestablishment of the East Mark. After this he was called to Rome by John XII, who had been threatened by Berengarius II of Italy, and by making a treaty that secured to the imperial dignity a share in the election of the pope, he attained the imperial crown, 2 February, 962. It was necessary for Otto to obtain imperial power in order to carry out his politico-ecclesiastical policy. His intention was to make the Church an organic feature of the German constitution. This he could only do if the Church was absolutely under his control, and this could not be attained unless the papacy and Italy were included within the sphere of his power. The emperor's aim was to found his royal power among the Germans, who were strongly inclined to particularism, upon a close union of Church and State. The Germans had now revived the empire and had freed the papacy from its unfortunate entanglement with the nobility of the city of Rome. The papacy rapidly regained strength and quickly renewed the policy of Nicholas I. By safeguarding the unity of the Church of Western Europe the Germans protected both the peaceful development of civilization, which was dependent upon religion, and the progress of culture which the Church spread. Thus the Germans, in union with the Church, founded the civilization of Western Europe. For Germany itself the heroic age of the medieval emperors was a period of progress in learning. The renaissance of antiquity during the era of the Ottos was hardly more than superficial. Nevertheless it denoted a development in learning, throughout ecclesiastical in character, in marked contrast to the tendencies in the same age of the grammarian Wilgard at Ravenna, who sought to revive not only the literature of ancient times, but also the ideas of antiquity, even when they opposed Christian ideas. Germany now boldly assumed the leadership of Western Europe and thus prevented any other power from claiming the supremacy. Moreover the new empire sought to assert its universal character in France, as well as in Burgundy and Italy. Otto also fixed his eyes on Lower Italy, which was in the hands of the Greeks, but he preferred a peaceful policy with Byzantium. He therefore married his son Otto II, in 972, to the Greek Princess Theophano.

Otto II (973-83) and his son Otto III (983-1002) firmly upheld the union with the Church inaugurated by Otto I. Otto II aimed at a great development of his power along the Mediterranean; these plans naturally turned his mind from a national German policy. His campaign against the Saracens, however, came to a disastrous end in Calabria in 982, and he did not long survive the calamity. His romantic son sought to bring about a complete revival of the ancient empire, the centre of which was to be Rome, as in ancient times. There, in union with the pope, he wished to establish the true Kingdom of God. The pope and the emperor were to be the wielders of a power one and indivisible. This idealistic policy, full of vague abstractions, led to severe German losses in the east, for the Poles and Hungarians once more gained their independence. In Italy Arduin of Ivrea founded a new kingdom; naturally enough the Apennine Peninsula revolted against the German imperial policy. Without possession of Italy, however, the empire was impossible, and the blessings of the Ottonian theory of government were now manifest. The Church became the champion of the unity and legitimacy of the empire.

After the death of Otto III and the collapse of imperialism the Church raised Henry II (1002-24) to the throne. Henry, reviving the policy of Otto I which had been abandoned by Otto III, made Germany and the German Church the basis of his imperial system; he intended to rule the Church as Otto I had done. In 1014 he defeated Arduin and thus attained the Imperial crown. The sickly ruler, whose nervousness caused him to take up projects of which he quickly tired, did his best to repair the losses of the empire on its eastern frontier. He was not able, however, to defeat the Polish King Boleslaw II: all he could do was to strengthen the position of the Germans on the Elbe River by an alliance with the Lusici, a Slavonic tribe. Towards the end of his reign a bitter dispute broke out between the emperor and the bishops. At the Synod of Seligenstadt, in 1023, Archbishop Aribo of Mainz, who was an opponent of the Reform of Cluny, made an appeal to the pope without the permission of the bishop. This ecclesiastical policy of Aribo's would have led in the end to the founding of a national German Church independent of Rome. The greater part of the clergy supported Aribo, but the emperor held to the party of reform. Henry, however, did not live to see the quarrel settled.

With Conrad II (1024-39) began the sway of the Franconian (Salian) emperors. The sovereigns of this line were vigorous, vehement, and autocratic rulers. Conrad had natural political ability and his reign is the most flourishing era of medieval imperialism. The international position of the empire was excellent. In Italy Conrad strengthened the German power, and his relations with King Canute of Denmark were friendly. Internal disputes kept the Kingdom of Poland from becoming dangerous; moreover, by regaining Lusatia the Germans recovered the old preponderance against the Poles. Important gains were also made in Burgundy, whereby the old Romanic states, France and Italy, were for a long time separated and the great passes of the Alps controlled by the Germans. The close connexion with the empire enabled the German population of north-western Burgundy to preserve its nationality. Conrad had also kept up the close union of the State with the Church and had maintained his authority over the latter. He claimed for himself the same right of ruling the Church that his predecessors had exercised, and like them appointed bishops and abbots; he also reserved to himself the entire control of the property of the Church. Conrad's ecclesiastical policy, however, lacked definiteness; he failed to understand the most important interests of the Church, nor did he grasp the necessity of reform. Neither did he do anything to raise the papacy, discredited by John XIX and Benedict IX, from its dependence on the civil rulers of Rome. The aim of his financial policy was economic emancipation from the Church; royal financial officials took their place alongside of the ministeriales, or financial agents, of the bishops and monasteries. Conrad sought to rest his kingdom in Germany on these royal officials and on the petty vassals. In this way the laity was to be the guarantee of the emperor's independence of the episcopate. As he pursued the same methods in Italy, he was able to maintain an independent position between the bishops and the petty Italian despots who were at strife with one another. Thus the ecclesiastical influence in Conrad's theory of government becomes less prominent.

This statesmanlike sovereign was followed by his son, the youthful Henry III (1039-56). Unlike his father Henry had a good education; he had also been trained from an early age in State affairs. He was a born ruler and allowed himself to be influenced by no one; to force of character and courage he added a strong sense of duty. His foreign policy was at first successful. He established the suzerainty of the empire over Hungary, without, however, being always able to maintain it; Bohemia also remained a dependent state. The empire gained a dominant position in Western Europe, and a sense of national pride was awakened in the Germans that opened the way for a national spirit. But the aim of these national aspirations, the hegemony in Western Europe, was a mere phantom. Each time an emperor went to Italy to be crowned that country had to be reconquered. Even at this very time the imperial supremacy was in great danger from the threatened conflict between the imperial and the sacerdotal power, between Church and State. The Church, the only guide on earth to salvation, had attained dominion over mankind, whom it strove to wean from the earthly and to lead to the spiritual. The glaring contrast between the ideal and the reality awoke in thousands the desire to leave the world. A spirit of asceticism, which first appeared in France, took possession of many hearts. As early as the era of the first Saxon emperors the attempt was made to introduce the reform movement of Cluny into Germany, and in the reign of Henry III this reform had become powerful. Henry himself laid much more stress than his predecessors on the ecclesiastical side of his royal position. His religious views led him to side with the men of Cluny. The great mistake of his ecclesiastical policy was the belief that it was possible to promote this reform of the Church by laying stress on his suzerain authority. He repeatedly called and presided over synods and issued many decisions in Church affairs. His fundamental mistake, the thought that he could transform the Church in the manner desired by the party of reform and at the same time maintain his dominion over it, was also evident in his relations with the papacy. He sought to put an end to the disorder at Rome, caused by the unfortunate schism, by the energetic measure of deposing the three contending popes and raising Clement II to the Apostolic See. Clement crowned him emperor and made him Patrician of Rome. Thus Henry seemed to have regained the same control over the Church that Otto had exercised. But the papacy, purified by the elevated conceptions of the party of reform and freed by Henry from the influence of the degenerate Roman aristocracy, strove to be absolutely independent. The Church was now to be released from all human bonds. The chief aims of the papal policy were the celibacy of the clergy, the presentation of ecclesiastical offices by the Church alone, and the attainment by these means of as great a centralization as possible. Henry had acted with absolute honesty in raising the papacy, but he did not intend that it should outgrow his control. Sincerely pious, he was convinced of the possibility and necessity of complete accord between empire and papacy. His fanciful policy became an unpractical idealism. Consequently the monarchical power began rapidly to decline in strength. Hungary regained freedom, the southern part of Italy was held by the Normans, and the Duchy of Lorraine, already long a source of trouble, maintained its hostility to the king. By the close of the reign of Henry III discontent was universal in the empire, thus permitting a growth of the particularistic powers, especially of the dukes.

When Henry III died Germany had reached a turning-point in its history. His wife Agnes assumed the regency for their four-year-old son, Henry IV (1056-1106), and at once showed her incompetence for the position by granting the great duchies to opponents of the crown. She also sought the support of the lesser nobility and thus excited the hatred of the great princes. A conspiracy of the more powerful nobles, led by Archbishop Anno (Hanno) of Cologne, obtained possession of the royal child by a stratagem at Kaiserswert and took control of the imperial power. Henry IV, however, preferred the guidance of Adalbert, Archbishop of Bremen, who was able for the moment to give the governmental policy a more national character. Thus in 1063 he restored German influence over Hungary, and the aim of his internal policy was to strengthen the central power. At the Diet of Tribur, 1066, however, he was overthrown by the particularists, but the king by now was able to assume control for himself. In the meantime the papacy had been rapidly advancing towards absolute independence. The Curia now extended the meaning of simony to the granting of an ecclesiastical office by a layman and thus demanded an entire change in the conditions of the empire and placed itself in opposition to the imperial power. The ordinances passed in 1059 for the regulation of the papal elections excluded all imperial rights in the same. Conditions in Italy grew continually more unfavourable for the empire. The chief supporters of the papal policy were the Normans, over whom the pope claimed feudal suzerainty. The German bishops also yielded more and more to the authority of Rome; the Ottonian theory of government was already undermined. The question was now raised: In the Kingdom of God on earth who is to rule, the emperor or the pope? In Rome this question had long been settled. The powerful opponent of Henry, Gregory VII, claimed that the princes should acknowledge the supremacy of the Kingdom of God, and that the laws of God should be everywhere obeyed and carried out. The struggle which now broke out was in principle a conflict concerning the respective rights of the empire and the papacy. But the conflict soon shifted from the spiritual to the secular domain; at last it became a conflict for the possession of Italy, and during the struggle the spiritual and the secular were often confounded. Henry was not a match for the genius of Gregory. He was courageous and intelligent and, though of a passionate nature, fought with dogged obstinacy for the rights of his monarchical power. But Gregory as the representative of the reform movement in the Church, demanding complete liberty for the Church, was too powerful for him. Aided by the inferior nobility, Henry sought to make himself absolute. The particularistic powers, however, insisted upon the maintenance of the constitutional limits of the monarchy. The revolt of the Saxons against the royal authority was led both by spiritual and secular princes, and it was not until after many humiliations that Henry was able to conquer them in the battle on the Unstrut (1075). Directly after this began his conflict with the papacy. The occasion was the appointment of an Archbishop of Milan by the emperor without regard to the election already held by the ecclesiastical party. Gregory VII at once sent a threatening letter to Henry. Angry at this, Henry had the deposition of the pope declared at the Synod of Worms, 24 January, 1076. Gregory now felt himself released from all restraint and excommunicated the emperor. On 16 October, 1076, the German princes decided that the pope should pronounce judgment on the king and that unless Henry were released from excommunication within a year and a day he should lose his crown. Henry now sought to break the alliance between the particularists and the pope by a clever stroke. The German princes he could not win back to his cause, but he might gain over the pope. By a penitential pilgrimage he forced the pope to grant him absolution. Henry appealed to the priest, and Gregory showed his greatness. He released the king from the ban, although by so doing he injured his own interests, which required that he should keep his agreement to act in union with the German princes.

Thus the day of Canossa (2 and 3 February, 1077) was a victory for Henry. It did not, however, mean the coming of peace, for the German confederates of the pope did not recognize the reconciliation at Canossa, and elected Duke Rudolf of Swabia as king at Forchheim, 13 March, 1077. A civil war now broke out in Germany. After long hesitation Gregory finally took the side of Rudolf and once more excommunicated Henry. Soon after this however, Rudolf lost both throne and life in the battle of Hohenmoelsen not far from Merseburg. Henry now abandoned his policy of absolutism, recognizing its impracticability. He returned to the Ottonian theory of government, and the German episcopate, which was embittered by the severity of the ecclesiastical administration of Rome, now came over to the side of the king. Relying upon this strife within the Church, Henry caused Gregory to be deposed by a synod held at Brixen and Guibert of Ravenna to be elected pope as Clement III. Accompanied by this pope, he went to Rome and was crowned emperor there in 1084. Love for the rights of the Church drove the great Gregory into exile where he soon after died. After the death of his mighty opponent Henry was more powerful than the particularists who had elected a new rival king, Herman of Luxembourg. In 1090 Henry went again to Italy to defend his rights against the two powerful allies of the papacy, the Normans in the south and the Countess Matilda of Tuscany in the north. While he was in Italy his own son Conrad declared himself king in opposition to him. Overwhelmed by this blow, Henry remained inactive in Italy, and it was not until 1097 that he returned to Germany. No reconciliation had been effected between him and Pope Urban II. In Germany Henry sought to restore internal peace, and this popular policy intensified the particularism of the princes. In union with these the king's son, young Henry, rebelled against his father. The pope supported the revolt, and the emperor was unable to cope with so many opponents. In 1105 he abdicated. After this he once more asserted his rights, but death soon closed (1106) this troubled life filled with so many thrilling and tragic events. To Henry should be ascribed the credit of saving the monarchy from the threatened collapse. He has been called the most brilliant representative of the German laity in the early Middle Ages. During his reign began the development, so fruitful in results, of the German cities.

Henry V (1106-25) also adopted the policy of the Ottos. In the numerous discussions of the right of investiture men of sober judgment insisted, as did the emperor, that the latter could not give up the right of the investiture of his vassal bishops with the regalia, that a distinction must be made between the spiritual and secular power of the bishops. The pope now made the strange proposal that the emperor should give up the investiture and the pope the regalia. This proposal to strip the Church of secular power would have led to a revolution in Germany. Not only would the bishops have been unwilling to give up their position as ruling princes, but many nobles, as well as vassals of the Church, would have rebelled. The storm of dissatisfaction which in 1111 broke out in Rome obliged the pope to annul the prohibition of investiture. It was soon seen to be impossible to carry out the permission so granted, and the conflict regarding investitures began again. The ecclesiastical party was again joined by the German princes antagonistic to the emperor, and the imperial forces soon suffered defeats on the Rhine and in Saxony. Consequently the papal party gained ground again in Germany, and the majority of the bishops fell away from Henry. Notwithstanding this he went, in 1116, to Italy to claim the imperial feudal estates of the Countess Matilda, who had died, and to confiscate her freehold property. This action naturally made more difficult the relations between pope and emperor, and in spite of the universal weariness the conflict began anew. The influence of the German secular princes had now to be reckoned with, for at this time certain families of the secular nobility commenced to claim hereditary power and appeared as hereditary dynasties with distinct family names and residences. It was in the age of the Franconian emperors that the dynastic families of the German principalities were founded. These princes acted as an independent power in settling the disagreement between emperor and pope. Callistus II was ready for peace; in 1122 an agreement was reached and the concordat was proclaimed at the Synod of Worms. In this the pope agreed that in Germany the election of bishops should take place according to canonical procedure in the presence of the king or his representative, and that the bishop-elect should then be invested by the king with the sceptre as a symbol of the regalia. In Germany this investiture was to precede the ecclesiastical consecration, in Italy and Burgundy it was to follow it. The emperor therefore retained all his influence in the appointment to vacant dioceses, and as secular princes the bishops were responsible to him. Not withstanding this the Concordat of Worms was a defeat for the imperial claims, for the papacy that had been hitherto a subordinate power had now become a power of at least equal rank. It was now entirely free from the control of the German Crown and held an independent position, deriving its dignity wholly from God. The emperor, on the contrary, received his dignity from the papacy. The talented, but intriguing and deceitful, king had greatly strengthened the anti-imperial tendency in all Western Europe. During the great investiture conflict the other kings had freed themselves completely from the suzerainty of the emperor. The pope was the guarantee of their independence, and he had become the representative of the whole of Christendom, while the imperial dignity had lost the attribute of universality. The way was now open to the pope to become the umpire over kings and nations. There was now a truce in the conflict between pope and emperor. Only a minor question had been settled, but the conflict had awakened the intellects of men, and on both sides a voluminous controversial literature appeared. The assertion was now made that the Christian conception of the papacy was not realized by existing conditions. There were also other manifestations of independent thought. The Crusades opened a new world of ideas; historical writing made rapid progress, and art ventured upon new forms in architecture. Commerce and travel increased through the active intercourse with Italy, a state of affairs beneficial to the growth of the cities. Germany grew in civilization although it did not reach the same level of culture which Italy and France had then attained.

Henry V died childless, and his nephew, Duke Frederick of Swabia, the representative of the most powerful ruling family in the empire, hoped to be his successor. The clergy, led by Archbishop Adalbert of Mainz, however, feared that Frederick would continue the ecclesiastical policy of the Franconian emperors, and they succeeded in defeating him as a candidate. At Mainz the majority of the princes voted for Lothair of Supplinburg (1125-37); thus the electors disregarded any hereditary right to the throne. The Hohenstaufen brothers, Frederick and Conrad, did not yield the crown to Lothair without a struggle. The Hohenstaufen family was in possession of the crownlands belonging to the inheritance of the Franconian emperors, and a long struggle ensued over these territories. Lothair's suzerainty was for a while in a very critical position; the Hohenstaufen power increased to such an extent that in 1127 its abettors ventured to proclaim Conrad king. In the end, however, Lothair conquered. A courageous man, but one somewhat inclined to hasty action, he was able to maintain the claims of the empire against Bohemia, Poland, and Denmark. As a statesman, however, Conrad was less aggressive. He allowed the schism of 1130, when Innocent II and Anacletus Il contended for the Holy See, to pass by without turning the temporal weakness of the papacy to the benefit of the empire. After a delay Lothair finally recognized Innocent as pope and brought him to Rome. Here Lothir was crowned emperor in 1133; but the Curia did not agree to his demand for the restoration of the old right of investiture. However, he received the domains of the Countess Matilda as a fief from the pope and thus laid the foundation of the strong position of the house of Welf (Guelph) in Central Europe. In the meantime the two Hohenstaufen brothers were defeated, and Lothair was now able (1136), without fear of an uprising in Germany, to go to Rome for a second time. The object of this further campaign in Italy was to defeat King Roger of Sicily, the protector of the antipope, but the success of the imperial army was only temporary. Differences of opinion as to imperial and papal rights in lower Italy and Sicily endangered at times the good understanding between the two great powers. The emperor grew ill and died on the way home, and after his death the vigorous Roger united all lower Italy, with the exception of Benevento, into a kingdom that held an unrivalled position in Europe for its brilliant and strangely mixed culture. In the struggle between the papacy and the empire this Sicilian kingdom was before long to take an important part.

The political policy of the Church was directed by its distrust of the aims of the Saxon dynasty in lower Italy; consequently by a bold stroke it brought about the election of Conrad III (1138-52), the Hohenstaufen Duke of Franconia, passing over Duke Henry the Proud, ruler of Saxony and Bavaria, and a descendant of Duke Welf (Guelph). The new king demanded from Henry the surrender of the Saxon duchy. Although after a long struggle the double Duchy of Bavaria-Saxony was dissolved, yet the Saxon duchy that was given by the treaty of 1142 to young Henry the Lion, son of Henry the Proud, continued a menace to the Hohenstaufen rule. Conrad was not able to put an end to the disorders in his realm, and the respect felt for the empire on the eastern frontier declined; neither was he able to assert his power in Italy. Yet all these troubles did not prevent his yielding to the fiery eloquence of St. Bernard of Clairvaux and joining the Second Crusade. This crusade, the success of which had been promised by St. Bernard and the pope, failed completely. When Conrad returned home, broken in spirit, he was confronted by the danger of a formidable rising of the Welfs. In 1152 he died. During his reign the intellectual results of the Crusades began to show themselves. Men's imaginations had been stimulated and led them away from traditional medieval sentiment. The world was seized by a romantic impulse and the conception of the Crusades, developed first among the Romanic nations, gave a Romanic colouring to the civilization and morals of the age. For a long time German knighthood, in particular, was characterized by Romanic ideas and manners.

When the new king, Frederick I Barbarossa (1152-90), ascended the throne his German kingdom seemed on the verge of disintegration, and he sought to strengthen his power by a journey through all parts of his realms. Contrary to the policy pursued by his predecessor, he exerted himself to settle the strife between the Welf (Guelph) and Hohenstaufen parties. He wanted to strengthen the Welf power to such extent as to make it evident that this party's interests coincided with those of the Crown. Besides, Saxony, Henry the Lion received also the Duchy of Bavaria which had been taken from his father Henry the Proud. As secular protector of the Church, Frederick came to an agreement with the pope in regard to the latter's adversaries, the citizens of Rome and King Roger of Sicily. The imperial policy of Frederick was one of vast schemes which he could only carry out when he had a firm footing in Italy. But in Italy the city republics had arisen, and these had entirely cast off his suzerainty. Not realizing the power of resistance of the free communities, Frederick wanted to force the cities to recognize the supremacy of the empire. In case the pope should interfere in the dispute, Frederick was resolved not to permit his intervention in secular affairs. Frederick was filled with an ideal conception of his position as emperor. He believed that the Germans were destined in the history of the world to exercise universal rule. It was this idea, however, that exasperated the Italians and aroused their hatred. Frederick could only carry out this universal policy if Italy were his, and the question of its possession led to renewed struggles between Church and State. When Frederick went to Rome to be crowned emperor in 1155, most of the Italian cities paid their homage to him. On his return home Bavaria was restored in fief to Henry the Lion, the East Mark (later Austria) being first detached from the duchy. This led in the course of time to a development of the mark that proved of great importance for the future history of the empire. Frederick's policy was, in the main, not to interfere with the rights of the German princes as long as they obeyed the laws of the empire. The spiritual princes he attached closely to himself. The most powerful bishops of this period, Rainald of Cologne, Christian of Mainz, and Wichmann of Magdeburg, supported the imperial party. The majority of the bishops looked upon Frederick as a protection against the encroachments of Rome and of the secular rulers. The emperor sought, by strengthening his dynastic power, to make himself independent of both the ecclesiastical and temporal princes; to carry out this policy he depended on his inferior civil officials (Ministerialen), who were still serfs, and from whom was hereafter to come the important military nobility. Thus Frederick prepared the way for the flourishing period of chivalry, which was to give its signature to the time now at hand. A romantic, knightly culture arose; poetry flourished; yet the love lyrics of the age often expounded unhealthy views of morals and marriage. Nevertheless, the movement did not penetrate very deep, and the common people remained uncorrupted. Moreover, poetry was not wasted on artificial love songs; Wolfram von Eschenbach had the courage to attempt great problems; Walther von der Vogelweide was the herald of German imperialism. Art undertook to solve great questions, and began to draw its themes from life. Scientific learning, however, had not made equal progress; the time of apprenticeship was not yet passed, while in France and Italy Scholasticism had already shown itself creative. In 1158 Frederick made a second campaign in Italy that closed with the sack of Milan, the subjugation of Italy, and the flight of Pope Alexander III to France. When, however, the rest of Europe sided with the lawful pope, the defeat of the emperor was assured, for the papacy, when supported by all other countries, could not be coerced by Frederick. The emperor's third campaign in Italy (1162-64) ended in the failure of his lower Italian policy, and the outbreak of the plague destroyed the more promising prospects of the fourth expedition. In the fifth campaign (1174) occurred the memorable defeat near Legnano which opened the eyes of the emperor to the necessity of a treaty of peace. In 1177 he made peace with the pope at Venice, and recognized Alexander III, whom he had so obstinately opposed. The papacy had victoriously defended its equality with the empire. In Germany Frederick was obliged to take steps against the violent proceedings of Henry the Lion. The insubordinate Guelph was deposed and his fiefs divided, Bavaria being given to Otto of Wittelsbach. By the repeated allotment of these lands Frederick in reality helped to break up the empire, and when in 1184 he betrothed his son Henry to Constance, the heiress of the Norman kingdom, he prepared the way for new complications. Frederick took part in the Third Crusade in order that the highest power of Christendom might actively fight against the infidel. He was drowned in Asia Minor, 10 June, 1190; and was, at his death, a popular hero. He had greatly strengthened the feeling of the Germans that they were one great people, though a really national empire was at the time quite out of the question; the achievement of unity was prevented by the international character of intellectual, and partly of social, life.

Frederick's son, Henry VI (1190-97), meant to establish a world power along the Mediterranean. His schemes were opposed by a Saxon-Guelphic combination headed by Richard the Lion-Hearted of England, and also by the German princes, who strove to hinder the increase of the royal power aimed at by Henry. The capture of Richard in 1192 dissolved the league of princes and led to peace with the House of Guelph. In 1194 Henry succeeded in conquering Sicily, and it now seemed as though his imperialistic schemes would gain the day; nevertheless they failed owing to the opposition of the German princes and the pope. When Henry died in 1197 the countries of Western Europe had already taken a stand against the all-embracing schemes of the German emperor. Germany was threatened by the horrors of a civil war. All the anti-national forces were active.

Instead of the crown going to Frederick, son of Henry, who was at Naples, Archbishop Adolph of Cologne sought, by means of the electoral rights of the princes, to obtain it for the son of Henry the Lion, Otto IV (1198-1215). But the Hohenstaufen party anticipated this scheme by securing the election of the popular Duke Philip of Swabia (1198-1208). For the first time the question now arose, which of the princes have the right to vote? The number of electors had not, so far, been defined, yet as early as the election of Lothair and Conrad only the princes had voted, and the right of the Archbishops of Mainz to preside at the election was clearly admitted. Not much later the opinion prevailed that only six ruling princes were entitled to act as electors: the three Rhenish Archbishops, the Rhenish Palsgrave, the Duke of Saxony, and the Margrave of Brandenburg; to these was added in the course of time the King of Bohemia. The "Sachsenspiegel" (compilation of Saxon law, c. 1230) caused this view to prevail. At the time of the double election of Otto and Philip the policy pursued by the German princes was a purely selfish one. The energetic Innocent III, who was then pope, claimed the right of deciding the dispute and adjudged the crown to Otto. Thus the latter for a time gained the advantage over Philip. In this conflict the German princes changed sides whenever it seemed to their interest. Archbishop Adolph of Cologne, who had carried the election of Otto, finally fell away from him. Philip gained in authority, and after the successful battle near Wassenberg in 1206 he would have overcome Otto and his ally the papacy, had he not been murdered at Bamberg in 1208 by Otto of Wittelsbach.

Otto IV was now universally acknowledged king. He had promised the pope to give up his claim to the domains of the Countess Matilda of Tuscany and to grant the free election of bishops. But when at Rome he refused to carry out these promises. However, the pope, though displeased, crowned him emperor in 1209. But when Otto after this wished to revive the imperial claims to Naples, the pope excommunicated him (1210).

In the meantime the supreme position of the empire had become so important a matter that foreign princes meddled in German politics. The great conflict between Philip II Augustus of France and John of England was reflected in the contest between the Guelphs and the Hohenstaufens in Germany. Protected by the French and the pope, Frederick II (1212-50) came to Germany and was crowned at Mainz. The coalition of the English and the Guelphs was broken by the French at the battle of Bouvines (1214), yet Otto kept up the struggle for his rights until his death in 1218. The long conflict had greatly impaired the strength of the Hohenstaufen line; both the imperial and the Hohenstaufen domains had been squandered, and the German princes had become conscious of their power. Like his father, Frederick II made Italy the centre of his policy; but at the same time he intended to keep the control of Germany in his own hands, as the imperial power was connected with this country and he must draw the soldiers needed for his Italian projects from Germany. In order to maintain peace in Germany and to secure the aid of the German princes for his Italian policy Frederick made great concessions to the ecclesiastical princes in the "Confoederatio cum principibus ecclesiasticis" (1220) and to the secular princes in the "Statutum in favorem principum" (1232). These two laws became the basis of an aristocratic constitution for the German Empire. They both contained a large number of separate ordinances, which taken together might serve as a secure basis for the future sovereignty of the local princes. In these statutes the expression landesherr (lord of the land) occurs for the first time. In this era Germany was cut up into a large number of territorial sovereignties, consisting of the ecclesiastical territories, the duchies, which, however, were no longer tribal duchies, the margravates, among which the North Mark ruled by Albert the Bear was one of the most important, the palatinates, the countships, and the independent domains of those who had risen from landed proprietors to landed sovereigns. In addition to these were the districts ruled directly by the king through imperial wardens. What Frederick sought to get by favouring the princes he obtained. He had no real interest in Germany, which was at first ruled by the energetic Engelbert, Archbishop of Cologne; after 1220 he visited it only once. It was to him an appendage of Sicily. Frederick's Italian policy threatened the papacy, and he strove by concessions to avert a conflict with the pope. The highly talented, almost learned, emperor was far in advance of his age; an autocratic ruler, he created in lower Italy the first modern state; but by his care for Italy he overstrained the resources of the empire. This brought advantages to the neighbouring Kingdoms of France, and England, now long independent powers, as well as to Hungary, Poland, and the Scandinavian countries. The conflict between the sacerdotal power and the empire had aided the independent development of the states of Western Europe. The possession of Italy and the vow to go on a crusade regulated Frederick's relations with the Curia. In 1212 he was crowned emperor. Repeatedly urged to undertake the promised crusade, and finally excommunicated because he failed to do so, the emperor obtained successes in the East in 1227-29, contrary to the wishes of the pope. The silent acknowledgment of these successes by the Curia was a victory for Frederick. A rebellion headed by his son Henry was quickly crushed, but the confederates of Henry, the Lombards, assumed a threatening attitude. The emperor was able to bring order out of the confusion in Germany by the policy of yielding to the princes. About the same time began Frederick's struggle with the Lombards and Pope Gregory IX (1227-41). The German princes loyally upheld the emperor, consequently, upon the pope's death, the victory seemed to belong to the imperial party. Innocent IV (1243-54), however, renewed the struggle and from Lyons excommunicated the emperor, whose position now became a serious one. In Germany his son Conrad was obliged to contend with the pretenders, Heinrich Raspe of Thuringia and William of Holland. In Italy, though, conditions seemed favourable, but just at this juncture Frederick died (13 December, 1250), and with his death ended the struggle for the world sovereignty.

The year 1250 marks an era of extraordinary change in Germany. The romance of chivalry passed away, and new forces directed the life of the nation. On account of the extraordinary economic changes the population rapidly increased; the majority of the people were peasants, and this class was rising, but compared with nobles and ecclesiastics the peasants had no weight politically. The important factor of the new era was the municipality, and its development was the beginning of a purely German policy. The glamour of the imperial idea had vanished, men now took their stand on facts and realities. Education found its way among laymen, and it developed with trade. New markets were opened for commerce. The new commercial settlements received "city charters" under the royal cross. The merchants in these settlements needed craftsmen, and these latter from the twelfth century formed themselves into guilds, thus making a new political unit. Councils elected by the cities strove to set aside the former lords of the cities, especially the bishops on the Rhine. In vain the Hohenstaufen rulers supported the bishops against the independence of the towns, but the government in the cities could no longer be put down. In order to protect their rights some of the cities formed alliances, such as the confederation of the Rhenish towns, that was formed as early as the period of the Great Interregnum in order to guard the public peace. These confederations promised to become dangerous opponents of the territorial lords, but such alliances did not become general and, divided among themselves without mutual support, the smaller confederations of towns succumbed to the united princely power. The growth of the towns brought about the ruin of the system of trade by barter or in kind; the rise of the capitalistic system of commerce at once affected German views of life. Up to this time almost wholly absorbed in the supernatural, henceforth the Germans took more interest in worldly things. Unconditional renunciation of the world came to an end, and men grew more matter-of-fact and practical. This change in the German way of thinking was aided by the opposition that sprang up in the towns between the citizens and the former lords of the territory, often the bishops and their clergy. Here and there the influence of the city on the views of the clergy manifested itself. The Dominicans and Franciscans, at least, taught their doctrines in language quite intelligible to the people. The rise of the cities was also of importance in the social life of the day, for the principle, "City air gives freedom" (Stadtluft macht frei), created an entirely new class of freemen.

Under the last of the Hohenstaufens the beginnings of a national culture began to appear. Latin had fallen into disuse, and German become the prevailing written language. For the first time Germany felt that she was a nation. This soon brought many Germans into opposition to the Church. In the conflict between the papacy and the empire the former often seemed the opponent of nationalism, and bitterness was felt, not against the idea of the Church, but against its representative. The Germans still remained deeply religious, as was made evident by the German mystics.

The most valuable result of this strengthening of the national feeling was the conquest of what is now the eastern part of the present German Empire. Henry I had sought to attain this end, but it was not until the thirteenth century that it was accomplished, largely by the energy of the Teutonic Order. The Marks of Brandenburg, Pomerania, Prussia, and Silesia were colonized by Germans in a manner that challenges admiration, and German influence advanced as far as the Gulf of Finland. The centres of German civilization in these districts were the Premonstratensian and Cistercian monasteries. This extraordinary success was won by Germans in an era when the imperial government seemed ready to go to pieces. It was the period of the Great Interregnum (1256-73). We find traces of internal chaos as early as the reign of Frederick's son, Conrad IV (1250-54), and the confusion grew worse in the reign of William of Holland, and after him during the nominal reigns of Richard of Cornwall and Alfonso of Castile. At the same time Bohemia rapidly advanced in power under Ottocar II and became a dangerous element for the domestic and foreign policy of Germany. It was Pope Gregory X who restored order in Germany. To carry out his projects in the Holy Land peace must be secured in Western Europe. He therefore commissioned the electoral princes, who now appear for the first time, to elect a new king. In 1273 the princes chose Rudolf of Hapsburg (1273-91), a man of no great family resources. Meantime the imperial power had fallen into decay; the imperial estates had been squandered; there were no imperial taxes; and the old method of obtaining soldiers for the service of the empire had broken down. Rudolf saw how necessary the possession of crown-lands was for the imperial authority, his aim being to create a dynastic force. Ottocar II, King of Bohemia, sought to induce the Curia to object to the election of Rudolf, but the Curia had quickly come to terms with Rudolf concerning conditions in Italy. After his election he demanded from Ottocar the return of the imperial fiefs, and the refusal of the latter led to a war (1276) in which, on the plain called the Marchfeld, Ottocar lost both life and crown. This victory gave Rudolf secure possession of the Austrian provinces. As the German king was not permitted to retain vacant fiefs, he evaded this law by granting Austria, Styria, Carniola, and Lusatia in fief to his sons Albert and Rudolf; in this way the power of the family was greatly increased. Not even Rudolf thought of strengthening the kingly power by constitutional means. He decided to protect the public peace but did not entirely succeed in this. His policy was always influenced by the circumstances of the moment: at one time he favoured the princes, at another the cities; consequently he was never more than half successful. His only great achievement was that he secured for his family a position in Eastern Europe that was destined to give it importance in the future.

Rudolf's successor was Adolf of Nassau (1292-98), not his son Albert, as he had desired. The policy of the new sovereign was to weaken Austria, his natural opponent. Like Rudolf he recognized the necessity of obtaining possessions for his family, for which he tried to lay a foundation in Thuringia. Adolf's success against Frederick the Degenerate of Thuringia caused the electoral princes to incline to Albert. In a battle near Goellheim, fought between Albert and Adolf, Albert, aided by Adolf's numerous enemies, defeated the king, who was killed.

Albert I of Austria, a very able but morose man (1298-1308), was filled with a boundless ambition for power. Without regard for the rights of others, he enforced the recognition of his own rights in his duchy. He desired to preserve the public peace in Germany and opposed the cruel persecution of the Jews customary at this time. He also wished to reorganize the imperial lands, which were to be regained in such a way as to provide a connecting link between the territories of the Hapsburgs in the east and those in the west. If his lands were thus united he would be a match for the strongest of the territorial princes; but the latter opposed this scheme. Albert also roused the anger of the ecclesiastical electors by combining with King Philip IV of France against Boniface VIII, who had not recognized Albert. Boniface now declared his intention of summoning Albert before his tribunal for the murder of Adolf. Supported by the cities, Albert contended successfully with the Rhenish electors, but after a while, in order to carry out his plans for the aggrandizement of his family, he came to terms with the pope, and this put an end to the opposition of these electors. The only opponent of his dynastic schemes now to be dreaded was Wenceslaus II of Bohemia; but the Przemysl line soon died out, and Albert at once claimed their lands and gave them to his son Rudolf as a fief. Before he could carry out his designs on Thuringia he was murdered by John of Swabia, called Johannes Parricida. According to legend, the tyranny of his rule in Switzerland led to a great struggle for freedom on the part of the confederated Swiss. The aim pursued by Albert was always the same: by making Austria powerful to force the other sovereign princes to acknowledge his suzerainty and thus to make the crown hereditary in his family. It is, therefore, not a matter of surprise that after his death the electors decided to select a less mighty prince.

Archbishop Baldwin of Trier managed the matter so skillfully that his brother Henry of Luxembourg (Lützelburg) was chosen (1308-13). A man of gentle, amiable character, Henry was full of visionary enthusiasm, but withal he was a man of energy; consequently he was soon very popular. By birth he was in sympathy with the French. German interests concerned him less. Italy had a great fascination for him; he was ambitious to receive the imperial crown, to be the first after a long interregnum. Clement V had recognized him. The Ghibelline party in Italy greeted him with joy. At first he sought to hold a neutral position in the quarrels of the Italian parties, but this proved to be impossible. The Guelphs, led by King Robert of Naples, began to oppose him. When Henry thereupon wished to attack Naples, the old conflict with the Church again broke out, but death suddenly ended his imperial dreams. Henry's only successful act was the marriage of his son John with the heiress of Bohemia, Elizabeth, the sister of Wenceslaus III; for Germany his reign proved of no advantage. The election of his son John to succeed him was impossible, and the Luxembourg party chose Louis the Bavarian (1314-47) in opposition to Frederick the Fair (1314-30). There was a double election, each of the candidates being elected by one party, and a civil war broke out, confined, however, mainly to the partisans of the two Houses of Wittelsbach and Hapsburg. The struggle was ended by the capture of Frederick at the battle of Mühldorf (1322); after this Louis was universally recognized.

While this conflict was going on the old strife between Church and State again broke out. At the time of the double election John XXII claimed the rights of an administrator of the country. He asserted that no king chosen by the electors could exercise authority before the pope had given his approval. This over-straining of the papal claims roused a dissatisfaction which continually grew and to which were already added complaints of the worldliness of the Church. The Minorites placed at the disposal of the king eloquent preachers to denounce the worldliness of the papacy, which had rejected as heretical the Franciscan teaching concerning the poverty of Christ and the Apostles. In 1324 Louis was excommunicated because he had not obeyed the papal command to lay down his authority. To this Louis made a sharp reply in the proclamation of Sachsenhausen, in which he denied the claims of the pope and at the same time defended the teaching concerning poverty upheld by the Franciscans. In the conflict with the pope, who supported the candidature of Charles IV of France for the imperial throne, the German cities and the German episcopate, the latter led by Baldwin of Trier, were virtually a unit on the side of Louis. Even the death of Frederick the Fair did not produce a reconciliation with the Curia. It was at this juncture that the writings of the Franciscans, Michael of Cesena and William of Occam began to exert their influence. The spirit of revolution in the Church is shown by the "Defensor Pacis" of Marsilius of Padua, a professor of Paris who went to the Court of Louis the Bavarian. In this the medieval papal ecclesiastical system is attacked. The intellectual ferment enabled Louis to undertake an expedition to Rome. He had been invited to enter Italy by the magnates of northern Italy, especially by the Visconti of Milan and the Scala of Verona. The city of Rome received him with joy, and he was the first German king to receive the imperial crown from the Roman commonwealth which had always regarded itself as the source of all sovereignty. But the fickle populace soon drove him away; the means at his command were too small to carry out the old imperial policy. Again Italy was lost. Notwithstanding the lack of success in Italy, Germany in the main held to Louis, who had been excommunicated again. It was now evident that papal interdicts had largely lost their terrors; the civil communities frequently paid no attention to them, and in some places ecclesiastics were forced, notwithstanding the prohibition, to say Mass. The growth of a worldly spirit in the Church began to undermine respect for it, and Germany was the first country to turn against the ideals of the Middle Ages. Sects opposed to sacerdotalism appeared; mysticism tended to make the soul independent in its progress towards God, without, however, rejecting the sacraments, as was done by some in this era. Yet, unintentionally, mysticism strengthened the tendency to deny the absolute necessity of the intercessory office of the Church. Moreover, mysticism gave a national cast to German religious life, for the intellectual leaders of mysticism, Ekkehard, Suso, and Tauler, wrote and preached in German. The chief strength of this religious movement was among the citizens of the towns. In the conflict between Church and State the cities sided with the emperor, but they were not yet strong enough without assistance to maintain the authority of a German emperor. Consequently, the position taken by the German princes was decisive for Louis. As he meant to carry on a dynastic policy, as his predecessors had done, he soon came into conflict with these princes, and, in order to be stronger than his opponents, he sought to establish friendly relations with the pope. But although Louis could resolve on vigorous action, yet he lacked the necessary persistence. He was not an able man, nor one of much intellectual power. He tried to make a good impression on every one; as a consequence, he failed with all parties. He opened negotiations with the Curia, but the intrigues of Philip VI of France kept the two parties from concluding peace. This led Louis to take the side of Edward III of England at the beginning of the war between the French and English for the succession to the French throne. This stand won more general sympathy for Louis in Germany. The electors were also influenced by public opinion when they declared at Rense in 1338 that a legitimate German emperor could be created only by their votes; a king so chosen needed no papal recognition, and the pope, by crowning the German king, only gave him the imperial title. Louis was also declared to be entirely without blame in the dispute with the Curia. When Edward III appeared before Louis at Coblenz and the latter appointed him imperial vicar for the territories beyond the Rhine, the emperor had reached the zenith of his power. Nevertheless the fickle Louis, because he hoped, through the mediation of the King of France, to be reconciled with the Curia and to secure the support of the latter for his schemes to aggrandize his family, allied himself with the French in 1341. Instead of peace a worse estrangement with the papal court was the result.

With the consent of the emperor, Margaret Maultasch of Tyrol, who had married John of Luxembourg (Lützelburg), had divorced herself without awaiting the papal decision and married the emperor's son, Louis of Brandenburg. The Luxembourg party at once had recourse to Clement VI. Louis was excommunicated in 1346, and Charles IV of Moravia (1347-78) was, with the help of the pope, chosen German king by five of the electors under humiliating conditions. At first Louis had strong support from the German cities, but his unexpected death secured universal recognition for Charles. Henceforth for nearly a hundred years the Luxembourg-Bohemian dynasty held the throne. The king set up by the Wittelsbach party, Guenther of Schwarzburg, could make no headway against the adroit policy of Charles IV. In 1347 Germany was ravaged by the Black Death; the Jews were immediately accused of poisoning the wells, and a frightful persecution followed. In the midst of the confusion the country was traversed by bands of Flagellants, and these "penitents" were often full of hostility to the Church. While in Italy Petrarch and Cola di Rienzi revived the dream of the universal dominion of the Eternal City, Charles IV regarded Italian affairs with the eyes of a political realist. The Italians said that he went to Rome (1355) to secure the imperial crown like a merchant going to a fair. In Germany Charles sought to settle the election to the crown at the Diets of Nuremberg and Metz in 1356, and he issued the Golden Bull, which was the first attempt to put into writing the more important stipulations of the imperial constitution. Above all, the Bull was intended to regulate the election of the king, and defined what princes should have the electoral vote. The electoral college was to consist of the three Archbishops of Mainz, Trier, and Cologne; the Count Palatine of the Rhine, the Duke of Saxony (Sachsen-Wittenberg), and the Margrave of Brandenburg; to this number was added later the King of Bohemia. The electors were granted special privileges; besides the royal rights (regalia) and those of taxation and coinage, they received the privilegium de non evocando, that is, their subjects could not be summoned before the court of another jurisdiction, not even before an imperial one. The royal authority was to find in the electors who were scattered throughout the empire a support against the many petty princes. Other articles of the Golden Bull were to guard the rights of the local princes against their vassals and subjects, especially against the cities. Nothing is said of the share of the pope in the election of the king; the one chosen by the majority of the electors was to be the king. Only the coronation as emperor was left to the pope. The Golden Bull remained the most important part of the fundamental law of the Holy Roman Empire.

Learning flourished under the rule of Charles, who was a scholar among his contemporaries. He was surrounded by highly educated men, one of whom was John of Neumarkt, the head of his chancelry. His interest being almost entirely in Bohemia, he showed his care for the advancement of learning chiefly in this country and founded there, 7 April, 1348, the University of Prague. Charles held steadfastly to Catholicism and Christian Scholasticism. But this did not prevent him from carrying on policies independent of the pope. In reorganizing the imperial chancelry he encouraged the use of German in the imperial documents and thus assured the victory of the national tongue over Latin. By this action he gave German learning an independent standing.

Charles also furthered the interests of the empire in various other directions. He did not, indeed, overthrow the power of the princes, which had grown strong during the several hundred years of its existence, but he sought by the maintenance of internal peace to preserve his supreme power. To promote the foreign interests of Germany he desired to liberate the papacy from its connexion with France and to persuade the pope to return from Avignon to Rome. Gregory went back to Rome, but the Babylonian Captivity was to be followed by the Great Schism. In the meantime, Charles had largely increased the territorial possession of his family; the Marks of Brandenburg, Lusatia, and Silesia came into his hands. By marriage he hoped to obtain for his son, and thus for his dynasty, both Hungary and Poland. Thus for a time the House of Luxembourg threatened to crash out the Hapsburgs. In two directions only Charles's adroit agreements and diplomatic skill failed of success. The Swiss Confederation seceded more and more completely from the empire, and the cities by their leagues established for themselves an independent position in the empire. Towards the end of his life he secured the election of his son Wenceslaus as German king.

Wenceslaus (1378-1400) reigned without the confirmation of the defenceless pope of that time. The German crown was no longer dependent on the papacy. Other questions far more important than this were now brought into the foreground by the Great Schism. There was a continually growing clamour, which could not be suppressed, for the reform of the Church in its head and members. The demand for reform had infused new life into the whole conception of the Church, and the leaders of this movement still held to Catholic dogmas. The most difficult task of the new king, and one he did not shirk, was to put an end to the schism. He sided with Rome and supported Urban VI while France, at the head of the Romanic countries, upheld Clement VII. Wenceslaus, however, took no energetic action in ecclesiastical affairs; the internal disorder in Germany did not permit it, for here the confederations of princes, knights, and the cities, struggled with one another. In 1381 the confederation of the Rhenish cities formed a coalition with the league of the Swabian cities and sought with considerable success to obtain the adherence of other Swabian towns and of those of North Germany. Thus strengthened, the cities wished to share in the government of the empire; this desire was opposed by the princes who in military force were superior to the cities. The attempts of the rulers of Austria to overthrow the Swiss confederates failed, but in Germany the army of the Swabian League suffered a crushing defeat in 1388 near Doeffingen. After this Wenceslaus changed his policy and sided with the princes. Confederations of the cities were forbidden. Owing to their lack of union the cities succumbed in this contest for political independence and the territorial princes were the conquerors. The quick-tempered, irascible king sought to strengthen his hold on his hereditary provinces by protecting himself against the other ruling princes, but in this he was not successful. A government by favouritism of the worst kind began which excited the anger of the nobility and the clergy. A dispute with the Archbishop of Prague led to the murder, by the king's command, of the archbishop's vicar-general, John of Pomuk, and this caused open rebellion. In 1394 the nobles with Jost, Margrave of Moravia, as their leader, took the king prisoner; he was soon set free at the instance of the German princes, but his release did not do away with the rule of the nobility in Bohemia. In this era of confusion no attempt was made to oppose the repeated incursions (1388) of Charles VI of France into Germany. Wenceslaus looked on inactively when the French king undertook to carry out a scheme for putting an end to the schism by securing the success of the Avignon pope by a bold stroke; but in 1392 Charles VI became insane, and his plans were brought to nought. The waning influence of the German Empire was everywhere perceptible and called forth universal indignation. The king's lack of capacity for government led the majority of the electors to form a league for the protection of the interests of the country.

Soon after this the three episcopal electors chose Ruprecht, Count Palatine of the Rhine, as King of Germany (1400-10). As only a part of the electors joined in this choice Ruprecht was never more than a pretender, and although he was an ambitious and capable man he never succeeded in uniting the empire. Ruprecht hoped to gain popularity by restoring German influence in northern Italy, and by securing the imperial crown to prove himself the legal sovereign. As Ruprecht had no money, his expedition to Italy was inglorious, and its failure had a bad effect on his position in Germany. Even his final recognition by the pope, who had for a long time held to the Luxembourg dynasty, his faithful supporters, did little to aid Ruprecht's cause, and his throne began to totter. In 1405 Archbishop Johann of Mainz combined the princes against Ruprecht in the League of Marbach which, however, accomplished next to nothing. In the question of the schism Ruprecht supported Boniface IX. As King of the Germans Ruprecht was a failure. During the laxity of government that followed his death the German conquests in the eastern part of the empire were in danger of being lost. A new factor had appeared in history, the Kingdom of Poland.

All this time the confusion in the affairs of the Church had continued to grow worse, and it was now proposed to put an end to the schism by means of a council. The cardinals of the two rival popes called a council at Pisa which deposed Popes Gregory XII and Benedict XIII and elected Alexander V, but Gregory and Benedict could still count on some supporters, and the world thus saw three popes. The greater part of Germany held to the new pope, Alexander V, but the party of the Count Palatine and of the Bishop of Trier held to Gregory. A period of utter confusion and great distress of conscience followed; all the relations of life suffered, the political by no means the least. In Germany the troubles led to a double election; Sigismund of Luxembourg, King of Hungary, the brother of Wenceslaus was elected (1410-37), as was also Jost, Margrave of Moravia. Jost withdrew, and Wenceslaus resigned the government to Sigismund, who in 1411 was generally recognized as emperor. The impotence of the last reign convinced the electors, who had chosen Margrave Jost for reasons of Church politics, that a king who had not large territorial power could accomplish nothing. Consequently they dropped their opposition to Sigismund. The latter's life before his election had been a very eventful one. He had married the daughter and heiress of Louis the Great of Hungary, and had been crowned king of that country in 1387. In the war between Hungary and the Turks he had been completely defeated by Sultan Bajazet; after this he had to contend with a dangerous rebellion in Hungary. Sigismund was talented, eloquent, witty, and exceedingly ambitious; he was inclined to visionary schemes, but he honestly desired to relieve the woeful troubles of his time. In his hereditary dominions, to which Hungary was now added, there was great disorder. Yet notwithstanding this he succeeded in bringing together the great councils of Constance and Basle. Ambition led him to attempt to settle the difficulties in which the Church was involved, but he was also impelled by political considerations. He hoped that a council would aid him in suppressing the religious troubles kindled in his hereditary kingdom of Bohemia by John Hus. It was not zeal for the Church, however, which inspired his interest in the council, as is evident from the general bent of his mind. For with all his interest in literature and learning, Sigismund scrupulously avoided involving himself in theological difficulties; moreover he took pleasure in denouncing the faults of the clergy. Nevertheless it was Sigismund's energy that held together the great council at Constance. It was certainly not his fault that many were not satisfied with the result of this and the following council. The forcible interference of the Council of Constance in the religious difficulties of Bohemia and the burning of John Hus were injurious to Sigismund's dynastic interests, and not in accordance with his political schemes. In Bohemia and Moravia the Hussites at once strove to prevent the king from taking possession of these countries; and it, especially in Bohemia, was a violent religious and national outbreak. The king was held directly responsible for the burning of the national hero and saint. Fanatical hordes led by Ziska repeatedly overthrew Sigismund's army in his crusade against the Hussites, and the storm spread over the adjacent provinces of the empire. Bavaria, Franconia, Saxony, and Silesia were terribly devastated. The imperial government broke down completely. The selfishness of the cities prevented the reform of the German military system, even after its necessity had been proved by further successes of the Hussites. In 1427 an imperial law for the levying of a war-tax was laid before the Diet at Frankfurt, but it was never carried out.

In addition to the troubles in Bohemia, Sigismund's already insecure position was made more precarious by a fresh invasion of Hungary by the Turks. The only help he received was from Duke Albert V of Austria, his son-in-law and the prospective heir of the great inheritance of the Luxembourg possessions. The jealousy among the German states prevented common action against both foes. Sigismund's chief ambition, after the reunion and reformation of the Church, to unite all the nations of Western Europe in a war against the Turks, became more and more hopeless. The defeat of the Hussites appeared equally impossible, and negotiations were opened with them, peace being finally arranged at Basle. Sigismund induced the pope to weaken in his attitude towards the conciliar theory, and especially to the Council of Basle which was to deal with the Hussite difficulties. To gain his point he had gone to Rome, where he was crowned emperor in 1433. Even in Bohemia where the existing anarchy had been increased by a new religious quarrel, where the moderate Calixtines had obtained a decisive victory over the Taborites under Procopius the Great in 1434, the need of peace grew more and more intense. The year previous to this, 1433, a commission of the Council of Basle had made a number of concessions to the Hussites in the Compact of Basle or of Prague; among these was the granting of the Cup to the laity. On the basis of the Compact a peace was agreed to, which was followed by the recognition (1436) of Sigismund as king in Bohemia. When this was attained Sigismund seemed to lose all concern for the reform of the Church and empire in which before he had shown so keen and active an interest. He can hardly be blamed for the boundless selfishness and jealousy of the princes repeatedly wrecked the work of reform; and the whole responsibility for the scanty gains for the empire achieved during his reign should not be laid on his shoulders. Only two of his measures were to have permanent existence: the transfer of the Mark of Brandenburg to the Hohenzollerns, and the granting of electoral Saxony to the House of Wettin. The great councils passed without bringing the fervently desired reform. Great changes were witnessed in these assemblies. At Basle the pope was regarded simply as a representative of the Church, and the superiority of the council over the pope was openly declared. In 1433 Procopius had been allowed to enter Basle at the head of his heretical followers and to set forth his opinions before the assembled members of the council without molestation. At Basle opinions which were signs of a revolutionary movement in the Church repeatedly appeared. In character this council differed entirely from all earlier ones; the excitement was so great that tumults and brawls occurred. Contrary to the wishes of Rome the council remained at Basle; the fear was that if it were transferred to Italian soil the work of reform would be forgotten. Yet the honest intentions of the majority of the members cannot be doubted. In the end the pope was victorious, and the council was transferred to Ferrara. Some of the members remained at Basle and the spectacle of a conciliar schism was offered to the world.

In this troubled era Albert II (1438-39), Duke of Austria, was chosen emperor. The electors recognized the fact that the centre of gravity of the empire now lay towards the east. Albert, member of the Hapsburg family, had not put himself forward as a candidate, and the electors probably selected him through fear that the important and necessary eastern territories might fall away from the empire. Before he could come to Western Germany Albert, a rough soldier, died during a campaign against the Turks.

The election now went to the head of the Hapsburg family, the inert and indolent Frederick III, who, as King of the Romans, was Frederick IV (1440-93). During his reign the work of reform in the empire fell completely into abeyance. He too was obliged to face the difficulties in the Church. The electors had decided to remain neutral in the dispute between the pope and the Council of Basle, but this neutrality had been broken, inasmuch as the Diet of Mainz in 1439 accepted the reform decree of Basle, with exception of the assertion of the superiority of the council over the pope. Henceforth bishops and abbots were to be elected canonically, but the king had the right to secure the election of suitable persons by negotiation. Papal reservations and annates were abolished. The Council of Basle, however, held firm]y to its exaggerated conception of the powers of a council, and its members wished to establish the dogma of conciliar superiority by deposing Pope Eugene IV. In this dispute the electors remained neutral. The reform of the Church was more and more lost sight of by the Council of Basle in its struggle with the pope. Frederick, who was appealed to by both Rome and Basle, at first remained neutral; then he proposed the calling of a new council to reunite divided Christianity. Western Europe gradually turned again to the rightful pope, and the pope elected at Basle, Felix V, received but slight recognition. For a time the German attitude of neutrality was maintained, but after a while Frederick gave the impulse to the universal recognition of Pope Eugene. This was brought about by Aeneas Sylvius, later Pius II, an adroit diplomat who was able to influence the king and the leading princes. An agreement was made with Rome in the Concordat of Vienna (1448) in which the Curia made but trifling concessions, while the question of reform received scant consideration. From now on the Synod of Basle, transferred to Lausanne, had only a shadowy existence. The Curia, although sorely pressed, had once more conquered. The general anxiety to avoid a new schism in the Church had far more to do with the settlement of these ecclesiastical troubles than the interference of Frederick. Moreover Frederick showed his lack of skill in other ways. In 1444 the Swiss at the battle of St. Jakob on the Birs, not far from Basle, by their extraordinary courage defeated his French mercenaries, called Armagnacs, and thus frustrated his schemes for restoring the control of the Hapsburgs over the Swiss League. In spite of the constant disorders in the empire and the frequent wars, Frederick never wavered in his belief in the future greatness of the Hapsburg dynasty. It was this confidence that in 1452 led him to Rome, where he was crowned emperor by the pope, the last German king to be crowned at Rome. Directly afterwards came the capture of Constantinople by the Turks, which obliged the emperor to take up arms for the defence of the eastern frontier of his realm. Yet he could neither maintain peace within the empire nor its most important rights. Luxembourg and the possessions of the Wittelsbach family in the Netherlands fell into the hands of Burgundy, the Poles annexed West Prussia, and the remnant of the Teutonic Order in East Prussia was obliged to recognize the suzerainty of the Polish king. Thus the Germanizing influences that had been at work for centuries in what is now the eastern part of the German Empire were destroyed.

The complete breakdown of the power of the empire called forth the demand that the emperor should be either deposed or have a coadjutor, but the lack of harmony among the electors prevented any change. The clamour for internal reform grew louder, but nothing was done except to enact laws for the maintenance of the public peace. During this confusion Frederick's position in his hereditary possessions became very precarious. The Czechs had held the preponderating power in Bohemia ever since the time of the Hussite troubles and now elected George of Podiebrad as king. The Hungarians also chose a ruler for themselves, electing the hero of the wars with the Turks, Matthias I Corvinus. Matthias soon overthrew the Bohemian king, and in 1487 apparently intended to form a great kingdom by uniting the eastern German provinces with the Bohemian, Moravian, and Hungarian territories. Important changes also occurred in the northern part of Germany. The Counts of Holstein, who had carried the German nationality into the northern territory of what is now Germany, had received Schleswig as early as 1386 in fief from Denmark; the two provinces, Holstein and Schleswig, soon grew together. After the death of the last Count of Holstein, King Christian of Denmark was in 1460 elected duke by Schleswig and Holstein. In this way he became a prince of the empire, a point of importance in the near future. This was afterwards to influence the position of the Baltic countries and the German interests there. For centuries the centre of the empire had been in the south, and Germany had no maritime interests. In this case also, as in the Germanization of the east, self-help was the means of attaining the desired end. The Hanseatic League, a union of German mercantile guilds, rapidly extended from Cologne to Reval on the Gulf of Finland. From the middle of the thirteenth century the chief towns of the League were Luebeck and Hamburg. German commerce flourished on all waters, for the members of the League carried the fame of their country across all the seas surrounding the Europe of that day. It is in fact a striking phenomenon that the national feeling was invigorated, while the strength of the empire was weakened by the division into so many petty sovereignties. The Hanseatic League maintained its ascendency in the Baltic as late as the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

At the same time a great power threatened to spring up in the west. By peaceful agreement Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy (1467-77), attempted to secure Frederick's consent to his election as King of the Romans and to the elevation of his possessions to the rank of an independent kingdom. But all these ambitious plans came to an end upon the death of Charles at the battle of Nancy in 1477. The duke's possessions fell to Louis XI of France, while Maximilian, son of the Emperor Frederick and son-in-law of Charles the Bold, hastened to the Netherlands, which he secured for himself (1479) by the brilliant battle at Guinegate. He was not, however, able to make himself master of Burgundy and Artois. Moreover, Flanders was not willing to submit to the new regime and it was not until 1489 that it was completely subdued. Somewhat later, on the death of Matthias Corvinus in 1490, Maximilian's energetic action gained for his dynasty the future possession of Hungary and Bohemia, while at the same time he reunited the Tyrol with Austria. Consequently when the old emperor died, all looked to the knightly hero Maximilian for the restoration of the empire.

Thus the outlook was by no means unfavourable at the time Maximilian I (1493-1519) ascended the throne. There were even indications of a healthier condition of internal affairs. The Swabian League, made up of the free cities and of the knights, sought, especially in 1486, to effect an adjustment of those interests of the different estates which most threatened the existence of the empire. Another favourable sign was the rapid development in civilization and culture of the several principalities. No less promising was the decision of the electors, now that the imperial authority had shown its entire impotence to check further decentralization. Turbulent agitation for reform in the cities was another important indication in the same direction. Maximilian tried by vigorous reforms to win the good will of the cities, the aid of which would be essential to him in the expected war with France, but the obstacles to be overcome before reforms could be introduced seemed steadily to increase. The most serious difficulty was and remained the antagonism between the interests of the empire and those of the princes. Maximilian, with his dynastic resources, which were made up of very heterogeneous elements, was not able to overcome these opposing forces. Thus the Diet of Worms in 1495 could not do much to promote reform on account of the opposing interests of the ruling princes, the free knights of the empire, and the imperial cities. At this diet the "Universal Pacification of the Empire" was proclaimed. All private wars were forbidden. An Imperial Chamber was established as a perpetual supreme court for the maintenance of the public peace, and the appointments to it were made by the emperor and the Estates of the empire. So many matters, however, were turned over to this court that it was condemned to inactivity from the outset. Nor was the Imperial Chamber able to promote the public peace, as it lacked all power of enforcing its decrees. Order in the empire could not be attained until the subordinate rulers became strong enough to exercise a vigorous police power in their territories. Maximilian had only agreed to the establishment of this court on condition that a general imperial tax, "the common penny," and military help against France and the Turks should be promised him. Concessions of a very different character had also been demanded by the ruling princes from the king. The powerful Archbishop of Mainz, Berthold of Henneberg, was the first to express the opinion that the administration of the empire should be placed in the hands of the electors, without, however, doing away with the monarchy. This proposition of the Diet of Worms was rejected by Maximilian. Five years later, however, when the promised financial and military aid was not forthcoming, he consented to the appointment of a permanent Imperial Council at Nuremberg. If this council had maintained an active existence for any length of time the king would have become a mere puppet. But after two years the royal power proved strong enough to break down the unnatural limitations imposed on it by the Estates.

During these constitutional struggles within the empire the hostile feeling between France and Germany continued to grow. France, now greatly increased in power, wished to gain a firm foothold in the Italian peninsula, and put forward claims to Naples and Milan. Thus began the long struggle of the Hapsburg dynasty with France for the possession of Italy. Maximilian was unable to checkmate the Italian schemes of the French king. In the end Maximilian even changed his policy, for, in order to gain assistance against Venice, he allied himself with France. Yet even now he reaped no laurels in Italy. In the Swabian war also, which the Swiss confederated cantons carried on against the Swabian League, his intervention was unsuccessful. As a matter of fact Maximilian was obliged, in the Treaty of Basle (1501), to acknowledge the independence of the Swiss Confederation. In the course of these wars the Swiss had become enthusiastic soldiers, and after this Switzerland could furnish or refuse entire armies of mercenaries, in this way attaining European importance in the great struggle of the Hapsburgs with France. The work of reform in the empire, however, came to a complete standstill on account of these unsuccessful foreign undertakings. The only permanent result of all these efforts was the Imperial Chamber. The course of history could not be reversed: the territorial development of the separate states had been too logical to allow its reversal. A strengthening of the central administration, the preliminary condition for a reform of the empire, was no longer possible. In 1508 Maximilian had assumed the title of "Elected Roman Emperor," thus proclaiming that the imperial dignity was independent of papal confirmation. Restlessly active, he staked everything on the success of those foreign policies that would strengthen his royal power. It was for this reason that he finally returned to his earlier course of action and joined the Holy League against France. The brilliant success of Francis I over the Swiss at Marignano (1515) forced Maximilian to agree to a peace by which the French received Milan, and Venice obtained Verona. In the meantime various imperial diets again took up the question of reform, but the whole reform movement failed entirely, and the separate states gained a complete victory over the central administration. At Maximilian's death practically nothing had been accomplished for the constitution of the empire.

Political and cultural life followed the course of development we have described, the foci being in the several states. Among these states the most prominent were the electoral principalities, which had been granted special honours and privileges by the Golden Bull. The three Rhenish electors were the most important political personages. Saxony was much increased in size by the addition of Meissen. It would have become the leading state of northern Germany had not its territories been divided in 1485 between the Albertine and Ernestine branches of the ruling family. The Electoral Mark of Brandenburg, acquire in 1417 by the Hohenzollerns, was still in the beginnings of its growth. The Hussite wars had almost entirely estranged Bohemia from the empire. The Palatinate of the Rhine, always a home of culture, was still one of its centres. The Duchies of Brunswick-Lueneburg and Bavaria were also prominent. In 1495 the able Counts of Wirtemberg (Würtemberg) received Countship of Swabia, which was raised to a duchy. Baden grew into a principality more slowly. More rapid was the development of Hesse, whose sovereigns under the title of Landgraves, were soon to come into prominence. The future of the empire depended on these minor states. The empire lacked imperial civil officials, imperial taxes, an imperial army, a general and systematized administration of imperial justice, while in these subordinate states there arose a defined government, a centralization of the civil officials, a systematic administration of law. This is also true of Maxmilian's hereditary possessions, the Austrian provinces. The leaders of progress in this respect also were the imperial cities, in which intellectual life began to flourish. In art they produced an Albrecht Durer and the two Holbeins. A darker side, however, was not lacking to this brilliant city life. Bloody outbreaks were often caused by a restless proletariat. Dissatisfaction was also rife among the free knights of the empire who had lost their former importance in consequence of the change in the military system, which had again made infantry the decisive element in battle. Moreover discontent was at work among the peasantry. The knights became robber-knights and highwaymen. Though banned by the empire, Franz von Sickingen, without authority, carried on war with the city of Worms. The economic changes had even more ruinous consequences for the peasantry. The age of discovery, of the growth of commerce, and of the great inventions, is also the age in which capital made its appearance as the great power of the world. There was a change in the value of money which brought severe suffering upon the peasantry which was despised and politically without rights, especially in the thickly populated southern part of Germany. Communistic writings appeared, which discussed the position of the peasants. The unrest increased in Franconia, Swabia, and on the upper Rhine, and revolts occurred. It was proposed to found a communistic kingdom of God and all hopes were placed on a strong emperor. Mixed with these desires was the expectation of a thorough reform of ecclesiastical affairs concerning which dissatisfaction was loudly expressed.

The social-religious restlessness continually increased. The period of political confusion had not passed by without leaving its impress on the German character. The brilliant exterior of life covered but thinly the brutality within. There was widespread evidence of the lack of morality in domestic life, of barbarity in the administration of justice, and of inhumanity in war. Loyalty to the Church continually decreased, although a rich and voluminous religious literature had been disseminated by the art of printing. Great preachers, like Geiler von Kaysersberg at Strasburg, also appeared at this time. The Brethren of the Common Life took for their ideal the abnegation of the world. But all this failed to prevent the decline of the authoritative influence of the Church on the life of the people. The Great Schism had severely shaken the position of the papacy. The common people were estranged from the Church. A craving for religious self-help arose, and religious movements antagonistic to the Church won large followings. German learning loosened the bond that up to then had united it to theology. A new intellectual movement disputed the dominance of Scholasticism at the universities. Nicholas of Cusa, Æneas Sylvius, and Gregor von Heimburg prepared the way for Humanism. The medieval ideals having apparently lost their attraction, men turned to others, which advocated the world and its pleasures in opposition to self-abnegation, and instead of medieval universalism preached the freedom of the individual.

In the second half of the fifteenth century Italian Humanism entered Germany in order to break down here as it had done in Italy the absolute domination of the ecclesiastical conception of the world. But Humanism in Germany assumed an entirely different form. In Germany the end sought was not beauty of form in learning, art, and life; here it manifested, rather, a practical, pedagogical, and, finally, religious tendency. Aided by the art of printing, humanism by its delight in experiment and induction, roused other sciences to fresh life, such as the science of history and especially the natural sciences. Individualism, moreover, strengthened the national sentiment and was a powerful force in overthrowing medieval universalism, and in putting an end to the ideal of the medieval world, the universality of the Kingdom of God. At the close of Maximilian's reign the signs of the times were undoubtedly very threatening, yet closer investigation shows that the Christian idea was still powerful. Notwithstanding the turning away of many from the Church, there were still men in Germany who were filled with this idea. These men did not conceal from themselves the necessity of genuine moral reform. The same power and intensity of Christian feeling that had built the great cathedrals in the later Middle Ages was still alive in the more serious minded part of the nation. Only the elect few carried these feelings over into the succeeding age, and with them the certain expectation of the reform of the Church from within.

II. FROM 1556 TO 1618

After the death of Maximilian I the two great competitors for the imperial crown were Francis I of France and Charles, Maximilian's grandson. Notwithstanding the opposition of Leo X and the alienation of French sympathies, the choice of the electors fell on Charles (28 June, 1519), who was crowned as Charles V at Aachen, on 23 October, 1520, and by Clement VII at Bologna, on 23 February, 1530. In January, 1521, he opened the Diet of Worms and his administration of the Holy Roman Empire lasted until his abdication. In 1556 Charles V resigned the imperial throne. This act implied a serious break in the continuity of the political and religious history of the German people. Charles's reign had lasted for more than a generation, but only an insignificant part of it had been devoted to Germany. His attention had been mainly given to the Netherlands, to Spain, and to the wars with France and the Turks. Consequently from 1520 the defection from the Church had made more and more rapid headway, in spite of the emperor's prohibitory edicts issued at the Diet of Worms (1521) and at the Diet of Augsburg (1530), and shortly after 1540 this apostasy threatened to affect the whole of Germany. At the same time the separatist tendencies of the ruling princes increased in strength. It was not until towards the end of his reign that Charles took measures to check the princes of the empire. By the war in Gelderland (1543), the deposition of the Archbishop of Cologne (1547), and the Smalkaldic War (1546-47), he succeeded in bringing the triumphant career of Protestantism to a standstill, thus saving the greater part of western and southern Germany to Catholicism. Driven from these territories Protestantism overran, during the following decades, the Bavarian and Bohemian-Austrian provinces in the south-east. But even there it was not able to maintain itself. On the other hand, Charles did not succeed in forcing the princes to return to their proper position in the empire and to subordination to the emperor. The most important of the princes were the rulers of the northern states; these were in no wise affected by Charles's military successes, as he did not push his operations as far as northern Germany. The Dukes of Saxon and Bavaria also, who were friendly to Charles and took part in his campaigns, suffered no curtailment of their power. The partial failure of Charles determined the future development of the empire, the basis of which was laid down in the recess of the Imperial Diet of 1555. By it, in the so-called Religious Peace of Augsburg, Germany was divided between the Catholics and the adherents of the Augsburg Confession, and the territorial princes were practically made the political arbiters of the empire. The principle, cujus regio, ejus religio, was recognized. The Imperial Chamber (Reichskammergericht) was subjected to the influence of the Estates of the empire. In the newly instituted system of administration by "circles" also, the control of the emperor was no longer permitted. Further, the permanent council of administration (Reichsdeputationstag), an organ of centralization developed in 1558 from the system of "circles," was summoned and presided over by the Elector of Mainz as chancellor of the empire and not by the emperor. Economical and judicial legislation devolved on the separate states. At the Diet of Speyer (1570) the princes annulled the supreme authority of the emperor in military matters.

These events implied not only a change in the government of the empire, so that it was controlled by the electors and not by the emperor, but the empire itself became almost a shadow incapable of great administrative actions. Its constitutional powers waned; diets were seldom convoked (only ten up to 1618), the decisions of the Imperial Chamber were not carried out, the administration by "circles" did not take root. The empire failed just as signally, as a European power, in maintaining its interests during the great wars of the reign of Philip II in Western Europe, an exception being the Pacification of Cologne (1579), which sought to restore order in the Netherlands, but to which little heed was paid. Not even the boundaries of the empire were maintained. From about 1580 the Spaniards and Dutch established themselves in the Rhine provinces and Emden, and Spain sought in addition to obtain Alsace. France entangled as many of the south-western sections of the empire as possible in its intrigues, especially the city of Strasburg. James I of England married his daughter to the Elector Palatine. On the Baltic coast the Swedes, Russians, and Poles despoiled the Germans of the more distant territories colonized by them, while the Danes settled in the south-west corner of the Baltic. At the same time the Dutch overthrew the economic supremacy of the Hanseatic League in the Baltic Sea and German Ocean. On the Danube the Hapsburgs were compelled to buy an armistice with the Turks by the payment of tribute. The blame for the helpless condition of the empire rested principally on the reigning princes. They took no interest in its affairs, not because they were lacking in German sentiment, but because the horizon of their ideas was still too restricted, and because either they gave little thought to politics or their attention was absorbed by the details of administration within their own dominions. The governmental organization of their principalities was still very imperfect. The conservation and gradual development of their territories engrossed the energies of the princes, especially of the most powerful among them, the Elector Augustus of Saxony (1553-86) and Duke Albert V of Bavaria (1550-89). They, therefore, avoided war above all things. The only alliance among them that had any stability at that time, the "Landsberg League" of southern Germany (1556-90), had, for its sole object, the maintenance of peace.

The emperors of this period, Ferdinand I (1556-64), Maximilian II (1564-76), Rudolf II (1576-1612), and Matthias (1612-19), not only failed to arouse the princes to a more intelligent treatment of the affairs of the empire, but by their own policy they encouraged the princes to pursue purely personal ends. For, unlike Charles V who had ruled a world-empire, his successors governed territories, the political importance of which barely exceeded that of the majority of German states, and which only surpassed these latter in extent. Accordingly, as none of them were men of pre-eminent ability, their political aims were narrow, their need of peace urgent, and their credit inadequate, while the credit of the western powers had largely developed since the time of Charles V. Moreover they had harder conditions to face in their own dominions than the other princes. Most of their territories were in the eastern part of Europe where, from the end of the fifteenth century, the landed petty nobles, who formed a large class, opposed with ever-increasing success the progress of the commonalty and the introduction of orderly administration under the control of the sovereign. With this inferior nobility in the dominions of the German Hapsburgs, the Protestants, who attracted to themselves all the opposing elements, made common cause. Thus the emperors were by degrees so harassed in their family possessions that, towards the end of Rudolf's reign, the power fell into the hands of the nobility, and Matthias, though advised by his able minister Cardinal Klesl, was hardly able to maintain his authority.

In the period from 1556 to 1618 the only general movement in the inner politics of the empire, and one that caused important changes in the relative influence of the German rulers, namely, the endeavour to place the ecclesiastical principalities in the hands of the younger sons of reigning princes, was entirely due to the desire of these princes to increase their territories. The ecclesiastical domains in the eastern provinces of Germany were few and insignificant, whereas in the north-west as well as throughout the west and south they were numerous, some being large in extent and of great importance. With exception of the territorially powerful Diocese of Münster and the small diocese of Hildesheim, those in the east and north came under the control of Protestant princes as "administrators" to the aggrandizement of the Houses of Wettin, Hohenzollern, and Guelph. In this way these territories were made ripe for secularization. Bavarian princes became Bishops of Cologne and Hildesheim, which were, thereby, saved from the fate that befell the others. These measures quickened the process of consolidation by which the territories of a few dynastic houses in northern Germany steadily grew in extent, the result being of considerable importance in the future political development of Germany. On the other hand, the attempts of the princes to annex the spiritual principalities of southern Germany failed. Protestantism entered these territories at a later date and with less force than it had in those of northern Germany. Consequently the ecclesiastical lands in the south had more power of resistance than those in the north, while the princes were weaker, because their number was large and their possessions all small, excepting what belonged to the Austrian Hapsburgs on the Upper Rhine and perhaps also the territory belonging to Würtemberg. In these circumstances the Ecclesiastical Reservation (Reservatum Ecclesiasticum), adopted at the instance of the Catholics in the Recess of the Imperial Diet of 1555, proved an effective precautionary measure in southern Germany. It provided that any bishop or abbot who turned Protestant could not take advantage of the rule cujus regio, ejus religio, but must resign.

The chief opponents of the ecclesiastical principalities in southern Germany were the representatives of the House of Wittelsbach, rulers of the Palatinates and of Bavaria. Prominent because of their noble descent, the Elector Palatine being in fact the ranking temporal elector, they were all poor in land. The branch that ruled the Palatinate of Neuburg acquired a heritage on the Lower Rhine by marrying into the ducal House of Cleves-Juelich, which was becoming extinct. The other branches sought to extend their domains at the expense of their neighbours. What decided the predominance of the Catholics in the south was the result of two movements which settled the question whether the Protestants, in spite of the successes in 1543-47 of Charles V, were finally to seize Cologne and the whole country of the Lower Rhine and from these centres crush the Catholics of southern Germany. In the first of these contests, the "Cologne War" (1582-84), which arose from the apostasy of Archbishop Gebhard Truchsess, the last Archbishop of Cologne who was not a Bavarian, the Catholics were successful. In the second, the contest over the Cleves-Juelich succession on the extinction of the native ducal family, the inheritance, it is true, passed to Protestant rulers, the Palatines of Neuburg and the Hohenzollerns; but of these the Neuburg line became Catholic in 1612, so that the danger was dispelled once more. As a consequence the Catholic Church gained sufficient time, after the Council of Trent, to accomplish gradually the reconversion of the greater part of southern and western Germany, especia