HENRY V, ROMAN EMPEROR

Reigned Jan. 5, 1106, to May 23, 1125; b. Turin, 1081; d. Utrecht. The son of henry iv and Bertha, he was elected German king in 1098 in place of his brother Conrad. He deposed his excommunicated father in 1106 and was crowned emperor in 1111. This scheming, crafty ruler, so adroit in negotiation, was widely respected but loved by none. He pursued his father's policy of intransigence toward the papacy, though in a different fashion. He employed nobles in government and invested even more prelates than his father, meanwhile neglecting the rising communes and the ministeriales. In 1111 when he was in Rome for his coronation, his ferocious conduct moved Pope paschal ii to decree the Church's abandonment of all regalia, although this act was almost immediately repudiated by a Church synod. After Henry suffered crushing defeats by German rebels both lay and ecclesiastical in 1116, he could no longer withstand demands that he negotiate with callistus ii to resolve the empire-papacy struggle (see investiture struggle). The resulting Concordat of worms (Sept. 23, 1122) recognized the validity of the ruler's claim in both the regalian rights and in the ecclesiastical character of the same prelate. The Diet of Bamberg made the concordat imperial law and the lateran council of 1123 gave it canonical validity. Henry was defeated by the Saxons in his last year, and the electors, headed by his foe, Abp. Adalbert of Mainz, rejected the childless Henry's candidate for king and substituted Duke Lothair of Saxony. This marked the end of Salian monarchy. Thus it was demonstrated that the imperial constitution was now controlled by the aristocracy and that the hereditary principle had yielded to election in choosing the Roman emperor.

Bibliography: g. meyer von knonau, Jahrbücher des deutschen Reiches unter Heinrich IV. und Heinrich V., 7 v. (Leipzig 1890–1909), v.6, 7. Cambridge Medieval History 5:154–166. c. w. previtÉ-orton, The Shorter Cambridge Medieval History, 2 v. (Cambridge, Eng. 1952) 1:469–500. a. hofmeister, Das Wormser Konkordat. Zum Streit um seine Bedeutung, mit einer textkritischen Beilage, new editon with foreword by r. schmidt (Darmstadt 1962). k. hampe, Germany under the Salian and Hohenstaufen Emperors (Oxford 1973). h. fuhrmann, Germany in the High Middle Ages, c. 1050–1200, tr. t. reuter (Cambridge 1986). j. fleckenstein, ed., Investiturstreit und Reichsverfassung (Sigmaringen 1973). r. schieffer, Die Entstehung des päpstlichen Investiturverbots für den deutschen König, (Stuttgart 1981). u.-r. blumenthal, The Investiture Controversy: Church and Monarchy from the Ninth to the Twelfth Century (Philadelphia 1988).

[s. williams]