Introduction

The world of Imperium Romanorum is our own, nearly a thousand years ago, in the southwestern part of what we now call the Holy Roman Empire. In the 12th century, this part of Europe had been under the control of first the Franks and then the Germans for almost half as long as the interval between our times. Charlemagne's conquest brought the region into the Latin Church and Frankish administration, and it remained within the Carolingian world as it was divided and re-divided through successive inheritances. By the turn of the 11th century, the German "Roman" Empire (or Neo-Roman Empire, to borrow Benjamin Arnold's term) was the largest secular polity in Europe. Although it had yet to reach its most magnificent heights, by the middle of the 12th cenutry, the Empire had already grown large and rich, exhibiting the splendor of its wealth, although feeling the pressure of the inability of secular or religious authorities to restrain the political violence that periodically wracked the realm. The warrior aristocracy's preferred method of finally resolving disputes was naturally violence.

Perhaps, however, its greatest moments had already come. Under the Salian dynasty, the monarchy and the empire reached a peak which it has arguably yet to surpass. Conrad II and Henry III, the first two Salian monarchs, patronized the church and the secular nobility, granting extensive privileges and jurisdictions to laymen and religious institutions alike. Conrad in 1031 recovered territory lost to the Poles under Henry II. He added Burgundy to the Empire in 1032. Henry, his son, encouraged clerical celibacy and reformed the Church, selecting several Popes. However, Henry IV was a small child when his father died, and the long regency allowed opportunistic princes to alienate significant lands and jurisdictions from the crown. It was Henry IV's attempt to recover these losses that triggered the Great Saxon Revolt of 1073/1077-1088; the unrest created by these revolts was used by Pope Gregory VII to promote his radical reform agenda and weaken the power of the crown. The resulting Wars of Investiture, as they are known, lasted for almost the next half-century, and resulted in a significantly altered relationship between the King/Emperor and the ecclesastical princes; they also significantly altered the relationship between the monarchy and the lay princes. In spite of signing the Concordat of Worms in 1105, in which Henry V agreed to cease the practice of investing bishops and abbots with their religious offices and the sale of those offices (known as simony), and the Pope agreed to allow the King to continue to invest them with any secular appurtenances to those offices, the crown continued to attempt to influence papal, episocopal, and abbatial elections, and the reformers continued to seek greater power for the church over secular affairs.

Following the death of Henry V in 1125, the Princes ignored his wishes to elect Frederick II, Duke of Swabia, and elected Lothar of Supplinburg, Duke of Saxony, instead. Lothar proceeded to hand out favors to rebel nobles, antagonizing the Staufer and the other pro-Salian nobles, resulting in further conflict. The reign of Conrad III, brother of Frederick II, returned the loyalists to the old régime to power upon his election in 1138.