Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 159 – The rise to Imperial Power, Charles IV journey to Rome, also episode 22 of season 8 From the Interregnum to the Golden Bull.
This season has now gone on for 22 episodes. We started with the interregnum of largely absent rulers and after a brief renaissance under Rudolf von Habsburg the empire became a sort of oligarchy where 3 families, the Luxemburgs, the Wittelsbachs and the Habsburgs took turns on the throne. Succession usually involved some form of armed conflict between the contenders and a struggle with the pope over who had precedence. Whoever emerged victorious then used the ever-dwindling imperial powers to enrich his family at the expense of the others.
When in 1349 Karl/Karel/Charles IV emerged triumphant from the latest of these conflicts, chances were that the same game would start anew, civil war between the three families, excommunication and murder. But it did not. Why it did not is what we will talk about in this episode…
But before we can all breathe a great sigh of relief, the gods have made it so that I have to hold the beggars bowl up to you again, my graceful listeners. This show is, as you know, free of advertising, apart of this my grovelling. And if you want to keep yourself safe from me droning on about my varied mental health issues, holiday rental preferences or sleeping problems, there is only one thing to do. Go to historyofthegermans.com/support and give generously. And thanks so much to Michael W., Admiral Geekington, Timo B., Admiral von Schneider, Barry M. and Greg B. who have already signed up.
Next thing, I have to admit to an error, or more precisely to a serious lack of knowledge. I did say last week that the cathedral of St. Vitus in Prague was unique in as much that it sat on the top of a hill, half an hour’s walk from the centre of the city and within the precinct of the royal castle. All that is correct, apart from the bit about it being unique. As some of you pointed out, the cathedrals of Meissen and Krakow are similarly inside the compound of the territorial ruler, away from the city centre. I then looked at the locations of several other cathedrals founded east of the Elbe River and it becomes clear that the concept of the cathedral inside the royal or ducal compound is the norm rather than the exception. Esztergom, Naumburg, Brno to name just a few have a similar setup. However, west of the Elbe, in particular in the lands that had once been part of the Roman empire, cathedral churches tend to be in the centre of town. And that makes sort of sense.
The citizens of the Roman empire had largely converted to Christianity by the 4th century and hence when the bishops built their cathedrals and palaces, they did it amongst the faithful, largely independent from the secular ruler. Meanwhile the pagan Slavs who lived east of the Elbe had been converted by fire and sword in the 10th, 11th and 12thcentury, which meant the bishop’s churches had to be located within the castles of the rulers for protection against a hostile population. And that is where they remained, often to this day.
The fact that I could not remember a place where the cathedral was located in the royal castle reveals the experience of someone who had grown up in West Germany and has not travelled anywhere as extensively in central Europe as I should have. And I have been reading books by predominantly West German authors who also seem to suffer from the same bias. That is history for you, so often as much about the author than it is about the subject. Will try to do better next time.
And with that, back to the show.
Last week we discussed Karl IV’s political and architectural projects in Bohemia. This was however only one of the crowns he had by now acquired. As we discussed 3 episodes ago, Karl had managed to overcome the opposition and had been unanimously elected by all seven electors and then crowned king of the Romans in Aachen in 1349.
In 1350 he had reconciled with his last remaining serious adversary, Ludwig the elder, the son of the emperor Ludwig the Bavarian and margrave of Brandenburg. This reconciliation involved on the one hand that Ludwig would be returned to his margraviate and the current usurper, now dubbed “the false Waldemar” be dropped. And in return Ludwig handed over the imperial regalia, including the Holy Lance, the purse of St. Stephen, various coats and socks and the imperial crown.
Beyond this exchange, Karl also promised to use his influence at the papal court in Avignon to finally lift the excommunication pope John XXII had put on Ludwig’s father and then ultimately over the whole Wittelsbach family 30 years earlier.
And shortly after that all political activity at the royal court ceased. That was in part down to the plague which had by now reached Bohemia. But there was also a mysterious illness. For about a year the king of the Roamn was afflicted by some sort of paralysis none of his doctors could identify. It wasn’t the Plague, otherwise he would have either died or recovered much more quickly. Nor was it the gout he would suffer from for the rest of his life. This sudden loss of ability to act, move and even speak remains a mystery, not least because none of the sources from the court mention it at all. We only know of it through sources from the empire who noticed the absence of their ruler.
He finally rose from his sickbed in 1352, but he never fully recovered. His spine remained impaired, giving him a somewhat hunched appearance. His days as a shiny knight at tournaments were now comprehensively over. He had never enjoyed them much and only taken part when it was absolutely unavoidable. He was so not his father’s son.
The other way in which he differed from the knightly blind king was in his preference for diplomacy over war. War was expensive and unpredictable, whilst playing the different sides against each other cheap, intellectually thrilling and something he was just very, very good at.
Having made peace with the Wittelsbachs, one of the great imperial families of the 14th century, he now needed to settle things with the other one, the house of Habsburg. The Habsburgs had done alright under the emperor Ludwig the Bavarian. They had gained the duchy of Carinthia and the county of Tyrol. The latter turned out to be a genuine lottery win as silver mining in the region was gaining pace. Ove the next 300 years more and more mines opened in Tirol, the largest in Schwaz which would at some point employ 10,000 miners who dug up 85% of all silver found in Europe.
Whilst this is all good news for the dukes of Austria, not everything was going according to plan. For one, the usually so fertile family had experienced one of its occasional bouts of reproductive decline and was reduced to just Albrecht II, the lame and his son Rudolf IV, the Founder. But the biggest issue were some renegade peasants back home in their original homeland. The three cantons, Uri, Schwyz and Nidwalden that had defeated duke Leopold at Morgarten in 1315 have continued to undermine Habsburg control of the Aargau and the roads leading to the Gotthard pass. In 1332 the city of Lucerne, until then part of the Habsburg zone of influence had joined the three Waldstaetten and they had formed the “eternal Swiss Confederation”. In 1351 Zurich, then and now the largest city in Switzerland joined the confederation. In 1353 Bern, Zug and Glarus came in as well.
This had now become more than an irritation for the Habsburgs and Karl was happy to exploit the situation. He offered the Habsburgs to rein in on these obstinate commoners, if Albrecht and Rudolf kept the peace and let him pass down to Italy should he want to go to Rome. To further firm up the alliance Rudolf became engaged and later married Catherine, the daughter of Karl and – in the absence of a son - his heiress.
Karl never made good on his promise to go after the Swiss. He joined the Habsburgs and their army attacking Zurich but after a few skirmishes forced the parties on to the negotiation table. The subsequent peace included recognition of the Swiss confederation, very much to the chagrin of the Habsburgs. But by then it was too late and there was little they could do about it.
It is with these promises of help that rarely materialised in actual military support and the generous handout of titles and imperial vicariates that Karl solidified his reign in the empire.
In 1354 he moved his focus to the western side of the empire. One reason was that his great uncle, the legendary archbishop of Trier, Balduin had finally passed away at the grand old age of 69. Having become archbishop aged 22 he had lifted two members of his family on to the imperial throne, his brother Henry VII and now Karl. In the meantime he had fostered the power of the electors at the Kurverein zu Rhens and at the same time strengthened the territorial power of his archbishopric. Karl may have never liked him, and vice versa, but they had supported each other in the interest of the dynasty.
So when Karl rushed to Trier as soon as news had reached him of his relative’s demise, it wasn’t to mourn his long lost mentor. No, what he was after was a legendary hoard of gold and silver everyone believed the wily bishop had gathered during his 47 years on the episcopal throne. When Karl arrived the treasure, if it had ever existed, was gone. Still he coerced the new archbishop to hand back the lands his great uncle had forced him to hand over as an electoral bribe in 1344. And in the absence of precious metal, he raided the spiritual wealth of this, the oldest cathedral in the German lands. The staff of St. Peter, a third of the veil of the virgin Mary, a piece of the finger of St. Matthew and the obligatory piece of the holy cross were packed up and sent to Prague.
Then he went to Luxemburg where his half-brother Wenceslaus had now turned 18. Wenceslaus was supposed to inherit Luxemburg but Karl had seized it upon their father’s death. Now it was time to honour the bling king John’s wishes and Wenceslaus received Luxemburg, which Karl elevated to a duchy and imperial principality at the same time. Young Wenceslaus then married Joanna, the eldest daughter and heiress of the duchies of Brabant and Limburg, which was followed by the happy event of duke John of Brabant dying in 1356. Wenceslaus and his wife gained control of this exceedingly wealthy part of the world after granting the citizens of Brabant a large number of rights in a document called the Joyeuse Entrée which we will look at next week. For the moment the important point is that the Luxemburgs got hold of Brabant, at least tripling their position in the west and all that against opposition from the count of Flanders and behind him, the king of France.
The empire was on the up. And to make it absolutely clear that there was a new broom in the house, willing to protect the western border of the empire against constant French incursions, Karl held an imperial diet in the city of Metz, right on the border to France. No emperor had been to Metz since the days of the Hohenstaufen. This event in March 1354 was meant to rebuild the sense of belonging to the empire that had been waning. Ever more often had the local powers taken their disputes to the courts and Parlamants of France, believing that there was no justice to be obtained from the weak imperial power. Karl imposed an imperial peace on Lothringia whereby they should resolve their conflicts peaceably in courts of their own peers, rather than by the French.
Such local peace agreements had been a tool of imperial policy for a long time, but the last decades had seen them running out and/or being ignored. Karl used them extensively in all the areas he travelled through. And he could back them up with the sheer strength of his personal wealth and prestige. In the east the house of Luxemburg controlled Bohemia, which had almost doubled in size since the days of Ottokar II and in the West they ruled the combined duchies of Luxemburg and Brabant. And Karl could rely on the support of the great imperial cities, in particular the richest and most powerful of them, Nürnberg.
Many citizens of the empire experienced imperial administration for the very first time. By 1355 Karl had become the most effective guardian of the empire in generations.
With the empire under his control, we move on to – yes I can hear you groan - the inevitable journey to Rome. Should that not be over by now? Didn’t the Electors declare that the elected king was automatically the ruler of the empire, even without coronation of approbation by the pope? Did Karl not remember the catastrophic outcome of his grandfather’s attempt to pacify Italy, let alone his own experience as a young man trying to chart a path through the endless squabbles between the various communes, republics and autocracies?
Sure, he did, but even though an imperial Romzug was no longer an absolute must, it still added to the cachet of an emperor, in particular an emperor like Karl who derived more of his power from symbols and the letter of the law than from the yielding of swords.
So a trip to Rome was on the agenda, but such a trip was not as urgent as it had been for his grandfather or for Ludwig the Bavarian. Karl had time to plan how he could thread his course through the convoluted Italian and papal politics.
Papal politics should have been easy. As we have discussed before, Karl owed the beginnings of his career to his mentor, the pope Clement VI. But by the 1350s that relationship had soured.
When Karl reconciled with the excommunicated Wittelsbachs, first by marrying the daughter of the Count Palatinate on the Rhine and then by making deals with the sons of Ludwig the Bavarian, the pope was incensed. The whole point of supporting Karl as the new king of the Romans had been to squash the Wittelsbach and their nest of heretics that was Munich. And once the excommunicated usurpers were gone, the popes would regain control of the imperial church.
Well, none of that happened. Karl had no intention to become a papal lapdog. Instead of taking orders from Avignon, he strengthened imperial oversight of the church to the point that he invested more bishops during his reign than any emperor had done since Barbarossa.
What also did not help was that Karl let slip that he found Clement VI’ propensity for bling and hard partying unsuitable for his office, comments that made their way back to Avignon.
With Clement VI refusing to send cardinals to crown him, Karl had two options. One was to boost his diplomatic efforts in Avignon in the hope of changing Clement’s mind. The other was to do as his predecessor had done and go to Rome to accept the crown from the Senate and People of Rome as the ancient Roman emperors from Augustus to Romulus Augustulus have done.
This latter option materialised in 1350 in the form of a visit to Prague by Cola di Rienzi, the Tribune of the People of Rome. Cola di Rienzi is one of those characters that warrant a whole podcast by themselves and I may produce one for the Patreon feed. But since he is very much a figure of Italian history, rather than German history, here are just the bare bones of his story.
Cola di Rienzi, actual name Nicola Gabrini was the son of a wine merchant. Being clever and talented, he received a thorough education and rose to become a notary and diplomat for the city of Rome. In 1347 he led a public revolt that catapulted him to the leadership of the city, where he promised to resurrect the ancient Roman republic with him as the Tribune of the people.
How come a wine merchant’s son can rise to be the ruler of the eternal city? The answer lies in the truly dissolute state of Rome and the papal states in the middle of the 14th century. It is now more than a generation since the popes had left Rome to settle in Avignon. Without the papal court the income streams that had sustained the city had dried up. Not just the lavish expenditure of the popes and cardinals but also the bribes paid for ecclesiastical judgements, the approval of episcopal appointments, the income from absolutions etc., etc., all that was now spent in Provence.
Rome, unlike the other great Italian cities did not have much commercial or industrial activity. Barely 20,000 souls lived in a city once built for millions. To generate some cash the popes had declared holy years in 1300 and in 1350 that brought in thousands of pilgrims. The tradition exists to this day by the way and the next holy year is 2025.
But these Jubilees took place only every 50 years. In the intervening years, the impoverished Romans had fallen into the hands of warring aristocratic factions, the Colonna and the Orsini. Most Romans huddled within the bend of the Tiber marked by the triangle of the Mausoleum of Augustus at the north, Castel Sant'Angelo to the west and the Tiber Island to the south, the area called the abitato. The Vatican Borgo, stretching from St. Peter's to the river, retained its boundaries set by the walls of Leo IV. The remaining 215 hectares (almost 4.7 square miles) within the ancient Aurelian Wall lay nearly empty. This disabitato remained a dangerous waste of forest, vineyard, and garden, interrupted only by the irregular masses of Rome's fortified monasteries and the fortress-towers of its barons, by hamlets scattered around the major churches and the militarized hulks of Rome's vast ruins. Meanwhile in Florence, Siena, Milan and Venice churches and palaces rose up that could rival the splendour that had once been Rome’s
Cola di Rienzi tapped into the discontent of the Roman masses, promising them an end to the current mismanagement and a return to the glory of ancient Rome. By all accounts he was an engaging orator who could whip up the crowds. He was also a populist and fantasist who promised the world but was unable to maintain a functioning administration, let alone deliver on these pledges.
His first run as Tribune of the Roman People lasted a mere seven months, at the end of which he slunk out of town in the middle of the night. From 1347 onwards he hid for 2 years in a community of Franciscan who adhered to the rule of strict poverty promoted by Michael of Cesena and William of Ockham. In 1349 he embarked on a journey across plague ridden europe in search of allies who would help restore the glory of Rome.
That is why he showed up at the court of Karl IV in Prague in 1350. And the emperor was listening. After all Cola di Rienzi still had supporters in Rome and all across Italy including the celebrated poet Petrarch.
Though he may have been tempted by the proposal to get his coronation swiftly and with the support of the Roman populace, there were a number of issues with that though.
One was that his predecessor who had accepted the crown from the people and not from the pope had always faced issues of legitimacy. Karl himself had never recognised Ludwig’s imperial title.
Moreover, it would have also been a truly unforgivable affront to the pope that would turn the simmering disappointment into open conflict. A conflict that judging by the example of Ludwig, could go on for decades and hamper his efforts to stabilise the empire under his reign.
So Karl had Cola di Rienzi arrested and sent to Avignon. By all accounts that should have been a death sentence. But by the time he had arrived, pope Clement VI had died and his successor Innocent VI saw an opportunity in the plebeian rabble rouser. In 1354 he sent Cola di Rienzi together with a cardinal to Rome to oust the regime of the aristocrats and bring order to the place, make it ready for a return of the pope.
Cola’s second attempt to restore ancient Rome lasted not much longer than the first. Rienzi made some stirring speeches and put the Colonna and Orsini on trial. He managed to have a few of them beheaded before the two archenemies joined hands and also the cardinal realised that Rienzi may not be entirely on board with the idea of the return of the Holy Father. A crowd gathered outside the Palazzo Senatorio on the Capitoline hill demanding his head. He tried to make one last speech to defend himself and his track record but could not get through. The mob set the palace alight. Cola di Rienzi fled the building in disguise but was recognised and then horrifically maimed and killed.
As I said, a fascinating and dramatic story that Richard Wagner made into his first and worst opera and that allegedly inspired Adolf Hitler. As I said, well worth a whole podcast.
But why does this story matter beyond the fact that Karl had rejected the offer to be crowned by the people of Rome?
What it illustrates is how far the power of the Avignon church had declined. If a pope has to resort to a populist firebrand in his attempt to exert control over his capital, the situation must be quite dire.
And it was. These 40 years in Avignon had had a devastating effect on the standing of the church. We have not gone quite all the way back to the days of the Pornocracy in the 9th and 10th century, but a lot of the political capital the reform popes since Leo X have patiently built into the imperial papacy of an Innocent III has been washed away in an excess of corruption and ostentatious display of wealth. Then there was the political dependency on the French kings who could force the pope to sanction the raid of the Templars.
Few people in the cities and villages ever saw the extravagant luxury of the papal palace but they did see what happened to the Franciscans and Dominicans. These mendicant orders enjoyed a lot of respect for their good works and adherence to the vows of poverty. When John XXII forced them into accepting gifts and property, the brothers and even more, the papacy lost the moral high ground. And it was the moral high ground that papal power was based on.
More and more voices criticised the pope and demanded a change in his behaviour and a return to Rome. One of them was Petrarch and another was St. Bridget of Sweden. She was a high aristocrat who had come to Rome during the holy year of 1350. Shocked by the state of the city she threw herself into charitable works and as things got traction, founded her own order of nuns. What made her famous across europe were her religious visions. And in one of those visions God told her to tell Pope Clement quote “ it shall not be forgotten how greed and ambition flourished and increased in the church during your time, or that you could have reformed and set many things right but that you, lover of the flesh, were unwilling. Get up, therefore, before your fast approaching final hour arrives, and extinguish the negligence of your past by being zealous in your nearly final hour! End quote.
Once Clement’s final hour arrived in 1352 as predicted, the church tried to improve. They replaced the worldly pope Clement VI with Innocent VI, an altogether more sober head of the church. But the pope’s room for manoeuvre was very limited. Reforming the church back to a semblance of moral authority ran into the opposition of entrenched interests, his attempt to regain Rome through Cola di Rienzi had failed and left him marooned in Avignon under the watchful eye of the French.
And it was exactly this weakness of the pope that Karl had bet on. One of the few options Innocent VI had to counterweigh French influence was through the empire. Karl may not have lived up to papal expectations, but he was still less overbearing that the king of France. And he had enormous prestige and still some influence in Italy.
And that is why Karl was confident that once he were to set off for Rome the new pope would fall into line and send him a cardinal for the coronation.
Karl set off for Italy in September 1355 with just 300 men. The reason he did not bring an army as his grandfather had done was simple, he had no interest in conquering Italy. All he wanted was to travel down to Rome, get crowned and go home again. He had made that very explicit in a letter he had written to Petrarch. The great poet had begged him to bring peace to his war-ridden Italy. To that Karl responded quote “The times have changed my most venerated poet laureate. Freedom has been crushed, the bride of the empire, together with all the other Latins, have been wedded into servitude; justice has become the whore of avarice, peace has been driven out of the people’s minds and the virtues of men have vanished so that the world is descending into the abyss” end quote.
No, Karl had been to Italy before and got the T-shirt. No way was he going to take sides in this never ending game of Whack-a-mole. All he wanted was free passage. To achieve that he joined an alliance led by Venice against Milan. Once he had crossed the lands of his allies, he headed for Milan, signed a deal with the city’s rulers, the Visconti, who handed him 150,000 gold florin and the iron crown of Lombardy. Next stop is Florence where he promised help against Milan in exchange for 100,000 florin and recognition of imperial overlordship, the first time in centuries the city on the Arno river had bent the knee. Then he goes to Siena who make Karl their podesta in exchange for protection against Florence, and so forth and so forth, I guess you get my drift.
Somehow this has turned into a veritable walk in the park. Part of his success is clearly his diplomatic skill that allowed him to double cross all his interlocutors with impunity. But he is also genuinely popular. He is one of the very few emperors who speak Italian. Wherever he goes, he chats with the people, he gets down from his horse to shake hands. They even forgive him his now obsessive raids of churches and monasteries for relics. He remains calm in all circumstances, both when the citizens of Siena parade him through the city on their shoulders in triumph as well as when a rebellion in Pisa puts him and his now third wife in mortal danger.
On April 2nd does he arrive before Rome . And for the next three days he visits all the great basilicas and monasteries of the eternal city, disguised as a pilgrim. Most probably many a saint was missing a few bones once the mysterious pilgrim had left.
The coronation date was set for the 5th of April.
Which now leaves the question, is there a cardinal available to perform the ceremony? Oh you bet. Though Karl had not even bothered to inform the pope of his departure for Rome, seven month earlier, as soon as he was under way Innocent VI caved in. The cardinal bishop of Ostia, the #2 in the papal hierarchy was dispatched to Rome to do the deed. The only condition was that Karl should not spend more than a day in the eternal city.
And so, for the first time in now 150 years did Rome see a peaceful imperial coronation. Both St. Peters and the Lateran welcomed the emperor and he and his wife were crowned following the ancient coronation ordo. No wading through blood, no arrows shot into the dining hall, just a really nice party.
And, as promised, Karl IV left Rome at sundown and returned to his lands north of the Alps as the universally recognised Holy Roman Emperor. And he was truly universally recognised, the pope accepted him, the Italian cities as far as they ever would, recognised him as their king and emperor, the Wittelsbachs and the Habsburgs had made their peace with him, his family possessions, the much enlarged kingdom of Bohemia and the duchies of Luxemburg and Brabant made him the by far richest and most powerful imperial prince.
Not since the early years of Frederick Barbarossa had an emperor gained such a position of power. And it was this power he would now use to create what many called the constitution of the Holy Roman empire, the Golden Bull of 1356. And that is what we are going to look at next week. I hope you will join us again.
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