Harriss, G.L. Cardinal Beaufort: A Study of the Lancastrian As-
cendancy and Decline. Oxford: Clarendon, 1988 [especially
valuable for the later part of the reign].
Kirby, John L. Henry IV of England. London: Constable, 1970
[modern and concise compared with Wylie].
McNiven, Peter. “Prince Henry and the English Political Crisis
of 1412.” History 65 (1980): 1–16.
McNiven, Peter. Heresy and Politics in the Reign of Henry IV:
The Burning of John Badby. Woodbridge: Boydell, 1987 [a
broader study than the title suggests].
Wylie, James H. History of England under Henry the Fourth.
4 vols. London: Longmans Green, 1884–98 [still valuable,
though mostly an uncritical collection of facts].
John L. Kirby
HENRY IV, EMPEROR (r. 1056–1106)
Born on November 11, 1050, the future Emperor Henry
IV was the much longed-for son and heir of Emperor
Henry III and Agnes of Poitou. He was baptized by
Archbishop Hermann of Cologne at Easter 1051. Abbot
Hugh of Cluny, who had come specially from Burgundy
at the invitation of the emperor, lifted the baby from
the font, thus becoming his godfather and, apparently,
also naming him. Elected king at Tribur in November
1053, Henry was crowned July 17, 1054, at Aachen and
betrothed the next year to Bertha, a girl of his own age
and daughter of the count of Turin. He was not even six
years old when his father died on October 5, 1056, at
the palace of Bodfeld in the Harz mountains.
On his deathbed, Henry III had entrusted his heir
to Pope Victor II (1055–1057), the former bishop of
Eichstätt and imperial chancellor. Victor managed to
obtain recognition of little Henry’s succession to the
throne. Nominally, Henry IV began his reign in 1056.
The guardianship lay in the hands of his pious mother,
the Empress Agnes, until April 1063, however, when a
faction of conspirators, led by Archbishop Anno II of
Cologne, abducted the young king, who tried to save
himself by jumping overboard into the Rhine. Anno now
became the leading infl uence at court, replacing another
bishop, Adalbert of Bremen. Anno had good relations
with ecclesiastical reformers in Rome and reversed an
earlier imperial policy which had supported the election
of Bishop Cadalus of Parma as (anti)pope Honorius III.
In collaboration with Peter Damian a papal legate, Anno
and the German court recognized, instead, Pope Alexan-
der II (1061–1073), who had been elected by Hildebrand
(the fi xture Gregory VII) and other reformers.
Henry IV began to govern in his own name at age six
in March 1056. In July 1066 he married Bertha of Turin
but tried to divorce her three years later. He desisted in
face of the remonstrations of Peter Damian, who had
been sent to Germany by the pope as a legate.
Henry’s relationship with several German nobles
was tense from the beginning of the reign. His troubles
increased from about 1068, when he began to try to
recover the crown lands, originally in the hands of
the Ottonian rulers, in eastern Saxony and Thuringia.
Essentially continuing his father’s policies, Henry
strengthened and expanded them, forcing the Saxons to
build and maintain fortifi cations that were garrisoned
with southern German ministeriales. This policy pro-
voked Saxon resistance, playing into the hands of Otto
of Northeim. Otto had forfeited the duchy of Bavaria
in 1070 and formed an alliance with Magnus Billung,
the duke of Saxony, and other magnates who had made
their fortunes under Ottonian emperors during their
eastward expansion. Together with the region’s bishops,
and with massive support from the Saxons in general, the
magnates confronted Henry IV in the summer of 1073 at
Goslar. They demanded that the castles he had recently
built should be razed, that lands unjustly confi scated
should be restored by the council of princes, and that
the king should stay in Saxony and dismiss his low-born
advisers and instead follow the princes’ advice. Henry,
who had also lost the support of the south German dukes,
was besieged by the Saxon army and barely escaped
from his fortress, the Harzburg, to fi nd protection in
the town of Worms. The Harzburg was stormed by the
Saxons, but their army was defeated in September 1075.
By the end of the year, however, Henry seemed to have
mastered the situation. At Christmas the nobles elected
his son Conrad their king.
At the request of the higher clergy of Milan, who had
defeated the Pataria reform movement in the spring of
1075, Henry nominated the imperial chaplain Tedald
as archbishop of Milan instead of Atto, who had the
support of Pope Gregory VII and the Pararia. Gregory
expressed his furious opposition in a letter (December
8, 1075) and in a verbal message, perhaps threatening
the king with excommunication. From Worms, where
nobles and ecclesiastics met jointly in a diet on January
24, 1076, came the reply. The German bishops, who
resented papal claims of hierocracy and centralization,
renounced their obedience to the pontiff, whom they
called “Brother Hildebrand,” and claimed his election
had been illegal; Henry IV called upon Gregory to re-
sign, and the Romans were asked to elect a new pope.
The north Italian episcopate supported these measures
immediately.
From the Lenten synod he was holding in Rome
from February 14–20, 1076, Gregory deposed Henry,
absolved his subjects from the oath of fealty, and excom-
municated the king. Many of the bishops then deserted
Henry, joining forces with the Bavarian and Saxon op-
position. By October 1076, at the meeting of Tribur, the
king had to accept their terms and to declare his submis-
sion to the pontiff. Unless Henry was absolved from his
excommunication by February 1077, the assembly of
Tribur threatened, they would proceed with the election
of a new king. The German princes invited Gregory toHENRY IV, EMPEROR