riage alliance between Henry’s son, Henry the Proud,
and Lothar’s only child and heir, Gertrude. Elected on
August 30 as king of the Romans, Lothar was crowned
in Aachen about two weeks later.
The succession did not go smoothly, however. Be-
tween the Staufen Frederick II of Swabia and Lothar a
new rivalry developed. The new king needed to assert
his control over royal and imperial rights and properties.
But royal prerogatives were mixed together with the
personal inheritance of Henry V and the Salian dynasty
inherited by the Staufen. Because Frederick was reluc-
tant to turn over certain possessions, Lothar outlawed
him at Christmas, 1125. Distracted by the defi ance of
Sobeslav of Bohemia, Lothar could not begin a military
campaign against the Staufen until summer 1127, when
he began to besiege Nuremburg. There the Staufen party
elected Frederick’s younger brother Conrad as anti-king
in December, 1127. This confl ict disturbed the peace of
the empire until Conrad’s capitulation in 1135. Nine-
teenth-century historians infl ated these disagreements
into a grand vendetta between two dynasties, the Welf
(or in Italian, Guelph) versus the Staufen (or in Italian,
Ghibelline after the castle Waiblingen). While such a
view oversimplifi ed the issues involved, the competing
interests of these powerful families would recurrently
affect imperial affairs for decades.
Meanwhile, Lothar was capably handling the affairs
of his kingdom. His exploitation of extinct noble dy-
nasties changed the political landscape. Lothar helped
establish the Zähringens in Burgundy as rivals to the
Staufen. Lothar’s intervention of the succession of the
duchy of Lower Lotharingia led to its breakup into the
duchies of Brabant and Limburg. In Saxony, his home
territory, he enfeoffed the Askaniens with the Nord-
mark and the Wettins with the Marches of Meissen and
Lausitz, dynasties that would, however, later become
rivals of the Welfs. Lothar made his will felt beyond his
kingdom’s borders. He carried out several campaigns
against the Slavs, collecting tribute from Poland and
granting Pomerania as a fi ef. And a quick military
demonstration against the Danish, where rivalry for
the throne had caused disorder, encouraged the various
candidates to acknowledge his over-lordship almost
without bloodshed.
Most importantly, Lothar became entangled in the
papal schism between Innocent II and Anacletus II.
Since both sides had respectable claims to the papacy,
Lothar faced a real dilemma about whom to recognize
as legitimate pope. Under the infl uence of the important
Cistercian Abbot Bernard of Clairvaux and Norbert of
Xanten (the founder of the Premonstratentian order,
whom Lothar had made archbishop of Magdeburg),
Lothar decided at a synod at Würzburg in 1130 to give
allegiance to Innocent. Greeting the pope in Liège in
March, 1131, Lothar acted as a groom and horse-marshal
(Strator- und Marschaldienst), leading the pope’s horse
by the bridle and holding his stirrup during dismount-
ing. The memorialization of this act with a fresco in the
Vatican, implying that Lothar served as a vassal of the
pope, later caused tension between imperial and papal
ideologues.
In return for offering to conquer Rome for Innocent,
Lothar tried to get back the old rights of investiture
of bishops that had been lost for the monarchy in the
Concordat of Worms. But Innocent only gave a promise
of the imperial election. In late summer 1132, Lothar
began an expedition to Italy with a small army. His at-
tack on Rome brought one success: Innocent crowned
Lothar and his wife, Richenza, emperor and empress
on June 4, 1133, although in the Lateran Palace, since
Anacletus’s forces still held the Vatican. Again Lothar
tried to reclaim investiture, but only received confi rma-
tion that his rights would be the same as his predeces-
sors. In negotiations about the Mathildine lands, he
gained more success. Lothar recognized the claims of
overlordship by the church, but he gained use of the
lands in exchange for an annual payment of 100 pounds
silver. Although the emperor immediately enfeoffed his
son-in-law Henry the Proud with the lands, the papacy
tried to portray him as a vassal of the church.
Within months Lothar returned to Germany, un-
able to defeat Anacletus’s main ally, King Roger II of
Sicily. Soon, Innocent was forced to fl ee Rome. Once
the Staufen had reconciled with Lothar, however, the
worsening plight of Innocent prompted Lothar to lead
a second, much larger, Italian expedition in 1136. In
northern Italy Lothar was triumphant; by the beginning
of 1137 he invaded the kingdom of Roger of Sicily. But
the quarrels between pope and emperor over the dispo-
sition of conquests and leadership, as well as the heat
of summer, led to the breakup of the campaign before
lasting success could be won. On the return northward
Lothar sickened, fi nally dying in Breitenwang near
Reutte in Tyrol on December 4, 1137.
Both his contemporaries and later historians have
tended to judge Lothar harshly, especially those who
resented his rather friendly relations with leaders of
the church. Other modern historians reject his image
as Pfaffenkönig (parson’s king): his quarrels with the
pope and his wars with local territorial bishops belie
that charge. The confl icts after his death that ruined his
legacy were largely caused by the change in dynasty,
which Lothar had tried to forestall by giving the impe-
rial insignia to Henry the Proud. In many ways Lothar
successfully expanded political authority in Saxony,
Germany, and the empire.See also Henry IV, Emperor; Roger IILOTHAR III