Читать книгу The Empire and the Papacy, 918-1273. Investiture Contest, Crusades & The Famous Conflicts онлайн

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Ten years of Conrad’s rule had now brought the Holy Empire to a point of solid prosperity that was seldom surpassed. But Conrad saw that there were still great dangers inherent in his position, and foremost among these was the smallness of the number of the feudal dignitaries with whom he had direct legal dealings. There were no longer indeed the five national dukedoms in their old united strength and dignity. There were no longer dukes of Franconia; Lorraine was already divided into two distinct duchies, of Upper and Lower Lorraine. Swabia was showing signs of a similar tendency to bifurcation; Bavaria, after the rearrangement of 976, was in a much less imposing position than under the Saxon Emperors, and even in Saxony the margraves were a strong counterpoise to the more imposing but not more powerful dukes. In the last generations the more vigorous of the counts and margraves had shaken off their dependence on the dukes, and aspired to stand in immediate relations with the Emperor. Yet the whole drift of the time was towards feudalism, and towards making a limited number of tenants-in-chief, whether dukes, margraves or counts, the sole persons with whom the Emperor had any direct relations. Secure in their own hereditary tenure of their fiefs and allodial properties, the great lords of Germany claimed an absolute control over all their vassals. The old tie of national allegiance that bound every subject to his sovereign had fallen into neglect as compared with the new link of feudal dependence of vassal on lord. The leading tenants-in-chief considered that their powers over their vassals were so absolute that it was the bounden duty of a tenant to follow his lord to the field, even against his overlord. With the same object of strengthening their own position, the great lords strove to prevent the fiefs of their vassals from assuming that hereditary character which they had already acquired in practice, if not in theory, for their own vast estates.