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

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A series of signal triumphs in the east first proclaimed to the world the greatness of the new king. Poland, Bohemia, and Hungary were all alike matters of concern to Henry. ³⁵ But Poland, so mighty a few years before, was distracted by civil strife, and attacked by the rising power of Bohemia, now the strongest Slavonic state. It was a light matter for Henry to retain Poland as a feudatory of the Empire. But it involved a long struggle before Bohemia, under its warlike Duke Bretislav, could be forced to accept the same position. It was Bretislav’s ambition to make himself a king, and to secure for the Bohemian bishopric at Prague the position of an archbishopric, so that a great Slavonic kingdom, independent both in Church and State, might centre round the Bohemian table-land. But Henry forced his way through the mountains of the border and threatened Prague itself. In despair Bretislav did homage to him for Bohemia and Moravia, and even for the outlying district of Silesia, which he had conquered from the weak Polish monarchy and made an integral part of the Bohemian kingdom. Even greater difficulties beset Henry in Hungary, where a heathen reaction had set Aba, a member of the hero race of Arpad, on the throne. In 1042 Henry invaded Hungary and dethroned Aba, but the Hungarian king was soon restored, and it was not until a third expedition in 1044 that Henry finally succeeded in destroying his power. Aba’s defeat secured the complete triumph of the German king. Peter, the new king of Hungary, performed homage to Henry, thus making Hungary, like Poland and Bohemia, a fief of the Empire. In 1045 Henry visited Hungary, and received the submission of the Magyar magnates. In pious gratitude for his victory Henry sent the gilded lance, which Peter had given to him as an emblem of his dependence, as a votive offering to the Papacy. A few years later another Arpad, Andrew, dethroned the weak Peter, and gave a more national direction to the fierce Magyar nation, though he was too conscious of Henry’s power to break openly with him. With a row of vassal kingdoms extending to the extremest eastward limits of Roman civilisation, the Holy Empire was fast becoming in a very real sense the mistress of the world. Henry III. and France.