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

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With all his power, Henry could not hope to obtain from the princes of the west the same formal acknowledgment of his supremacy that he had wrested from the lords of the east. The France of Henry I. was indeed feeble and helpless, but the early Capetian monarchy was still the centre of a great system, and its feudatories, though constantly at war with their king and with each other, would be likely to make common cause against a German pretender to universal rule. Henry III. was content to keep on friendly terms with his neighbours beyond the Rhine, and, as a good means of securing French friendship, he chose a wife from among the greater vassals of the Capetian throne. In 1043 he married Agnes of Poitou, the youngest daughter of that Count William of Poitou who, in his youth, had competed with Conrad the Salic for the crown of Italy. Agnes exercised henceforth strong influence over her husband, and in particular upon his ecclesiastical policy.

With the eastern kings paying him tribute and the monarch of the west seeking his friendship, Henry had now leisure to improve the internal condition of his dominions. Despite all that his predecessors had done, Germany and Italy were still in the utmost disorder. ³⁶ Conrad II.’s policy of encouraging the smaller nobility had tended to increase the private wars and local feuds that made existence so difficult and dreary for the simple freeman, and so dangerous even to the great lord. Henry now made strenuous efforts to restore peace to Germany. At a diet at Constance Henry solemnly forgave all his enemies, and craved their forgiveness in turn, calling upon the magnates to follow his example and lay aside their feuds with each other. Some degree of success followed this appeal, especially as Henry had partly abandoned his father’s policy of concentrating the national duchies in his own hands. Germany was so vast that it could hardly be effectively ruled from a single centre, and Henry hoped that henceforth the dukes whom he set up would be faithful ministers, and not champions of local independence.