General Notes

Name Suffix:<NSFX> " King Of Germany
Event: Titled BET. 1027 - 1041 Duke of Bavaria [Henry VI] 1
Event: Titled BET. 1038 - 1045 Duke of Swabia [Henry I] 1
Event: Titled BET. 1039 - 1056 King of Germany (Henry III) 1
Event: Titled BET. 1046 - 1056 Holy Roman Emperor 1
Note:
Henry III (b. Oct. 28, 1017--d. Oct. 5, 1056, Pfalz Bodfeld, near Goslar, Saxony), duke of Bavaria (as Henry VI, 1027-41), duke of Swabia (as Henry I, 1038-45), German king (from 1039), and Holy Roman emperor (1046-56), member of the Salian dynasty. He was a powerful advocate of the Cluniac reform movement that sought to purify the Western Church in the 11th century, the last emperor able to dominate the papacy.
Youth and marriage.
Henry was the son of the emperor Conrad II and Gisela of Swabia. He was more thoroughly trained for his office than almost any other crown prince before or after. With the Emperor's approval, Gisela had taken charge of his upbringing, and she saw to it that he was educated by a number of tutors and acquired an interest in literature.
In 1036 Henry married Gunhilda (Kunigunde), the young daughter of King Canute of England, Denmark, and Sweden. Because her father had died shortly before, the union with this frail and ailing girl brought with it no political advantages. She died in 1038, and the emperor Conrad died the following year.
His 22-year-old successor as German king resembled him in appearance. From his mother Henry inherited much, especially her strong inclination to piety and church services. His accession to the throne, unlike that of his two predecessors, did not lead to civic unrest, but his reign was burdensome from the beginning. Probably over questions of principle, the self-willed emperor quarrelled with the aging Gisela during her last years.
He devoted his energies above all to the contemporary movement to bring an end to war among Christian princes, although his own policies were not always pacific. In possession of the duchies of Franconia, Bavaria, Swabia, and Carinthia, he had attempted to carry on his father's policy of supremacy in the east and, in fact, attained sovereignty over Bohemia and Moravia.
It may have been at this time that Henry, prematurely believing he had reached the zenith of his power, displayed openly, as if it were a matter of governmental policy, his leanings toward the clerical-reform party. Intending to re-create a theocratic age like that of Charlemagne, he failed to realize that this could be done only as long as the papacy was powerless.
Still a childless widower, he married Agnes, the daughter of William V of Aquitaine and Poitou, in 1043. The match must have been intended primarily to cement peace in the west and to assure imperial sovereignty over Burgundy and Italy, and Agnes' total devotion to the church reform advocated by the Cluniac monasteries probably confirmed Henry in his decision to take her for his wife. In November 1050 she bore him a son, who later became the emperor Henry IV. There followed another boy, Conrad, and three daughters. What Henry still lacked was the highest honour--his coronation as emperor at the hands of the pope.
Control of the papacy.
When Henry reached Rome in 1046, three rivals were claiming the papacy. Henry wanted a pacified Italy, in which German supremacy was uncontested, and he wanted to receive the imperial crown from unsullied hands. He convoked a synod at Sutri, which, at his bidding, elected as the new pope a German, Suidger, bishop of Bamberg, who was inaugurated as Clement II. On the same day the new pope crowned the imperial couple.
Rome became an imperial city, and the control over the church--i.e., the decisive vote in future conclaves--passed into the hands of the German king. In succeeding years Henry made use of this right to appoint a pope three more times. When the Normans were beginning their conquest of Calabria, Henry did not intervene to any extent in southern Italy; instead he left this problem to Pope Leo