General Notes

Name Suffix:<NSFX> Holy Roman Emperor
Event: Crowned 31 MAR 1084 Holy Roman Emperor at Rome by Pope Clement III 2 1
Event: Titled BET. 1055 - 1061 Duke of Bavaria [Henry VIII] 1
Event: Ruled BET. 1054 - 1084 King of Germany 1
Note:
Henry IV (b. Nov. 11, 1050, Goslar?, Saxony--d. Aug. 7, 1106, Liège, Lorraine), duke of Bavaria (as Henry VIII, 1055-61), German king (from 1054), and Holy Roman emperor (1084-1105/06), who engaged in a long struggle with Hildebrand (Pope Gregory VII) on the question of lay investiture, eventually drawing excommunication on himself and doing penance at Canossa (1077). His last years were spent countering the rebellion of his sons Conrad and Henry (the future Henry V).
Early years.
Henry's father, Henry III, had retained a firm hold on the church and had resolved a schism in Rome (1046), opening new activities for the reformers. At Easter 1051, the boy was baptized after the German princes had taken an oath of fidelity and obedience at Christmas 1050. On July 17, 1053, he was elected king at Tribur (modern Trebur, in Germany) on condition that he would be a just king. In 1054 he was crowned king in Aix-la-Chapelle (modern Aachen, in Germany), and the following year he became engaged to Bertha, daughter of the Margrave of Turin. When the Emperor died in October 1056, at the age of 39, succession to the throne and survival of the dynasty were assured. The princes of the realm raised no objection when nominal government was handed over to the six-year-old boy, for whom his pious and unworldly mother became regent. Yet the early death of Henry III was the beginning of a fateful change that marked all of his son's reign. In his will, the late emperor had appointed Pope Victor II as counsellor to the Empress, and the Pope solved some of the conflicts between the princes and the imperial court that had endangered peace in the empire.
After Victor's early death (1057), however, the politically inept empress committed a number of decisive mistakes. On her own, and without the benefit of the advice of a permanent group of counsellors, she readily yielded to various influences. She turned over the duchy of Bavaria, which Henry III had given to his son in 1055, to the Saxon count Otto of Nordheim, thus depriving the king of an important foundation of his power. She gave the duchy of Swabia to Count Rudolf of Rheinfelden--who married her daughter--and the duchy of Carinthia to Count Berthold of Zähringen; both of them eventually became opponents of Henry IV. The death of the Emperor also marked the disruption of German influence in Italy and of the close relationship between the king and the reform popes. Their independence soon became apparent in the elections of Stephen IX and Nicholas II, which were not influenced (as under Henry III) by the German court; in the new procedure for the election of the popes (1059); and in the defensive alliance with the Normans in southern Italy. This alliance was necessary for the popes as an effective protection against the Romans and was not directed against the German king. Yet the Normans were considered usurpers and enemies of the Holy Roman Empire; the pact thus resulted in strained relations between the Pope and the German court, and these strains were aggravated by papal claims and disciplinary action taken by Nicholas II against German bishops. While the German king had so far been known as a supporter of the reformers, the Empress now imprudently entered into an alliance with Italian opponents of church reform and brought about the election of Cadalus, bishop of Parma, as antipope (Honorius II) against the reigning pope, Alexander II, who had been elected by the reformers. But since she did not give effective support to Honorius, Alexander was able to prevail. Her unwise church policy was matched by an obscurely motivated submissive policy at home, which, by unwarranted cession of holdings of the crown, weakened the material foundations of the king's power an