King's election of 1002

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The German election of 1002 was the decision on the question of succession, which came after the heirless death of Emperor Otto III. had asked; it was decided for himself by Duke Heinrich IV of Bavaria using methods that were not customary ( bribery and election manipulation ).

The history

On 23/24 On January 1st, 1002 the 21 year old Emperor Otto III died surprisingly. at the castle Paterno in Italy of malaria , unmarried, childless and without having issued a succession regulation. With him, the last male descendant of Emperor Otto I , the older line, the Otto line, the Liudolfinger became extinct .

Because of this situation, the election of a new king was no longer a formality controlled by the incumbent, but a central political issue.

The candidates

The dukes of the empire primarily came into question as Otto's successors ; Beyond this group of people, only the Margrave Ekkehard I of Meißen ( Ekkehardiner ) actively applied , who, according to Thietmar von Merseburg, was made duke by the Thuringians in a popular election and was particularly valued by the late emperor.

The most promising among the candidates was initially the Conradin Hermann II of Swabia , at the latest after the majority of the princes present at Otto's funeral in Aachen on Easter 1002 had spoken out in favor of him.

Another candidate from the circle of dukes was Heinrich IV of Bavaria, the son of Heinrich the quarrel , who was rebellious at the time, and (besides his brother Brun ) the only remaining Liudolfinger, whom Emperor Otto II wanted to have eliminated from any participation in imperial power and which, according to Thietmar von Merseburg, except for the bishop of Augsburg , Siegfried I , no one in the vicinity of the deceased emperor wanted to see him as his successor. In fact, Heinrich probably had several supporters among the great Saxons who valued a ruler from a Saxon family. Heinrich laid claim to the successor and underlined this with an extensive foundation for the deceased - an act that was usually reserved for the actual successor. In addition, he made contact with the Salier Otto von Worms , titular duke of Carinthia , a grandson of Otto I, who, however, renounced in favor of Heinrich after he had offered him the candidacy - seriously or tactically. This made Heinrich the highest ranking and at the same time Otto III. closest related contender. Nevertheless, his claim remained questionable, as there were neither codified rules nor a tradition that granted distant relatives a right to the succession of the king.

Only the history of the founding of the Brauweiler Abbey reports on a candidature for the throne of Count Palatine Ezzo of Lorraine ( Ezzonen ) ; on the other hand, from him - the only brother-in-law and father of the closest blood relatives of Otto III. - reports that he received the imperial insignia from the Chancellor and Archbishop of Cologne, Heribert . Another candidate - according to the Vita Bernwardi , c.38, and the Vita Meinwerci , c.7 - is said to have been Count Brun von Braunschweig ( Brunonen ), without further information being known.

The robbery of the imperial regalia

When the train with the corpse of Otto III. Having crossed the Alps under the leadership of the Chancellor and Archbishop of Cologne, Heribert, he met Duke Heinrich in Polling on the Bavarian border, who showed great concern for the train, but also formulated his claim here and finally forced Heribert to hand over the imperial regalia he was carrying . Among these, however, the Holy Lance was missing , which was probably the most important relic of the empire at that time . Heribert had sent them ahead to Aachen, probably out of caution and mistrust, since as a member of the inner circle around the deceased Emperor he also saw Hermann von Schwaben as the new king. Heinrich took the archbishop and later his brother, the Würzburg bishop Heinrich I , into custody. As a result, he finally forced the handover of the lance.

The candidacy of Ekkehard von Meissen

Probably because of the personal appreciation that Emperor Otto III. the Margrave Ekkehard von Meißen had, this entered after his death the fight for the successor. A first meeting of 16 Saxon princes and bishops in Frohse on the Elbe , at which Ekkehard was to be nominated, was postponed to a meeting in Werla without any result . Important for this decision was the urging of Count Lothar von Walbeck , Margrave of the Nordmark , who, following the decision of Frohse, got in touch with Heinrich von Schweinfurt , a partisan of Heinrich IV. Of Bavaria, whom he promised to follow had drawn his duchy on his side.

In Werla, Heinrich von Schweinfurt succeeded in winning the meeting for the absent Heinrich von Bayern, on the one hand through rich gifts that he promised on Heinrich's behalf in the event of the nomination, on the other hand - and this with the support of the sisters of the deceased emperor, Sophia and Adelheid - with reference to his membership of the Liudolfinger family and a derived right of inheritance.

Ekkehard obviously did not give up his claims despite the defeat. He continued to appear in Werla together with his allies, Bishop Arnulf von Halberstadt and Duke Bernhard I of Saxony . A little later he went to Hildesheim , where he was already received by Bishop Bernward like the new king, and then made his way to Duisburg to negotiate with Hermann von Swabia, but then turned back in Paderborn . On the way back, he was attacked and killed on April 30, 1002 in the Palatinate Pöhlde am Harz by Count Siegfried von Northeim and Heinrich and Udo von Katlenburg , apparently as a result of revenge and not in connection with the election of a king.

The choice of Heinrich

Immediately after the meeting in Werla, Heinrich von Bayern moved to Mainz with military support and received a promise from the Archbishop of Mainz, Willigis , that he would be crowned in his cathedral, the Mainz Cathedral , and not as usual in Aachen. Heinrich then let the clergy and secular princes present vote on June 7, 1002 without waiting for or attempting the required general election meeting. He was elected with the votes of his supporters from Bavaria and Eastern Franconia and against the votes of Swabia, without the knowledge and participation of the north and west - Lorraine, Saxony and Thuringia: Heinrich's power base was his duchy and the majority of the bishops under the leadership of the Archbishop of Mainz Willigis, who carried out the promised coronation immediately after the election.

As Archbishop of Mainz, Willigis was also responsible for the coronation, but everything else about this royal election did not correspond to tradition - the place of choice, the lack of a throne on the Karl's throne and of course the lack of a general election.

Recognition of the choice

Course of the king's ride

The lack of general election prompted Heinrich to obtain the homage through a month-long king ride. Such a ride around was common among the Merovingians , but later dropped for centuries. The tour was supposed to lead via Thuringia, Saxony, Lower Lorraine, Swabia and Bavaria to Upper Lorraine, but was initially stopped or deflected by the resistance of the Swabians.

As expected, Hermann von Schwaben had not recognized the election and the coronation in Mainz, so that at the end of June, almost immediately after his elevation, Heinrich launched a campaign against the Conradines, which took him to Strasbourg and to the island of Reichenau at the end of the month .

Via Bamberg he traveled on to Kirchberg near Jena , where the Thuringians under the leadership of Count Wilhelm II of Weimar paid homage to him on July 20, 1002 . A few days later, from July 24th to 28th, negotiations with the Saxon greats took place in Merseburg , especially Duke Bernhard of Saxony, Duke Boleslaw I of Poland , Margrave Lothar von der Nordmark, Palatine Count Friedrich von Sachsen, den Bishops Arnulf von Halberstadt and Bernward von Hildesheim, who had lost the vote in Mainz. In the end, it was agreed that Heinrich would be recognized under certain conditions that saved face on both sides, especially since the Saxons, after four Saxon rulers, had claimed that the next king would also have to come from their ranks; a condition that Heinrich, as a Bavarian duke in the third generation, did not fulfill despite his descent. The agreement comprised the following points:

  • Heinrich recognized the rights of the Saxons to German royalty.
  • The Saxons recognized Heinrich's rank as king.
  • The election in Mainz was not binding for the Saxons due to the lack of participation.
  • Heinrich submitted to the separate elevation to king by the Saxons.
  • Duke Bernhard gave him the Holy Lance, homage and a further coronation followed.

Heinrich traveled on via Grona to Paderborn, where his wife Kunigunde was crowned queen on August 10th . On August 18, 1002, Heinrich was reconciled with the Archbishop of Cologne Heribert in Duisburg, and the homage by the bishops of Lorraine followed immediately. After stops in Nijmegen and Utrecht , another coronation took place on September 8th in Aachen, which was accompanied by the homage by the barons of Lower Lorraine . On October 1st, Duke Hermann and with him the Swabian nobility surrendered in Bruchsal . Heinrich went via Augsburg to Regensburg , where his own followers paid homage to him from November 11th to 24th, before he traveled on to Frankfurt am Main and finally to Diedenhofen ( Thionville ), where he held a court conference and an imperial synod on January 15th, 1003 which he combined with the homage by the barons of Upper Lorraine .

aftermath

Hermann von Schwaben, who initially did not recognize Heinrich's choice but later submitted to Bruchsal, died a few months later, on May 4, 1003. Heinrich took over for Hermann's young son Hermann III. the government of the duchy - a state of affairs which in fact (not legally) remained under both successors until the middle of the century - and thus permanently ousted his competitor's family from power.

Heinrich von Schweinfurt had supported the elected king against the promise to succeed him in Bavaria. When the new king did not honor this promise, however, because he could not afford such a powerful position of the Schweinfurters in the southeast of the empire, Heinrich von Schweinfurt (along with some relatives) allied himself with Boleslaw I of Poland (who was still in Merseburg had fallen out with Heinrich in an unexplained attack) and Brun, the king's brother. The allied nobles were defeated in the summer of 1003.

The king gave the ducal dignity in Bavaria to Heinrich von Luxemburg , his brother-in-law, and in the emerging power vacuum in 1007 he founded the diocese of Bamberg to strengthen the royal power in Eastern Franconia. Heinrich von Schweinfurt lost his counties and imperial fiefs, was pardoned in 1004, but only got his own property back.

swell

literature

  • Gerd Althoff , Hagen Keller : The time of the late Carolingians and Ottonians 888-1024 (= Gebhardt. Handbook of German History. Vol. 3). 10th, completely revised edition. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2008, p. 315ff., ISBN 978-3-608-60003-2 .
  • Eduard Hlawitschka : The throne candidacies of 1002 and 1024. Were they based on claims to relatives or on ideas of free choice? In: Karl Schmid (Ed.): Empire and Church before the Investiture Controversy. Thorbecke, Sigmaringen 1985, ISBN 3-7995-7030-6 .
  • Eduard Hlawitschka: "Do you not notice that you are missing the fourth wheel on the car?" On Ekkehard von Meißen's candidacy for the throne (1002) according to Thietmar, Chronicon IV c. 52. In: Karl Hauck , Hubert Mordek (Ed.): Historiography and intellectual life in the Middle Ages. Festschrift for Heinz Löwe on his 65th birthday. Böhlau, Cologne a. a. 1978, ISBN 3-412-05178-0 .
  • Eduard Hlawitschka: Investigations on the change of throne in the first half of the 11th century and on the aristocratic history of southern Germany. At the same time clarifying research on "Kuno von Öhningen" (= lectures and research. Volume 35). Thorbecke, Sigmaringen 1987, ISBN 3-7995-6695-3 .
  • Steffen Patzold : King's surveys between inheritance law and the right to vote? Succession to the throne and legal mentality around the year 1000. In: German Archive for Research into the Middle Ages , Vol. 58 (2002), pp. 467–507. ( Digitized version )

Remarks

  1. ↑ Thietmar IV, 45.