Hohenstaufen cooperation and conflict with the papacy, 1152–1215

Frederick’s interest in Italy stemmed not only from his difficulties in Germany but also from his desire to obtain imperial coronation at the hands of the pope, who alone could bestow this dignity. Frederick enjoyed good relations with the papacy early in his reign, and in 1153 he and Pope Eugenius III signed a treaty acknowledging each other’s rights, though the pontiff died before he could crown Frederick emperor. That task fell to Adrian IV in 1155, whom Frederick had restored to the papal throne after suppressing the revolt of Arnold of Brescia and the people of Rome. Good relations would not last between the two, however. Neither side upheld the terms of the treaty of 1153, and in 1157 open conflict erupted in the so-called incident at Besançon, wherein Adrian declared that Frederick had received the empire as a beneficium, or fief, from the pope, provoking the emperor and his advisers. Adrian apologized for the use of the term, explaining it meant “favour,” but only after relations between the emperor and pope had become embittered. The incident at Besançon was the first of a series of controversies between the papacy and Frederick and the Hohenstaufen line.

The attempt to establish a direct imperial regime in Italy in 1159 antagonized the papacy once again and led to a new struggle with Rome, the ally of the Lombard communes. Political and territorial rather than ecclesiastical interests were at stake; but the popes could only fight as heads of the universal church, defending its liberty against a race of persecutors, and they had to employ their characteristic weapons—excommunication, propaganda, and intrigue. Nonetheless, the German bishops stood by Frederick and, for the most part, followed him in maintaining a prolonged schism against Pope Alexander III. Unsuccessful in Lombardy, the Hohenstaufen shifted the centre of their ambitions after 1177 to Tuscany, Spoleto, and the Romagna. This redoubled the fears and the resentment of the popes, particularly after Frederick’s death while Crusading in 1189, when his son and chosen successor, Henry VI (reigned 1190–97), became the legitimate claimant to the Sicilian kingdom through his wife Constance, the sole surviving heiress.

With their backs to the wall, the popes had to make what use they could out of any opposition to the Hohenstaufen. Their chance came in 1197 when Henry VI died prematurely, leaving a three-year-old son, Frederick, to succeed him. To escape the chaos of a minority regime, the bulk of the German princes and bishops in 1198 elected the boy’s uncle Philip of Swabia; but an opposition faction in the lower Rhenish region, led by the archbishop of Cologne and financed by Richard I of England, raised an antiking in Otto IV, a younger son of Henry the Lion. Concerned with preserving traditional papal rights regarding the imperial succession and territorial holdings in Italy as well as with the interests of his ward, Frederick, Pope Innocent III involved himself in the electoral dispute. Territorial interests in the Romagna tempted the papacy to exploit the weaknesses of the empire’s constitution, the uncertainties of electoral custom, and the lack of strict legal norms in Germany. During the war for the crown, much hard-won demesne and useful rights over the church had to be sacrificed by the rivals to bribe their supporters.