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cahnLast post, along with the usual 18th-century suspects, included the Ottonians; changing ideas of conception and women's sexual pleasure; Isabella of Parma (the one who fell in love, and vice versa, with her husband's sister); Henry IV and Bertha (and Henry's second wife divorcing him for "unspeakable sexual acts"). (Okay, Isabella of Parma was 18th century.)
Re: News from the Middle Ages
Date: 2022-12-01 05:30 am (UTC)Why? To quote from the transcript:
Henry V’s worst-case scenario was that his father would suddenly die, and the Gregorian party would then propose their own candidate as king. All Henry V could rely upon was that he had been formally elected, anointed, and crowned in 1099 and that all the magnates had sworn fealty to him. But what is that worth? His own father was elected, anointed and crowned when the magnates deposed him in 1076. All it needs is a Gregorian pope to excommunicate him, and all that frankincense and Myrrh would fade into nothingness. As far as Henry V was concerned, his father needed to reconcile with the pope pronto or the new king’s reign would start with a civil war.
...There was one way Henry IV could achieve a reconciliation with the pope, and that was by giving up all the investiture rights, the last remaining open issue between pope and emperor. But that would also mean that the empire would be finished. No investiture means no control over bishops, which means no call on episcopal military, which means no central power.
That would be the worst of all worlds for Henry V, a contested succession to an empire that was barely worth of its name.
The only way to avoid that outcome was to take over right now, put himself at the head of the Gregorian party and take a stab at reconciling with the pope.
And to summarize what
What a life. Henry IV had been emperor from 1056 to 1105, 49 years in total. In that time he was abducted by a faction of his nobles, abandoned by his mother, forced to marry a girl he saw as a sister, betrayed a hundred times by his nobles, forced to stand in the snow for three days to do penance, stabbed in the back by his eldest son, publicly accused of the worst misdemeanours by his second wife, and finally deposed by his youngest son. Where is the scriptwriter who sells the story to Netflix?
I see he's stating the "Bertha as sister" guess as a fact, but in any case, Henry was forced to marry her and stay married to her when he didn't want to, for whatever reason.
Re: News from the Middle Ages
Date: 2022-12-01 07:12 am (UTC)(Reminder that the way this medieval excommunication of a monarch business worked was that it not only banned the monarch himself from all sacraments but also not only allowed but pushed anyone who'd ever sworn an oath to him to rejecting that oath, and absolved them from all duties to him. This is why it was such a powerful instrument (originally), it basically gave all the nobility and the family a shoot to kill or at least drop licence. I say at first, because by the time we've arrived at the Emperors Frederick of Hohenstaufen, both Barbarossa, his sons and his grandson were, well, not blasé, but far more hardened to it, and also they managed to keep many more of the nobility AND the bishops on their side. Fast forward a few centuries, and of course Elizabeth I, the child of a schism, got excommunicated, too, and it had no practical effect at all (which is why later Popes upped the ante to declare it was the duty of her Catholic subjects to assassinate her, at which point life became really hard for English Catholics.)
Theatre history note: Luigi Pirandello's play Enrico IV isn't actually about Henry IV himself but about an Italian aristocrat who believes himself to be Henry IV. Ironically enough, said aristocrat ships himself with Mathilda of Tuscany!
Re: News from the Middle Ages
Date: 2022-12-04 05:12 am (UTC)Oh wooooow. Yeah, I didn't know that.
(Surely someone has written tropey stuff about people struggling with this oath rejection business? Schiller, maybe?)
Re: News from the Middle Ages
Date: 2022-12-05 08:53 am (UTC)(Sidenote: it's not that all these other factors weren't important in the 80 years long Netherlands vs Spain struggle, they absolutely were and became more and more so, but still, by avoiding the religious question which early on certainly was a key factor, Schiller for example also avoids having to explain how on earth Carlos not just joining but leading the struggle of the Dutch rebells would work on the religious front in Posa's plans. Was he supposed to convert? Would he have minded or would he have been delighted? We don't know, because whatever Carlos' religious feelings, we don't hear about them.)
What I'm getting at: I don't think Schiller could have written a drama where the hero has a loyalty conflict because the Pope has excommunicated his monarch without writing a hero who actually does believe the Pope has the power to do so (otherwise there's no conflict), and this in turn would have been impossible for him to write because the medieval mindset of intense (Catholic) faith was so very alien to him.
Re: News from the Middle Ages
Date: 2022-12-18 10:15 pm (UTC)...And of course Verdi's opera, composed in the 19th century, is very much more concerned with presenting religious faith as something that the characters feel strongly about (Elisabeth being perhaps the most salient example as a single character, as her religion is a fairly strong component of her operatic character, whereas in Schiller, of course, it's not -- but then of course there's also the opera interpolations of the auto-da-fe and everyone kneeling for the Grand Inquisitor).