the HRE

i´d like to hear your opinion on a milestone of HRE´s history...
let me give you some facts first

during the ruin of the power of the karolingers, the german duchies grew very strong by evading external threads. these duchies were often based on "tribesland" (saxons, franks, bavarians, swabes, lothringians) and lacked a feeling as a "german" nation.
after the extinction of the "east-franconian" karolingers, in 911 the grands of the reich elect Konrad I of francony as king. he fails in becoming accepted by the dukes. lorraine joines the western empire (france).
in 919 Henry I of saxony gets declared king by the saxons and franks. he also is not accepted by the other dukes and has to fight them. in 921 Arnulf duke of bavaria submits to the king. in 925 lorraine comes back to the "east-empire", duke Giselbert marries Henry´s daughter. in 926 the duke of swabia dies and count Hermann of franconia gets his successor. after gaining upperhand against the dukes he conquers brandenburg from the slavs (928/29). he pays a cease fire agreement for 9 years from the hungarians, but crushes them in 933 and gains austria.

in 936 Henry´s son Otto follows him as king. he tries to ensure loyality of the dukes and all come to his coronation and get offices. Eberhard of Francony: chancellor, Giselbert of Lorraine: chamberlain, Herrmann of Swabia: cupbearer, Arnulf of Bavaria: marshall. but their loyality lasts not for long...
in 939 Eberhard of Francony and Giselbert of Lorraine and Otto´s brother Henry start a rebellion. and get axed down by Hermann of Swabia (Eberhard falls, and Giselbert drowns in the Rhine during his flight, Henry submits). Otto chooses to ensure the loyality of the duchies by giving them to family members.
in 953/954 these new dukes, members of his family, again start a rebellion (Liudolf of Swabia and Konrad the Red of Lorraine), and again get defeated.

these constant rebellions led to a new policy of the german emperors (Otto was enthroned in 962 in rome).
the holdings of the church get increased (at the dukes costs). bishops and abbots get secular lords and hold the main imperial offices. these sovereign clerus soon bears two thirds of the Reich´s military and financial burden. the church gets a advocacy of the idea of a strong unified "Reich".

the advantages of empowering the church were the creation of a powerful unifying institution in opposition to the duchies. and absence of eirs, at least of official ones, prevented the rise of powerful dynasties.

but there were also grave disadvantages. the great power the bishops and abbots had, made it very interesting to control their nomination (=investiture).
the "investiture fight" came up in 1075. pope Gregor VII banned the "investiture by layman". that means the pope declared to be the only one to nominate bishops and abbots. which would be a fatal blow to the emperor. because that would mean he looses control who holds the important offices in the empire. this lead to the struggle between the empire and the papacy which had its climax in the excommunication of the emperor and his submission at Canossa. but also affected the whole medieval times by creating a cantradiction between the empire and the papacy and at least loosened the obedience of the "Reichs-church" to the emperor.



so i´m interested what you think of that. do you think the emperor was right to empower the church to create a balance weight towards the duchies?
or do you think his pact with the church was kind of a "out of the frying pan into the fire" thing? and he schould have battled it out on his own instead of "a pact with the devil"?

Otto couldn't have forseen the reform movement. Even when it arose, his successor Henry IV dealt with it very badly; he could have diffused the situation by being more politique. So really, I don't think otto's choice was all that bad; without it, you may not have had a HRE at all.

Well you already mentioned the main reason the Liudolfings (and later the Salians) thought it was a good idea: imperial lands granted to clerics did not pass to their heirs, but to the next cleric to fill their abbacy/bishopric/archbishopric. And since, until the Investiture Conflict, the Emperor chose his own candidates to fill these offices, it meant that even if a cleric proved rebellious, as soon as he died or was deposed, the Emperor could install a loyal candidate.

Also, clerics only received imperial lands; they held no allodial lands as did the nobles. If a noble (like Henry the Lion) held enough allodial lands, then even if the Emperor stripped him of his Duchy, he still had a large power-base to fall back on.

One more thing; since the election of the first German King in 911, it was the Church, not the Dukes, that had supported the idea of a united kingdom, because a strong monarchy brought order, enforced the law, and protected the Church against the nobility. They also pushed movements like the Peace of God that tended to help the monarch control the nobles.

As above poster said, Otto I, or even Henry III for that matter, had no way of knowing what was going to happen later. And, even after the Investiture Conflict, the majority of the German Church generally supported the Emperor even against the Pope (since it was the Emperor, not the Pope, that was the source of their wealth and power).