Henry the Lion

Duke of Saxony (1142-1180) and Bavaria (1156-1180)

• Born: 1129
• Birthplace: Unknown
• Died: August 6, 1195
• Place of death: Brunswick, Saxony (now in Germany)

Henry was the most important of the twelfth century German nobles who resisted the authority of the Holy Roman Emperor. He was also a leader in the movement to extend German colonization into Slavic territory.

Early Life

Even kings considered themselves clients of Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony and Bavaria. He was a very capable and determined person, but these traits alone would not have made him one of the most important people of the age. The timing of his birth and the political conditions in Germany allowed him to attain a degree of power and influence seldom reached in the twelfth century by anyone without royal status. Between 1076, when Pope Gregory VII attempted to depose Emperor Henry IV, and Henry the Lion’s birth in 1129, the German nobility gained so much independence from the throne that the result was nearly anarchy. This situation had arisen because the emperors were distracted by the conflict with the Papacy and because they had lost their struggle to make succession to the imperial throne hereditary. The conflict with the various popes required concentration on Italy rather than Germany, and the principle of election to the throne meant that feuds, granting of favors in return for electoral support, and uncertainty about the future created political instability. Enjoying freedom from imperial control, aggressive knights carved out domains for themselves and began to give themselves territorial designations based on the names of their castles: thus Lothair of Supplinburg, grandfather of Henry the Lion.

Lothair was one of the new men, so new that his family is unknown except for the name of his father. Yet he was able to become duke of Saxony and, finally, Holy Roman Emperor Lothair III. He had no sons, but he married his daughter, Gertrude, to Henry the Proud, a member of the Bavarian Welf family. Despite all of his efforts to have Henry the Proud recognized as his successor, when Lothair died in 1137, Henry was not elected. Throughout Lothair’s reign, a feud had continued between the Welf and Hohenstaufen families. The Hohenstaufen party not only prevented Henry the Proud’s election but also deprived him of his title as duke of Saxony. The Saxons, however, remained loyal to him and war broke out between his forces and those of Albert the Bear, the newly appointed duke of Saxony. Henry the Proud appeared to be winning when he suddenly died in 1139, leaving his ten-year-old son, Henry the Lion, to carry on the struggle.

Contrary to expectation, the Welf cause did not collapse with the death of Henry the Proud. The Saxon nobles and the Welf family continued the fight until a negotiated settlement in 1142 recognized Henry the Lion as duke of Saxony. As part of the settlement, Gertrude, Henry the Lion’s mother, married the newly named duke of Bavaria. She died in childbirth the next year, leaving Henry alone at the age of fourteen. Albert the Bear lost his title but remained a problem for the Welfs. He was given a small territory on the Saxon border and remained Henry’s archenemy for the rest of his life.

Life’s Work

In addition to his struggle to maintain and increase his influence and holdings at the expense of his fellow nobles and the emperor, Henry expanded his domain, and consequently that of German culture, into previously Slavic regions. These activities made him second in power only to the emperor within Germany and a prominent figure in international affairs. He displayed the ruthless methods he would use throughout his life from the very beginning of his tenure as duke of Saxony at the age of thirteen. One of his first acts was to claim the lands of one of his vassals who died childless. In the course of the ensuing dispute, he imprisoned the archbishop of Bremen, who was the deceased’s brother, and other church officials. He released them only after the emperor intervened. These high-handed methods were to be the primary cause of the revolt by his vassals that led to his deposition in 1180.

Henry’s campaign against the Slavs was similarly characterized by ruthless determination. As early as 1147, Henry had been involved in the crusade against the heathen Slavs that had been authorized by the pope in lieu of warring in the Holy Land. The Crusade of 1147 had few results because of the quarreling among the Crusaders, but Albert the Bear and Henry the Lion as well as other Saxon nobles continued the attempt to establish colonies beyond their eastern borders. Albert cooperated with the Church, although he would not allow Church officials to impose heavier tithes on the converted Slavs than on the German colonists. He also prevented the Crusade of 1157 from being conducted in his territory. Henry, on the other hand, was less interested in Christianizing the Slavs than in obtaining tribute from them. He crossed the Elbe River in 1160 and subdued the area around Mecklenburg, which he managed to hold for seven years. Even after he was forced to return most of it to a Slav prince, the acquisition and exploitation of Slavic lands remained a constant feature of his policy. By the time of his deposition in 1180, the area between the Elbe and the Baltic Sea to the Danish border had been colonized by Germans and was under Saxon control.

Henry was also interested in extending his power by encouraging trade and commerce. One of his most successful enterprises was the development and promotion of the city of Lübeck into an important commercial center on the Baltic coast. The city was founded in 1143, and Henry had gained control of it with his usual ruthless tactics by 1160. Thereafter, he favored it in every way he could and in return received considerable revenue from its markets. In a similar way, he raised the city of Munich to commercial importance by building a bridge for the transport of salt from Salzburg. Bishop Otto of Freising complained that Henry had, in effect, stolen the tolls from the salt trade by diverting traffic to Munich from the bishop’s territory, but the complaint produced no results.

These high-handed methods and efforts to increase his power finally brought Henry to grief. He took every opportunity to weaken the Saxon nobility, who bitterly resented him. The practice that aroused the most fury was the seizure of the lands of vassals who died without adult male heirs. He added insult to injury by attempting to make the counts into his direct administrative subordinates. By the standards of a later age, this movement toward centralization and the attempt to gain control of independent, frequently feuding, and continually troublesome nobles may seem laudable, but in the twelfth century, the view was that nobles should be free to govern their lands as they pleased as long as they met their feudal obligations. That was the position of Henry’s vassals, who protested vigorously to his overlord, Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa.

Henry probably could not have withstood the conspiracies against him by the Saxon nobles as long as he did without the support of the emperor. Frederick, who had been elected emperor in 1152, was a staunch friend to Henry as well as being his first cousin. Frederick’s mother, Judith, was Henry the Proud’s sister. This kinship did not, however, make Frederick a Welf partisan, for he had equal ties of kinship to the Hohenstaufen family. It seems that the two men were genuinely fond of each other. At any rate, they supported each other. Frederick allowed Henry to do as he pleased in Saxony, and Henry participated in Frederick’s military campaigns in Italy. It was after the Italian campaign of 1155, in which Henry had performed particularly valuable service, that Frederick made him duke of Bavaria as well as Saxony and thus returned the old Welf territories to the family that had traditionally possessed them. By the time his arch rival, Albert the Bear, died in 1170, Henry had been able to quell the rebellions against him so successfully and had become so powerful that a period of relative peace ensued. He felt secure enough to leave his lands in the care of his wife and go on a crusade to Jerusalem in 1172, but he returned after only a short stay.

Relations between Henry and Frederick became less cordial after 1174. Henry apparently refused to take part in the Italian campaign of that year even though his troops were desperately needed. The two men are reported to have met for the last time in 1176, when Frederick is supposed to have gone so far as to beg for Henry’s help in Italy. Henry is said to have demanded the important castle and fief of Goslar in return for military aid. Frederick refused, and the two parted on bad terms. The negotiations at this meeting, if it actually occurred, are matters of speculation. No contemporary record of it exists.

Whatever the immediate circumstances of the quarrel between Henry and Frederick, it was the result of the policies both men had pursued. Frederick was attempting to assert his authority in Germany and Italy just as Henry was trying to consolidate his in Saxony. While Henry wanted to subordinate his own vassals, he also wanted to maintain his freedom from imperial control. The demand for Goslar, regardless of whether it occurred, is symbolic of this struggle for power.

Part of the struggle involved Henry’s dealings with foreign princes. A civil war in Denmark enabled him to make the king of Denmark practically a vassal in return for his support. The king paid tribute to Henry and remained under his control from 1157 until 1171, when he tried to break away. The attempt failed, and Denmark remained a Saxon client until Henry’s fall. Frederick was less concerned with Henry’s Danish venture than with his friendship toward foreign enemies of imperial policy. He was particularly disturbed by Henry’s relations with some of the Italian nobles Frederick was trying to subdue. Henry also visited the Byzantine emperor, who was unfriendly to Frederick. Another of Frederick’s enemies, Henry II of England, was a potential problem, as Henry the Lion had married his daughter, Matilda, in 1168.

The final break with the emperor came in 1178. A bishop who had been dispossessed of some of his lands by Henry appealed to Frederick for justice. Naturally, the Saxon nobility supported the bishop. Frederick, who had dismissed many such complaints against Henry on previous occasions, took this opportunity to call his overly powerful vassal to account. Henry ignored three different summonses to appear at the imperial court during 1179 and was outlawed in January, 1180. Bernard of Anhalt, a son of Albert the Bear, became duke of Saxony, and Saxony became a much smaller territory as many of its fiefs went back to the Church or to other magnates. Frederick was careful not to create such a powerful threat to imperial authority as Henry had.

Henry attempted to fight back but without success. His former vassals proved undependable, and his appeals to foreign courts for aid went unheeded. Finally, in 1182, he went into exile at the court of his father-in-law, Henry II of England. He and his family were well treated in England. His son, Otto, became a favorite of Richard I, who became king of England in 1189. Richard and Otto were first cousins and similar in appearance as well as tastes. Richard made him earl of York in 1190, when he was only eight years old, tried to obtain the Scottish throne for him, and was his primary supporter when he was elected Holy Roman Emperor Otto IV .

The differences between Frederick and Henry were reconciled. Frederick died in 1190, and Henry returned to Germany in 1194. He established a court at Brunswick, where he patronized the troubadours who were to make him the hero of many ballads. He also saw to the building of the church where he and his wife are buried. His interest in history led him to collect a number of chronicles and to oversee the writing of an informational book that he titled Lucidarius. Despite the Latin title, it is written in the vernacular German of the period. He had only one year to enjoy these activities, as he died in 1195.

Significance

Henry the Lion was in many ways a product of his time, but his personal attributes qualified him for his time very well. He was probably the most powerful and archetypal of the nobles who prevented the Holy Roman Emperor from establishing a unified government in Germany. There were many other reasons for the failure of Germany to develop a central government after the French or English model, but the ability of the great nobles to maintain their own authority at the expense of central government was one of the key factors.

He was also one of the most important figures in the expansion of Germany to the east. The territory he wrested from the Slavs may have fallen from his personal control, but those areas settled by German colonists were to remain permanently Germanized.

It is interesting to speculate about the results if Henry had succeeded in establishing a centralized, independent Saxony. Bavaria and Saxony, as they then existed, constituted about one third of modern Germany. Such a state in Central Europe would have had profound consequences. He failed, however, and remains interesting only as a prime example of the powerful subjects whose defeat was such an important feature of nation building by medieval European kings. The difference in this case is that there was no building of a German state.

Bibliography

Barraclough, Geoffrey. The Origins of Modern Germany. Reprint. New York: W. W. Norton, 1984. Although published originally in 1947, this book remains the standard work in English on medieval Germany. Barraclough takes the position that Henry resented giving up Goslar to Frederick in 1168 and was determined to regain it but that Henry lost all chance of success when Frederick made peace with the Church in 1177. The author also believes that Frederick pursued a policy of keeping the nobles weak after Henry’s fall.

Barraclough, Geoffrey., ed. Medieval Germany, 911-1250: Essays by German Historians. 2 vols. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1961. The issue of most interest to modern historians is the interpretation of the constitutional struggle between Frederick and Henry, and some of the articles in this work deal with this topic.

Ehlers, Joachim. Heinrich der Löwe: Europäisches Fürstentum im Hochmittelalter. Göttingen, Germany: Muster-Schmidt, 1997. One of the few biographies of Henry, in German. Illustrations, bibliography.

Eyck, Frank. Religion and Politics in German History: From the Beginnings to the French Revolution. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998. An analysis of how Germanic peoples preserved links with classical civilization through their ability to assimilate other cultures and peoples, from their alliances with eighth century popes through the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. The initial bond between the Germanic rulers and popes turned to conflict as the Papacy gained power. Tables, maps, bibliography, index.

Hampe, Karl. Germany Under the Salian and Hohenstaufen Emperors. London: Rowman and Littlefield, 1973. A classic work, with an introduction by Ralph Bennet that comments on the latest German and English works in this field and gives the latest interpretations of the constitutional struggle between Frederick and Henry.

Jeep, John M., et al., eds. Medieval Germany: An Encyclopedia. New York: Garland, 2001. An A-Z encyclopedia that addresses all aspects of the German- and Dutch-speaking medieval world from 500 to 1500. Entries include individuals, events, and broad topics such as feudalism and pregnancy. Bibliographical references, index.

Jordan, Karl. Henry the Lion: A Biography. Translated by P. S. Falla. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. A rare English-language biography of Henry. Illustrations, maps, bibliography, index.

Moore, Robert Ian. The First European Revolution, c. 970-1215. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2000. According to the publisher, “a radical reassessment of Europe from the late tenth to the early thirteenth centuries [arguing that] the period witnessed the first true ’revolution’ in European society,” supported by transformation of the economy, family life, political power structures, and the rise of the non-Mediterranean cities. Bibliography, index.

Munz, Peter. Frederick Barbarossa: A Study in Medieval Politics. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1969. Munz believes that assigning motives of modern state building to twelfth century figures is anachronistic and that Frederick did not want to centralize his authority. He argues that Frederick’s real aim was to keep the German nobles embroiled with one another so he would be free to go on crusades.

Otto of Freising. The Deeds of Frederick Barbarossa. 1953. Rev. ed. New York: W. W. Norton, 1966. There is little about Henry in this work, but it is worth looking at because Otto was a contemporary of Henry and was involved in a quarrel with him. It is also worthwhile in that it deals extensively with Frederick, who is of obvious importance to Henry’s story.

Thompson, James Westfall. Feudal Germany. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1928. Dated, but probably one of the more readily available works. Thompson champions Henry as a forward-looking ruler who was trying to build a modern, centralized state and who was patriotically trying to prevent abortive, wasteful military campaigns in Italy. He further argues that one of Frederick’s greatest wrongs was the destruction of Saxony.