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| 1074 |
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| Charter of Worms, the first imperial charter issued directly to citizens without episcopal intervention. | 1 |
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| 1075–1122 |
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| The struggle over lay investiture. The German bishops, alarmed at Gregory VII's reform policy (See 1073–85), opposed his confirmation as pope, but Henry, in the midst of the Saxon revolt, sanctioned it, and apparently promised reforms in Germany. The sudden abolition of lay investiture would have reduced the emperor's power in Germany and would have made government impossible. With the end of the Saxon revolt, Henry's interest in reform vanished. | 2 |
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| 1077 |
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| A faction of the nobles elected an antiking, Rudolf of Swabia, with the approval of Gregory's legates, but without papal confirmation. | 3 |
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| 1077–80 |
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| Civil war ensued, but Henry, loyally supported by the towns, gained strength steadily; Rudolf of Swabia was defeated and killed (1080); Gregory excommunicated and deposed Henry, but a synod of German and North Italian prelates then deposed Gregory, naming as his successor Guibert of Ravenna, a reforming bishop and former friend of Gregory (1080). | 4 |
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| 1083 |
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| Henry, at the end of a series of expeditions to Italy (1081–82), besieged Rome; after futile efforts at reconciliation, he gained entrance to the city, and Gregory called in his Norman allies. Henry, crowned at Rome by his antipope, invaded Apulia; Robert Guiscard expelled him from Rome and sacked (1084) the city. The horrors of the Norman sacking made it impossible for Gregory to remain in Rome, and he departed with his allies, dying as their “guest” in Salerno (1085). | 5 |
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| 1093–1106 |
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| Gregory's successors, champions of reform, supported the revolts of Henry's sons in Germany and Italy: Conrad (1093), and the future Henry V (1104). Henry was elected king, but his father retained the loyalty of the towns to the end. Henry V shamefully entrapped and imprisoned his father, who abdicated, escaped, and was regaining ground when he died. | 6 |
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| 1106–25 |
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| HENRY V (married to Matilda, daughter of Henry I of England, in 1114). A brutal, resourceful, treacherous ruler, Henry continued his father's policies. Skillfully pretending to be dependent on the princes, he continued lay investiture, opposed papal interference in Germany, and retained the support of the lay and clerical princes; in the meantime, relying on the towns and ministeriales, he built up the nucleus of a strong power. Wars against Hungary, Poland, and Bohemia (1108–10). | 7 |
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| 1110–11 |
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| Imposing expedition to Italy to secure the imperial crown, universally supported in Germany. In Italy the Lombard towns (except Milan) and even the Countess Matilda yielded to Henry. Pope Paschal II (1099–1118) offered to renounce all feudal and secular holdings of the Church (except those of the see of Rome) in return for the concession of free elections and the abandonment of lay investiture, a papal humiliation more than equal to the imperial mortification at Canossa. | 8 |
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| 1114–15 |
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| A series of revolts (in Lorraine, along the lower Rhine, in Westphalia, and soon in East Saxony and Thuringia). Henry was saved by the loyalty of the South Germans. | 9 |
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| 1115 |
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| Matilda, countess of Tuscany, who had originally made over all her vast holdings to the papacy, retaining them as fiefs with free right of disposition, willed these lands to Henry on her death, and Henry arrived in Italy to claim them (1116–18). | 10 |
| Both pope and emperor were weary of the investiture controversy, Europe was preoccupied with the Crusades (See The Crusades), and the time was ripe for compromise. The first important compromise negotiated by the pope was with Henry I of England (1107) and provided that the king should not invest with the spiritual symbols (the ring and the staff), but that he was to be present or represented at all elections. After due homage, the king should then invest with the symbols of temporal authority. In France a similar compromise was reached in practice with Philip I (c. 1108). | 11 |
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| 1122 |
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| At the Synod of Worms, under the presidency of a papal legate, the Concordat of Worms was drawn up in two documents of three brief sentences each that provided that: (1) elections in Germany were to be in the presence of the emperor or his representative, without simony or violence; in the event of disagreement, the emperor was to decide; the emperor was to invest with the temporalities before the spiritual investiture; (2) in Italy and Burgundy, consecration was to follow within six months of election; the emperor to invest with the regalia after homage. This concordat ended the investiture struggle, but not the rivalry of pope and emperor. In Germany the nobles were the real victors. | 12 |
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| 1125 |
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| Henry left no direct heir, and at the bitterly fought election of 1125, the archbishops of Mainz and Cologne, foes of the anticlerical Salian line, cleverly prevented, with papal aid, the election of the nearest heir, Frederick of Swabia, of the house of Hohenstaufen, on the grounds that the hereditary principle was dangerous. Lothair of Supplinburg, duke of Saxony, was chosen, opening the great struggle of Welf and Waiblinger (Hohenstaufen) in Germany (Guelf and Ghibelline in Italy). | 13 |
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