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Salic Dynasty / Franconian Dynasty 1024-1125

After the death of the last Saxon king in 1024, the crown passed to the Salians, a Frankish tribe. The Franconian line of emperors was established by Conrad II, the Salic (1024-39). The four Salic kings -- Conrad II, Henry III, Henry IV, and Henry V -- who ruled Germany as kings from 1024 to 1125, established their monarchy as a major European power. Their main accomplishment was the development of a permanent administrative system based on a class of public officials answerable to the crown.

Under Conrad II's son and successor, Henry III, the Black (1039-56), the empire attained perhaps its maximum of strength. Henry III was powerful in Germany and successful in foreign wars, and he received from a Roman synod the right of nominating the Pope. A principal reason for the success of the early Salians was their alliance with the church, a policy begun by Otto I, which gave them the material support they needed to subdue rebellious dukes. In time, however, the church came to regret this close relationship.

In the reign of Henry IV (1056-1106), the great struggle for supremacy between the empire and the papacy began. In 1059 Pope Nicholas II, at the instigation of the famous archdeacon Hildebrand, afterward Pope Gregory VII, vested the papal election in the college of cardinals, reserving the rights of the clergy and people of Rome and of the emperor.

The relationship broke down in 1075 during what came to be known as the Investiture Contest, a struggle in which the reformist pope, Gregory VII, demanded that Henry IV (r. 1056-1106) renounce his rights over the German church. Hildebrand, as Pope Gregory VII declared it criminal for an ecclesiastic to receive a benefice from a layman, he raised the whole question of feudal investiture of land to the clergy. It had a special bearing on Germany, where a great part of the land and wealth was vested in bishops and abbots, who, under the new ruling, could pass from the control of the emperor to that of the Pope. A war between the secular and the religious powers was thereupon begun.

The pope also attacked the concept of monarchy by divine right and gained the support of significant elements of the German nobility interested in limiting imperial absolutism. More important, the pope forbade church officials under pain of excommunication to support Henry as they had so freely done in the past. Gregory summoned Henry to Rome for judgment : Henry retaliated by convening a synod which deposed the Pope.

The Pope's reply was to excommunicate Henry, who, deserted by his nobles, went as a penitent to Canosa in northern Italy in 1077, and, clad in woolen and standing barefoot on the snow, sued and obtained forgiveness from the successor of the Fisherman. It was a scene well calculated to strike the imagination, and the admission that the spiritual was greater than the temporal power was destined - to have momentous consequences. However, he resumed the practice of lay investiture (appointment of religious officials by civil authorities) and arranged the election of an antipope.

Henry's son, Henry V (1106-25), was as able and determined an opponent of the papal claims as his father. He asserted all the rights over ecclesiastics which had ever been enjoyed by his predecessors, and it was not until the Concordat of Worms (1122), concluded between Pope Calixtus II and Henry V, that a settlement, greatly diminishing the emperor's powers, was effected.

Salic Law

Some historians allege that the term Salic is derived from a river called Sala in ancient Germany, the borders of which were peopled by the Franks. Montesquieu wrote that "Echard has very plainly proved that the word Salic is derived from Sala, which signifies a house.... ; and, therefore, that the Salic land was the land belonging to the house.... The Salic land was then within that inclosure which belonged to a German house; this was the only property they had. The Franks, after their conquests, acquired new possessions, and continued to call them Salic lands. " Other sources report that the term salic is derived from the Latin work sal meaning "salt." Many historians believe that 'Salic' is derived from 'Saalland'. This was a region in the east of modern Holland, just above the Rhine. 'Sele' refers to a type of large and expensive house. 'Saalland' means 'the land of the big (farm)houses'.

Philippe V, known as Philippe le Long, the second son of Philippe IV., or 'Le Bel,' was born A.D. 1294, and succeeded to the throne A.D. 1316. It was upon this occasion that the Salic law, by which females were excluded from the succession to the throne, was established as a constitutional law in France. Louis X had left a daughter, Jeanne, queen of Navarre; and there appears to have been no just ground, either from precedent or from the analogy of the laws of succession which prevailed in other kingdoms, for her exclusion. The ground urged by the legal supporters of Philippe's claim was an ancient law excluding females from the succession to the Salic lands, a peculiar species of allodial possessions, but which law could only by a remote analogy be made to bear on the succession to the throne. The case of a sole heiress to the crown had not however occurred before; and if there was no precedent for the exclusion of a female, there was no instance of one having really occupied the throne. Jeanne was, besides, a female and a minor: the duke of Bourgogne, her maternal uncle, who was her natural supporter, was induced to surrender her claim; the StatesGeneral, being convoked, confirmed the title of Philippe; and the death of his only son induced his brother Charles to assent to it, in the hope of turning against Philippe's own daughters the law of which he was desirous to avail himself to the exclusion of his niece. The Salic law was thus firmly established as the fundamental law of succession in the French monarchy.

The German monarch's struggle with the papacy resulted in a war that ravaged German lands from 1077 until the Concordat of Worms in 1122. This agreement stipulated that the pope was to appoint high church officials but gave the German king the right to veto the papal choices. Imperial control of Italy was lost for a time, and the imperial crown became dependent on the political support of competing aristocratic factions. Feudalism also became more widespread as freemen sought protection by swearing allegiance to a lord. These powerful local rulers, having thereby acquired extensive territories and large military retinues, took over administration within their territories and organized it around an increasing number of castles. The most powerful of these local rulers came to be called princes rather than dukes.

According to the laws of the German feudal system, the king had no claims on the vassals of the other princes, only on those living within his family's territory. Lacking the support of the formerly independent vassals and weakened by the increasing hostility of the church, the monarchy lost its preeminence. Thus, the Investiture Contest strengthened local power in Germany in contrast to what was happening in France and England, where the growth of a centralized royal power was under way.

The Investiture Contest had an additional effect. The long struggle between emperor and pope hurt Germany's intellectual life--in this period largely confined to monasteries--and Germany no longer led or even kept pace with developments occurring in France and Italy. For instance, no universities were founded in Germany until the fourteenth century.