Individual

Go to List of Family Names Go to List of People    < Previous Next >

Birth:          Nov 1165 Nijmegen
Death:          28 Sep 1197 
Burial:         Cathedral of Palermo

Notes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_VI,_Holy_Roman_Emperor
Henry VI (Heinrich VI) (November 1165 – 28 September 1197), a member of the 
Hohenstaufen dynasty, was King of Germany (King of the Romans) from 1190 and Holy 
Roman Emperor from 1191 until his death. From 1194 he was also King of Sicily.

He was the second son of Emperor Frederick Barbarossa and his consort Beatrix of 
Burgundy. In 1186 he was married to Constance of Sicily, the posthumous daughter of 
the Norman king Roger II of Sicily. Henry, still stuck in the Hohenstaufen conflict with 
the House of Welf, had to enforce the inheritance claims by his wife against her 
nephew Count Tancred of Lecce. Based on an enormous ransom for the release of 
King Richard I of England, he conquered Sicily in 1194; however, the intended 
unification with the Holy Roman Empire ultimately failed.
[edit]

Early years[edit]

Henry was born in autumn 1165 at the Valkhof pfalz of Nijmegen to Emperor Frederick 
Barbarossa and Beatrix of Burgundy. At the age of four, his father had him elected 
King of the Romans during the Hoftag in Bamberg at Pentecost 1169, and Henry was 
crowned on 15 August at Aachen Cathedral.[1][2]

He accompanied his father on his Italian campaign of 1174-76 against the Lombard 
League, whereby he was educated by Godfrey of Viterbo and associated with 
minnesingers like Friedrich von Hausen, Bligger von Steinach, and Bernger von 
Horheim. Henry was fluent in Latin and, according to the chronicler Alberic of Trois-
Fontaines, was "distinguished by gifts of knowledge, wreathed in flowers of 
eloquence, and learned in canon and Roman law". He was a patron of poets and 
poetry, and he almost certainly composed the song Kaiser Heinrich, now among the 
Weingarten Song Manuscripts. According to his rank and with Imperial Eagle 
(Reichsadler), regalia, and a scroll, he is the first and foremost to be portrayed in the 
famous Codex Manesse, a 14th-century songbook manuscript featuring 140 reputed 
poets; at least three poems are attributed to a young and romantically minded Henry 
VI. In one of those he describes a romance that makes him forget all his earthly 
power, and neither riches nor royal dignity can outweigh his yearning for that lady (ê 
ich mich ir verzige, ich verzige mich ê der krône – before I give her up, I’d rather give 
up the crown).

Emperor's son[edit]

Having returned to Germany in 1178, Henry supported his father against insurgent 
Duke Henry the Lion. He and his younger brother Frederick received the knightly 
accolade at Mainz in 1184.[3] The emperor had already entered into negotiations with 
King William II of Sicily to betroth his son and heir with William's aunt Constance. As 
William's marriage had remained childless, she was his sole legitimate heir, and, after 
the latter's death in November 1189, Henry had the opportunity of adding the Sicilian 
crown to the imperial one. He and Constance were married on 27 January 1186 in 
Milan.[4]

In the Hohenstaufen conflict with Pope Urban III, Henry moved to the March of 
Tuscany, and with the aid of his liensman Markward von Annweiler devastated the 
adjacent territory of the Papal States. Back in Germany, he took the reins of the 
Empire from his father, who had died while on the Third Crusade in 1190. Henry tried 
to secure his rule in the Low Countries by elevating Count Baldwin V of Hainaut to a 
margrave of Namur, and at the same time he tried to reach a settlement with rivalling 
Duke Henry of Brabant. Further difficulties arose when the exiled Welf duke Henry the 
Lion returned from England and began to subdue large estates in his former Duchy of 
Saxony. A Hohenstaufen campaign to Saxony had to be abandoned when King Henry 
received the message of the death of King William II of Sicily on 18 November 1189. 
The Sicilian vice-chancellor Matthew of Ajello pursued the succession of Count 
Tancred of Lecce and gained the support of the Roman Curia.

To assert his own rights in the inheritance dispute, Henry initially supported Tancred's 
rival Count Roger of Andria and made arrangements for a campaign to Italy. The next 
year he concluded a peace agreement with Henry the Lion at Fulda and moved farther 
southwards to Augsburg, where he learned that his father had died on crusade 
attempting to cross the Saleph River near Seleucia in the Kingdom of Cilicia (now part 
of Turkey) on 10 June 1190.

Imperial coronation[edit]

While he sent an Imperial army to Italy, Henry initially stayed in Germany to settle the 
succession of Louis III, Landgrave of Thuringia, who had also died on the Third 
Crusade. He had planned to seize the Thuringian landgraviate as a reverted fief, but 
Louis' brother Hermann was able to reach his enfeoffment. The next year, the king 
followed his army across the Alps. In Lodi he negotiated with Eleanor of Aquitaine, 
widow of King Henry II of England, to break the engagement of her son King Richard 
with Alys, a daughter of late King Louis VII of France. He hoped to deteriorate 
English-French relations and to isolate Richard, who had offended him by backing 
Count Tancred in Sicily. Eleanor acted cleverly; she reached Henry's assurance that 
he would not interfere in her son's conflict with King Philip II of France, and she would 
also prevent the marriage of Henry's younger brother Conrad with Berengaria of Castile 
to confine the Hohenstaufen claims to power.

Holy Roman Emperor

Henry entered into further negotiations with the Lombard League cities and with Pope 
Celestine III on his Imperial coronation, and ceded Tusculum to the Pope. At Easter 
Monday on 15 April 1191, in Rome, Henry and his consort Constance were crowned 
Emperor and Empress by Celestine. The crown of Sicily, however, was harder to gain, 
as the Sicilian nobility had chosen Count Tancred of Lecce as their king. Henry began 
his work campaigning in Apulia and besieging Naples, but he encountered resistance 
when Tancred's liensman Margaritus of Brindisi came to the city's defence, harassed 
Henry's Pisan navy, and nearly destroyed the later arriving Genoese contingent. 
Moreover, the Imperial army had been heavily hit by an epidemic, and Henry ultimately 
had to abandon the siege. Constance, who was left in the palace of Salerno as a sign 
that he would soon return, was betrayed and handed over to Tancred.

Henry had to return to Germany when he learned that Henry the Lion had again incited 
a conflict with the Saxon House of Ascania and the Counts of Schauenburg. His son 
Henry of Brunswick deserted from the Imperial army in Italy and was ostracized by the 
emperor at the Hoftag in Worms at Pentecost 1192. However, Henry VI had to realise 
that his powers were limited: after his closest ally in Saxony, Archbishop Wichmann of 
Magdeburg died, he concluded another armistice with inflammatory Henry the Lion.

Meanwille, despite his wife had been captured by Sicilians, Henry always refused 
Celestine III making peace with Tancred. While Tancred would not permit Constance 
to be ransomed, Henry complained her capture to Celestine. In January 1192 
Constance was released on the intervention of Pope Celestine III, who in return 
recognized Tancred as King of Sicily. Constance was to be sent to Rome for Celestine 
III to put pressure on Henry, but German soldiers managed to set up an ambush on the 
border of Papal States, releasing Constance, at June.

On the other hand, the emperor was able to strengthen his power base in the Duchy of 
Swabia, when he inherited the possessions of Henry the Lion's cousin Welf VI. In 
September 1192 he proceeded to Lüttich (Liège) to enforce the succession of his 
candidate Count Lothair of Hochstaden as Bishop of Lüttich against Albert of Louvain, 
the brother of Duke Henry of Brabant. Albert had to yield and sought support from the 
pope in Rome and from the Archbishop of Reims. In Reims, he took the holy orders 
with papal consent, but he was killed soon after by hired assassins. His brother Duke 
Henry chose to conclude a peace agreement with the emperor but remained a bitter 
enemy.

Emperor Henry already was concerned with the deposition of the Welf supporter 
Archbishop Hartwig II of Bremen. He further had to arbitrate in a conflict in the 
Margraviate of Meissen on the eastern border of the Empire, where the Wettin 
margrave Albert I had to fend off the claims raised by his brother Theoderic and 
Landgrave Hermann of Thuringia. Meanwhile, the opposition in the west took on a 
dramatic scale, when the dukes of Brabant and Limburg joined forces with Archbishop 
Bruno III of Cologne. A massive confederacy against the emperor loomed ahead, 
including Archbishop Conrad of Mainz, Archchancellor of Germany, and Duke Ottokar 
I of Bohemia, as well Henry's old rival Henry the Lion, the Swabian House of 
Zähringen, the English Crown, and the pope, irritated by the killing of Albert of 
Louvain.

Capture of Richard the Lionheart[edit]

At this stage, Henry had a stroke of good fortune when the Babenberg duke Leopold 
V of Austria gave him his prominent prisoner, Richard the Lionheart, King of England, 
whom he had captured on his way back from the Third Crusade and arrested at 
Dürnstein Castle. On 28 March 1193, Richard was handed over to the emperor in 
Speyer and imprisoned at Trifels Castle, taking revenge for Richard's alliance with 
Tancred of Lecce. Ignoring his nearly excommunication by Pope Celestine III for 
imprisoning a former crusader, he held the English King for a ransom of 150,000 silver 
marks and officially declared a dowry of Richard's niece Eleanor, who was to marry 
Duke Leopold's son Frederick. The opposition princes had to face the defeat of their 
mighty ally and to refrain from their plans to overthrow the Hohenstaufen dynasty.

Backed by his mother Eleanor of Aquitaine, who successfully defended his interests 
against his rivaling brother John Lackland and his ally King Philip of France, King 
Richard procured his release in exchange for the huge ransom, a further interest 
payment, and his oath of allegiance to Henry. In turn the emperor under threat of 
military violence demanded the restitution of the French lands, which John had seized 
upon approval by Philip during Richard's absence. Henry not only gained another 
vassal and ally, he could also assume the role of a mediator between England and 
France. He and Richard ceremoniously reconciled at the Hoftag in Speyer during Holy 
Week 1194: the English King publicly regretted any hostilities, genuflected, and cast 
himself on the emperor's mercy. He was released and returned to England.

At the same time, Henry settled the longstanding conflict with the Welf dynasty when 
he married Agnes of Hohenstaufen, daughter of his cousin Count Palatine Conrad, to 
Henry the Lion's son Henry of Brunswick, followed by a peace agreement in March 
1194.

Conquest of Sicily[edit]

Meanwhile, the situation in Southern Italy had grown worse: After Henry's defeat at 
Naples, Tancred's brother-in-law Count Richard of Acerra had reconquered large parts 
of Apulia, and Tancred himself had reached the allowance of his claims by the pope. 
Henry was granted free passage in Northern Italy, having forged an alliance with the 
Lombard communes. In February 1194, Tancred of Lecce died, leaving as heir a 
young boy, William III, under the tutelage of his mother Sibylla of Acerra. In May 
Emperor Henry, based on King Richard's ransom, again set out for Italy. He reached 
Milan at Pentecost and occupied Naples in August. He met little resistance and on 20 
November 1194 entered the Sicilian Palermo and was crowned king on 25 December. 
On the next day his wife Constance, who had stayed back in Iesi, gave birth to his 
only son and heir Frederick II, the future emperor and king of Sicily and Jerusalem.

The young William and his mother Sibylla had fled to Caltabellotta Castle; he officially 
renounced the Sicilian kingdom in turn for the County of Lecce and the Principality of 
Capua. A few days after Henry's coronation, however, the royal family and several 
Norman nobles were accused of a coup attempt and arrested. Henry is said to have 
had William blinded and castrated, while many of his liensmen were burned alive. 
Some, however, like the Siculo-Greek Eugene of Palermo, transitioned into the new 
Hohenstaufen government with ease. William probably was deported to Altems 
(Hohenems) Castle in Swabia, where he died in captivity about 1198. To take revenge 
of the capture of his wife Henry hanged Richard, Count of Acerra brother of Sibylla in 
1196.

In March 1195 Henry held a Hoftag in Bari and appointed his wife Constance Sicilian 
queen regnant, though with Henry's liensman Conrad of Urslingen, elevated to a 
hereditary Duke of Spoleto, as Imperial vicar to secure the emperor's position in 
Southern Italy. He placed further ministeriales in the Sicilian administration, like the 
Troia bishop Walter of Palearia who became chancellor. His loyal henchman Markward 
von Annweiler was appointed a Duke of Ravenna, placing him in a highly strategic 
position to control the route to Sicily via the Italian Romagna region and the 
Apennines. Henry's younger brother Philip of Swabia was vested with the large estates 
of late Margravine Matilda in Tuscany. The emperor also felt strong enough to send 
home the Pisan and Genoese ships without giving their governments the promised 
concessions.

Universal ruler[edit]

At that point, Emperor Henry was the most powerful monarch in the Mediterranean and 
Europe, since the Sicilian kingdom added to his personal and Imperial revenues an 
income without parallel in Europe. However, his aims to integrate Sicily into the Empire 
as a second power base of the Hohenstaufen dynasty were not realised during his 
lifetime. The negotiations with Pope Celestine III to approve the unification (unio regni 
ad imperium) in return of another crusade reached a deadlock. On the other hand, his 
beliefs of a universal rule according to the translatio imperii concept collided with the 
existence of the Byzantine Empire, reflected in Henry's expansionist policies by forging 
alliances with King Leo I of Armenia and King Aimery of Cyprus.

In 1195 Henry's envoys in Constantinople raised claims to former Italo-Norman 
possessions around Dyrrachium (Durrës), one of the most important naval bases on the 
eastern Adriatic coast, and pressed for a contribution to the planned crusade. Upon 
the deposition of Emperor Isaac II Angelos Henry openly threatened with an attack on 
Byzantine territory. He already evolved plans to betroth his younger brother Philip to 
Isaac's daughter Princess Irene Angelina —deliberately or not— opening up a 
perspective to unite the Western and Eastern Empire under Hohenstaufen rule. 
According to the contemporary chronicler Niketas Choniates his legates were able to 
collect a large tribute from Isaac's brother and successor Alexios III, which, however, 
was not paid before Henry's death.

Emperor Henry came down to earth, when an armistice between Pisa and the Republic 
of Venice ended and the Pisan navy immediately entered the Adriatic to attack the 
Venetian harbour of Pola (Pula), where they suffered a disastrous defeat. La 
Serenissima had suspiciously eyed Henry's claims to Adriatic ports threatening her 
dominating position and commercial interests in the region. The emperor had to 
culminate the conflict by arranging a peace treaty and confirming the Venetian 
autonomy.

Hereditary monarchy[edit]

In summer 1195 Henry returned to Germany, in order to call for support to launch his 
crusade and to arrange his succession in the case of his death. However, he first 
again had to deal with the quarrels in the Wettin Margraviate of Meissen upon the 
death of Margrave Albert I. As Albert had tried to gain control over the adjacent 
Pleissnerland, an Imperial Hohenstaufen territory, Henry took the occasion to deny the 
inheritance claims of the margrave's younger brother Theodoric and seized the 
Meissen territory for himself. In October he reconciled with Archbishop Hartwig of 
Bremen at Gelnhausen and was able to obtain the support of numerous Saxon and 
Thuringian nobles for his crusade which was scheduled to begin on Christmas 1196.

His next aim was to make the imperial crown hereditary. Henry tried to secure the 
Imperial election of his son Frderick II as King of the Romans, which however met with 
objections raised by Archbishop Adolf of Cologne. Spending the winter in Hagenau 
Castle, the emperor and his ministeriales evolved the idea of a hereditary monarchy. 
Though they would have lost their right to elect the kings, the secular princes 
themselves wished to make their Imperial fiefs hereditary and to be inheritable by the 
female line as well, and Henry agreed to consider these demands. The emperor also 
bought the support of ecclesiastical princes by announcing that he would be willing to 
give up the Jus Spolii and the right to receive recurring earnings from church lands 
during a period of sede vacante. At the Diet of Würzburg, held in March/April 1196, 
he managed to convince the majority of the princes to vote for his proposal. However, 
Archbishop Adolf of Cologne did not even put in an appearance and several princes, 
predominantly in Saxony and Thuringia, were still dissatisfied.

While in July 1196 Henry proceeded to Burgundy and Italy in order to negotiate with 
Pope Celestine III, the resistance in Germany grew. At the following diet at Erfurt in 
October, a majority of the princes rejected the emperor's plans. Furthermore, the Pope, 
still concerned in view of the Hohenstaufen rule over Sicily, broke off the talks. 
Nevertheless, on Christmas Henry's son Frederick II was elected King of the Romans 
in Frankfurt.

Death[edit]

At the same time, the emperor stayed in Capua, where he had Count Richard of 
Acerra, held in custody by his ministerialis Dipold von Schweinspeunt, cruelly 
executed. He entered Sicily in March 1197 and applied himself to prepare his crusade 
in Messina.

Soon after, the tyrannical power of the foreign King in Italy spurred a revolt, especially 
around Catania and southern Sicily, which his German soldiers led by Markward of 
Annweiler and Henry of Kalden suppressed mercilessly. The rebels even sought to 
make Count Jordan of Bovino king in Henry's place. Even Queen Constance, 
provoked by the neglect of Henry and pitying her countrymen, joined the revolts 
against him and besieged him in a castle, forcing him into a treaty.[5] In the midst of 
preparations Henry fell ill with chills while hunting near Fiumedinisi and on 28 
September died, possibly of malaria, in Messina,[6] although it is also widely believed 
that he was poisoned.[7] His wife Constance had him buried at Messina, his mortal 
remains were transferred to Palermo Cathedral in 1198. Various items were removed 
from Henry VI's grave in the mid nineteenth century, some of which made their way to 
the British Museum in London. They include the remains of a shoe, a head band and 
an ornate silk textile that originally wrapped the body.[8]

Henry's minor son Frederick II was to inherit both the Kingdom of Sicily and the 
Imperial crown. However, a number of princes around Archbishop Adolf of Cologne 
elected the Welf Otto of Brunswick, son of Henry the Lion, anti-king. To defend the 
claims of the Hohenstaufen dynasty, Frederick's uncle Philip of Swabia had himself 
elected King of the Romans in March 1198. The German throne quarrel lasted nearly 
twenty years, until Frederick was again elected king in 1212 and Otto, defeated by the 
French in the 1214 Battle of Bouvines and abandoned by his former allies, finally died 
in 1218.

Reception[edit]

During his rule in Germany, Henry moved from one Kaiserpfalz residence to another 
or–to a lesser extent–stayed at Prince-bishop's sees in the tradititon of the medieval 
itinerary kingship. He concentrated on the Franconian core locations of his kingdom, 
while the Bavarian and Saxon lands were less subject to the central authority. His 
travel routes through Germany as well as his campaigns in Italy are documented by 
numerous deeds he issued year by year.

The emperor strongly relied on the high-ranking clergy like the archbishops Philip of 
Cologne and Conrad of Mainz. Several contemporary accounts of his life given by 
ecclesiastical chroniclers like Godfrey of Viterbo or Peter of Eboli in his Liber ad 
honorem Augusti (on the emperor's conquest of Sicily) paint a bright picture of Henry's 
rule; while the annals by Otto of Sankt Blasien are considered more objective. In his 
Arnoldi Chronica Slavorum the chronicler Arnold of Lübeck concentrates on the 
dispute between the Hohenstaufen and Welf dynasties from a pronounced Welf 
perspective, while Gislebert of Mons tells of Henry's policies in Hainaut and Flanders. 
The Hohenstaufen rule in Italy and the Meezogiorno is documented by the chronicles 
of Archbishop Romuald of Salerno and Richard of San Germano. Henry's conflict with 
King Richard I of England is rendered by Roger of Hoveden and Gervase of Tilbury, 
expressing their negative attitudes towards the emperor.

Later historians stressed the fact of Henry's early death and the succeeding throne 
quarrel as a stroke of fate and a major setback for the development of a German 
nation state begun under his father Frederick Barbarossa. On the other hand, the 
emperor's stern measures in Sicily earned him the reputation of a cruel and merciless 
ruler. Present-day historical research classifies Henry as a man of his time; though a 
capable ruler he had to cope with the centrifugal forces of the disintegrating empire 
while at the same time he overstretched the Hohenstaufen realm to an extent that 
finally could not be kept together.

Parents
____ Frederick (Friedrich) III "Barbarossa" (1122 - 10 Jun 1190)
OF BURGUNDY (OF MACON) Beatrice (Beatrix) (1143 - 15 Nov 1184)

Siblings
____ Henry (Heinrich) VI (Nov 1165 - 28 Sep 1197)
VON HOHENSTAUFEN Philipp II (Feb 1177 - 21 Jun 1208)

Marriage To OF SICILY Constanza (2 Nov 1154 - 27 Nov 1199)
    m. 27 Jan 1186 Milan, Italy

Notes

Parents
____ Roger II (Ruggero II) (22 Dec 1095 - 26 Feb 1154)
DE RETHEL Beatrice (ABT 1130 - 30 Mar 1185)

Children by OF SICILY Constanza 2 Nov 1154 - 27 Nov 1199
____ Frederick (Friedrich) II (26 Dec 1194 - 13 Dec 1250)

Produced by Fzip 1.7 6/20/2017