Henry VI, Holy Roman Emperor
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Template:Infobox Monarch Henry VI (November 1165, Nijmegen – 28 September 1197, Messina), sometimes called the Cruel, was king of Germany 1190-1197, Holy Roman Emperor 1191-1197, and king of Sicily 1194-1197.
Henry was the son of the emperor Frederick Barbarossa and Beatrix of Burgundy, and was crowned King of the Romans at Bamberg in June 1169, at the age of four. After having taken the reins of the Empire from his father, engaged in the Crusade, in 1189-1190 he suppressed a revolt of Henry the Lion, former duke of Saxony and Bavaria and relative of Frederick.
Constance of Sicily was betrothed to Henry in 1184, and they were married on January 27, 1186. Constance was the sole legitimate heir of William II of Sicily, and, after the death of the latter in November 1189, Henry found the possibility to add the Sicilian crown to the Imperial one, as his father had also died in Syria in June 1190.
In the April of 1191, in Rome, Henry and Constance were crowned Emperor and Empress by Pope Celestine III. The crown of Sicily, however, was to be harder to gain, as the barons of southern Italy had chosen a local relative of the Norman ruling family, Tancred, count of Lecce, as their king. Henry began his work besieging Naples, but he had to leave the siege after his army had been decimated by a plague and the Salernitane had taken prisoner his wife, bringing her to Tancred. Moreover, Henry the Lion had revolted again forcing him to return to Northern Germany in the August of that year. His difficulties soon diseappeared when the duke of Austria Leopold gave him his prisoner, the king of England Richard I. Henry managed to receive from the English a ransom of 150,000 silver marks, a huge sum for that age, and with this money could attend with a powerful army the conquest of southern Italy.
Henry was granted free passage in Northern Italy signing with the Italian communes a treaty in January 1194, and in the following April he also settled the question with Henry the Lion. In February Tancred died, leaving as heir a 7 year old boy, William III. Henry met little resistance and entered in Palermo, capital city of the Kingdom of Sicily, on November 20, and was crowned on December 25. He also had the young William blinded and castrated, while many Sicilian nobles were burned alive.
At that point he was the most powerful monarch of the Mediterranean and Europe, since the Kingdom of Sicily added to his personal and Imperial revenues an income of money without parallel in Europe. Henry felt strong enough to send back home the Pisane and Genoese ships without giving their governments the promised concessions in Southern Italy, and even got a tribute from the Byzantine Empire. In 1194 he was born a son, Frederick, the future emperor and king of Sicily and Jerusalem. Henry secured his position in Italy naming his friend Conrad of Urslingen as duke of Spoleto and giving the Marche to Markward of Anweiler.
His next aim was to make the Imperial crown also hereditary. At the Diet of Würzburg held in April 1196 he managed to convince the majority of the princes to vote for his proposal, but in the following one at Erfurt (October 1196), he did not score the same favourable result.
In 1197 the tyrannic power of the foreign King in Italy spurred a revolt, especially in southern Sicily where Arabs were the majority of the population, but his German soldiers suppressed it mercilessly. In the same year Henry felt himself ready for a Crusade, but, on September 28, he died of malaria in Messina.
Henry was fluent in Latin, and, according to Alberic of Troisfontaines, was "distinguished by gifts of knowledge, wreathed in flowers of eloquence, and learned in canon and Roman law." He was a patron of prophets and poetry, and almost certainly composed the song "Kaiser Heinrich" that is now among the Weingarten Song Manuscripts.
According to his rank and with Imperial Eagle, regalia, and a scroll, he is the first and foremost to be portrayed in the famous Codex Manesse which is a late mediaeval manuscript showing 140 reputed poets (see Minnesänger) and at least three poems are attributed to a young and romantically minded Henry VI. In one of those he describes a romance which 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).
Sources
- Alberic of Troisfontaines, Chronicon
- David Abulafia, Frederick II
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Parentage and children
| Frederick II of Swabia | Judith of Bavaria | Renald III of Burgundy | Agatha of Lorraine |
| Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor | Beatrix of Burgundy | ||
| Henry VI, Holy Roman Emperor | |||
| Spouse(s) | Children | ||
| Constance of Sicily | Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor | ||
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