179

CHAPTER GERMANY: HENRY

I

VIII.

AND

OTl'O

THE GREAT.

“The future of the realm,” Conrad is said to have declared with his dying words, “ lies with the Saxons,” and he bade his brother Everard to bear the royal insignia to Henry, the Saxon Duke, as the one man capable of restoring the glory of the German name. The union of Frank and Saxon had given the throne to Conrad on the death of Louis the Child the same alliance was responsible for the ascendancy of the Saxon dynasty in 91 9 h Everard carried out the last injunctions of the late king, waived his own claim, and caused Henry the Saxon to assume the royal dignity. The election was a purely secular function for, either from a genuine feeling of his unworthiness or from his dislike of the higher clergy and their secular influence, a dislike which he undoubtedly possessed in the earlier years of his reign, he dispensed with the solemn ceremonials of anointing and coronation offered him by Archbishop Heriger of Mayence. It took place at Fritzlar on the borders

of Fi’anconia and Saxony in

The

position of

May

919.

Henry the Fowler^ was a

difficult one. As king he was scarcely more powerful than he was as duke. Saxon and Francoifian princes had been present at the election, but there is little reason to believe that the princes of the southern duchies were present or that they acquiesced in the result. Everard, Duke of Franconia, had been

Henry to the. throne, but he had previously been an inveterate enemy to the Saxon house, and his loyalty was only purchased at the price of almost complete independence in his own dukedom. The new king did not at first aspire very high. He had no scheme of governing the whole realm, as the Carolings before him, from one centre through his own officials. He had no choice but to allow the chiefly instrumental in raising

manage their own affairs according to their own customs and own traditions. Even his modest ambition to be regarded as the head of a confederate Germany was not yet accepted. Bavaria and tribes to

their

• Henry’s Carolingian

descent (he was the great-grandson of Louis the Pious) did not influence the election. He was chosen purely on his own merits. - This name Auceps ” is first givei'* him by the Aunalista Sa.xo in the middle

of the twelfth century. CH. viu.

Ann. Sax. M. G.

S*'. vi.

594. 1:

1—2

•

•