Samarkand state institute of foreign languages faculty of english filology and translation studies department of language and translation

2.2 Henry IV: The Movement of Henry's Crusade
Henry believes that a war for Jerusalem will provide his state with an ironic peace, yet this also forms the basis of his grievances throughout the play. Unlike the Bolingbroke of Richard II, Henry is fully committed to war, hence the reason why he emphasizes the oneness of his aims. In his eyes, the Englishmen are "all of one nature" and thus should "march all one way" to Jerusalem. They shall be of like men in his expedition, bonded by "mutual well-beseeming ranks," which is a line that speaks to the restorative effect Henry hopes to invoke. Moreover, all these English soldiers shall, in effect, make up a single "soldier" that shall fight beneath the banner of Christ.
Yet, Henry does not state all of this without taking himself into account. Warfare to him is a tool, "an ill-sheathed knife" that he seeks to utilize further, rather than cast aside entirely. Despite receiving criticism for his bloodshed in the past, Henry is somehow convinced that, so long as his men get on the same page, things will turn out differently this time. His emphasis upon oneness later becomes a melancholy obsession, and he later rants:

O God, that one might read the book of fate,

And see the revolution of the times
Make mountains level, and the continent,
Wear of solid firmness, melt itself
Into the sea; [4.1.43-48]

Here, his views become almost nihilistic, and he wishes he could see the landscape turn into a single flat mass and melt. In both of these quotes, Shakespeare plays a common idea of his time. Phrases concerning "mobility" originally came from the Latin phrase "mobile vulgus" (Frazer, 1). Notice the second word’s similarity to "vulgar." Too much movement, whether emotional or physical, was considered disruptive. The land melting into the sea is preferable to discord in movement. With this in mind, it is easy to see why Henry is so urgently pushing for holy war.

It is also easy to see why Henry reacts so harshly to the activities of his son, Prince Hal. When King Henry, dying of an illness, hears of his son’s continually unorthodox behavior, he remarks:

Most subject is the fattest soil to weeds,

And he, the noble image of my youth,
Is overspread with them; therefore my grief
Stretches itself beyond the hour of death. [4.1.85-107]

Hal parallels Henry’s own development, and Henry, still reeling from Richard II’s murder, suddenly becomes aware of his own "noble image of [his] youth." Furthermore, he remarks that Hal is "overspread" with weeds and that Henry’s grief "stretches" beyond his death as a result. Henry emphasizes spreading and stretching because, as king, his actions extend far beyond himself. He makes this clearer by declaring "Harry the Fifth is crowned. Up vanity! / Down, royal state!". Pride and the royal state are going in opposite directions, which is what Henry fears most.

If Henry is to be the master of the "soldier" sent to the Holy Land, then he needs a focused mind, just as Hal is going to need to be focused in order to be king. Henry’s crusade is a way of providing a single goal for his followers to focus on. Thus, his English nation shall "march all one way" before and beyond his death.
That rebellion affected relations between Henry and the pope. In Milan a popular party, the Patarines, dedicated to reforming the city’s corrupt higher clergy, elected its own archbishop, who was recognized by the pope. When Henry countered by having his own nominee consecrated by the Lombard bishops, Alexander II excommunicated the bishops. Henry did not yield, and it was not until the Saxon rebellion that he was ready to negotiate. In 1073 he humbly asked the new pope, Gregory VII, to settle the Milan problem. The king—having thus renounced his right of investiture, a Roman synod—called to strengthen the Patarine movement and forbade any lay investiture in Milan; henceforward, Gregory regarded Henry as his ally in questions of church reform. When planning a Crusade, he even put the defense of the Roman Church into the king’s hands. But after defeating the Saxons, Henry considered himself strong enough to cancel his agreements with the pope and to nominate his court chaplain as archbishop of Milan. The violation of the agreement on investiture called into question the king’s trustworthiness, and the pope sent him a letter warning him of the melancholy fate of King Saul (after breaking with his church in the person of the prophet Samuel) but offering negotiations on the investiture problem. Instead of accepting the offer, which arrived at his court on January 1, 1076, Henry, on the same day, deposed the pope and persuaded an assembly of 26 bishops, hastily called to Worms, to refuse obedience to the pope. By that impulsive reaction he turned the problem of investiture in Milan, which could have been solved by negotiations, into a fundamental dispute on the relations between church and state. Gregory replied by excommunicating Henry and absolving the king’s subjects from their oaths of allegiance. Such action equalled dethronement. Many bishops who had taken part in the Worms assembly and had subsequently been excommunicated now surrendered to the pope, and immediately the king was also faced with the newly aroused opposition of the nobility. In October 1076 the princes discussed the election of a new king in Tribur. It was only by promising to seek absolution from the ban within a year that Henry could reach a postponement of the election. The final decision was to be taken at an assembly to be called at Augsburg to which the pope was also invited. But Henry secretly travelled to northern Italy and in Canossa did penance before Gregory VII, whereupon he was readmitted to the church. For the moment it was a political success for the king because the opposition had been deprived of all canonical arguments. Yet, Canossa meant a change. By doing penance Henry had admitted the legality of the pope’s measures and had given up the king’s traditional position of authority equal or even superior to that of the church. The relations between church and state were changed forever.

The princes, however, considered Canossa a breach of the original agreement providing for an assembly at Augsburg and declared Henry dethroned. In his stead, they elected Rudolf, duke of Swabia, in March 1077, whereupon Henry confiscated the duchies of Bavaria and Swabia on behalf of the crown. He received support from the peasants and citizens of those duchies, whereas Rudolf relied mainly on the Saxons. Gregory watched the indecisive struggle between Henry and Rudolf for almost three years until he resolved to bring about a decision for the sake of continued church reform in Germany. At a synod in March 1080, he prohibited investiture, excommunicated and dethroned Henry again, and recognized Rudolf. The reasons for that act of excommunication were not as valid as those advanced in 1077, and many nobles who had so far favoured the pope turned against him because they thought the prohibition of investiture infringed upon their rights as patrons of churches and monasteries. Henry then succeeded in deposing Gregory and in nominating Guibert, archbishop of Ravenna, as pope at a synod in Brixen. When the opposition of the princes was crippled by the death of Rudolf in October 1080, Henry, freed of the threat of enemies to the rear, went to Italy to seek a military decision in his struggle with the church. After attacking Rome in vain in 1081 and 1082, he conquered the city in March 1084. Guibert was enthroned as Clement III and crowned Henry emperor on March 31, 1084. Gregory, the legitimate pope, fled to Salerno, where he died on May 25, 1085. A number of cardinals joined Clement, and, feeling that he had won a complete victory, the emperor returned to Germany. In May 1087 he had his son Conrad crowned king. The Saxons now made peace with him. Further, Henry replaced bishops who did not join Clement with others loyal to the king.

Later crises in Italy and Germany of Henry IV
The escape and death of Gregory VII and the presence of Clement III in Rome caused a crisis in the reform movement of the church, from which, however, it quickly recovered under the pontificate of Urban II (1088–1099). The marriage, arranged by Urban in 1089, of the 17-year-old Welf V of Bavaria with the 43-year-old countess Matilda of Tuscany, a zealous adherent of the cause of reform in the church, allied Henry’s opponents in southern Germany and Italy. Henry was forced to invade Italy once more in 1090, but, after initial success, his defeat in 1092 resulted in the uprisings in Lombardy; and the rebellion of his son Conrad, who was crowned king of Italy by the Lombards, led to general rebellion. The emperor found himself cut off from Germany and besieged in a corner of northeastern Italy. In addition, his second wife, Praxedis of Kiev—whom he had married in 1089 after the death of Bertha in 1087—left him, bringing serious charges against him. It was not until Welf V separated from Matilda, in 1095, and his father, the deposed Welf IV, was once more granted Bavaria as a fief, in 1096, that Henry was able to return to Germany.
In Germany sympathy for reform and the papacy no longer excluded loyalty to the emperor. Gradually Henry was able to consolidate his authority so that in May 1098 the princes elected his second son, Henry V, king in place of the disloyal Conrad. But peace with the pope, which was necessary for a complete consolidation of authority, was a goal that remained unattainable. At first a settlement was impossible because of Henry’s support for Clement III, who had died in 1100. Paschal II (1099–1118), a follower of the reformist policies of Gregory VII, was unwilling to conclude an agreement with Henry. Finally, the emperor declared that he would go on a crusade if his excommunication were removed. To prepare for the crusade, he forbade all feuds among the great nobles of the empire for four years (1103). But unrest started again when reconciliation with the church did not materialize and the nobles thought the emperor was restricting their rights in favour of his son. Henry V feared a controversy with the princes. In alliance with Bavarian nobles he revolted against the emperor in 1104 to secure his throne by sacrificing his father. The emperor escaped to Cologne, but when he went to Mainz his son imprisoned him and on December 31, 1105, extorted his apparently voluntary abdication. Henry IV, however, was not yet prepared to give up. He fled to Liège and with the Lotharingians defeated Henry V’s army near Visé on March 22, 1106. Henry IV suddenly died in Liège on August 7. His body was transferred to Speyer but remained there in an unconsecrated chapel before being buried in the family vault in 1111.
Legacy
Judgment of Henry by his contemporaries differed according to the parties to which they belonged. His opponents considered the tall, handsome king a tyrant—the crafty head of heresy—whose death they cheered because it seemed to usher in a new age. His friends praised him as a pious, gentle, and intelligent ruler, a patron of the arts and sciences, who surrounded himself with religious scholars and who, in his sense of law and justice, was the embodiment of the ideal king. In his attempt to preserve the traditional rights of the crown, Henry IV was only partially successful, for while he strengthened the king’s position against the nobles by gaining the support of the peasants, the citizens, and the ministerials, his continuing battles with the reforming church over investiture ultimately weakened royal influence over the papacy.





"Henry IV [pt. 2, IV, 5, The prince is about to take the crown from the king]," Alexandre Bida, 19th century.