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HENRY VI HOHENSTAUFEN, HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE
Henry VI, "le Sévère", "le Cruel" “the Severe or the
Cruel”
Endowed with the qualities of a statesman;
temperament cold and calculating, greedy for power
and glory, the heir to the imperial throne, the son of
legendary Barbarossa, the husband of the rich and
powerful Constance of Hauteville (Altavila in Italy)
the man that no one ever saw smile, albeit for a very
short time was the most powerful ruler of Western
Europe after Charlemagne.
Beginning in the twelfth century, Western Europe
became the battleground for a series of particularly
vociferous legalistic struggles between powerful
monarchs and the Church of Rome, the temporal authority of the latter greatly
strengthened following the Great Schism of 1054.
The conflicts took slightly different forms in different kingdoms, whether in
England, Sicily or the various realms forming the Holy Roman Empire, but in every
instance it was a question of a king refusing to bow to Papal authority in domestic
matters having little if anything to do with religion. In England the greatest
conflicts began with Henry II and Thomas Becket, culminating (in a sense) with
Henry VIII centuries later, while in Sicily every monarch from Roger I to Frederick
II (who was actually excommunicated) had to deal with meddlesome Pontiffs. In
the Holy Roman Empire the dynasty facing Papal wrath was the Hohenstaufen
family of Swabia, who eventually claimed the Throne of Sicily, and the man to do
that was Henry VI.
Born in 1165, Henry, son of the imposing Frederick Barbarossa and Beatrice of
Burgundy, was King of the Germans (from 1169) and Holy Roman Emperor (from
1191). Historians believe that the key to his expansionist ambitions was the
Kingdom of Sicily, which then encompassed all of Italy south of Rome and a few
Mediterranean coastal areas in the Balkans and northern Africa; Italy's northern
city-states were already a nominal part of his Empire.
Having wed Constance of Hauteville, subsequent daughter of Roger II of Sicily,
Henry claimed by marital right to be the heir of William II of Sicily, who died
without issue in 1189, though Constance's nephew Tancred also claimed the
Sicilian Throne. (Tancred was the illegitimate son of Roger II's eldest son, Roger of
The Hohenstaufen Dynasty - Page 39 of 200