Henry V, Holy Roman Emperor
Henry V was the last Salian emperor and the man who ended the Investiture Controversy by conceding most of it. Born in 1081, he was the second son of Henry IV, whose long war with the papacy had included the humiliation at Canossa in 1077 and had left Germany in near-permanent civil war. He rebelled against his father in 1104 with papal encouragement, captured him by a promise of safe conduct in 1105, and forced his abdication. His father escaped and was raising an army when he died in 1106. Having taken the throne as the pope's ally, Henry then pursued exactly his father's policy on investiture — the right of the ruler to appoint bishops and abbots and to give them the ring and staff — because the German church held perhaps half the crown's resources and no emperor could give it up. He marched to Rome in 1111 and proposed a radical solution: the church would surrender all its regalian lands and rights and the crown would give up investiture entirely. The German bishops refused, since it would have beggared them. He then seized Paschal II and held him for two months until he granted the right and agreed to crown him. Paschal repudiated it as extorted, and the war resumed. The Concordat of Worms in 1122 settled it by separating the two elements: the emperor gave up investiture with ring and staff, and kept the right to be present at elections and to invest bishops with their temporal lands. He died childless in 1125.
- Lived: 1086 CE – 1125 CE
- Nationality: German
- Roles: emperor, head_of_state, military_leader
