Henry IV

   1) (1050–1106)

   Monarch.

   Henry IV inherited the throne from his father, the Holy Roman Emperor Henry III, while he was still a child. During his minority, there was civil strife and, on his majority, Henry was determined to reassert royal power. He managed to subdue the Saxon princes in 1075, but Pope Gregory VII prohibited lay investiture, thus depriving him of secular control over the German Church. Henry refused to accept this; he declared the Pope deposed and was excommunicated. Then the Saxons rose again in rebellion and, in order to forestall difficulties, he had to make a humiliating submission to the Pope at Canossa in 1077. However, in 1080, he again deposed the Pope, who died in exile, and he set up an antipope, Clement III, who crowned him Holy Roman Emperor. Meanwhile Pope Urban II was elected in succession to Gregory. The last years of Henry’s reign were fraught with civil war, family rebellion and administrative difficulty.

   I.S. Robinson, Authority and Resistance in the Investiture Contest (1978).

   2) (1553–1610)

   Monarch.

   Henry was the son of Anthony of Bourbon and Jeanne d’Albret, a niece of the French King Francis I. He was brought up a Protestant and he inherited the throne of Navarre from his mother in 1572. It was during the celebration of his marriage to Margaret of Valois in 1572 that catherine de’ medici ordered the St Bartholomew’s Day massacre. When King Henry III was assassinated, Henry was the heir to the French crown, but his Protestantism made him unacceptable to many French citizens as well as to the Pope and King Philip II of Spain. According to popular legend, he declared ‘Paris vaut bien une messe’ (Paris is worth a Mass) and, for reasons of political expediency, converted to Catholicism. Many scholars, however, believe that the conversion was sincere. In any event, by 1595 he was in complete control of the country and had been formally absolved by the Pope for heresy. In 1598 he issued the Edict of Nantes which gave French Protestants freedom of worship. He was assassinated by a Roman Catholic fanatic in 1610.

   D. Buisseret, Sully and the Growth of Centralised Government in France 1598–1610 (1968);

   M. Reinhard, Henri IV ou la France Sauvée (1943) [no English translation available].