Thus encouraged, or rather driven forward, by the national sentiment
Louis continued to assert the independence of the crown against the
pope. In 1327 he marched into Italy, where he had powerful and numerous
friends in the Ghibelline party, the Visconti family and others; in
January 1328 he was crowned emperor at Rome, and after this event he
declared Pope John deposed and raised Peter of Corvara to the papal
chair as Nicholas V. The concluding stages of this expedition were not
favourable to the new emperor, but his humiliation was only slight and
it did not appreciably affect the conditions of the controversy.
Louis in Germany.
For a short time after the emperor's return to Germany there was peace.
But this was soon broken by a dispute over the succession to the duchy
of Carinthia and the county of Tirol, then ruled by Henry V., who was
without sons, and whose daughter, Margaret Maultasch, was married to
John Henry, margrave of Moravia, a son of John of Bohemia. Upon these
lands the three great families in Germany, those of Wittelsbach, of
Habsburg and of Luxemburg, were already casting covetous eyes;
Carinthia, moreover, was claimed by the Habsburgs in virtue of an
arrangement made in 1286. Thus a struggle between the Luxemburgs and the
Habsburgs appeared certain, and Louis, anxious to secure for his house a
share of the spoil, hesitated for a time between these rivals. In 1335
Duke Henry died and the emperor adjudged his lands to the Habsburgs;
wars broke out, and the result was that John Henry secured Tirol while
the other contending family added Carinthia to its Austrian possessions.
The pope and the electors.
During this time Louis had been negotiating continually with Pope John
and with his successor Benedict XII. to regain the favour of the church,
and so to secure a free hand for his designs in Germany. But the pope
was not equally complaisant, and in 1337 the emperor allied himself with
Edward III. of England against Philip VI. of France, whom he regarded as
primarily responsible for the unyielding attitude of the Papacy. This
move was very popular in Germany, and the papal party received a further
rebuff in July 1338 when the electors met at Rense and declared that in
no possible manner could they allow any control over, or limitation of,
their electoral rights. As a sequel to this declaration the diet,
meeting at Frankfort a month later, asserted that the imperial power
proceeded from God alone and that the individual chosen by a majority of
the electors to occupy this high station needed no confirmation from the
pope, or from any one else, to make his election valid. Contrary
opinions they denounced as _pestifera dogmata_.
Louis and the Luxemburgs.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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