An archbishop kidnapped the boy emperor Henry IV off a Rhine boat
In 1062 Archbishop Anno of Cologne lured eleven-year-old King Henry IV onto a ship and cast off. Terrified, the boy leapt into the Rhine and had to be fished out. Anno then ruled in his name, and the humiliated child grew into the emperor who fought the papacy and famously begged for forgiveness at Canossa.
Born on 11 November 1050, probably at the palace of Goslar, Henry was the long-awaited son of Emperor Henry III and Agnes of Poitou, after four daughters. His godfather, Abbot Hugh of Cluny, persuaded the emperor to give the boy his own name. Princes elected him king at the age of one, and when his father died on 5 October 1056 the six-year-old became sole ruler, with Agnes as regent. She bought noble loyalty with land grants but lost control over papal elections, as reformers in Rome pressed the principle of the liberty of the Church.
His father had treated kingship as almost priestly, deposing three rival popes at the Synod of Sutri in 1046 and installing German reformers. That habit clashed with the new reform movement, which argued that popes and cardinals, not kings, should control church appointments. After Agnes backed an antipope and a failed Hungarian campaign, nobles led by Anno removed her in the Coup of Kaiserswerth, taking the young king with them.
Ruling in his own right from 1065, Henry tried to recover royal lands using low-born officials, which provoked revolts in Saxony. His insistence on appointing bishops and abbots sparked the Investiture Controversy. In 1076 his bishops declared Pope Gregory VII's election invalid; Gregory excommunicated Henry and freed his subjects from obedience. Facing revolt, Henry made his penitential walk to Canossa in 1077 and won absolution, yet German princes still elected a rival king, Rudolf of Rheinfelden.
Excommunicated again in 1080, Henry had his supporters elect an antipope, Clement III, who crowned him emperor in Rome in 1084. He later fought his own son Conrad and Matilda of Tuscany in Italy, and in 1103 proclaimed an imperial peace for all Germany. In 1105 his younger son, the future Henry V, forced him to abdicate, and he died on 7 August 1106 still unabsolved.
Source: Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor
