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The Salian dynasty or Salic dynasty () was a dynasty in the High Middle Ages. The dynasty provided four kings of Germany (1024–1125), all of whom went on to be crowned Holy Roman emperors (1027–1125).
After the death of the last Ottonian emperor in 1024, the Kingdom of Germany and later the entire Holy Roman Empire passed to Conrad II, a Salian. He was followed by three more Salian rulers: Henry III, Henry IV, and Henry V. They established their monarchy as a major European power. The Salian dynasty developed a permanent administrative system based on a class of public officials answerable to the crown.
Wipo of Burgundy, the biographer of the first Salian monarch, Emperor Conrad II, described Conrad's father and uncle as "distinguished noble lords from Rhenish Franconia" around 1044, but without calling them Salians. Wipo added that Conrad's mother, Adelaide of Metz, was "supposedly descended from the ancient royal house of Troy". The statement made a connection between Conrad and the royal Merovingians who had claimed a Trojan ancestry for themselves.
Historian Stefan Weinfurter proposes that the putative relationship between the Salians and the Merovingians gave rise to the family name, because the Salian Franks had been the most renowned Frankish group. Their memory was preserved through a Frankish law code, known as the Salic law. Peter H. Wilson states the Salians received their name due to their origins amongst the Franks living along the Rhine in western Franconia, a region "distinguished through its use of Salic law". A less likely etymology links the appellation to the old German word sal ("lordship"), proposing that the name can be traced to the Salian monarchs' well-documented inclination towards hierarchical structures.
The term reges salici (or Salian kings) was most probably coined early in the 12th century. A list of monarchs and archbishops from Mainz, which was completed around 1139–40, is the first extant document to contain it. Bishop Otto of Freising, a maternal descendant of the Salian monarchs, also used the term in his Chronicle or History of the Two Cities in the middle of the 12th century. In a narrow sense, only the four German monarchs who ruled from 1024 to 1125 could be called Salians, but the same appellation has already been expanded to their ancestors by modern historians. An earlier name of the family, appearing in 982, was the Wormsers, due to their main holdings being in the Diocese of Worms.
All male members of the family who were destined to a secular career were named Conrad or Henry. Emperor Conrad II's grandfather, Otto of Worms, established this tradition in the late 10th century. He named his eldest son, Henry of Worms, after his maternal great-grandfather, King Henry the Fowler; and he gave the name of his father, Conrad the Red, to one of his younger sons, Conrad of Carinthia. Conrad the Red was most probably named for King Conrad I of Germany.
The marriage forged a link between the royal Ottonian dynasty and the Salians. He lost Lotharingia after he joined a revolt against his father-in-law in 953 or 954. He died fighting against the invading Magyars in the Battle of Lechfeld in 955. The contemporaneous Widukind of Corvey praised him for his bravery. He was buried in the Worms Cathedral, although mainly bishops and kings had so far been buried in cathedrals.
Otto I's son and successor, Emperor Otto II, was worried about the concentration of lands in his nephew's hands in Franconia. The Emperor appointed Otto of Worms to administer the faraway Duchy of Carinthia and March of Verona in 978. The Emperor persuaded Otto to cede his right to administer justice in Worms, and also parts of his revenues in the town, to the local bishop. Otto was persuaded to renounce Carinthia and Verona, but he was lavishly compensated with a large forest in Wasgau, the royal palace at Kaiserslautern and the proprietary rights over Weissenburg Abbey.
He could also preserve the title of duke, thus becoming the first duke to bear the title without ruling a duchy in Germany. Otto was the cousin of Otto III, Holy Roman Emperor, thus he had a strong claim to the throne after the Emperor's death, but he concluded an agreement with the Ottonian candidate, Henry of Bavaria in 1002. Henry restored Carinthia to Otto in 1002 and he ruled the duchy until his death in 1004.
Conrad the Elder was elected king of Germany against his cousin Conrad the Younger on 4 September 1024. Four days later, he was crowned in the Mainz Cathedral by Archbishop Aribo. On learning of Henry II the citizens of the Italian city Pavia demolished the local royal palace claiming that during the interregnum no king could own the palace. In his response to the rebels, Conrad emphasized that "Even if the king died, the kingdom remaind, just as the ship whose steersman falls remains". A group of Lombard aristocrats offered the throne first to Robert II of France or his eldest son, Hugh Magnus, then to William V, Duke of Aquitaine, but the Lombard bishops and most aristocrats supported Conrad's claim to rule.
After crushing a revolt by his stepson Ernest II, Duke of Swabia and Conrad the Younger in Germany, Conrad marched to Italy. He was crowned king of the Lombards in Milan by Archbishop Aribert probably on 25th March 1026. Resistance against his rule was quickly crushed. He reached Rome where he was crowned Holy Roman Emperor by Pope John XIX on 26th March 1027.
Already in 1028 Conrad II had his son Henry III elected and anointed king of Germany. Henry's tenure led to an overstatement of previously unknown sacral kingship. So during this reign Speyer Cathedral was expanded to be the largest church in Western Christendom. Henry's conception of a legitimate power of royal disposition in the duchies was successful against the dukes, and thus secured royal control. However, in Lorraine, this led to years of conflict, from which Henry emerged as the winner. However, in southern Germany a powerful opposition group was formed in the years 1052–1055. In 1046 Henry ended the papal schism, freed the Papacy from dependence on the Roman nobility, and laid the basis for its universal applicability. His early death in 1056 was long regarded as a disaster for the Empire.
The early Salians owed much of their success to their alliance with the Catholic Church, a policy begun by Otto I, which gave them the material support they needed to subdue rebellious dukes. In time, however, the Church came to regret this close relationship. The alliance broke down in 1075 during what came to be known as the Investiture Controversy (or Investiture Dispute), a struggle in which the reformist Pope, Gregory VII, demanded that Emperor Henry IV renounce his rights over the Church in Germany. The pope also attacked the concept of monarchy by divine right and gained the support of significant elements of the German nobility interested in limiting imperial absolutism.
More importantly, the pope forbade ecclesiastical officials under pain of excommunication from supporting Henry as they had so freely done in the past. In the end, Henry IV journeyed to Canossa in northern Italy in 1077 to do penance and to receive absolution from the pope. However, he resumed the practice of lay investiture (appointment of religious officials by civil authorities) and arranged the election of an antipope (Antipope Clement III) in 1080.
The monarch's struggle with the papacy resulted in a war that ravaged through the Holy Roman Empire from 1077 until the Concordat of Worms in 1122. The reign of the last ruler of the Salian dynasty Henry V coincided with the final phase of the great Investiture Controversy, which had pitted pope against emperor. By the settlement of the Concordat of Worms, Henry V surrendered to the demands of the second generation of . This agreement stipulated that the pope would appoint high church officials but gave the German king the right to veto the papal choices.
Imperial control of Italy was lost for a time, and the imperial crown became dependent on the political support of competing aristocratic factions. Feudalism became more widespread as freemen sought protection by swearing allegiance to a lord. These powerful local rulers, having thereby acquired extensive territories and large military retinues, took over administration within their territories and organized it around an increasing number of castles. The most powerful of these local rulers came to be called princes rather than dukes.
According to the laws of the feudal system of the Holy Roman Empire, the king had no claims on the vassals of other princes, only on those living within his family's territory. Lacking the support of the formerly independent vassals and weakened by the increasing hostility of the Church, the monarchy lost its pre-eminence. Thus the Investiture Contest strengthened local power in the Holy Roman Empire – in contrast to the trend in France and England, where centralized royal power grew. The Investiture Contest had an additional effect. The long struggle between emperor and pope hurt the Holy Roman Empire's intellectual life, in this period largely confined to monasteries, and the empire no longer led or even kept pace with developments occurring in France and Italy. For instance, no universities were founded in the Holy Roman Empire until the fourteenth century.
The first Hohenstaufen king Conrad III was a grandson of the Salian Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor. (Agnes, Henry IV's daughter and Henry V's sister, was the heiress to the Salian dynasty's lands: her first marriage produced the royal and imperial Hohenstaufen dynasty and her second marriage the ducal Babenberg potentates of the Duchy of Austria, which was elevated much due to these connections via the Privilegium Minus.)
Their regnal dates as emperor take into account elections and subsequent coronations.
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