Early life Henry was born in autumn 1165 at the
Valkhof pfalz of
Nijmegen to Emperor
Frederick Barbarossa and
Beatrice I, Countess of Burgundy. At the age of four his father had him
elected King of the Romans during a
Hoftag in
Bamberg at
Pentecost 1169. Henry was crowned on 15 August at
Aachen Cathedral. Henry accompanied his father on his
Italian campaign of 1174–76 against the
Lombard League, whereby he was educated by
Godfrey of Viterbo and associated with
minnesingers like
Friedrich von Hausen,
Bligger von Steinach and
Bernger von Horheim. Henry was fluent in
Latin and, according to the chronicler
Alberic of Trois-Fontaines, was "distinguished by gifts of knowledge, wreathed in flowers of eloquence, and learned in canon and Roman law". He was a patron of poets and poetry, and he almost certainly composed the song
Kaiser Heinrich, now among the
Weingarten Song Manuscripts. According to his rank and with
Imperial Eagle (),
regalia, and a scroll, he is the first and foremost to be portrayed in the famous
Codex Manesse, a 14th-century songbook manuscript featuring 140 reputed poets; at least three poems are attributed to a young and romantically minded Henry VI. In one of those he describes a romance that makes him forget all his earthly power, and neither riches nor royal dignity can outweigh his yearning for that lady ( – before I give her up, I'd rather give up the crown).
Emperor's son Having returned to
Germany in 1178, Henry supported his father against insurgent duke
Henry the Lion. He and his younger brother
Frederick received the knightly
accolade at the
Diet of Pentecost Mainz in 1184. That same year, Henry had almost lost his life during the
Erfurt latrine disaster, where about 60 nobles had perished in a latrine cesspit after the
Erfurt Cathedral's second story floor had collapsed. Henry had only survived due to being seated in a separate part of the alcove which was made of stone. The emperor had already entered into negotiations with King
William II of Sicily to
betroth his son and heir with William's aunt Constance by 1184. Constance, almost 30 years old at that time, was said to have been confined in
Santissimo Salvatore, Palermo as a nun since childhood to keep
celibacy due to a prediction that "her marriage would destroy Sicily" despite having become the sole legitimate heir to William as the marriage of the latter had remained childless; and, after the latter's death in November 1189, Henry had the opportunity of adding the
Sicilian crown to the imperial one. He and Constance were married on 27 January 1186 in
Milan. In the Hohenstaufen conflict with
Pope Urban III, Henry moved to the
March of Tuscany, and with the aid of his deputy
Markward von Annweiler devastated the adjacent territory of the
Papal States. Back in Germany, he became sovereign ruler of the Empire, as his father had died while on the
Third Crusade in 1190. Henry tried to secure his rule in the
Low Countries by elevating Count
Baldwin V of Hainaut to a
margrave of
Namur, and at the same time he tried to reach a settlement with rivalling Duke
Henry of Brabant. Further difficulties arose when the exiled Welf duke
Henry the Lion returned from
England and began to subdue large estates in his former
Duchy of Saxony. A Hohenstaufen campaign to Saxony had to be abandoned when King Henry received the message of the death of King William II of Sicily on 18 November 1189. The Sicilian vice-chancellor
Matthew of Ajello pursued the succession of Count Tancred of Lecce and gained the support of the
Roman Curia. To assert his own rights in the inheritance dispute, Henry initially supported Tancred's rival Count
Roger of Andria and made arrangements for a campaign to Italy. The next year he concluded a peace agreement with Henry the Lion at
Fulda and moved farther southwards to
Augsburg, where he learned that his father had died on crusade attempting to cross the
Saleph River near
Seleucia in the
Kingdom of Cilicia (now part of
Turkey) on 10 June 1190.
Imperial coronation '', Weingarten Abbey, 1180 crowning Henry VI with his foot. The story of popes crowning emperors with their feet was a popular medieval legend, often intended to show the superiority of papal authority over secular authority. In the case of Henry and Celestine, the story of Celestine crowning the emperor with his right foot and then kicking the crown off his head came from the English chronicler
Roger of Howden. While he sent an Imperial army to Italy, Henry initially stayed in Germany to settle the succession of
Louis III, Landgrave of Thuringia, who had also died on the Third Crusade. He had planned to seize the
Thuringian landgraviate as a reverted fief, but Louis' brother
Hermann was able to reach his enfeoffment. The next year, the king followed his army across the
Alps. In
Lodi he negotiated with
Eleanor of Aquitaine, widow of King
Henry II of England, to break the engagement of her son King Richard with
Alys, a daughter of late King
Louis VII of France. He hoped to deteriorate English-French relations and to isolate Richard, who had offended him by backing Count Tancred in Sicily. Eleanor acted cleverly; she reached Henry's assurance that he would not interfere in her son's conflict with King
Philip II of France, and she would also prevent the marriage of Henry's younger brother
Conrad with
Berengaria of Castile to confine the Hohenstaufen claims to power. Henry entered into further negotiations with the Lombard League cities and with
Pope Celestine III on his
Imperial coronation, and ceded
Tusculum to the Pope. At Easter Monday on 15 April 1191, in
Rome, Henry and his consort Constance were crowned Emperor and Empress by Celestine. The crown of Sicily, however, was harder to gain, as the Sicilian nobility had chosen Count Tancred of Lecce as their king. Henry began his work campaigning in
Apulia and besieging Naples, but he encountered resistance when Tancred's vassal
Margaritus of Brindisi came to the city's defence, harassed Henry's
Pisan navy, and nearly destroyed the later arriving
Genoese contingent. Moreover, the Imperial army had been heavily hit by an epidemic, and Henry ultimately had to abandon the siege. Upon his retreat, those cities that had surrendered to Henry resubmitted to Tancred. As a result, Constance, who was left in the palace of
Salerno as a sign that Henry would soon return, was betrayed and handed over to Tancred. Backed by his mother Eleanor of Aquitaine, who successfully defended his interests against his rival brother
John, Count of Mortain and his ally King Philip of France, King Richard procured his release in exchange for the huge ransom, a further interest payment, and his
oath of allegiance to Henry. In turn the emperor under threat of military violence demanded the restitution of the French lands, which John had seized upon approval by Philip during Richard's absence. Henry not only gained another vassal and ally, he could also assume the role of a mediator between
England and
France. He and Richard were ceremoniously reconciled at the
Hoftag in Speyer during Holy Week 1194: the English king publicly regretted any hostilities, genuflected, and cast himself on the emperor's mercy. He was released and returned to England. At the same time, Henry settled the longstanding conflict with the Welf dynasty when he secured the marriage of
Agnes of Hohenstaufen, daughter of his half-uncle Count Palatine
Conrad, to Henry the Lion's son Henry of Brunswick, followed by a peace agreement in March 1194. ===
Henry VI's conquest of Sicily=== ,
Liber ad honorem Augusti, 1196 , husband Henry VI and son
Frederick II File:Henry Hohenstaufen torturing the young William III.jpg|thumb|left|Emperor Henry VI has King William III of Sicily blinded and castrated in 1194 (Des cas des nobles hommes et femmes [fol. 169r] by Giovanni Boccaccio, 15th century, Bibliothèque de Genève Ms. fr. 190/2). Meanwhile, the situation in Southern Italy had grown worse: After Henry's defeat at Naples, Tancred's brother-in-law Count
Richard of Acerra had reconquered large parts of Apulia, and Tancred himself had reached the allowance of his claims by the pope. Henry was granted free passage in Northern Italy, having forged an alliance with the Lombard communes. In February 1194, Tancred of Lecce died, leaving as heir a young boy,
William III, under the tutelage of his mother
Sibylla of Acerra. In May Emperor Henry, based on King Richard's ransom, again set out for Italy. He reached Milan at Pentecost and occupied Naples in August. He met little resistance and on 20 November 1194 entered
Palermo capital of Kingdom of Sicily and was crowned king on 25 December. On the next day his wife Constance, who had stayed back in
Iesi, gave birth to his only son and heir
Frederick II, the future emperor and king of Sicily and Jerusalem.
Universal ruler The Sicilian kingdom added to Henry's personal and Imperial revenues an income without parallel in Europe. However, his aims to integrate Sicily into the Empire as a second power base of the Hohenstaufen dynasty were not realised during his lifetime. The negotiations with Pope Celestine III to approve the unification (
unio regni ad imperium) in return of another
crusade reached a deadlock. On the other hand, his beliefs of a universal rule according to the
translatio imperii concept collided with the existence of the
Byzantine Empire, reflected in Henry's expansionist policies by the imposition of suzerainty over King
Leo I of Armenia and King
Aimery of Cyprus. In 1195 Henry's envoys in
Constantinople raised claims to former
Italo-Norman possessions around
Dyrrachium (Durrës), one of the most important naval bases on the eastern
Adriatic coast, and pressed for a contribution to the planned crusade. Upon the deposition of Emperor
Isaac II Angelos Henry openly threatened with an attack on Byzantine territory. He already evolved plans to betroth his younger brother Philip to Isaac's daughter Princess
Irene Angelina—deliberately or not—opening up a perspective to unite the Western and Eastern Empire under Hohenstaufen rule. According to the contemporary historian
Niketas Choniates his legates were able to collect
a large tribute from Isaac's brother and successor
Alexios III but it was not paid before Henry's death. When an armistice between Pisa and the
Republic of Venice ended, the Pisans attacked Venetian ships in Marmora and carried out raids against theỉr premises in Constantinople. The matters escalated and the two sides went to war. The Byzantine emperor
Alexios III Angelos was thought to be behind Pisan attacks. In 1197, Henry imposed a truce on them. Previously, Pisa and Genoa had supported Henry's invasion of Italy while Venice chose to be neutral. But Henry granted Venice various rights in 1195 and 1197 while prevaricating over the more extensive privileges Pisa and Genoa claimed. Henry's planned expansion against Thessaloniki and Constantinople, if it had happened, would have isolated Venice in its own gulf, and Venice was worrying that Alexios would rather submit to Henry than settle disgreements with Venice. Henry's death relieved both Venice and Constantinople of their worries. On the news of Henry's death, the Byzantine "German tax" was abolished. When Henry died, he was the most powerful monarch in Christendom, being Holy Roman Emperor, King of Germany, Burgundy, Italy, Sicily, feudal overlord of the Kings of England, Lesser Armenia and Cyprus, and tributary lord of Northern African princes.
Hereditary monarchy '', 1304 In summer 1195 Henry returned to Germany, in order to call for support to launch his crusade and to arrange his succession in the case of his death. However, he first again had to deal with the quarrels in the Wettin Margraviate of Meissen upon the death of Margrave Albert I. As Albert had tried to gain control over the adjacent
Pleissnerland, an Imperial Hohenstaufen territory, Henry took the occasion to deny the inheritance claims of the margrave's younger brother Theodoric and seized the Meissen territory for himself. In October he reconciled with Archbishop Hartwig of Bremen at
Gelnhausen and was able to obtain the support of numerous Saxon and Thuringian nobles for his crusade which was scheduled to begin on Christmas 1196. His next aim was to make the imperial crown
hereditary. Henry tried to secure the Imperial election of his son Frederick II as King of the Romans, which however met with objections raised by Archbishop
Adolf of Cologne. Spending the winter in
Hagenau Castle, the emperor and his
ministeriales evolved the idea of a hereditary monarchy. Though they would have lost their right to elect the kings, the secular princes themselves wished to make their Imperial fiefs hereditary and to be inheritable by the female line as well, and Henry agreed to consider these demands. The emperor also bought the support of ecclesiastical princes by announcing that he would be willing to give up the
Jus Spolii and the right to receive recurring earnings from church lands during a period of
sede vacante. At the Diet of
Würzburg, held in March/April 1196, he managed to convince the majority of the princes to vote for his proposal. However, Archbishop Adolf of Cologne did not even put in an appearance and several princes, predominantly in Saxony and Thuringia, were still dissatisfied. While in July 1196 Henry proceeded to Burgundy and Italy in order to negotiate with Pope Celestine III, the resistance in Germany grew. At the following diet at
Erfurt in October, a majority of the princes rejected the emperor's plans. Furthermore, the Pope, still concerned in view of the Hohenstaufen rule over Sicily, broke off the talks. Nevertheless, on Christmas Henry's son Frederick II was elected King of the Romans in Frankfurt.
Death At the same time, the emperor stayed in
Capua, where he had Count Richard of Acerra, held in custody by his
ministerialis Dipold von Schweinspeunt, cruelly executed. He entered Sicily in March 1197 and applied himself to prepare his crusade in
Messina. Soon after, the transition to Hohenstaufen's rule in Italy spurred revolts, especially around
Catania and southern Sicily, which his German soldiers led by Markward of Annweiler and
Henry of Kalden suppressed mercilessly. The rebels even sought to make Count
Jordan of Bovino king in Henry's place. Some contemporary Germans (who were hostile to Empress Constance) even accused her of directly collaborating with the rebels, even though recent research like the work of Theo Kölzer shows that this was unlikely. Kölzer opines though that Henry's "discipline methods" in Sicily had put a dent on the relationship between wife and husband, and it was possible that Constance passively tolerated the rebels. In the midst of preparations Henry fell ill with
chills while hunting near
Fiumedinisi and on 28 September died, likely of
malaria (contracted since the siege of Napoli in 1191 and had never completely healed), in Messina, although some immediately accused Constance of poisoning him. His wife Constance had him buried at Messina; in 1198, his mortal remains were transferred to
Palermo Cathedral. Various items were removed from Henry VI's grave in the late eighteenth century, some of which are now in the
British Museum in London. They include the remains of a shoe, a head band and an ornate
silk textile that originally wrapped the body. Henry's minor son Frederick II was to inherit both the Kingdom of Sicily and the Imperial crown. However, a number of princes around Archbishop Adolf of Cologne elected the Welf
Otto of Brunswick, son of Henry the Lion, anti-king. To defend the claims of the Hohenstaufen dynasty, Frederick's uncle Philip of Swabia had himself elected King of the Romans in March 1198. The
German throne quarrel lasted nearly twenty years, until Frederick was again elected king in 1212 and Otto, defeated by the
French in the 1214
Battle of Bouvines and abandoned by his former allies, finally died in 1218. ==Reception==