The death of Othon set the emperor and the great vassals once more in opposition.  The German monarch insisted on naming some creature of his own to the dignity of duke; but Lambert II., count of Louvain, and Robert, count of Namur, having married the sisters of Othon, respectively claimed the right of inheritance to his title.  Baldwin of the comely beard, count of Flanders, joined himself to their league, hoping to extend his power to the eastward of the Scheldt.  And, in fact, the emperor, as the only means of disuniting his two powerful vassals, felt himself obliged to cede Valenciennes and the islands of Zealand to Baldwin.  The imperial power thus lost ground at every struggle.

Amid the confusion of these events, a power well calculated to rival or even supplant that of the fierce counts was growing up.  Many circumstances were combined to extend and consolidate the episcopal sway.  It is true that the bishops of Tournay had no temporal authority since the period of their city being ruined by the Normans.  But those of Liege and Utrecht, and more particularly the latter, had accumulated immense possessions; and their power being inalienable, they had nothing to fear from the caprices of sovereign favor, which so often ruined the families of the aristocracy.  Those bishops, who were warriors and huntsmen rather than ecclesiastics, possessed, however, in addition to the lance and the sword, the terrible artillery of excommunication and anathema, which they thundered forth without mercy against every laic opponent; and when they had, by conquest or treachery, acquired new dominions and additional store of wealth, they could not portion it among their children, like the nobles, but it devolved to their successors, who thus became more and more powerful, and gained by degrees an authority almost royal, like that of the ecclesiastical elector of Germany.

Whenever the emperor warred against his lay vassals, he was sure of assistance from the bishops, because they were at all times jealous of the power of the counts, and had much less to gain from an alliance with them than with the imperial despots on whose donations they throve, and who repaid their efforts by new privileges and extended possessions.  So that when the monarch, at length, lost the superiority in his contests with the counts, little was wanting to make his authority be merged altogether in the overgrown power of these churchmen.  Nevertheless, a first effort of the bishop of Liege to seize on the rights of the count of Louvain in 1013 met with a signal defeat, in a battle which took place at the little village of Stongarde.  And five years later, the count of the Friesland marshes (comesFrisonum_ Morsatenorum) gave a still more severe lesson to the bishop of Utrecht.  This last merits a more particular mention from the nature of the quarrel and the importance of its results.

CHAPTER IV