Henry III, Holy Roman Emperor in the context of "Azelin"

Henry IV (German: Heinrich IV; 11 November 1050 – 7 August 1106) was Holy Roman Emperor from 1084 to 1105, King of Germany from 1054 to 1105, King of Italy and Burgundy from 1056 to 1105, and Duke of Bavaria from 1052 to 1054. He was the son of Henry III, Holy Roman Emperor—the second monarch of the Salian dynasty—and Agnes of Poitou. After his father's death on 5 October 1056, Henry was placed under his mother's guardianship. She made grants to German aristocrats to secure their support. Unlike her late husband, she could not control the election of the popes, thus the idea of the "liberty of the Church" strengthened during her rule. Taking advantage of her weakness, Archbishop Anno II of Cologne kidnapped Henry in April 1062. He administered Germany until Henry came of age in 1065.

Henry endeavoured to recover the royal estates that had been lost during his minority. He employed low-ranking officials to carry out his new policies, causing discontent in Saxony and Thuringia. Henry crushed a riot in Saxony in 1069 and overcame the rebellion of the Saxon aristocrat Otto of Nordheim in 1071. The appointment of commoners to high office offended German aristocrats, and many of them withdrew from Henry's court. He insisted on his royal prerogative to appoint bishops and abbots, although the reformist clerics condemned this practice as simony (a forbidden sale of church offices). Pope Alexander II blamed Henry's advisors for his acts and excommunicated them in early 1073. Henry's conflicts with the Holy See and the German dukes weakened his position and the Saxons rose up in open rebellion in the summer of 1074. Taking advantage of a quarrel between the Saxon aristocrats and peasantry, he forced the rebels into submission in October 1075.

The Salian dynasty or Salic dynasty (German: Salier) 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.

Gerard (c. 1030 – 14 April 1070), also known as Gerard the Wonderful, was a Lotharingian nobleman. He was the count of Metz and Châtenois from 1047 to 1048, when his brother Duke Adalbert resigned them to him upon his becoming the Duke of Upper Lorraine. On Adalbert's death the next year, Gerard became duke, a position that he held until his death. In contemporary documents, he is called Gerard of Alsace (after the fact that he had some land in Alsace), Gerard of Chatenoy (after an ancestral castle near Neufchâteau), or Gerard of Flanders (after his wife's homeland).

He was the second son of Gerhard IV of Metz, count of Metz, and Gisela who was possibly a daughter of Theodoric I, Duke of Upper Lorraine. Henry III, Holy Roman Emperor, invested Adalbert with Lorraine in 1047 after confiscating it from Godfrey III. Godfrey did not back down, however, and killed Adalbert in battle. Henry subsequently bestowed it on Gerard, but the deposed duke continued to stir. Godfrey had the support of a faction of the nobles who did not want a strong hand at the ducal helm and Gerard was imprisoned. Gerard, however, had the support of the chiefest of his bishops, that of Toul, Bruno of Eguisheim-Dagsburg (later the sainted Pope Leo IX), who procured his liberation in 1049. The emperor gave him troops to assist him in his fight, for the rebels had the support of some elements in the church. Gerard himself remained, as his brother had, faithful to the end to the imperial dynasty and his descendants would remain so as well even into the Hohenstaufen years.

Thietmar of Hildesheim, also Tymmo, Tiemo, Thietmarus, Thetmarus, Thiatmarus, Diothmarus, Deotharus, T(h)etmarus, Detmarus, Deithmarus, Teythmarus, (died 14 November 1044 in Hildesheim) was Bishop of Hildesheim from 1038 to 1044.

He was a native Dane. He was first mentioned when he accompanied Gunhilda, the daughter of Canute the Great, to Nijmegen, where she married Henry III on June 29, 1036, and took the name of Cunegonde. He was chaplain to the Queen, and thus a member of the royal court orchestra.

The history of the papacy from 1046 to 1216 was marked by conflict between popes and the Holy Roman Emperor, most prominently the Investiture Controversy, a dispute over who— pope or emperor— could appoint bishops within the Empire. Henry IV's Walk to Canossa in 1077 to meet Pope Gregory VII (1073–85), although not dispositive within the context of the larger dispute, has become legendary. Although the emperor renounced any right to lay investiture in the Concordat of Worms (1122), the issue would flare up again.

The Imperial crown once held by the Carolingian emperors was disputed between their fractured heirs and local overlords; none emerged victorious until Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor invaded Italy. Large parts of northern and central Italy became a constituent kingdom of the Holy Roman Empire in 962, from which point emperors were Germanic. As emperors consolidated their position, northern Italian city-states would become divided by Guelphs and Ghibellines.