The Salian dynasty was a dynasty in the High Middle Ages of four German Kings (1024-1125), also known as the Frankish dynasty after the family's origin and role as dukes of Franconia. All of these kings were also crowned Holy Roman Emperor (1027-1125): the term 'Salic dynasty' also applies to the Holy Roman Empire as a separate term.

After the death of the last Saxon of the Ottonian Dynasty in 1024, first the elected German King and then three years later the elected position of Holy Roman Emperor both passed to the first monarch of the Salian dynasty in the person of Conrad II, the only son of Count Henry of Speyer and Adelheid of Alsace (both territories in the Franconia of the day). He was elected German King in 1024 and crowned emperor of the Holy Roman Empire on 26 March 1027.

The four Salian kings of the dynasty — Conrad II, Henry III, Henry IV, and Henry V — ruled the Holy Roman Empire from 1027 to 1125, and firmly established their monarchy as a major European power. They achieved the development of a permanent administrative system based on a class of public officials answerable to the crown.

Henry V (11 August 1086 – 23 May 1125) was King of Germany (from 1099 to 1125) and Holy Roman Emperor (from 1111 to 1125), the fourth and last ruler of the Salian dynasty. Henry's reign coincided with the final phase of the great Investiture Controversy, which had pitted pope against emperor. By the settlement of the Concordat of Worms, he surrendered to the demands of the second generation of Gregorian reformers.

He was a son of Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor and Bertha of Savoy. His maternal grandparents were Otto of Savoy and Adelaide of Susa.

On 6 January 1099, his father Henry IV had him crowned King of Germany at Aachen in place of his older brother, the rebel Conrad. He took an oath to take no part in the business of the Empire during his father's lifetime, but was induced by his father's enemies to revolt in 1104, securing a dispensation from the oath by Pope Paschal II, and some of the princes did homage to him at Mainz in January 1105. Despite the initial setbacks of the rebels, Henry IV was forced to abdicate and died soon after. Order was soon restored in Germany, the citizens of Cologne were punished with a fine, and an expedition against Robert II, Count of Flanders, brought this rebel to his knees.

The Roman emperor was the ruler of the Roman State during the imperial period (starting at about 27 BC). The Romans had no single term for the office although at any given time, a given title was associated with the emperor. If a man was "proclaimed emperor" this normally meant he was proclaimed augustus, or (for generals) imperator (from which English emperor ultimately derives). Several other titles and offices were regularly accumulated by emperors, such as caesar, princeps senatus, consul and Pontifex Maximus. The power of emperors was generally based on the accumulation of powers from republican offices and the support of the army.

Roman emperors refused to be considered "kings", instead claiming to be leaders of a republic, however nominal. The first emperor, Augustus, resolutely refused recognition as a monarch. Although Augustus could claim that his power was authentically Republican, his successor, Tiberius, could not convincingly make the same claim. Nonetheless, the Republican institutional framework (senate, consuls, magistracies etc.) was preserved until the very end of the Western Empire.