Diplomat and Grand Master of the Teutonic Order

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 129 – Hermann von Salza

“.. the far-sighted planning of Grand Master Brother Hermann von Salza had so strengthened the Teutonic Order that it had many members and such power, riches and honour that word of its fame and good reputation had spread the length and breadth of the empire.” So describes the chronicler Nicolaus von Jeroschin the role of the fourth and arguably most influential of the grand Masters of the Teutonic Knights. His role in promoting and expanding the order is hard to exaggerate. Without his skill and energy, the Teutonic Knights would have ended up like the Order of the Knights of St. Thomas. Have you have never heard of the Knights of St. Thomas, a English chivalric military order founded as a field hospital during the siege of the city of Acre in 1191? Well, that is the difference one man can make, at least very occasionally.

TRANSCRIPT

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 129 – Hermann von Salza

“.. the far-sighted planning of Grand Master Brother Hermann von Salza had so strengthened the Teutonic Order that it had many members and such power, riches and honour that word of its fame and good reputation had spread the length and breadth of the empire.” So describes the chronicler Nicolaus von Jeroschin the role of the fourth and arguably most influential of the grand Masters of the Teutonic Knights. His role in promoting and expanding the order is hard to exaggerate. Without his skill and energy, the Teutonic Knights would have ended up like the Order of the Knights of St. Thomas. Have you have never heard of the Knights of St. Thomas, a English chivalric military order founded as a field hospital during the siege of the city of Acre in 1191? Well, that is the difference one man can make, at least very occasionally.

Before we get into the story let me briefly reiterate that the History of the Germans podcast and all its offshoots, including the recently launched separate podcast on the Teutonic Knights are advertising free thanks to the generosity of our patrons. And you can become a patron too by signing up on patreon.com/historyofthegermans or by making a one-time donation at historyofthegermans.com/support. And thanks a lot to Thomas E. O., Joseph L., Ales T. and the ghost of Wayne Knight from Jurassic Park who have already signed up.

The Early Years

The very first time we hear of the existence of Hermann von Salza is in the year 1210 when he is present at the coronation of John of Brienne as King of Jerusalem. At that point he is already the master of the Knights of the Hospital of St. Mary of the Germans in Jerusalem, which suggests he must already be a man of some maturity.

His family were Ministeriales to the Landgraves of Thuringia. Ministeriales were a uniquely German institution. They had originally been unfree men, serfs, who had been trained in the use of knightly weapons. As unfree men they were the property of their master and could -at least in theory- be sent to do whatever the master demanded. In practice they lived a lifestyle almost indistinguishable from the lower aristocracy, they held castles and were sometimes exceedingly wealthy. But they did not have the freedoms of a true aristocrat to choose their master and refuse orders incompatible with their honour. All that resulted in a social inferiority complex for many Ministeriales families. One way to get elevated from serf knight to true knight was to join a chivalric order, which explains the attraction of the Teutonic Knights to this class and presumably to Hermann von Salza.

We do not know when he joined but even by 1210 the Teutonic Order was still a very modest affair. They had started off as a field hospital during the siege of Acre and had set up a more permanent structure inside the city once it had been taken. They had some property in the Holy Land as well as  a monastery and some castles in Sicily given to them by emperor Henry VI. Henry VI had planned a crusade in 1197 that would presumably have involved a role for the Teutonic Order, but the emperor had died before he could get going. All we know about this period is that the order is so insignificant that we know nothing about the first three grand masters apart from their names.

In 1210 when Hermann von Salza takes over the outlook is especially bleak. The early sponsors of the Teutonic knights had been the Hohenstaufen family, namely duke Frederick of Swabia and his brother, the emperor Henry VI. By 1210 the power of the Hohenstaufen seemed irretrievably lost. Philipp of Swabia the last of Henry VI’ brothers had fought an endless civil war for the Imperial crown against Otto IV from the House of Welf. Though he had won the war, he was murdered in 1208 on an unrelated matter. At that point Hohenstaufen power in the German lands collapsed. The empire went to Otto IV, archenemy of the Hohenstaufen and presumably uninterested in the tiny hospital in Acre, assuming he even knew about its existence.

There was still the baby boy Henry VI had left behind, the then last male member of the House of Waiblingen. He had by now turned 15 but watched powerless as Otto IV’s army was coming down to Sicily to link up with the rebels who wanted to remove him from his throne.

The new grandmaster urgently needed a new sponsor.

The Financing of the Chivalric Orders

All of the chivalric orders were heavily dependent upon financial support from Europe. Building these enormous castles and manning them with highly trained knights was extraordinarily expensive. Just google the Krak des Chevaliers, the stronghold of the Knights Hospitallers. It covered 6 hectares and was continuously garrisoned by 2000 men. There was no way such a structure could be built, maintained and staffed with the resources available in the Holy Land. And on top of that there are the hospitals, some of which are quite large and the churches the orders maintained.

To fund all that, the chivalric orders, like other religious orders, received donations from lay people who were keen to benefit from the spiritual wealth their activities generated. That was initially quite easy since enthusiasm for crusading was huge and the momentum of the First Crusade pushed vast amounts of resources towards the Holy Land. But by the end of the 12^th century the news from the Holy Land had been relentlessly bleak. The armies of the second crusade had been routed before even the first pilgrim set foot in Palestine. Jerusalem had fallen in 1187 and the various attempts to regain it had failed. The fourth crusade had turned into a travesty when the Venetian doge demanded the crusaders attack Christian Constantinople in lieu of payment for transport to the Holy Land.

To keep the cash flowing the church resorted to a system of indulgences, Ablaesse in German. I guess you have all heard about those in the context of the Reformation. In the 13^th century they were still new and relatively reasonable. So for instance someone got convicted of a crime and ordered to go on crusade as penance, but was elderly or infirm. In that case he could pay someone else to go in his stead. To find such a person he could go to a chivalric order who would send one of their brothers in exchange for a sizeable contribution. Things got a bit more edgy when the papacy developed the theory of excess grace or “the treasury of merit”. The idea was that all the saints and martyrs had been so holy and worshipful that they had generated much more divine grace than they needed for the ticket to heaven. This excess divine grace was now administered by the church who would allocate it to those penitent sinners much in need of that elusive balm that wiped off their sins. To gain an indulgence a sinner had to perform a good deed, such as make a number of prayers, go on pilgrimage, serve the poor or infirm etc. One qualifying act was making a donation to a good cause, a hospital or orphanage.

As crusading euphoria died down and financing needs escalated in the 13^th century, the popes passed some of that excess divine grace to the chivalric orders to pass out as indulgences to those who were willing to repent and support the crusading effort by making a donation.

These donations ranged from tangible items, like foodstuff or clothes to whole estates, castles and even entire counties. To manage the flow of donations and the estates, the chivalric orders established networks of administrative centres across Europe. These were usually run by a member of the military wing or the order who would be called a commander or a Komtur in German. So when you travel through Germany and find an estate or vineyard is called a Komtur or in France a Commanderie, that would usually mean it was once owned by a chivalric order.

A chivalric order operated very much like a modern charity, except for a slightly different attitude to the locals. Only a small number of knights were in the Holy land actually fighting Muslims in the same way as only a few Medicins sans Frontier are actually on the frontier. Like Oxfam, where a lot more people work in their high street shops than drill wells in Sahel, behind any Templar riding out to face up to Saladin’s noble fighters stood not just his squires but also a whole centurion of administrators and fundraisers in their commanderies way back home.

The Teutonic Knights in Transylvania

The Teutonic Knights in 1210 had no network of Commanderies across Western Europe and after the demise of the Hohenstaufen little prospect of that happening any time soon. They needed new sponsors. And so, like any good charity boss, Hermann von Salza went on a journey to find donors. In 1211 he sets out to visit the kingdom of Armenia and the island of Cyprus, both Christian states in the region. He strikes up a friendship with king Leo of Armenia who promptly makes a generous donation. At the next staging post in Cyprus his efforts did not yield quite the results he intended. But whilst on the journey he made a very lucrative acquaintance. He met some senior Hungarian noblemen, envoys of king Andreas to the kingdom of Jerusalem.

Andreas may already be familiar with the order since his influential wife Gertrud is from Bavaria and many of his advisers are German. But when king Andreas hears of the ambitious and industrious new master of the order he comes up with an idea.

Hungary had been the entry point for central Asians invaders since Attila the Hun. The early 13^th century version of these attackers were the Cumans. As per usual, the Cumans were a pagan people who had conquered a large territory east of Hungary thanks to exceptional horsemanship and archery. Their constant attacks on the Hungarian border had resulted in a depopulated wasteland on the easters side of the kingdom. Inviting these Teutonic Knights to take over one of these buffer zones would be a great way to improve Hungary’s defences. And as an added benefit, King Andreas could claim to have supported the crusaders which would gain him some valuable excess divine grace.

So in 1211 the Teutonic Knights are offered to become Hungarian vassals in the Burzenland, a region in Transylvania, modern day Romania. The king grants them almost complete independence. Only the right to mint coins and any claim on minerals and precious metals remains with the crown. They are allowed to erect castles, found cities, establish markets, lay roads, build mills, pretty much whatever medieval colonists desire. In exchange they are to defend the Kingdom against invasions by the pagan Cumans

It is likely that there were already some hardy German colonists there when the Teutonic knights arrived, but after they had established themselves more and more arrived from Germany, mainly from Saxony and Franconia. The abandoned farmland is brought under the plough, villages are established, the new province flourished and the Teutonic Knights gained a reputation as competent managers. And it wasn’t only a commercial adventure. Because the Cumans were pagans with little intention to convert, the Teutonic Knights were allowed fight them under they order’s rule. It was here, rather than the Holy Land where the Teutonic Knights first displayed their impressive military skill. They built strong castles, including Kronberg, modern day Brasov and the first Marienburg (Feldioara in Romanian). The castles protected the new settlements and formed bases for increasingly successful operations against the Cumans.  

The development was so rapid that by the 1220s this territory had become a major contributor to the Teutonic Knights coffers. And it had become a recruitment tool for new knights who wanted to serve in crusades but preferred central European climate and the momentum that the Holy Land so sadly lacked.

All these successes did however not last. The Hungarian nobles became increasingly concerned about the rising power and wealth of a well organised, coherent monastic state inside their kingdom. One of the issues with the Teutonic Knights was that they had vowed chastity and poverty, like monks. They had no children and did not own the land they administered personally. Therefore every little strip of land they had acquired would stay with the order for ever. As the order expanded, more and more land would be swallowed up and taken out of circulation. That was similar to normal monasteries, but those could be bullied to hand things over or appoint the nobles as bailiffs. But Teutonic Knights, not easy to bully.

The Hungarian nobles conclude that they need to get rid of these interlopers before it was too late. And they find an ally in Bela, the crown prince who is very much not a dutiful son of king Andreas. One story is that this aristocratic and filial opposition twists Andreas arm until he revokes the Teutonic Knight’s privileges. Another is that Andreas had become closer to the Templars and Hospitallers during his time in the fifth Crusade, preferring them to the scruffier Teutonic Knights. In any event an order is issued for them to leave.

The Knights protest to the pope and are reinstated, but that opens another can of worms. Being unsure about their position relative to the current and even more the future Hungarian king Bela, they seek Papal protection. They go as far as offering pope Honorius III sovereignty over their new province and chuck out the local bishop. At that point all of Hungary, including Andreas, unites against the order and they are trown out. The pope protests but to no avail.

As for the German colonists, they stay and live there until after the fall of the Berlin Wall. These are the famous Siebenburger Sachsen, the Transsylvanian Saxons who maintained their own culture and traditions for hundreds of years, creating a cultural landscape that is  very high up on my bucket list to visit.

The friendship between Hermann von Salza and emperor Frederick II

Whilst all this is going on, our friend Hermann von Salza continues his search for more patrons. In 1215 he might have gone to Sicily where the order had some important possessions. By now the fortune of the house of Hohenstaufen had completely changed. Henry VI’ baby son had grown up and – with the support of pope Innocent III – had gone to Germany and, thanks to Otto IV’s defeat at the battle of Bouvines, had become King of the Romans.

This baby son is none other than the emperor Frederick II. Hermann von Salza meets Frederick II in 1216 in Germany and the two men formed one of these rare political friendships that benefitted both sides equally. Hermann von Salza was Frederick II’s foreign secretary, his main interlocutor with the papacy. Despite the almost insurmountable political differences, Hermann von Salza’s was able to bring pope and emperor back to the negotiating table, again and again. Only after the grand master had died in 1239 did the true fight to the death between the two heads of Christendom break out.

These developments from Henry VI’s acquisition of Sicily in 1194 to the beheading of Konradin, the last of the Hohenstaufen in 1268 was subject of an entire series of the History of the Germans. I will not go through all of the fascinating ups and downs in this podcast. It is a brilliant story and if you want to get in full or want to refresh your memory, listen to the episodes 70 to 92. I have actually just listened to them again myself, and some of the stories are just great.

But back to Hermann. The deal he got was that in exchange for all his advice, his help in keeping the papacy from going all out for him was that Frederick II would promote the Teutonic order at every opportunity. Whether that was a deal they agreed at their very first meeting in 1216 or at a later stage is unclear, but that is how it went down. Frederick handed over estates, castles and lands in Alsace, Thuringia, Franconia and Tyrol on top of generous donations in Sicily and Puglia. The Hohenstaufen supporters followed suit. For example the powerful Ministeriales of Munzenberg gave the order the hospital in Sachsenhausen today part of Frankfurt. And then there are the lords of Hohenlohe, a noble family from Franconia who claim to be loosely related to the Hohenstaufen. Their ancestral castle was Weikersheim, today one of Germany’s most remarkable Renaissance palaces and just 4 miles from my family home. More importantly for our story, the Hohenlohes were avid crusaders and upon return from the fifth crusade in 1219 they give the estate of Mergentheim to the order. Mergentheim would later become the administrative centre of the order in the German lands and after the loss of Prussia the seat of the Grand Master.

The Fifth Crusade

Talking about the fifth crusade, this is the first time the Teutonic Knights play a significant military role in the Holy Land. During the fifth crusade the Latins try something new. Instead of going straight for Jerusalem, they instead attack Egypt, which is more vulnerable. Hermann von Salza manages to recruit 700 crusaders for the undertaking which gives him a seat at the commanders’ table. The Fifth Crusade is in many ways a well-run operation led by locals, the king of Jerusalem and the masters of the chivalric orders, which may explain their initial success. They take the key trading city of Damietta after a long and difficult siege.

That cuts Cairo off from the mediterranean, which would end its hegemony in the east west trade. The sultan is prepared to offer the crusaders a great deal. They get Jerusalem back, minus the Al Aqsa Mosque, a lasting peace and the fragments of the Holy cross lost in the battle of Hattin. All that in exchange for just Damietta. Hermann von Salza and the king of Jerusalem, John of Brienna want to take the deal but some of the foreign crusaders led by the papal legate feel momentum is with them plus they have evidence that the mythical prester John will come to their aid. The Templars tip the balance to rejecting the offer and go off to take Cairo, at this point only the largest city west of India. The reason? The Templars cannot accept the sultan’s condition to keep the Al Aqsa Mosque as that meant losing their home on top of the Temple Mount, a home they haven’t had for decades, but still.  

Hermann is sent home to bring more reinforcements and indeed convinces Frederick to send more troops, even though the emperor is tied up with various rebellions. When Hermann gets back ahead of the reinforcements, he is told that everyone is restless and they will get going now. He counsels against a move before the imperial reinforcements are there but is overruled. The usual crusading disaster follows. A Gung Ho attack in unsuitable terrain and the army is wiped out, everyone is captured. Meanwhile the imperial troops arrived in Damietta and wondered how the hack everyone had left without them. In the peace agreement, Damietta was returned to the sultan of Egypt and everybody went home having achieved precisely nothing. Everybody blames emperor Frederick II.

The crusade of Frederick II

After that Frederick is constantly made to promise another crusade and for one or other reason had to cancel last minute. Several times it is Hermann von Salza’s diplomatic skill that stops the pope from excommunicating the emperor. To make crusading more attractive, Hermann organises for the emperor to marry Isabella, heiress of the kingdom of Jerusalem. Frederick uses this to immediately assume the title of king of Jerusalem, pushing aside his father in law, John of Brienne.

One side effect of these diplomatic missions is that Hermann can negotiate changes to the status of the Teutonic Order. A chivalric order, like any other monastic order had a rule, usually based on some adaptation of an existing rule, such as the rule of St. Benedict. In 1199 the Teutonic Order was given a mixed rule whereby they had to follow the rule of the Knights Hospitallers for their caritative side and the rule of the Templars for their military branch. In it it wasn’t quite clear whether they were subservient to the other two orders and/or had to take orders from the bishops.

Throughout the 1220’s Hermann von Salza obtained various papal privileges that elevated the Teutonic Knights to the same status that the other two orders enjoyed. That is the moment when they were officially allowed to wear their iconic white cloak with the black cross, something they had done for a while already. There were multiple revisions to their rule and by the 1250s they had acquired the right to alter their rule themselves, without requiring papal permission.

In 1225 Frederick II cancels his crusade one too many times. At that point even the resourceful von Salza cannot stop the pope from excommunicating the emperor. Which was really unfair, because this time it really wasn’t the emperor’s fault.

In 1226 Frederick tries to rehabilitate himself by eventually going on crusade. He and Hermann set off for the Holy Land with a sizeable but not overwhelmingly powerful army. This turns out to be both the most effective and least successful crusade.

News of the emperor’s excommunication had reached Jerusalem and the Franciscans, always opposed to Frederick II, have been agitating against him. When the crusaders arrive, the local powers, the patriarch, the nobility and the masters of the other two orders and above all the ex-king and imperial father-in-law John of Brienne shun the emperor. Still Frederick II ploughs on. But, rather than wasting his men and treasure in another futile attempt to dislodge the Saracens, he negotiates with the sultan and gets pretty much the same deal the crusaders had negotiated before Damietta. For the first time in 40 years Christians were again in control of Jerusalem and most of its holy sites -excluding the Al Aqsa Mosque.

But despite or maybe because of this astounding success the reaction is not just muted, but hostile. The patriarch of Jerusalem instead of rejoicing that he got back into his nominal seat not only refuses to crown Frederick king of Jerusalem in the church of the Holy Sepulchre, but instead reiterates the excommunication and places the whole city under interdict. Frederick II still insists on a coronation in church though. Hermann von Salza can convince him that forcing a pliant bishop to do it would make a reconciliation with the papacy almost impossible. So Frederick II crowns himself in a secular ceremony in the church of the Holy Sepulchre, something quite rare until Napoleon does it again in 1804.

With the local population and leadership so hostile Frederick II and his men had to withdraw in haste. This adventure yielded little benefit for the emperor and his trusted advisor the grand master. Frederick II came back to his kingdom of Sicily that had been overrun by papal mercenaries whilst the Teutonic Knights position in the Holy Land had changed. The close association with the emperor materially increased the possessions the order held in the Holy Land, gaining them their new headquarters, the Starkenburg or Montfort just outside Haifa. But at the same time they found themselves ostracised by the local leaders, a situation that got worse as the struggle between pope and emperor escalated.

It is likely around this time that the order became more and more German. So far they had received donations from across Europe and the crusader states, having established houses in Armenia, Greece, the kingdom of Sicily, Central Italy, France and Spain. Some of the brothers had been French or Italian. But that is now gradually coming to an end.

Konrad of Masovia invites the Teutonic Knights to Prussia

Whilst all this unfolds, a letter had arrived in the Teutonic Knights headquarters that will have much larger consequences than any of the crusades in the Holy Land.

In 1225/1226 the Polish duke Konrad of Masovia asked the Teutonic Knights whether they would be interested in defending Christendom against the heathen Prussians on his border. This was bad timing on Konrad’s part since the order was in the midst of organising the crusade of Frederick II and directed all their resources there. But Konrad insisted and negotiations continued and intensified after Hermann’s return from that crusade.

This is not the first time we encounter the Prussians, the Baltic people who lived between Poland and Lithuania. Those of you with good memory will recall St. Adalbert the friend of emperor Otto III who had set out to convert the Prussians in the 10^th century; without much success. His slain body was bought back by the duke of Poland Boleslav the Brave and Otto III came to Gniesno to pray at his grave. The next missionary, Bruno von Querfurth was no more successful, gaining martyrdom within days of crossing into Prussian land. That was in 1009. After that local monasteries occasionally sent out missionaries into the Prussian lands, and some even returned alive, but not many. As for the Prussians, they remained obstinately pagan.

Tensions between Prussians and Poles escalated during the early 13^th century. As the peaceful missionary attempts had failed, the Polish dukes called for a crusade against these pagans, hoping to incorporate them into their principalities. The crusade was given papal blessing and took place in 1222/23 involving the dukes of Masovia, Silesia and Pomerelia. Prussian resistance was strong and the crusaders got defeated. And worse for the Poles, namely Konrad of Masovia, the Prussians sensed their weakness and attacked, plundering and burning the duke’s lands. Amongst others the great Cistercian abbey of Oliwa was burned down twice.

One of the fundamental problems was the fragmentation of the Polish rulers, the Piast dynasty. Ever since the death of Boleslaw III Wrymouth in 1138 the kingdom had split into multiple duchies, each ruled by a different branch of the Piast family. One of them was usually chosen as the “high duke” and nominal ruler of Poland, though his control over his cousins was very limited. The duchy of Masovia that Konrad ruled did not have the resources to defeat the Prussians and the other dukes were happy to come for a period of fighting, but had enough other problems that stopped them from running sustained campaigns.

In that situation the duke of Masovia put his hope into the concept of chivalric orders. And of those there were many, not just the Templars, Hospitallers and Teutonic Knights. He negotiated with these three as well as with the Spanish order of Calatrava before founding his own order, the order of Dobrin or Milites Christi in Prussia. They attracted some 15 knights from Northern Germany who took over the border castle at Dobrin. But this new order had limited resources and was less successful in attracting colonists as their colleagues in Transylvania so that they could barely hold out in Dobrin.

The situation was pretty dire when Konrad of Masovia and his bishops put their last hope into the Teutonic Order. They offered them the Kulmerland, the land around the city of Kulm or Chelmno in Polish. The exact terms of this transaction are disputed between German and Polish historians. The Polish argue that it was given as a fief whilst the Germans argue that it had been handed over as unencumbered property. What both sides agree is that in 1230 the city and the land was in the hands of the Prussians.

If the Polish duke thought that the Teutonic Knights would be blown away by the generosity of the offer and would immediately saddle their horses to come to the rescue of his duchy, he was sorly mistaken.

For one, the Teutonic Knights saw their main purpose in the conquest and defence of the Holy Land. All this activity in Eastern Europe, including the activity in Hungary were always only ancillary to the main job.

Moreover, the debacle in the Burzenland had made them weary of princely promises, in particular from princes whose position wasn’t very stable. If they were going to do something like that again, they would only go with all belts and braces.

Therefore Hermann von Salza got the emperor Frederick II issue the Golden Bull of Rimini in which the Teutonic Knights are granted full ownership of the land of Chelmno and all future acquisitions in Prussia. Not only that but the head of Teutonic Order was elevated to the rank of imperial prince. As an imperial principality the emperor was obliged to help them in case they get attacked by an enemy. Moreover they were also granted all imperial regalia in Prussia, the right to raise taxes, levies, tolls, mint coins, build castles, found cities and exploit natural resources. What is unclear is the date of the Golden Bull. On the document it says 1226 so immediately after the first time Konrad of Masovia had made contact. Modern scholars put the date at 1234/5 at a time when the conquest of Prussia had already gained traction.

The problem with the Golden Bull is whether the emperor had jurisdiction over this territory. The basic argument for is that pagan lands were considered no-man’s land which therefore was the purvey of the heads of Christendom, the emperor and the pope. The counterargument would be that Poland had already built a presence in Kulm/Chelmno so that it was Christian land temporarily occupied by pagans, hence Polish and not Imperial. This debate about whether Prussia was part of the empire or not keeps rumbling on in the background and is the reason the elector Frederick of Brandenburg was crowned king in Prussia in Koenigsberg in 1701 rather than king of Prussia or king of Brandenburg.

In any event the Teutonic Order will conquer Prussia and rule it without paying homage to the king of Poland for most of its existence.

Now we will not talk about the conquest of Prussia this week. That will be in the next episode.

Elisabeth of Hungary and Hermann’s last years

What I would like to do instead is bringing the story of Hermann von Salza to its conclusion. Hermann remained instrumental in all of Frederick II’s policies. He keeps travelling relentlessly between Germany, Italy, Sicily and the Holy Land, an astounding feat for a man who must be in his fifties or early sixties by now. He negotiates the reconciliation between Frederick II and pope Honorius III that keeps a lid on things for nearly a decade. He gets sent to negotiate the release of King Waldemar II of Denmark, a story we heard in the context of the foundation of Lubeck, episode 105.

His greatest moment came at the canonisation of Saint Elisabeth of Thuringia in Marburg in 1235. Elisabeth had become one of the most influential saints in the high Middle Ages as the stories of her deep faith and devotion to the poor and infirm spread across the empire. She had become so revered that the ceremony of her canonisation was attended by the emperor Frederick II himself. The ruling landgrave of Thuringia at the time, Konrad, gave the hospital Elizabeth had founded in Marburg to the Teutonic Knights and allowed them to build and maintain the church where her body would be kept in a splendid golden reliquary. This association with Saint Elisabeth hugely improved the order’s standing, not to speak of the financial benefit the management of such an important pilgrimage site generated. The church they built, the Elizabethkirche is still there and Marburg became a main centre for the Teutonic Order, site of the meetings of the grand Chapter.

To what extent Saint Elisabeth was coerced into sometimes cruel acts of self-harm and harm to her children by her spiritual guardian, the unquestionably vile inquisitor Konrad of Marburg is something I did discuss in one of the bonus episodes for patrons.

1235 also saw the negotiations about the incorporation of the Livonian sword brothers into the Teutonic Knights something we have already looked at in episode 110.  

Hermann of Salza is literally everywhere where anything happens between 1216 and 1239. And he has to be. Frederick II’s attempts to bring Northern Italy under his control pushes him into an ever more difficult position vis-à-vis the pope who fears to be surrounded by imperial territory on all sides. Hermann von Salza is the man who enjoys the trust of both sides and can stop small issues from blowing up into outright hostilities.

He keeps going to almost his very last day. On March 20^th, 1239 Hermann von Salza succumbed to an unknown illness. In the following 11 years Frederick II and pope Innocent IV find themselves in a military and spiritual struggle that ends with the fall of the House of Hohenstaufen and 50 years later the removal of the papacy from Rome to Avignon.

As the fortunes of their great benefactor dims, the order’s path lies ahead sparkling in bright sunshine. As you may know, I am not an adherent of the Great Man view of history, but occasionally there are individuals who have an impact that goes beyond just managing the main political and economic currents well. And Hermann von Salza is one of them. Without his energy and skill the Teutonic Knight would have ended up like so many minor chivalric orders, the order of Saint Thomas, the Order of Calatrava, the Livonian word brothers etc., etc.

Now next week we will see what Hermann’s successors do with his legacy. We will move our focus to the North and take a look at how the Teutonic Knights gained Prussia, how they organised themselves and their territory and what made them so special. I hope you will join us again.