Henry II (1002-1024)

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The perception history of the Ottonians

The first and probably most important point to make is that the time of the Ottonians is a blank canvas. There are very few written sources. For Henry the Fowler and Otto the Great the Regesta Imperii, which is the list of all royal charter contains about 1,000 documents, most of which are land donations to monasteries etc. If you compare that to the reign of king Sigismund (1410-1437) there are about 14,000 registered documents though his reign was a mere third of the first Ottonians. On top of that, the contemporary chroniclers like Liudprand, Widukind and Thietmar are more interested in saint’s miracles than political analysis.

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans – Episode 20 A Blank Canvas

I know, I know, it has been two weeks since the last episode and you are wondering whether I have disappeared. No worries. I did indeed go on holiday to Portugal with the family for a week which was lovely. And then I spent the last few days getting the History of the Germans Podcast Website going. Check it out under www.historyofthegermans.com – there are maps, images and transcripts as well as blogposts that hopefully makes the podcast more enjoyable and easier to follow.

But now I am back and rearing to go. In this episode as announced we are going to take a look at how the Ottonians were perceived by their successors and in particular in the 19th and 20th century. Why does it matter you ask? Is that not something for the History seminar at university?

Well, German history is always, always contentious and even the Ottonians, reigning a thousand years ago were and are still extremely contentious. For instance, I had a comment on one of my social media posts accusing the podcast of being “nationalistic” and suggesting that nobody should listen to it. I think once you listened to this episode you will understand that this person was not your average Social Media troll but was coming from a perspective that I can understand though fundamentally disagree with.

Ok, so let’s get going.

The first and probably most important point to make is that the time of the Ottonians is a blank canvas. There are very few written sources. For Henry the Fowler and Otto the Great the Regesta Imperii, which is the list of all royal charter contains about 1,000 documents, most of which are land donations to monasteries etc. If you compare that to the reign of king Sigismund (1410-1437) there are about 14,000 registered documents though his reign was a mere third of the first Ottonians. On top of that, the contemporary chroniclers like Liudprand, Widukind and Thietmar are more interested in saint’s miracles than political analysis.

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Not a single word or thought Henry the Fowler and Otto the Great has said or thought has been written down. Only by the time of Otto III do we get statements that can be directly attributed and give us a glimpse of their personalities and political ambitions. And there are no portraits at all of these rulers. There are images, but these images were conveying a message of what a king should look like, not what he actually looked like.

Therefore, what you end up with is a map showing an empire much larger than any other subsequent historic polity in Western Europe on which you can project whatever narrative you want. And that is exactly what happens.

During the middle ages and early modern period the Ottonians were certainly remembered, and we find impressive works commissioned in their memory like the funeral monument to Henry II and Kunigunde in Bamberg Cathedral created by Tilman Riemenschneider, Germany’s foremost sculptor of the time.  However, their fame was eclipsed by the veneration reserved for Charlemagne who was canonised in the 12th century and an extraordinary reliquary was made to hold his bones. Even the imperial crown that was likely made for an Ottonian ruler, maybe even for Otto I is now being called the “Crown of Charlemagne”.

The enlightenment of the 18th century dismissed the whole of the middle ages as the dark ages where people were held down by superstition and armed thugs on horseback. That is the time where Ottonian churches were drowned in baroque decorations until they were hardly recognisable.

Interest in the Ottonians, in particular in Otto the Great, emerged again in the 19th century, during and after the Napoleonic Wars.

The French Revolution did not just give birth to “Liberte, Egalite and Fraternite”, it also gave birth to its ugly twin, Nationalism. Suddenly everyone in Europe wanted to be living in a nation state. That was largely unproblematic if you were French or English or Swedish, because the infrastructure of a nation state was already there. It was much more of an issue if you were Italian or in particular German. These countries did not have a coherent national infrastructure but consisted of a multitude of independent polities.

And each nation created its’ own historical narrative to prove that they had always shared the same identity and had been destined to rule a certain territory. England was able to draw a straight line from William the Conqueror, the Hundred Year’s war, and the Tudors to its Empire. France created its storyline out of Jeanne d’Arc, and then a pick’n’mix depending on political affiliation of Henri IV, Louis XIV, Lafayette, the French Revolution and above all Napoleon.

And so, the people who spoke the German language too were scrambling around for a past full of glory as a unified nation dominating their territory.     

That notion ran into a whole busload of problems.

First up, the most recent past had little on offer when it came to glory and unity. After the humiliating defeat in the battle of Austerlitz in 1805 the Holy Roman Empire had been dissolved, Emperor Francis II had put down the “Crown of Charlemagne” and the institutions of the state like the Reichskammergericht and the Immerwaehrende Reichstag were closed. Moreover, by order of Napoleon the hundreds of German states were reduced to 39, which became satellite states of France destined to provide soldiers to die in the Russian steppes.

Looking further back also yielded little joy.

The towering German figure of the 18th century was Frederick II of Prussia. But he was no good as a unifying figure since most of his wars were against Austria a fellow German state. Plus, he avoided speaking German whenever possible.

Going back one century further, the 17th century was no time for heroes either as the 30 Years War killed 2/3 of the population. The 16th century’s two key figures were Martin Luther and Charles V, neither of whom a unifying figure in a country split 50/50 between Catholics and Protestants. Then you have the 15th and 14th centuries which was a time of weak emperors and fragmentation, no time for national heroes. And that meant you had to go back all the way to the early and high middle ages to find a time of glory and that is where the Ottonian, the Salians and the Staufer emperors come in.

Wilhelm von Giesebrecht (1814-1889) and his “Geschichte der Deutschen Kaiserzeit” or “History of the time of the German Emperors” perfectly encapsulates this notion.

Let me quote from the preface of his monumental works:

“Though the importance of these times (919-1250) for the development of world history is broadly recognised, it does hold a special meaning for our people. Not only did the emperors emerge from Germany and Germany had become the seat of power during this period, but it was also the time where the German Stems for the first time unified in a common political entity that separated themselves from the surrounding peoples. We became our own peoples who could pursue our own unique and special developments in church, state, arts and science. Moreover, during the time of the German emperors the German people were strong through unity so that they reached the highest power, being free not only to decide its own affairs but also to command other nations, where the German man was the most respected and the name of Germany had the greatest resonance.”

Sounds good, a time of unity and strength, a time when Germany ruled most of Europe, all boxes ticked. Should be a great national narrative.

But here comes the second problem. Where is Germany? What is in and what is not in Germany. AT that time the key question was, are the Austrians in, and hence should the Austrian emperor be the head of a new nation state, or should the Austrians stay out, leaving Prussia in charge. The debate also has a religious dimension as a Prussian-dominated Germany would be majority Protestant, whilst an Austrian inclusion would tilt it towards Catholicism.

And so, almost as soon as Giesbrecht who took a somewhat neutral stance had published his works, the debate over the so-called “grossdeutsche” or “kleindeutsche” solution turned history seminars into boxing rings.

In the Prussian corner we have Heinrich von Sybel (1817-1895). An accomplished historian and, like Giesebrecht, trained by the godfather of the modern science of history, Leopold von Ranke. He argued that Henry the Fowler was the greatest Ottonian ruler since he focused on unifying the German stems, defending the realm against the Magyars, and expanding eastwards. On the other hand, he thought Otto the Great was misguided and did terrible harm to Germany by going after the imperial crown. The entanglement in Italy forced him and his successors to waste blood and treasure in fruitless fights with the Italian states and most of all, the papacy. Taking the eye off the ball in Germany allowed the local princes to expand their power which ultimately led to the collapse of central authority in Germany and all the misery ever since. His bottom line was that Germany should focus on inner unity and coherence and avoid entanglement with foreigners in general and Roman Catholics in particular.

In the Austrian corner we have Johann von Ficker (1826-1902), unfortunate name but also a gifted writer. He argued that the imperial project of Otto the Great and Otto III was neither a true empire nor a nation state but an ambitious and benevolent attempt to bring together the members of multiple nations under one roof. It was no coincidence that this model of the reign of Otto the Great looked a lot like the then Austrian empire which comprised many nations including Hungarians, Czech, Poles, Croats, Slovacs, Slovenians and many more who allegedly lived happily under Emperor Franz Joseph’s benevolent rule. Otto the Great and Otto III were his heroes.

Fun fact is that both Sybel and Ficker were disappointed by Bismarck’s creation of a German Reich in 1871, Ficker for obvious reasons, but Sybel as well, because he was at heart a liberal and had hoped for a less autocratic more open society.

From then on, historians began ordering the medieval emperors into categories of good or bad, depending on whether their policies appeared more like Henry the Fowler’s perceived focus on Germany and Eastern expansion or Otto the Great’s perceived Globalism.

Whether despite or because of the debate about who was better, Henry the Fowler or Otto the Great, the Ottonians became a reference point for the German national narrative. It was seen as a period of great national success that anyone could ultimately be proud of. It was a bit like the Hundred Years war are for both Britain and France, a time of great heroism, towering successes, and tragic failures.

But it was also a narrative of conquests in the east that did influence German thinking into the World Wars.  The greatest travesty happened during the Nazi regime. The Nazis began to style Henry the Fowler as the more “German” king who they believed was also more racially pure. The latter was an extremely hare-brained notion since it related to Otto’s paternal grandmother Hedwig being of Frankish/Italian descent. How that works when Hedwig is also Henry’s mother is lost in muddled Nazi logic. But that stupid racial argument was by no means the worst thing.

Heinrich Himmler and the SS took over the abbey church of Quedlinburg where Henry the Fowler had been buried. In 1938 they destroyed the altar and interior decoration and created the “Weihestaette der SS”, a sort of secular Nazi chapel to consecrate SS fighters into the force. Himmler was completely obsessed with Henry the Fowler and even believed he had communed with the dead king in this “chapel”. His entourage even called him “King Henry”.

No surprise that after the war, the name of king Henry the Fowler was mud. I went to school in the 1980s and I cannot remember him being mentioned at all. Which is really sad given that for all we know Henry the Fowler was the exact opposite of a Nazi, always looking for reconciliation, friendship agreements and ruling as a first amongst equals.

Otto the Great was also taken off the Christmas card list in both West and East Germany. There were no celebrations for the 1000 years since his coronation as emperor in 1962 or the 1000-year anniversary of his death in 1973.

When West Germany looked at the Middle Ages in the 1970s and 1980s it looked at the empire of Charlemagne. Charlemagne was comfortable because the Carolingian empire was seen as a pan-European polity, an early EU if you like. Sharing the memory of Charlemagne with France was one of the manifestations of the Deutsch-Franzoesische Freundschaft, the Franco-German friendship, a concept like the special relationship between US and UK. The Ottonians were gradually readmitted by claiming that a true German history only started in the mid to end 11th century and what happened before was just an extension of Carolingian times. Karl Bosl even includes them in something he calls “Frankish Late Antiquity”. Theophanu was hailed as a rare example of openness towards other cultures and the Theophanu foundation awards an annual prize for individuals and organisations that make an outstanding contribution to bridging Europe’s historic diversities.

East Germany in line with Marxist theory regarded the early Middle Ages as a transition period from slave owning antiquity to feudalism where individual rulers would have little agency in the first place. They also had for obvious reason little enthusiasm for the Ottonian policy of eastern expansion. They believed the Western interpretation of the Ottonians as proto-European was just a smokescreen hiding bourgeois nationalist desires for world domination.

o.k., thank you for listening to this point. You really have a lot of stamina, because all this stuff is clearly bollocks. The Ottonians were neither proto-Europeans nor forerunners of a German national state. All of these narratives are nothing but projections of a contemporary narrative on to the blank canvas of a time we have very few facts about.

Already from 1880s onwards more enlightened scholars insisted on trying to understand the early Middle Ages on their own terms. That trend really gained traction in the 90s and 2000s and today dominates the debate.

When you look at the time of the Ottonians on their own terms, as I have tried as well, all the debates of the 19th and early 20th century disappear.

Getting involved in Italian affairs was not anything new Otto the Great had come up with. The dukes of Swabia and Bavaria had constantly meddled in affairs south of the alps without thinking about any long-term consequences. King Arnulf of Carinthia had gone to Italy, besieged Rome and taken the imperial crown. Aiming for the imperial crown and its inherent mission wasn’t much of a choice for whoever happened to be the strongest ruler within the Carolingian empire. And Otto certainly did not think in categories of German national interest at all. According to Widukind he identified first and foremost as Saxon, which again maybe just a reflection of Widukind’s bias as a professional Saxon. Equally Otto III talks about being an uncouth Saxon wanting to be a sophisticated Greek. No mention of German anywhere.

The other big transition in the perception of the Ottonians relates to the internal organisation of the kingdom.

The prevailing view well into the 1980s was that the Ottonians and Salians ran the kingdom through the bishops and abbots. The Imperial Church system was seen as a tightknit structure with a cadre of bishops available to the emperor at his back and call. In exchange the emperors would gradually shift land, positions and money from the aristocracy into church hands.

That narrative suited the 19th century historians extremely well for two reasons. First, it supported the notion that to unify Germany you needed a strong central power with a control and command hierarchy.

And secondly it provided a superbly convenient narrative about how the mighty empire had fallen. The story goes a bit like that. The popes regained moral authority thanks to the Gregorian reforms in the middle of the 11th century and took control over the German bishops away from the emperors. Having lost their main source of power the emperors could no longer hold down the princes and so the state fragmented until it became a mere spectre by the time the Holy Roman empire was dissolved in 1806. That can be shortened down to “the evil popes caused Germany’s weakness” which is a really good story if you want protestant Prussia to lead the new Germany.

It took until 1982 when Timothy Reuter fundamentally challenged the notion of a coherent Imperial Church system. He highlighted the inability of for instance Otto the Great to first create and then staff the archbishopric of Magdeburg, he pointed out that most bishops came from the high aristocracy and that in many rebellions the bishops were leading the charge against the king.

Once you remove the idea of a coherent exercise of power through the church the question is, how did the Ottonians rule?

Current scholarship focuses much on the symbols and rituals of kingship which is believed to have been the means by which the kings and emperors co-ordinated activity and resolved conflict. You have heard many times about the process of submission to the king and the obligation of the king to raise the supplicant back up into the royal favour. You also heard about the dogs to be carried to Magdeburg as a means of ritual humiliation.

Equally you saw in the narrative that the emperors moved from a purely political notion of kingship under Henry the Fowler to a predominantly religiously supported idea of sacred kingship under Henry II. The notion that a ruler has been consecrated and thereby been appointed by god was an inherent source of power and protection. I think I said in episode 11 that Otto III is unlikely to have survived the first 6 months of his reign had he only been elected but not consecrated.

I did spare you most of the detailed explanations of the imperial images in illuminated manuscripts which historians use to understand the notion of kingship for instance of Henry II versus Otto the Great. And I completely shielded you from debates about the significance of the use of lead in imperial seals. The reason I left this out is that despite reading lots and lots of articles about these topics , I could not tie this into a set of coherent arguments I believed myself.

But what I do gather from these discussions is that today’s historians see the Ottonians and their empire as a system of co-ordination where the ruler exercises power in agreement with at least his magnates. The magnates are being kept in line through a shared belief in the sacrality of the kingship reenforced through rituals.

Now here is what I am wondering. Despite 200 years of intense scholarship, we still have only a small set of known facts at our disposal when assessing the 10th century. If it is still a blank canvas, to what extent do current biases drive the assessment of the Ottonians? Are we projecting the last 30 years of a globalising economy onto these long dead polities? Are we seeing co-ordination mechanisms like the EU and the UN that do not themselves have power in the itinerant imperial courts? Do we see a reflection of rituals like the G7 and the imposition and then removal of sanctions in the way 10th century emperors dealt with their adversaries? Do we see the belief in “global values” as a source of soft power foreshadowed by the concept of the sacral kingdom?

Maybe if people listen to this podcast in 15-years time they will regard it as ridiculously outdated. Maybe by then these kings and emperors will be seen as ruthless thugs who cynically exploited the beliefs of the people to satisfy their greed and lust for power. Let’s hope not, because that would make the place behind the projector quite uncomfortable.

So, before I go, let me just remind you that the next episode is a Q&A where you can ask any question you like relating to the podcast, the Ottonians and the history of the Germans in general. Some of you have already sent some really great questions and I hope I will be able to get through all of them in two weeks time. See you then.

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How a pious monarch organises his succession

In this episode we are going to talk about how Emperor Henry II re-organised the kingdom, in particular how he further developed the Imperial Church System. As you may remember, the Imperial Church system is the idea that the kingdom is run through the bishops and abbots, not the counts and dukes. So rather than relying on the feudal obligations of the barons, the king passes land and rights to the church which owes him allegiance as God’s anointed. It also helps that the king appoints the bishops, at least some of whom were trained at his court chancellery.

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans, Episode 19 – Henry II The House of God.

Before we dive in, I have a few housekeeping announcements. Today’s episode is the last one of Season 1.  In season 2. we will look at the next dynasty, the Salians who ruled from 1024  to 1125. That will start in about six weeks. Do not worry, there will be History of the Germans in the intervening period. I will release one episode looking at the perception history of the Ottonians, looking at what people believed about them in the 19th and first half of the 20th century. We will trace how in the 1960s historians developed a new understanding of their rule and the early medieval ages in general. Two weeks after that  there will be a Q&A episode, scheduled to be released on June 24th. So please send me questions on the History of the Germans so far, the podcast or anything else you like to know. I will try to answer all of them. And when you send a message Please state whether you want me to read out your full name or just your initials when I quote the question. You can contact me on historyofthegermans@gmail.com or on Facebook, Instagram, Reddit and Twitter under historyofthegermans or some derivation thereof.

I am looking forward to your questions.

With that, back to the show.

In this episode we are going to talk about how Emperor Henry II re-organised the kingdom, in particular how he further developed the Imperial Church System. As you may remember, the Imperial Church system is the idea that the kingdom is run through the bishops and abbots, not the counts and dukes. So rather than relying on the feudal obligations of the barons, the king passes land and rights to the church which owes him allegiance as God’s anointed. It also helps that the king appoints the bishops, at least some of whom were trained at his court chancellery.

There are basically two ways we can do that. One is to look at it in cynical political terms, the other is to look at it from the perspective of the protagonists themselves. We may look at immensely powerful and rich bishops or abbots with suspicion, but it is simply not true that the emperors, and Henry II in particular, created these canonical monsters as part of a political calculus or that all the bishops were power crazy hypocrites.

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To really understand his motivation is to start at the end. When Henry II died in 1024, he had no children. Nevertheless he made no succession plan whatsoever. Why? It is not the case he did not care what happened after. What he believed was that the political structure he wanted to create was the House of God. And if it is the House of God, then god will choose a successor to look after it. And if it was not good enough to be the House of God, well then good riddance.

What is the House of God then? In Henry’s mind the House of God was a society where the largest possible number of people can observe their religious duty in a way that pleases god. That means where everyone is led in prayer by a worthy priest who performs the sacraments in the prescribed form so that the observance increases the probability of ascending to heaven on the day of judgement.

I do not know and there is no documentary evidence that Henry II’s focus on the spiritual world was down to concerns about an imminent arrival of the antichrist as 1000 years have passed since the birth of Christ.. I doubt that matters much. If you are a deeply religious person, and Henry II clearly was, then you know for a fact that the apocalypse will come, and it does not really matter whether you spend a few decades or centuries in the ground before the antichrist arrives or if he shows up next week. For Henry it was the same, and he believed it was his job to prepare himself and to prepare his people for the coming of the end of times.

What we do know is that Henry II had an illuminated manuscript of the apocalypse commissioned from the abbey of Reichenau. It is not only absolutely beautiful but the Staatsbibliothek Bamberg has published it in its entirety on their Website with an explanation what goes on each of the pages. If you want to finally get your head around what is actually written in the Apocalypse, this is a very enjoyable way to do it; or you can watch Good Omens, which is admittedly funnier and famously ineffable.

Apocalypse now or not, Henry II wanted his kingdom to be the House of God and that means first and foremost a holy church that will lead the people in prayer towards salvation. And it cannot be just any prayer. It has to be effective prayer, prayer that the divinity will listen to, which means prayer can only be effective when it is led and performed by someone worthy.

What is therefore needed is church reform. Henry’s church reform attacked on all angles, all at the same time.

If I say it attacked everywhere, that means it covered even simple parish priests. In the Germany in the year 1000 episode I mentioned that parish priests would regularly live in a relationship and have children. Henry II initially recognised this to be a fact of life, but he wanted to ensure that priests did not pass church property onto their offspring. He decreed that the children of a priest, even if his partner was a free woman, would become serfs. That ensured they could not own church property handed down by their father. As time went on, Henry II moved on from this purely economic standpoint and compelled the pope to declare that all priests should strive to live celibate, paving the way to universal celibacy that was introduced in 1123. For the avoidance of doubt, adherence to that rule remained lax throughout the middle ages.

This kind of leniency did not apply to monks, who, by the rule of St. Benedict were obliged to spend their life in work and prayer. Henry II did not tolerate deviation from the strictures of monastic life. Henry had a guy he put in charge of monastery reform, called Godehard. Henry would send him into a monastery, make him abbot and give him his full backing. For example the monks at Hersfeld, one of the large imperial abbeys were subjected to the Godehard treatment. The monks had started living in their own comfy houses outside the monastery enjoying the fruits of other people’s labour. Godehard came in, had the houses torn down and told the monks to move back into the priory, pray five times a day and have modest communal meals. All 50 monks ran off into the woods, thinking that this new abbot will not last long. Well with Henry’s support abbot Godehard held out and most came back after a while. That sorted, Godehard moved on to the next monastery where the process repeated itself. The reform did not spare the most famous and storied abbeys of Reichenau, Fulda and Corvey where Henry would depose abbots he though were lax and put in his shock troops.

Henry also became a major sponsor of the abbey of Cluny. He invited the, to found monasteries As well as involve them in the reform process. He visited Cluny in 1021 and in a highly symbolic act handed the abbot a crown and a globe he had received from the pope earlier that year.

He reorganised the network of monasteries in the country as part of the reform program. Henry would take smaller or particularly obstinate monasteries and incorporate them and their assets into larger, more reform minded institutions or sometimes into bishoprics.

As he did so, he came up against some of his powerful nobles who often owned these monasteries as Eigenkirchen or proprietary churches, through the application of political pressure and moral suasion he brought many of them under direct royal control and patronage.

At the end of Henry’s reign, we find the country covered in a network of large abbeys staffed with pious monks whose reputation builds and builds and whose abbots report directly to the king.

The third pillar of Henry’s House of God were the bishops. Since Otto the Great, the Ottonians had increasingly relied on the bishops for their financial and military resources. Under Henry II and his immediate successors  this process goes into overdrive. We already heard that Otto III had given one county to the bishop of Liege. But by 1056, over 50 counties will have been donated to bishops and abbots.

When he goes down to Italy on his last major military expedition in 1022, the army is entirely led by bishops. There are no dukes or counts anywhere in sight. How that squares with the priest’s ban on carrying arms is not quite clear.

But it was not just Henry II who gave land to bishoprics. One of the fascinating stories of that period is the life of bishop Meinward of Paderborn. Meinward was the heir to a large chunk of the fortune of the Immedinger clan. The Immedinger are one of the richest and most famous Saxon clan, tracing their lineage back to the famous Widukind, the freedom fighter who opposed Charlemagne. One prominent member of his family was Mathilda of Ringelheim, wife of king Henry the Fowler and ancestor of current king Henry II.

Now Meinward himself was particularly blessed with worldly goods thanks to a ruthless mother who married successfully and then poisoned her own sister to ensure her paternal inheritance came down to her in full. She had one son, Meinward.

This immensely rich Meinward joined the church and was made bishop of Paderborn. At Henry’s instigation Meinward transferred his entire personal wealth to the church of Paderborn. He even sold the family seat of Please to support his bishopric.  What fascinates me about this story is that it goes against everything that is normally associated with aristocratic bishops. Normally the heir to a fortune like Meinward’s would not enter the church. He would hold on to the family lands and prolong the line. His younger brothers, those without inheritance, they would join the church. But even if for whatever reason the heir joins the church, the uncles and cousins would make damn sure he cannot shift the family fortune to the church. Generous donations, yes, but not the whole lot.

 It that was not the case with Mei ward. The whole lot went to the church. Maybe it was because of his mother’s colourful history? Not really, because Meinward was not the only one. Thietmar Bishop of Merseburg, the chronicler of the times and a man with no skeletons in the closet, was also expected to donate big chunks of the family fortune to the underendowed church of Merseburg. 

The only way this could make sense economically and politically would be if the bishopric had become the proprietary church of the donating family, so they would keep the income and appoint the bishop. But that was not the case. The king retained the right to choose the bishops of Paderborn and Merseburg.

Henry’s ambition to create a House of God was clearly shared by others.

Talking about choosing bishops, Henry II regularly ran roughshod over the election rights of the cathedral canons. You may remember that under church law it is the congregation, represented by the cathedral chapter that elects the bishop. The king only controls the temporal assets of the bishopric. Henry saw this differently. For instance when the elected bishop of Magdeburg held up a charter signed by Otto II that clearly granted the cathedral chapter the right to freely elect their bishop, Henry II just straight out dismissed their choice and put his friend and confidant Tagino in place. And this happened over and over again. Only one of the 64 bishops appointed during his reign was allowed into the role against the king’s will, and that was a special case in the very early years of his reign. Apart from that Henry insisted that every bishop is chosen by him and then confirmed by the cathedral chapter.

Henry chose his bishops not just for political allegiance, but for their suitability as spiritual leaders. Remember his main objective is to build the House of God, so that theological skill sometimes overrides allegiance. His appointments include Adalbero of Utrecht who was not just a highly regarded theologian but also a gifted mathematician who worked on the calculation of the volume of spheres as well as producing a commentary on the works of Boethius, a philosopher from late antiquity. He even supported  Bernward of Hildesheim despite his opposition during the race for the throne in 1002. Bernward was another universal genius of the 10th century, renowned theologian, tutor of Otto III and builder of the cathedral of Hildesheim, which together with its famous Bernward doors is another UNESCO World Heritage site.

Henry cared a lot about the quality of cathedral schools and sponsored bishops whose schools gained a reputation for learning, both theological as well as the sciences. Again, Meinward’s school at the cathedral of Paderborn became famous not least for its extensive library. For his House of God to work, priests and monks had to be well versed in scripture and liturgy.

He even started a major fight with the French king and the archbishop of Rheims over who would consecrate the bishop of Cambrai. Cambrai was located in Lothringia, so was part of the Empire. However, the bishopric of Cambrai was part of the archdiocese of Rheims, which is in France. The bishop of Cambrian expected to be consecrated by his superior, the archbishop of Rheims. Henry II objected and pushed for a consecration by a papal legate, which would basically remove Cambrai from the authority of the archbishop of Rheims tying it closer into the empire. But that was only the secondary one of henry II’s concerns. His main issue was that he thought the archbishop of Rheims may use liturgy that was not up to the standards prevailing in the empire, making the bishop of Cambrai less effective as a spiritual connector for his flock. The problem was ultimately resolved by Henry II sending detailed instructions to the archbishop of Rheims about how the ceremony was to be conducted. Sounds entirely bonkers, but it was a serious issue that was about to break out into open warfare…

Henry also began reforming the cathedral chapters, similar to his reform of the monasteries. Cathedral canons had traditionally been living closer to the community they served and – in line with the generally lax standards of ecclesial celibacy, tended to have their own families. Henry II could not bear this and forced the canons to give up their families and live as a celibate community of men inside the cathedral complex – again not everyone was happy about that.

Like his predecessors, Henry II relied heavily on his chancellors for the administration of the realm. These chancellors were usually scions of noble families destined for the church that would be trained up at the royal court to manage documents and learn about the emperors strategy and policies. These chancellors would then be placed into important bishoprics once the emperor was convinced of their capabilities and loyalty. Out of the 64 appointments Henry made, 24 were his chancellors, including the most important archbishoprics of Mainz, Trier, Magdeburg, Hamburg/Bremen and at the very end, Cologne.

He also made the bishops his “brothers in prayer”. These were agreements between several high aristocrats whereby they each had to regularly pray for each other’s well-being. We have seen these kinds of associations before, namely Henry the Fowler usually added them to his friendship agreements. Under Henry II they became a primary tool to bind in particular the bishops and abbots of the country together and to the emperor. One famous such agreement was concluded amongst the powerful of the northern half of the kingdom in Dortmund in 1005. Under this union, each member had to feed the 300 poor people, fund prayers and light 30 candles in case any of their number dies, with the king being obliged to feed 1500 and the duke of Saxony 500.

Henry II was constantly in touch with his bishops. Like with his predecessors the court was constantly on the move. But whilst Otto the Great would mostly stay on his own Palaces and castles in Saxony, Franconia and occasionally Lothringia, Henry II would mostly stay at episcopal seas and monasteries all across the realm, including in Swabia, Bavaria and Bohemia. Henry held 15 synods in his 22-year reign, more per year than any of his predecessors. This not only indicates how important church matters were to him, but they also show very clearly that the bishops had much more ready access to the emperor than the counts and dukes, further strengthening their position vis-à-vis their temporal neighbours.

All that resulted in a situation where the king became not only a colleague of the bishops, but their leader. He took on the role that would normally be reserved for the pope as the representative of Christ on earth. As such he had the ultimate say in all things ecclesiastical. And, in his final years, that role extended beyond the confines of his own kingdoms.

He dominated the synods held by pope Benedict VIII where the roman church declared that the Holy spirit has come from both the father and the son, the famous filioque clause. This was in direct opposition to Byzantium, which was another major contributing factor in the alienation between roman Catholicism and the orthodox church in the east.

With Henry II busy creating his House of God full of pious monks, priests and bishops, what about the secular lords? What about the counts and dukes who still ruled large parts of the country?

Under Henry’s predecessors the kings and emperors had to walk a tightrope between avoiding rebellions by recognising the aristocrats’ ancient rights and privileges whilst at the same time asserting their authority over them. The three Ottos played this game with varying success. Under Henry II we notice a fundamentally different approach.

It started with Henry’s refusal right at the beginning of his reign to grant the duchy of Bavaria to the Schweinfurter count, who by rights and customs should have received it. After he had been defeated in the ensuing conflict, the count did what needed to be done and submitted himself to the merci of his lord, coming before him on his knees wearing a hare shirt. As we have heard in this podcast over and over, being a merciful lord is one of the key features expected of an early medieval ruler. Therefore, under ancient custom since this was the first time he had rebelled, Henry II was obliged to accept the count of Schweinfurt back into his favour and hand back at least some of his property.

But that is not what he did. Instead, he declared the rebel should be locked up at the castle of Giebichenstein for “as long as it pleases the king”, which turned out to be relatively short period of 2 years. But the mere fact that he did not receive him back right away was a clear message that things had changed and royal merci was not to be taken for granted.

By locking up the Schweinfurter, Henry had asserted his right to appoint whoever he wanted as duke of Bavaria, but that was still not enough control for him. In the period before the appointment of a new duke, he significantly reduced the ducal estate by transferring assets, namely abbeys and churches to the royal demesne, leaving his successor as duke of Bavaria with a much diminished position. And that successor was his brother-in-law, someone he could expect to be staunchly loyal to his cause.

How little value he assigned to family relationships became clear when the seat of the archbishop of Trier, one of the most important ecclesiastical roles became vacant. One of the 11 siblings of his wife, a certain Adalbero got himself elected archbishop. His claim, apart from a reasonable ecclesiastical background as abbot of a nearby monastery, was the fact that his family owned vast tracts of land all over Lothringia and specifically around Trier. Their home, the castle of Luxembourg, capital of the homonymous country was just half hour drive down from Trier.

Henry II would have none of it. On the one hand he insisted that all bishops are appointed by him rather than elected by the cathedral chapter. Moreover, he did not like the idea of even more power concentrated in the hands of the Luxembourger clan even though they were his allies. So Henry appointed his own archbishop and besieged the city of Trier. Adalbero barricaded himself into the ancient Roman Basilica of Constantine that had been turned into a fortress. There he held out for 9 years, denying Henry II control of the city of Trier. Henry II controlled most of the lands of the archdiocese and maintained a loose siege for all that time. As the issue became bloody, all other siblings of Kunigunde were dragged into this, including her brother Henry who had been made duke of the much reduced duchy of Bavaria. The duke of Bavaria rebelled and even received some support from his magnates who just 6 years earlier were all in Henry II’s camp. But that did not last long and Henry II deposed the duke and for about 5 years the duchy was run by his wife Kunigunde on behalf of Henry II.

Whilst this was going on, Henry also picks a fight with the other major family group in Lothringia, the relations of Ezzo, you know the nouveau riche who had married Otto III’s sister and had made a bid for the throne in 1002. That was clearly one step too far. Ezzo allied with his neighbours, the Luxembourgers and the combined forces inflict a severe defeat on Henry II’s forces. Henry then caves to Ezzo, makes peace and hands him significant fortresses including the imperial palace at Kaiserswerth near Duesseldorf and the castle at Saalfeld. The power of Ezzo and his descendants would rise further during Henry II’s reign as Ezzo’s daughter Richeza married duke Boleslav the Brave of Poland.

After Ezzo reconciled with Henry II the brothers of Kunigunde who had supported Adalbero were defeated and had to appear before henry II on their knees and in a hare shirts to again be condemned to imprisonment at his majesty’s pleasure. This by the way was the occasion where henry II had invited Boleslav the Brave to witness so he could see what a submission to king Henry would involve. Fun fact – Boleslav did not fancy that one bit.

After seven years of war, In 1015 both Adalbero and henry’s pretender for the archbishopric of Trier died. Henry appointed Poppo, second son of the duke of Austria to become archbishop and Poppo quickly gained the upper hand over Trier.

Ezzo was the only one of the major nobles who thrived under Henry II’s rule. All others saw their power curtailed wherever that was possible.

In Saxony duke Bernward was weakened as the power of the bishoprics in Saxony, in particular Paderborn grew. Henry precluded the duke from taking over the lands of his cousin Wichman III which would have made him overly powerful. When Bernard rebelled in 1021, his rebellion petered out quite quickly.

Henry also began feuds with the Konradiner and Salier families in the South West. As with Bavaria, he hollowed out the duchy of Swabia after its duke, Hermann II had lost the contest for the throne in 1002.

So far all these quarrels have some sort of political logic to it. Using the church to keep the barons down was a great way to assert control as the dukes of Normandy had shown.

However, as with the monks and bishops, henry II did not care much for secular aims, he was targeting a spiritual objective. And that spiritual objective was to build the House of God. And in that house of god everybody had to follow the rules and one of these rules was the ban on incest.

The ban on incest makes obvious sense. Where this went off the rails was. when it came to the definition of incest. The Christian writers of late antiquity counted as incest a relationship in the 4th degree, which means between first cousins. However, Germanic tradition does not count the individuals but the generations, so that 4th degree would be anyone who shared a great  grandparent. As things progressed, the definitions tightened further and the ban on incest was extended to relations in the seventh degree, i.e,  who shared a great, great, great, great, great grandparent. That basically meant nobody could marry anybody for the simple reason hardly anyone knew their grandparent 6 generations ago. Even the imperial family itself could only trace their ancestors back to a certain Liudolf, who was the grandfather of Henry the Fowler and hence great, great grandfather of Henry II.

Basically everyone’s marriage was in jeopardy which also meant all these aristocratic networks were under threat should henry II randomly raise the issue of incestual marriage.

And he did. Barely a year into his reign he accused duke Konrad of Carinthia one of his first and most important supporters in the bid to kingship of an incestual marriage. Not much came of it, but it still caused massive irritation.  

A few years later he would go after Otto of Hammerstein, now the leader of the extended Konradiner family. As you well know the Konradiner are a big deal and picking a fight with them requires a lot of support. Duke Eberhard of Franconia was a Konradiner. And given that henry II had alienated pretty much all dukes and counts from Lothringia to Saxony, from Bavaria to Swabia, that looks like a serious gamble.

He first demands the marriage to be resolved in 1018 and after some two and fro Otto of Hammerstein accepted and offered to separate from his wife.

But that never really happened. The couple stayed together on the Hammerstein, one of these new-fangled giant fortifications on top of a mountain overlooking the Rhine river, called castles. They felt pretty secure there given the difficult to storm their fortress and the support they expected to get from their wide network of relatives.

However, that is not what happened. Henry II attacked using the forces of the archbishop of Mainz and after 3 months the defenders ran out of food and succumbed. The Hammersteins fled but were called to a synod in 1023. They both showed up and Mr Hammerstein submitted and publicly divorced his wife.

His wife did not take it lying down and went to Rome to seek the Pope’s support. The pope stuck with the previous interpretation of the law and sided with Ms. Hammerstein. The pope also punished the archbishop of Mainz who was formally in charge of the proceedings. Now the situation could easily get out of hand if the pope moves to excommunicate the archbishop or even the emperor himself – all over the marriage of the Hammersteins who were probably second cousins, like every other German magnate. However, the whole affair ground to a halt when both pope benedict VIII and Henry II died in 1024. Henry’s successor took a lot less issue with marriage rules and -as far as we know – the Hammersteins lived happily ever after.

What this rather ridiculous little episode showed however is a fundamental shift in the structure of the kingdom. Henry II was able to go after the head of one of the greatest families in the land without creating a broad rebellion across the land. Compare that with the time of Otto the great in 955 when he faced an uprising of more than half his magnates over much less of slight to one of his senior barons – Konrad the Red. Henry II did not have to fear as much from his nobles, in part because he could rely on the resources of the church and because he benefitted from a lack of cohesion amongst the major clans whose interest diverged between those trying to gain advantages in the east ether with or against Boleslav the Brave. And those in the west clashed over less available positions as more and more counties had been granted to bishoprics.

And despite his constant quarrels with the nobility, they were after all tenants in the House of God.

And Henry IIs house of god needed not just sturdy walls, but also a great architectural feature that would forever glorify his name. And that great adornment was Bamberg.

Bamberg had been an important fortress since the early 10th century. IT was handed to henry IIs family by Otto II in these first months of friendship between the two houses that ended with the rebellion of the three Henries. Despite the fallout the place remained in Henry’s family and it was by far his  favourite residence..

As he was not the guy to build palaces, but much more interested in churches, he decided to turn Bamberg into a bishopric. But not a bishopric like any other, subject t some archbishop.. No, this bishop would only report directly to the pope. And The pope, not the king would determine who would be bishop.

As we have seen with Otto the Great’s fights over Magdeburg, creating a new bishopric is not easy. All existing bishops are spiritually married to their church and their main objective has to be to increase the wealth and reputation of their diocese. Therefore, carving out territory from an existing diocese requires the agreement of the existing bishop which would hardly ever be forthcoming. It tells you something about the authority Henry II had over the German bishops that he could get their agreement for the creation of Bamberg in 1007. Yes,  It did require him begging on his knees, the one and only time he ever kneeled in front of other human beings. And It may also have helped that he compensated the bishop of Wurzburg with donations of land and rights out of his personal purse. But he got it done in just 1 year when Otto the Great took more than a decade to fulfil his dream.

And then we come to the endowment of the new diocese. Henry II and Kunigunde, who had no children and no near relatives made the church of Bamberg their sole heir. By the stroke of a pen Bamberg became one of the richest bishoprics in the world owning abbeys and lands all over Germany, from near Merseburg in the East to the Rhine valley, from lake Constance to Northern Saxony.

Bamberg was given a most splendid library with many of today’s most cherished Ottonian manuscripts originally held in the library of Bamberg.

Henry II had a great church built on the mountain that previously held the castle. For the consecration of the new cathedral in 1012. Henry invited 45 bishops, basically all German bishops plus the Patriarch of Aquileia and the Archbishop of Gran in Hungary. The bishops were set up as small troops, each consecrating a different alter that held immeasurably valuable relics of all the most important saints of the realm. The consecration turned into a mirror image of the kingdom with the bishops of the western diocese of Trier, Mainz and Cologne consecrating the altars on the western side, whilst the eastern archbishops of Salzburg and Magdeburg consecrate the altars on the eastern side.

When pope Benedict VIII came to Bamberg in 1020 the church had its most splendid moment. He brought with him the famous Star mantle a cape made from blue cloth embroidered with star signs in gold. On the rim it says “Hail to you, you adornment of Europe, Emperor Heinrich, may your rule be forever increasing by the grace of the king who rules forever” 

Henry II died on the 13th of July 1024. He is buried in the cathedral of Bamberg next to his wife Kunigunde. The original cathedral sadly burned down in the 12th century and was replaced by the current, still absolutely splendid edifice. Miracles are being reported after his death and by 1146 this autocratic ruler who allied with pagan Slavs against a Christian king of Poland was made a saint. His wife Kunigunde joined him in this state in 1200.

And that is it. The Ottonians have well and truly died out. There is no descendant in the male line from Henry the Fowler or even Otto the Venerable left. The German barons will meet and choose a new king, presumably one who is less keen on banning incest and harassing his magnates. This new king is of a new dynasty, the Salians. And that gives me a chance to take a break to prepare for the next season.

My current plan is to start the next season on July 10th at the latest. In the intermediate time we will have two episodes, one looking at the perception of the Ottonian rulers throughout history, in particular how the 19th centuries appropriated them to create a national German narrative that the Nazi further bastardised. After the war it took a long, long time before talking about the early middle ages was acceptable again and we will take a look at how contemporary historians try to get their head around these rather alien rulers. And then I want to da Q&A session on June 24th, so please send me your questions about the Ottonians, the Prologue or just general about podcasting and history podcasts. I will try to answer all, except for the most personal questions.

I hope to see you then. And if you get bored in the meantime, you can check out my new website www.histryofthegermans.com which should go live any day now. There will be maps, pictures and blogposts related to the podcast.  

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The Wars with Boleslaw Chrobry

Last week we left Henry II looking at the smouldering ruins of the Schweinfurter castles and feeling finally truly in charge of the country. He was the anointed king, all five duchies have recognised him and all other contenders have bent the knee, except for Ekkehard of Meissen, who was conveniently murdered along the way.

That death of Ekkehard might have helped Henry II to rise to the throne, but it did cause a major problem for the new ruler. A problem that will take precedence even over the precarious situation in Italy and some of his grand plans for the internal structure of the realm.

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans – Episode 18: Henry II goes forth.

 I think before I start, I should say some big thank you. I am totally amazed that so many you want to spend your time hearing about long forgotten German emperors. I honestly thought I would end up talking largely to myself. And also, I want to say a big thank you for all your feedback and encouragement. A special thanks to listener V.D. Who suggested we have a Q&A session at the end of this season. I would be very happy to do it if you send me enough questions. You can find me on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and Instagram under some version of History of the Germans. If you do not want to post publicly you can DM me or send an email to historyofthegermans@gmail.com. Let the questions flow.

So, with that, back to the show.

Last week we left Henry II looking at the smouldering ruins of the Schweinfurter castles and feeling finally truly in charge of the country. He was the anointed king, all five duchies have recognised him and all other contenders have bent the knee, except for Ekkehard of Meissen, who was conveniently murdered along the way.

That death of Ekkehard might have helped Henry II to rise to the throne, but it did cause a major problem for the new ruler. A problem that will take precedence even over the precarious situation in Italy and some of his grand plans for the internal structure of the realm.

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Ekkehard had been the margrave, a sort of count on steroids, of Meissen. You may know Meissen as the birthplace of European porcelain making cute shepherdesses and delicate coffee cups. In 1002 it was first and foremost a frontier town on the Elbe River. East of here is the Lausitz, an area settled by pagan Slavs. This area had been conquered by Margrave Gero in the 960s but had been almost completely lost during the Slavic uprising in 983. Margrave Ekkehard led the reconquest, built a major fortification in Bautzen and pushed the frontier as far as the Neisse River, where today’s border between Germany and Poland is found. By 1002 the region has been regarded as part of Empire and become a county, though most of the population was obviously Slavic and probably maintained a lot of their pagan beliefs. Even today the Lausitz remains one of the centres of old Slavic culture with villages speaking Wendish and trying to maintain their ancient customs.

Ekkehard had operated very much in line with the policy of Otto III, meaning he maintained close relations with the Christian duke of Poland, Boleslav the Brave whose lands were even further east. The strategy since the reign of Theophanu was to attack the Slavs from both sides, the Germans coming from the West and the Poles coming from the East. This close cooperation was underpinned further when Otto III did his famous pilgrimage to Gniezno in Poland where he may or may not have crowned Boleslav as king of the Poles. Ekkehard, as one of the leaders of the German armies in the east had developed close family ties with Boleslav, namely his brother Gunzelin was married to Boleslav’s sister.

When Ekkehard was killed and Henry II was hurtling towards his coronation in Mainz, the county of Meissen became a power vacuum. Boleslav saw the opportunity and jumped in. Boleslav had been keen on Meissen and the Lausitz for a long time. Within days Boleslav had taken hold of the Lausitz, and the town of Meissen, helped by his brother-in-law, Gunzelin. Sorry, I just love saying Gunzelin, what a brilliant name!

Boleslav defended his take-over by saying that he acted on Henry II’s behalf, securing the vacant county against his enemies (whatever these enemies were).

Boleslav came to meet king Henry II in Merseburg. Boleslav hoped to keep hold of all the lands he had occupied, and in particular wanted to be invested as margrave of Meissen. Henry II was not prepared to go all that far. He gave him presents and let him have part of the Lausitz. The compromise over the county and city of Meissen was that it went to Gunzelin, Boleslav’s brother-in-law and at that point his strong supporter. Not everything he wanted, but more than good enough.

What happens next is disputed. As Boleslav departed from Merseburg, he and his entourage are getting ambushed by an unidentified group of knights. Boleslav gets severely injured in the melee and just about gets away with his life. The reason he survived was an intervention by duke Bernward of Saxony who was also a supporter of Otto III’s policy of friendship with Poland and was a relative of Boleslav.

Did Henry order the ambush? Boleslav definitely believes that to be true and on his way home sacked the town of Strehla to make his point. The German chronicler, Thietmar of Merseburg explicitly said that it happened without Henry’s knowledge. Thietmar suggests the attackers had to defend the honour of the king since Boleslav and his men had refused to leave their weapons at the door when they had come into his presence.

There might be no evidence of Henry II’s involvement, but whoever attacked Boleslav would not have dared doing that against the will of the king. And the king did not identify and punish the perpetrators. Not the act of a friend and ally.

That raises the question why Henry II reversed the policy of close friendship and coordination with Poland that all previous Ottonian emperors had supported.

The fact that Boleslav stood with his brother-in-law Ekkehard in his bid for kingship is unlikely to be a reason for a deep rift between the two rulers. Henry II was perfectly happy to work with Heribert of Cologne who had actively promoted the candidacy of Hermann of Swabia.

Henry II bigger concern was the emergence of a hugely powerful new polity on his eastern frontier. Under Boleslav, Poland had become an increasingly coherent state, was expanding northwards and eastwards and the meeting of Gniezno had shown that the ruler of Poland had large resources at his disposal.

There is also a question about how useful the German/Polish alliance against the Slavs still was. As the pagan Slavs living between Poland and Germany were squashed harder and harder, at some point they would be wiped out and then Poland and Germany would come face to face on a new border. What then? If Poland had become too strong in the intervening period, Germany’s expansion would be blocked, removing a major source of tribute and plunder needed to keep the magnates on side.

That concern of rising Polish power increased further due to instability in neighbouring Bohemia. In 999 another Boleslav, Boleslav III (937-1037) called the Red had become duke of Bohemia. He was a weak ruler who quickly got into conflict with his stepbrothers Jaromir and Ulrich. Boleslav III had Jaromir castrated, and the two brothers fled into exile at the court of Henry II in Bavaria.

Before Henry II could intervene on their behalf, Boleslav III was deposed by a certain Wlodowej, a relative of the ducal family. Boleslav III fled to his relative, Boleslav the Brave of Poland.

The usurper Wlodowej died a few months later, allegedly because he could not go an hour without a drink. The two brothers returned with Jaromir been made duke. That lasted a few months before Boleslav III returned with support of Boleslav the Brave.

After the Polish Boleslav had returned home the Bohemian Boleslav invited all the major nobles of the duchy to dinner and – since they had supported either Wlodowej or Jaromir or were otherwise irritating, had them all killed. That did not go down well with his people, and they called on Polish Boleslav for help. Polish Boleslav lured Bohemian Boleslav into a trap and had him blinded and imprisoned. Boleslav the Brave made himself duke of Bohemia.

If that was not enough, Boleslav was strengthening his relationships with the Saxon magnates including by marrying his daughter to Hermann the son of Margrave Ekkehard. That gradually turned into a broader alliance of “Friends of Boleslav” that even included the duke of Saxony himself.

Bohemia, which was part of the empire, under the control of an already exceedingly powerful duke of Poland would have been unacceptable, even if the duke of Poland had been a faithful vassal. And a faithful vassal he clearly was not. When the Schweinfurter rebelled against Henry in 1003 as we heard in last episode, Boleslav the Brave popped up right by his side.

War had now become inevitable.

The first leg of the war was aimed at crushing the Schweinfurter. As we heard in the last episode, that was quite successful, and Henry destroyed many of his opponent’s castles.

Getting at Boleslav himself was more difficult. The area Henry II had to defend against a potential Polish attack stretched pretty much the full length of today’s Germany, from Hamburg in the far north to Passau in the far south. Moreover, the friends of Boleslav controlled most of the northern end of that border. They may not fight the king directly, but they would pass on information to Boleslav and hold back their troops. The only people Henry could trust in this conflict were the bishops and his Bavarians. In that situation Henry II did something very, very unexpected.

Henry II went into an alliance with the Liutzi, a federation of pagan Slavic tribes who lived in what is today Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. These peoples have been defending their way of life against Saxon incursions since at least the 920s.

The German chronicler Thietmar of Merseburg gives us a remarkably sympathetic description of their culture and their religious centre which he called Rethra, Riedegost or -for fans of Tolkien – Radegast.

Their holy of holies was a triangular building with three doors, built deep inside a holy forest. The building can be entered by all through two of the three doors. The third door is reserved to a special caste of priests. It opens onto a path that leads to a lake, that according to Thietmar, was “utterly dreadful in appearance”. The outer walls of the building were adorned by marvellous sculpted images of the gods and goddesses. Inside, in the centre was skilfully made shrine that was standing on a foundation composed of the horns of animals. There were full-sized free-standing sculptures of the gods, each inscribed with their name and clothed with helmets and armour. There was a senior god Thietmar calls Swarozyc, though other sources call him Radogast, the same as the name of the place.

The Liutzi had a priest class whose role was preside over the drawing of the lots to make major decisions. The process was divided in two parts. In part one the priests would throw the lots and divine from how they lay what they believed the correct decision was to be. Next, they would bring in the sacred enormous horse that would walk over the lots and thereby declare its reading of the omens. Only when the priests and the horse agreed would the decision be implemented. If they disagreed the proposal is rejected. And if the omen suggested that internal warfare was imminent, a giant boar would emerge from the lake.

The temple at Radegast was not the only one, but the most sacred. There were other religious centres for the different tribes in the federation. These tribes would take their decisions, namely about war and peace jointly and unanimously. Unanimous the decision might be, but there was a rule that anyone who opposes the decision in the assembly was beaten with rods until he agrees and if he opposes after the assembly, he loses everything, either by burning or confiscation. Clearly it does not always pay to be contrarian.

Part of the decision over war and peace was to determine what offers have to be made to the gods in case of a successful completion of the campaign, which according to German chroniclers could include a human sacrifice -though that is likely to be propaganda.

By 1002 these peoples had sustained relentless attacks from both Saxony and Poland for nearly 20 years. Both the Saxons and the Poles believed them to be their natural enemy and found their religious beliefs abhorrent.

These are the guys that Henry II calls upon for help against Boleslav the Brave. As you will hear, Henry II is otherwise very much the Christian ruler who derives his authority from God directly. Him allying with pagans upsets a lot of people, not least the missionaries like Brun of Querfurt who wrote a very unusual letter of complaint to his theocratic ruler.

Despite being unable to rely on the battle-hardened Saxons and morally in the wrong, the initial campaign was successful. Henry expelled Boleslav from Prague by circumventing the Poles major forces and put Jaromir back on the ducal throne.

In a next step he confronted Boleslav at a place called Krossen, where Boleslav had to flee, leaving a lot of his train behind, but without much loss of actual soldiers. Henry II progressed further into Poland and besieged Poznan, one of major towns. But in the end, he could not take the town and with his army weakened by hunger and disease, the two sides concluded a peace agreement in 1005.

This process would repeat itself several times over the next 13 years. Henry II would build up his forces, invade Poland, get stuck and finally agree a truce. That truce would last as long as it took Henry to gather new forces to make another run at it.

As time went by, Henry began to gradually replace unreliable counts and margraves along the border. Namely our friend Gunzelin, the brother-in-law of Boleslav was removed as the margrave of the crucial county of Meissen. Henry also tried to strengthen the power of the bishops in Saxony by handing them more and more resources. He -amongst other things – recreated the bishopric of Merseburg resolving an issue that had been undermining royal authority for the last 25 years.

One problem was that Boleslav was extremely well informed of what went on in Germany thanks to his network of supporters in the highest ranks of society. Every one of Henry’s moves, Boleslav could counter, and when that failed, he just disappeared into the depth of Poland where Henrys army would falter.

In 1013 both sides became pre-occupied with different things and made an attempt at a more lasting peace. Boleslav promised to be a faithful vassal of king Henry in exchange for being allowed to keep hold of what he had acquired, i.e., the Lausitz, Silesia and other parts of Bohemia Jaromir had been unable to recapture.

But that did not work either. Boleslav failed to send troops for Henry’s campaign to Rome which made him an unfaithful vassal. Henry invited Boleslav to a royal assembly in Merseburg to witness the submission of other unruly vassals before the emperor. That involved kneeling barefoot in front of the emperor wearing a hare shirt. To Henry’s surprise the proud duke of Poland did not fancy that, and hostilities resumed.

After another three-year campaign that was fought brutally across Poland, eastern Germany and Bohemia, Henry realised that he could not beat Boleslav. The two parties concluded a peace agreement signed at the castle of Bautzen, a final humiliation for Henry since Bautzen was on Imperial territory. Henry did not even bother to attend the ceremony. Boleslav had won almost everything he set out to gain, except for Meissen itself and the core duchy of Bohemia. That, together with his success against the Kievan Rus almost double the size of his realm. In the mind of many historians, Boleslav, and his father Miesco I, were the founders of Poland, turning a loose federation of independent groups into a coherent powerful state that was now outside any feudal obligation to The empire. As a last act, in the period of uncertainty after Henry IIs death, Boleslav had himself crowned king of Poland, a process that had begun 25 years earlier with the “act of Gniezno” when Otto III may or may not have put his imperial diadem on Boleslav’s head.

Apart from the resistance of the Saxon nobles, the moral headwind from the alliance with the pagan Slavs, the relative incompetence of Jaromir and the size of Poland, another reason for Henry’s failure in the east was that he had a number of other issues on his plate.

One of these issues was king Arduin of Italy. You may remember that when Otto III had died in 1002, his political construct for Italy collapsed. The Italian nobles elected one of their own, Margrave Arduin of Ivrea, a relative of Berengar II to be king of Italy. Arduin instantly embarked on the policy his electors wanted him to pursue – rolling back the power of bishops.

The Ottonian rule in Italy had relied very much on support from bishops, similar to the situation in Germany. The Ottonians, in their role as kings of Italy, would allocate land and resources to the bishops in exchange for these resources being available to the emperor when he comes down to Italy to fight either the pope or Byzantium or both. Apart from the bishops the Ottonians had relied on a select few of immensely powerful magnates, namely Hugh of Tuscany and the dukes of Spoleto. But the majority of the middling levels of the aristocracy regarded the Ottonians as foreigners and an impediment to their position. Furthermore, you have emerging urban elites whose main objective is to keep central power weak by constantly shifting allegiance from one side to the other.

That meant that Ottonian rule could not sustain itself. The bishops and a select few magnates is not enough to keep order in a kingdom as fragmented as Italy and full of still large defendable cities. Unless the imperial representative in Italy is as well connected as Adelheid, you have to rely on brute force, which means soldiers from the north. The issue with them is that they may be available for a campaign, but feudal obligations were such that keeping an army in the field permanently was effectively impossible. If the emperor was in Italy in person, he could often hold things together, even when the bulk of the army was back home in the north. When he was not there, the Italian aristocracy began to jump on the bishops and take all that imperial generosity off them. Arduin himself what been one of the most aggressive. He did not stop at taking the bishop of Vercelli’s land, but in 997 took the bishop’s head as well. That was still under Otto III’s rule and Arduin was excommunicated, his lands confiscated, and he was offered to go into a monastery. Otto III forced the aristocrats to hand back their booty to the bishops and monasteries.

In 1002 when Otto III died, Arduin came back out of his hidey hole, became king and began a new cycle taking land and privileges away from the bishops and giving it to his fellow aristocrats. Some bishops like Otto III’s chancellor for Italy joined Arduin to preserve their rights and their heads, whilst others opposed and often ended up fleeing north to Germany.

What facilitated Arduin’s rise to power was the death of Hugh of Tuscany, the big supporter of Ottonian policy. His heirs had split up the inheritance and none of them was either as powerful or as loyal as their predecessor had been.

Removing Arduin was one of the top priorities for Henry II once he had assumed control of the kingdom in October 1002. Because he had to deal with the Schweinfurter himself, Henry sent the duke of Carinthia and technically the ruler of Verona down to sort out Arduin. But he was not up to the job and his army was broken up coming down the Brenner pass.

In 1004 Henry II came himself. If you know the Brenner pass, you know that there are several locations where the valley narrows, creating excellent defensive positions. One of those is the Chiusa di Ceraino just north of Verona, which Arduin’s troops held. Henry II managed to circumvent them by sending some troops up side valleys and then fall on the enemy’s flank and back. That not only opened the way into Italy, but also compelled Arduin to flee.

On Mai 14th Henry II reached Pavia and was crowned by the archbishop of Milan with the iron crown of Lombardy.

His rule over Italy was however short. During the night of the coronation the people of Pavia rose up against their new king. This is an early indication that the urban population in Italy, as Thietmar said, “preferred the laxness of king Arduin”, i.e., wanted a weak central government.

Their uprising was a bit premature. With the German army occupying the city, the revolt ended in a massacre. Finding their king besieged in the royal palace in the centre of town, the German soldiers storm the gates, free the king and proceed to pillage, rape and finally burn down the whole city.

There you have it. The Furor Teutonicus, the German Fury is back. After that, Henry did not stay long in Italy, and it would be another 10 years before he would return.

Henry did not bother much with Italy. Some historians believe he had seen Otto III’s travails first hand and wanted to avoid the risk of deep entanglement in the complex Italian politics for no real gains. That may be, but there is also the fact that he had the much more pressing issue of Boleslav the Brave to deal with as well as number of domestic issues we will get into next week.

With Henry gone, Arduin immediately returns and whatever authority Henry may have had in Italy evaporates. He would still issue charters and grant rights in Italy, but what they are worth is questionable.

The longer Arduin stayed on the throne, the more Henry’s authority eroded. There is now a question on what grounds Henry claims any authority in Italy. Yes, he was crowned by the archbishop of Milan in the cathedral in Pavia with the correct crown, but so was Arduin.

You may remember that Otto II had tried to forge the German and Italian kingdoms into one entity, where the German and Italian magnates would jointly elect the king and a German and an Italian archbishop would jointly crown the new ruler, in that case Otto III.

By taking a separate coronation, Henry II had essentially broken that notion of an integrated superior realm. He had not proceeded to Rome to be crowned emperor, which would have strengthened his legitimacy.

In that dilemma he, or more likely one of his chancellors, comes up with a new concept. Initially Henry II would sign his charters as King of the Franks and the Lombards, in the same way Charlemagne did before he became emperor. But by 1007 Henry assumes a new title “King of the Romans”. This “King of the Romans” title is sort of an “emperor in waiting”. He is not yet crowned emperor by the pope, but he is already in charge of the empire, which means both Italy and Germany, as well as all the other territories that were part of the empire at the time, namely Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Austria, Switzerland, Czech republic and large parts of Eastern France etc.

This title, “King of Romans” stuck and was in use until 1806. It was most relevant for those kings that never make it to Rome to be crowned. You can have an empire ruled not by an emperor, but by a king.  It is also the reason why there is no “King of the Germans” ever. I know that I sometimes talk about the German kingdom or that such and such has become king of Germany. What I mean by that is the kingdom of East Francia, which is one of the three kingdoms that make the empire, East Francia (aka Germany), the Lombards (aka Northern Italy), and at a later stage Burgundy (aka Provence and Eastern France).

As we are talking about titles, another thing that comes up all the time is the “Holy Roman Emperor”. That word, to the extent it was ever really used, came only up in the 12th century. In the Ottonian period the title is simply Imperator or Augustus or Caesar, the latter word ultimately becoming the German work Kaiser. Being Emperor or Roman Emperor is not linked to a territory, which is obvious, since large parts of the area the Ottonians ruled had never been part of the Roman empire. Being emperor is more of a rank and a mission than a title. The rank is to be a unique monarch above all other kings, as the Roman emperor was always above mere kings in rank, whether they were his subjects or not. The mission is to protect and expand Christianity together with the Pope. In the same way the spiritual authority of the pope is in principle global, so is the imperial mission also global. In that sense, the empire is holy, but at this point it is not the Holy Roman Empire. 

Going back to Henry II the trick with calling himself “King of the Romans” worked only so far. By 1012/1013 the situation had become untenable. Henry needed to be crowned Emperor and quickly.

Meanwhile in Rome things had moved on. After Otto III had fled the city, the Crescenti had returned into their position as makers of popes. After the death of Sylvester II in 1003, they had run through John XVII, John XVIII and finally Sergius IV, called Buccaporci, pig’s snout for his unfortunate looks. All three are utterly insignificant puppets of the Crescenti. Though Otto III had killed the previous Crescenti praefect in the most gruesome way, the popes had maintained a reasonable relationship with Henry II. They acceded to most of his requests, but only on the assumption that he would not come anywhere near Rome.

In 1012 John Crescentius and Sergius IV both died within days of each other, very much suggesting foul play. That suspicion hardens when we hear that in the rioting that typically follows a papal death, the Theophylacts, eternal rivals of the Crescenti, took control of the city and the papacy. They make one of their number pope, who assumes the name of Benedict VIII.

Benedict VIII had been a layman before he was rapidly consecrated as a priest and then pope. He was an accomplished military man who smoked out the remaining Crescenti supporters who had also chosen one of theirs as pope. Benedict VIII was so successful that the Crescenti pope, Gregory VI had to flee to Germany. There Henry took him in, removed his papal vestments and told him that the best thing for him to do is go into a monastery and stay there for the rest of his life.

The Theophylacts were a lot more positively inclined towards the Ottonians, mainly on account of none of them having been killed by a German. That and the refutation of anti-pope Gregory made Benedict VIII willing to crown Henry II if he could make it to Rome.

That was less of a problem than last time. Arduin did not want or could not take a stand on one of the Brenner narrows and even offered to hand over the crown in exchange for the right to keep just Ivrea, an offer Henry rejected. Arduin got out of Henry’s way. Henry went down to Rome, gets himself and his wife Kunigunde, crowned, holds a synod where he creates the schism between the eastern and the western church over something called the filioque – I could explain, but hey.. and that is it. He is back in Bamberg in June 1014 – just 7 months after setting off. He really did not care much about Italy.

As soon as Henry was back home, Arduin came back, but, in a deviation from standard procedure, the Italian bishops managed to get him down. Arduin gives up and joins a monastery. His sons and nephews keep up the fight, but before it completely escalates the parties agree some sort of compromise. By 1016 Henry is finally sort of ruler of Northern Italy.

And that is where we should probably leave it for today. Next week we look a bit closer at how Henry manages domestic affairs. How he creates his kingdom as a “house of God” ruled by bishops, abbots and the emperor as the head of Christendom. We will talk about the conflict with the high nobility that he makes worse by doggedly pursuing a very wide definition of incest. And finally, listener K.K., we will talk about Bamberg, Henry’s great gift.

I hope you are going to join us again. And if you like the podcast, please let other people know, be it on social media, the podcasting review sections or old school, by talking to friends or family who may enjoy this sort of thing.

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Fighting the rivals for the imperial crown

Henry, Duke of Bavaria is the son of Henry the Quarrelsome and the grandson of Henry, brother and bane of Otto the Great. His branch of the family had forever believed that they were the true royal house and that the Ottos had usurped the crown through fiendish machinations at the battles of Birten and Andernach. Their ancestor had been born in aura Regis I.e., when the dynasty’s founder King Henry the Fowler was already king. That should have given him the claim under Byzantine rules, but somehow the crown went to Otto the Great who had been born the son of a mere duke. For 60 years the Henries had tried to claim their ancestral rights by force of arms or crooked conspiracies and never succeeded. But now, with all the Ottos dead and no heir in sight, it is payback time.

Hello and welcome to the history of the Germans, Episode 17: The (not yet holy) Emperor Henry II

I hope you enjoyed the last two episodes where we took a break from the narrative and had a bit of a look around Germany in the year 1000. Now it is time to get back into the story.

Back in Episode 14, Otto III, the madcap holy man intent of the renovation of the Western Roman Empire had died on January 24th 1002 in Paterno in Central Italy. On his death his whole dream collapsed within days. The Romans had already expelled the Germans but now the rest of the Italians rose up and elected a new king, margrave Arduin of Ivrea. Otto’s friends and supporters barely managed to carry his body back home. The funeral cortège was constantly harassed by Arduin’s soldiers, the local minor nobles and the city dwellers until they reached the relative safety of Verona.

From Verona the procession crossed the Alps and arrives in Bavaria in late February/early March. There the catafalque is greeted by Henry, duke of Bavaria.

We have encountered Henry before. He is the son of Henry the Quarrelsome and the grandson of Henry, brother and bane of Otto the Great. His branch of the family had forever believed that they were the true royal house and that the Ottos had usurped the crown through fiendish machinations at the battles of Birten and Andernach. Their ancestor had been born in aura Regis I.e., when the dynasty’s founder King Henry the Fowler was already king. That should have given him the claim under Byzantine rules, but somehow the crown went to Otto the Great who had been born the son of a mere duke. For 60 years the Henries had tried to claim their ancestral rights by force of arms or crooked conspiracies and never succeeded. But now, with all the Ottos dead and no heir in sight, it is payback time.

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So, from Henry’s perspective it is a complete no-brainer. everybody should rejoice in the elevation of the true king, himself, Henry of Bavaria. And so, he asks the assembled magnates and bishops who had accompanied the body of the former ruler to declare him king. Well, he was a bit surprised when they were no enthusiastic hurrahs following that suggestion. Ok, they are a bit shy given the unusual situation. He changed tactics and took each one aside separately and offered them gold and land if they were acknowledging him. Still no luck. Well, if they cannot be bribed, maybe they can be forced. So, he made them hand over the imperial regalia, things like the Imperial Crown, the Sceptre, the sword, the coronation mantle etc.

But that is where he hits the next major roadblock. The most important of all the regalia, the Holy Lance was not there. Archbishop Heribert of Cologne, the close friend and advisor of Otto III had been smart enough to send the Holy Lance off to Cologne when the cortege had left Italy. Without the Lance, Henry could not get crowned.

The chroniclers do not tell us why the magnates present at this meeting in Bavaria were so opposed to Henry as king. Thietmar of Merseburg simply stated they believed him to be unsuitable for high office. That is sometimes seen as a reference to Henry’s fragile health, but I am not sure that is the whole reason. Henry was clearly fit enough to run Bavaria, one of the largest duchies. He had also been a commander of the armies of Otto III in Italy.

The problem is more that the people who had accompanied Otto III’s body back to Germany were the most loyal supporters of the dead emperor. Heribert of Cologne, Bernward of Hildesheim, the bishop of Augsburg may have believed that under a king Henry new people would come in and they would lose control of the kingdom. After all the line of Henries have at best been grudgingly loyal to the Ottos and may have very different ideas about how and by whom the empire should be run.

On top of that Henry was running a very tight ship in Bavaria. Compared to other duchies, Henry kept his major counts and bishops on a tight leach. That is not something these powerful barons and bishops were keen on for the empire as a whole.

There were already some other contenders coming out of the woodwork offering alternatives to recognising Henry. It is actually quite a long list of contenders.

The most eminent of them was Otto of Worms, the closest relative of Otto III. He was the son of Luidgard, the daughter of Otto the Great. His stint on the ballot did not last long. It seemed that Otto and Henry had come to an agreement whereby Otto stepped aside for reasons of age, whilst also receiving the duchy of Carinthia for his son. One down in the first round.

The next one on the list of dukes was Bernward of Saxony, a descendant of Hermann Billung. He had no royal blood whatsoever but was a recognised leader. Would that be enough?  Bernward took one look at the potential mess he could get himself into and decided to step away. That is two down.

Within Saxony there was however a more ambitious man, count Ekkehard of Meissen. He was a celebrated warrior. His most famous feat was the storming of the Castel Sant Angelo in 998, you remember the one where Otto III either used some nifty siege technology or simple betrayal. Whichever it was, Ekkehard was the first man over the parapet. He also had been successful in his campaigns in the east, keeping control of the Slavs east of Meissen, taming the duke of Bohemia and commanding the respect of Boleslav the Brave of Poland. His fame was such that he was recognised by many as duke of Thuringia, a title that had been out of use for 200 years. He may not have any royal blood, but he is definitely on the list.

The most serious contender was Hermann, duke of Swabia. Hermann also had little blood relations with the Ottonians, but he made up for that with loyalty. As we know by now, the Konradiner dukes of Swabia are the ones that always come to the rescue when one of the Ottos get into trouble. Hermann of Swabia more than many others represents the continuation of the current regime.

Sorry, we are still not done. There were also the Ezzelinos, the embarrassing nouveau riches of the imperial family. Count Ezzo was a noble who became close enough to the empress Theophanu that she allowed him to marry her daughter. By that time the imperial family had taken in so much of Byzantine traditions that daughters born in the purple would automatically be destined for the church. No mere mortal would ever be good enough to touch them. Well exceptions prove the rule and count Ezzo, maybe by touching young Mathilda a bit before that was suitable got imperial dispensation to marry her. To maintain the status of the bride, Ezzo was granted vast domains, suddenly making him one of the richest magnates in the land.  That being so easy seems to have encouraged him to stretch out his dirty paws for the whole thing and he put his name in the goblet.

There were a few more, but since I want to keep you guys on board, I decided to drop them.

Lots to choose from for the magnates, which is not good news for Henry, who still believes the crown is his by rights. No way he will let this last chance his family has to achieve their ultimate ambition slip through his fingers. And if that means he must play dirty, then playing dirty is what he will do.

 The first thing he needs is the Holy Lance. No Lance no legitimate coronation. To get the lance out of its current holder, Heribert of Cologne, Henry takes Heribert’s brother, the bishop of Augsburg hostage. Henry’s grandfather had blinded an archbishop, so there was a serious threat behind the blackmail. And Heribert understood. The Lance was quickly produced, bringing Henry one step closer to kingship.

Then he accompanied the body of Otto III to Augsburg where he had the intestines of his predecessor removed and buried in the church of St. Afra, near the shrine of Saint Ulrich, defender of Augsburg against the Magyars. This act was meant to remind everyone of the great battle of Otto the Great on the Lechfeld where Henry’s grandfather had also played a major role. Basically, he says, look what this dynasty has done for you- recognise me as the heir to all that glory.

Meanwhile in Saxony the Major nobles of the duchy had come together to discuss the succession. There was no consensus amongst the Saxons on who they wanted as the new king. They were treated well under the Ottonians who still saw themselves as Saxons and they ideally wanted their privileged status to remain as is. But there was no natural candidate for that policy. Some supported Hermann of Swabia. There was also Ekkehard of Meissen who was a Saxon, but he was not universally loved in the duchy. So, in the first instance the Saxon nobles agreed to recognise no one, and all attendants, apart from Ekkehard, swore not to support any candidate unless they had agreed as a duchy.

One Saxon noble, Liuthard, however had a firm view that Ekkehard should not become king under any circumstances. He had it in for Ekkehard because of some slight related to a marriage proposal. So, he travelled down to Bavaria to discuss next steps with Henry. These two came up with a plan. They would send two abbesses, Mathilda and Sophie, a sister and an aunt of Otto III to plead Henry’s case in front of the Saxon nobles. These Ottonian abbesses are not to be underestimated. These ladies ruled abbeys that were extraordinarily rich and could raise significant contingents of soldiers. But more importantly, they combined imperial and sacred status. Several of them had become saints after their death, others had been regents during the absence of Otto II and Otto III.

When the ladies showed up at the gathering of the Saxon magnates, they were initially treated with all the honours becoming their status. But after they had made their mission clear, Ekkehard and his supporters stopped being nice. They sent the ladies up to their room without dinner and took their place at the feast. That was a big mistake. You cannot treat the imperial ladies like that. Ekkehard was made to leave the gathering with his chances much diminished. He headed for Aachen, where Otto IIIs body was to be buried and, where in all likelihood, a royal assembly would gather to elect a new king.

En route to Aachen Ekkehard stayed at the Pfalz in Poehlde. In the night four armed men attack his sleeping quarters. They enter the antechamber and kill two his attendants. Ekkehard wakes up and tries to raise his guards by making a fire and opening the window. All that does is alert the attackers of his whereabouts.  They break down the door, kill more of his knights and finally one throws a javelin that brings the mighty warrior down.  When he lies on the ground the assailants pile in, cut off his head and gruesomely mutilate his body before retreating. That crime shocked his contemporaries and raised many questions.

The assailants claimed it was revenge for the mistreatment of the imperial ladies at dinner. There was also some blood feud going on between Ekkehard and one of his assailants. But some things point to Henry as well. The assailants were relatives Henry’s wife Kunigunde, of which there are admittedly many. Now I do not want to point the finger at anyone here, but that smells a bit off.

Killing Ekkehard created not just a moral but also a military problem. Ekkehard and his reputation as an invincible warrior had been key to holding down the Slavic tribes around Meissen and keeping the dukes of Bohemia in line. Ekkehard also maintained great relations with Boleslav the Brave of Poland. With his death that whole power balance collapsed, adding another big headache to whoever would become king.

Anyway, another one down, but two more to go, Ezzo and Hermann of Swabia.

By March the body of Otto III had finally reached Aachen where he wanted to be buried. Henry had not come along but remained in Bavaria readying his supporters. At the funeral there were many magnates present plus an archbishop, Heribert of Cologne as well as the two other contenders, Hermann of Swabia and Count Ezzo. It seems Ezzo and Hermann came to some sort of arrangement, so that Ezzo now supported Hermann of Swabia.

The majority of the magnates present in Aachen swear an oath to support Hermann’s claim. But they do not formally elect Hermann and most importantly they do not consecrate and anoint him. The reason they could not do that was that they had the wrong archbishop, the one from Cologne, not the one from Mainz, and, crucially, they did not have the imperial regalia, in particular they did not have the Holy Lance.

These were still with Henry. And now he makes his big move. There is one person in the game we have not talked about yet. The archbishop of Mainz, Willigis. Willigis had already been kingmaker for little Otto III and had been regent during Otto IIIs minority. He sat on the council with first Theophanu and then Adelheid, effectively ruling the country. But after Otto III had taken over, Willigis was pushed aside and replaced by Heribert of Cologne. Willigis sulked back home in Mainz and started building an enormous church on the plan of old St. Peter in Rome, only bigger and better.

Willigis had always been one of the most astute political operators during the Ottonian period. After Otto II died he kept a neutral stance until he saw Henry the Quarrelsome’s plans going down the Swanny and jumped onto the Theophanu/Adelheid boat just at the right time. This time around he did it again. Keeping a watchful eye on the contestants he placed his bet late, but definitely not too late. And this time he held more of the chips, since he was the only archbishop who could legitimately crown a king. In April he came in firmly on Henry’s side.

He let Henry know, that if he can make it over to Mainz with the imperial regalia and a set of nobles that look remotely like a quorum for an election, he would crown him. Now to get to Mainz from Bavaria you need to do one thing, cross the Rhine River, a piece of information not lost on Hermann of Swabia who began patrolling the river north and south of Mainz, waiting for Henry to show up. And Henry indeed showed up at Worms with his supporters. When he saw Hermann on the opposite shore, he decided not to cross. He announced that it was hopeless and that he was heading back towards Bavaria. Hermann, thinking he had won, retired to Swabia awaiting prolonged negotiations over the handing out of the regalia.

Well, Hermann had not read up his history and forgotten that the Henries were a crafty bunch. Rather than going back to Bavaria as Henry had made Hermann believe, he turned back to the Rhine once the coast was clear, crossed over and rushed to Mainz. There, his supporters, basically the Bavarians and his wife’s clan, the Luxembourgers, elected him king and Willigis had him crowned in his shiny new cathedral.

If you ask Henry, he now has achieved 2 ½ of the requirements of becoming king. He was the direct male heir of the dynasty and he had been anointed and consecrated by the correct archbishop with all the necessary regalia, including the Holy Lance. Ok, the election was a bit dodgy but that can be fixed, right?

The first place to go to fix it is Saxony. The Saxon nobles have declared themselves neutral and, given the last 4 king-emperors were Saxons, believe they are the ones who should have the ultimate right to designate the new king.

The magnates of Saxony met for the third time to discuss the succession, this time in Merseburg. Henry appeared in person, wearing the royal robes and crown, thereby indicating that he did not come for election but for allegiance. The Saxons yielded, but only after having secured their ancient rights and privileged access to the king. Henry received another this time only a ceremonial coronation. Henry and his wife moved on from there to Paderborn, which is still in Saxony. Here his wife, Kunigunde was formally crowned, which is another faint attempt by the Saxons to retain the right to determine who is king and queen of the land.

Now Henry has support from his Bavarians, the Saxons and the family of his wife in Lothringia. And that is where he travels next. Extensive negotiations with the Lothringian magnates ensure count Ezzo also completely rescinds his claim. Archbishop Heribert of Cologne caves as well and guides Henry up on to the imperial throne of Charlemagne in Aachen.

By now we should be done. Ekkehard of Meissen is dead, Otto of Worms, Bernhard of Saxony and Count Ezzo have all thrown in the towel. There is however still the obstinate Hermann of Swabia. Hermann had for some reason decided to fight Henry by sacking the city of Strasburg and harassing its bishop. As so often with medieval warfare, one struggles to see the tactical benefit of a fight in the deep southwest of the country when the enemy is up in the northeast. The most remarkable titbit about this sacking is the bishop of Strasbourg himself. He is the first member of the Habsburg family to grace this podcast. Apart from getting sacked, the only other thing he is famous for is laying the foundation for the cathedral of Strasburg. Not the most significant of the Habsburgs, but the first.

Back to Hermann of Swabia. Once Henry had gained the three main duchies and travelled in triumph through Franconia, Hermann knew that there was no point in any further fighting. He bent the knee and with that act, in early October 1002, 9 months after the death of Otto III the realm had a new uncontested king, Henry II.

What is remarkable is that that the institutions of the realm had worked fairly effectively. Apart from the pointless sacking of Strasburg and the murder of Ekkehard, the transition was comparatively bloodless. What made it so was that, in this time of piety and veneration, the fact that Henry managed to get himself anointed with the right piece of kit completely superseded the lack of an election or broad support. Sure, the magnates would have very much preferred to sit down and discuss the merits of the different candidates, but once there was one who had the blessing from above, democratic legitimacy was no longer required.

Henry II is now king, but who is he? We have heard of him several times during the last couple of episodes, but I haven’t given you a full picture yet.

Henry II was born most likely in 973 as son of Henry the Quarrelsome and his wife Gisela, the daughter of the king of Burgundy. He is barely a year old when Otto II has his father imprisoned on counts of treason. The next 10 years Henry the Quarrelsome will remain locked up and his son is brought up, first by the bishop of Freising, and then by the bishop of Hildesheim.

Henry enters the cathedral school in Hildesheim and is promised to the church. That might have been his parents’ decision who had given up all hope of future royal or ducal titles, or, what is more likely, Otto II had forced them to make him and his brother churchmen to put an end to the constant rebellions of the Henries.

Henry is a bookish boy who enjoys his studies of theology and seems content to become a canon and maybe a bishop later. Things go up in the air in 983 when Otto II died, and his father is released from prison. His father, Henry the Quarrelsome’s attempt to gain the crown failed as we heard in episode 11. During his father’s uprising the future king Henry II stayed with his mother and possibly his little cousin Otto III at Merseburg. He stays there for the 2 years it takes his father to make peace with Theophanu, a time during which one would assume the family remained anxious about what will happen next. Little Henry is about 12 or 13 years old when his father is reinstated as duke of Bavaria. He finally experiences settled family life for the first time, or what goes for settled family life in the 10th century.

His further education is handed over to bishop Wolfgang of Regensburg. Wolfgang was one of the great proponents of the reform movement that we mentioned in last episode. He cleaned up the rich monasteries of Regensburg and forced the monks and nuns back into tight adherence to the rules of St. Benedict – forcing them to do a bit more manual labour and less frolicking about. All this happened with enthusiastic support from Henry’s parents and later from Henry himself.

We have seen already with Otto III that piety can be a defining trait of rulers in the 10th and 11th century. Henry’s interest though was much more in reforming the church, the bishoprics and monasteries, whilst Otto’s piety was more self-centred. If you like, Henry wanted the whole of the church to be pure to ensure salvation for all, whilst Otto III wanted to be pure or purify himself to get himself into Paradise. 

But Henry did not just focus on spiritual education. His father seems to have involved Henry in the administration of the duchy from an early age. When he is 21, a document refers to him as “condux”, a joint ruler together with his father.

Under Henry the Quarrelsome and then his son the duchy of Bavaria has become a very tightly run operation. We can see that from the so-called Ranshofen Resolutions. In these the ducal assembly sets out rules about serfs running away from their villages. This is not just interesting as it suggests there were labour shortages which means economic growth and hence peasants were able to improve their lot. It is also interesting because the punishments for the lord who harbours the fugitives were so harsh. It could go as far as revoking the whole fief of the lord. These decisions were all to be made by the duke himself, even if it was a fief of say a bishop or count.

That and other documents suggest the duke of Bavaria was able to keep the peace in the land, stop feuds, prevent the building of castles and be the ultimate judge in disputes between his nobles. He could remove counts who failed in their duties and replace them with loyal supporters, something we know the king-emperors were no longer able to except for special circumstances.

That depth of rule had been lost since Charlemagne and no other duke -as far as we know – had similar control. It may also explain the hesitancy of many fellow magnates during Henry’s bid for kingship. They feared an extension of Bavarian practices would undermine their position – and they may be right about that.

When Henry’s father died in 995, Henry is 22 years old. The chronicles, most of which written later, report that The Quarrelsome had made his son promise to support Otto III in all and everything and not ever to rebel, something he sincerely regretted having done.

That is obviously propaganda. As the son of a rebel and the grandson of a rebel, Henry needed a narrative that made him look not only as the legitimate heir by inheritance from Henry the Fowler, but also the heir his predecessor, Otto III would have chosen. During Henry II’s reign a number of chronicles are written that justify his claim by both his royal descent as well as his loyalty to Otto III. One of these stories is that in the year 1001 German nobles allegedly planned an insurrection, but Henry refused to join them so that it petered out. We also find Henry regularly supporting Otto III’s adventures in Italy and he is there when the whole edifice comes crashing down. His soldiers defend the funeral cortege in its hazardous journey back to Verona. He has Otto’s intestines buried in the church of St. Afra in Regensburg. And throughout his reign he will constantly refer to his cousin Otto III as the senior and most noble emperor etc. pp.

What he really thought about Otto III we will never know. But given Otto’s father had caused all sorts of hardship and insecurity to his family whilst he was a child and he had grown up with the notion that his family was the only really deserving royal family, he is unlikely to have started out with a positive pre-disposition. From his own policies we can conclude that he found Otto’s madcap adventures in Italy pretty pointless. So, he played the long game. Pretend he loved the pious dreamer on the imperial throne and wait for it to all crumble to nothing. Ok, I am putting thoughts in his mind for which I have no evidence but give me a break. Unless medieval basic psychology is something fundamentally alien, he must have hated thatgodly teenager.

One big influence on our new king and future emperor is his wife.  Henry had married Kunigunde, either around 996 or in the year 1000. Kunigunde is the daughter of count Siegfried of Luxembourg, one of the most powerful magnates in Lothringia. The Luxembourgs are a family we will hear a lot more about in our story. For now, what matters is that the Luxembourgs are part of a clan that stretches across Germany with possession all over the country. I did not mention their support in Henry’s dash for the royal coronation, but it was very important. Bavaria alone would not have been enough to get him there.

Kunigunde was another one of these empresses like Adelheid and Theophanu who were explicitly described as “sharing in the imperial authority”. Even by these standards Henry and Kunigunde were a formidable couple. They often shared the burden of actual rule by splitting the work up, Henry fighting in the West whilst Kunigunde was holding the East.

Despite this close personal bond they could not have children. Henry declared this publicly already in 1007 after less than 10 years of marriage, and – contrary what you would expect in the Middle Ages – did not blame it on her. As a consequence, Henry picked up the mocking name of Henry the lame, as in lame of loin. His supporters turned the story around and claimed that he and Kunigunde had never consummated their marriage to preserve her virginal state, as a step to future holiness. That latter notion is unlikely since there are charters where Henry explicitly states that he “recognised her in the flesh.” Best guess is that Henry was unable to sire children for whatever medical reason. The childlessness of the couple will drive a number of their decisions as we will see.

Kunigunde’s direct role was as the de facto royal administrator for the duchy of Bavaria. As I said, Bavaria was Henry’s main powerbase, and he had no intention of letting it go – full stop. But the idea of the king directly running one of the duchies had become a genuine no-no by the year 1000. The aristocrats had enforced an unwritten rule that vacant duchies needed to be awarded to someone else, usually one of the leading nobles of the duchy. And that even applied to Henry whose family had held Bavaria on and off for the last 50 years.

The largest of Henry’s Bavarian vassals, and therefore first in line to become duke was the count of Schweinfurt. It may well be that Henry had explicitly promised him the duchy to get his support for the bid to become king.  Whether or not he had, when the Schweinfurter asked for what he believed was his right, he was told not yet, but that Henry would call an assembly of the Bavarian nobles to elect a new duke. When asked when that assembly would take place the answer was a touch too vague for the Schweinfurter’s taste.

Henry was playing for time, time he used to hollow out the duchy. He passed proprietary monasteries and ducal castles into the royal demesne, carved out the duchy of Carinthia and gave it to a guy called Conrad, we will meet again later. As the Schweinfurter saw his prize thinning down by the day he saw no other solution than to rebel. He teamed up with members of his own clan, some Saxon nobles and even the king’s brother, Brun. He also added an international dimension by teaming up with the Polish duke/king Boleslav the Brave.

The Schweinfurter might have thought that this little bit of sable rattling would jog things along, as it might have done with previous incumbents on the royal throne. But not so with Henry II. Henry II had seen how powerful a streamlined operation like his duchy of Bavaria could be and wanted the whole country to run like that. He came down on him with the full might of the royal army and the count had to pack his bags quickly, fleeing across the border to Poland. Henry began to systematically flatten his opponent’s castles. With the Schweinfurter gone and the duchy hollowed out, Henry put his brother-in-law, another Henry in charge of the duchy. But that Henry was not even able to reside in the splendid capital of the duchy, Regensburg, but had to set up his own new administrative centre. The true ruler of the duchy was instead his sister, the wife of Henry II, the formidable Kunigunde. She resided in Regensburg and through her own private possessions, the royal monasteries and the bishops effectively ruled the duchy.

This rebuttal of aristocratic claims will become a key feature of Henry II’s reign. He is trying to make that next step of using control over church resources to enforce the royal power over the barons, counts and dukes, a process that had been extraordinarily successful in the duchy of Normandie.

Next week we will see how Henry II goes about sorting out the internal structure of the Reich. We will also see how he manages the eastern frontier where Boleslav the Brave of Poland, the one that Otto III had made a friend and ally of the Romans, had become overwhelmingly powerful. And the situation in Italy remained chaotic with an Italian king openly defying Henry’s authority.

I hope you are going to join us again next week. Ad in the meantime, if you enjoyed this episode, why not tell other people about the podcast, on social media, in the review sections of Apple Podcasts and others, or old school, when you are chatting with your friends, something we hopefully can do a lot more often now…

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