In this episode we will come to the end of the Investiture controversy, the end of the Salian dynasty and the end of Season 2  – and ask the question, what was all that about?

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 42 –  A World Revolution?

In this episode we will come to the end of the Investiture controversy, the end of the Salian dynasty and the end of Season 2  – and ask the question, what was all that about?

Before we start a just a reminder. The History of the Germans Podcast is advertising free thanks to the generous support from patrons. And you can become a patron too and enjoy exclusive bonus episodes and other privileges from the price of a latte per month. All you have to do is sign up at patreon.com/historyofthegermans or on my website historyofthegermans.com. You find all the links in the show notes. And thanks a lot to Andrew, Martha and David who have already signed up.

Last week we ended with Emperor Henry V and Pope Calixtus II getting within a hairs breadth of an agreement that would have brought the investiture conflict in Germany to an end.

Over almost 50 years of war the church and the secular rulers have narrowed down the so-called investiture controversy to one question, how are bishops and abbots appointed? Both France and England had settled the issue with the papacy in 1104 and 1107. In France the arrangement was that the church was free to select its bishops and abbots, however, once selected, the bishop or abbot would have to swear fealty to the king and offer him the services associated with the fiefs the church had received. In England that rule was similar with the crucial difference that the king was allowed to be present at the election and had a casting vote in case no unanimous decision could be agreed upon by the canons. Both of these compromises were a formal limitation of royal prerogatives, but left the rulers with the all important access to the church resources.

The Emperor Henry V was ready to go down a similar route in 1119 and had travelled towards an encounter with pope Calixtus II, only for negotiations to collapse at the last minute. Both sides accused each other of duplicity and last-minute changes. Everything reverted to square 1 and the pope excommunicated Henry V who in turn resumed hostilities against the Gregorian party in Germany.

In 1121 he mustered an army to attack the city of Mainz and its archbishop, his former friend and chancellor Adalbert. Adalbert had by now become papal legate in Germany and one of the most intransigent agents of the hard-line reformers. His stubbornness had lost Adalbert some support amongst the more moderate factions, including his fellow church leaders, the archbishops of Cologne and Trier, but he still had the support of the Saxons under the leadership of Lothar of Supplinburg.

When the two armies faced each other the princes in both camps decided that for the sake of the realm, battle should be avoided. Without a mandate from the emperor of the archbishop the two sides negotiated a formula for peace: “regalia vel fiscalia regno, ecclesiastica ecclesii”. To the king the king’s rights and possessions, to the church the churches’ rights.

This, all the princes jointly promised, is what they would help the king to negotiate with the papacy. Facing a united front of emperor and all the princes, Calixtus II would have to yield. The princes did not have to say what would happen to Henry V if the emperor had dared to reject their proposal.

Let me just leave this here – we will discuss why this is probably an even more important event than the actual concordat of Worms in a moment.

With Germany united in its position, negotiations started swiftly and -after a bit of diplomatic to and fro were concluded on September 23^rd 1122 in a field outside the city of Worms. The agreement consisted in two separate treaties.

In the first one, the Henricianum, named after Henry V, the emperor renounces his right to invest bishops with the ring and the staff. He guarantees the churches their right to freely elect their bishops and abbots. He promises to return or help recover whatever land and rights the churches may have lost to secular lords.

In the simultaneous treaty called the Calixtinium, Pope Calixtus II grants the emperor the right to invest the bishop or abbot with his royal fiefs. The symbol for that investiture is now a sceptre. In Germany this investiture is to take place before the consecration of the prelate, whilst in Italy and in Burgundy it takes place afterwards. And the pope allows for Henry to be present at the elections of bishops and abbots and grants him some sort of involvement in resolving contentious elections. In all cases the bishop or abbot owes the king the services under the rules of the fief.

In non-legalese this means the role of the German king in the selection and investiture of bishops is very similar to the situation in England and more significant than in France. Hold that thought – we will get back to this in a moment.

The Concordat brought an end to the religious conflict in Germany but did not result in much of an increase in imperial power on the ground. Saxony remained firmly in the hands of Lothar of Supplinburg. How little influence he now has becomes clear when the counties of Meissen and Lausitz became vacant. It was the duke of Saxony, not the emperor who chose the new counts for these extremely wealthy and strategically important counties. Lothar’s choice as count of Meissen was Conrad of Wettin. Conrad’s descendants would rule the lands around Meissen until rising to become the electors of Saxony, later kings of Saxony-Poland and creators of the greatest of German baroque cities, Dresden.

Whilst Henry’s room to manoeuvre in Germany became tighter and tighter, he was looking for a way out. Anything that would help him gather enough resources to resume the fighting and return to effective power in Germany.

And that opportunity came after in 1120 thanks to a maritime disaster. On the 25^th of November William Adelin, son of King Henry I of England boarded the Blanche Nef, the White Ship in Barfleur in Normandy. William being 17 and a man about town took along his entourage of some 300 retainers many of similar age. And they proceeded to do what 17-year-olds left without parental supervision have done since time immemorial, they had some hell of a party. Plus, they were on the fastest ship of the royal fleet, which meant that obviously they wanted to have a race. The king himself had set off earlier that day and bets were taken that the Blanche Nef could overtake the royal ship. The ship’s captain, probably ether sozzled or stirred in his pride set off with a bunch of pissheads in the depth of the night. Barfleur is not an especially difficult port to navigate. What you have to do is go East northeast for about 2 miles to be clear of outlying rocks before you can turn due north for England.  The pilot and the captain, keen to speed things up cut the corner and hit a rock. In the dark and cold all onboard perished except for one man, a butcher from Rouen who clung on to the fatal rock.

The death of King Henry’s only son created an opportunity for our Henry, Emperor Henry V who was married to, yes, the only legitimate daughter of King Henry I, Matilda. It wasn’t clear at this point that Henry I would not have another son, but the optionality was attractive enough for the emperor to invest heavily in the friendship with the ruler of England and Normandy.

The two of them forged a military alliance and Henry V mustered an army to support his father-in-law in his perennial struggles with the French crown. Fighting the French suited Henry V well anyway after their king had been such a strong supporter of the pope in the run-up to the Concordat of Worms.

Henry V thought the puny king Louis VI of France who controlled nit much more than the area around Paris and could call some bishops his vassals would be a pushover. In particular if the two Henrys staged a pincer movement coming simultaneously from the North and the East. And he should have been, had it not been for a sudden emergence of national sentiment amongst the French.

Henry V’s initial target was the city of Reims, the place of royal coronations and place of Clovis’ baptism. Something about the idea of the German emperor lording it over the church of Saint Remy stirred up patriotic sentiment amongst the French princes. They joined their king at the Abbey of Saint Denis, outside Paris, and raised the royal battle standard, the Oriflamme, a blood red, pointed banner flown from a golden lance for the very first time. The Oriflamme was the symbol of Saint Denis, everybody’s favourite headless saint, was believed to have been carried by Charlemagne into the Holy land and wielded by the legendary Roland. It would lead the French army into battle for the next couple of hundred years. Where the emperors had their Holy Lance, the Kings of France had their Oriflamme.

In this contest of the symbols in 1124 the shiny Oriflamme won out. The flipside of Louis’ support in France was the deafening silence Henry’s call for national unity found in Germany.

This defeat is by no means the end of the struggle for the succession of king Henry I, a process that will take decades and pitched Matilda against her cousin Stephen of Blois.

Henry V did not take part in any of these struggles. He died On Mai 23^rd, 1125 in Utrecht. He was 39 years old. If he had lived it would have been him who had fought alongside Matilda for the crown of England and his sons rather than the Plantagenets would have ruled England for the next few centuries. No Eleanor of Aquitaine, no Richard Lionheart no Henry V or Richard III. Shakespeare’s heroes would have been called Henry, Konrad or Fritz and you would look at this podcast and go Ahh Salians – so boring. Can’t you talk about something we know nothing about.

His body was brought to imperial basilica in Speyer where he was buried next to his father, grandfather and great grandfather.

Henry V had no son and with that the Salian dynasty ended. Henry V designated the sons of his daughter Agnes, Frederick and Konrad of Hohenstaufen to be the heirs to his fortune.

The Salian dynasty had ruled the Empire for almost exactly 100 years, from the election of Konrad II in 1024 to the death of Henry V in 1125. It was a period of massive change, socially, economically, politically and spiritually. Debate about what had happened and what it meant for the future began amongst contemporaries and has been raging ever since.

The chronicler Otto von Freising, a grandson of Henry V who wrote just 25 years after the death of the emperor saw the conflict between the papacy and the emperor as a world-ending calamity. The fragmentation of the unity of the spiritual and the secular was a portent of the end of the Roman Empire, which according to Saint Augustin ushered in the coming of the antichrist and hence the end of the world. It was the bishops and abbots who were to blame for this. They had been made rich by the generosity of the emperors only to turn around and impale their now enfeebled benefactor with his own swords.

The German 19^th century followed in that same vein. The church had stalled the progress of Germany towards statehood that ultimately resulted in the fratricidal religious wars and subsequent political decline to insignificance of the Reich. This storyline had the added advantage of blaming the catholic pope for all the misery of the 17^th and 18^th century.  A view that helped justify why Germany should be unified by protestant Prussia and not by catholic Austria. In 1872 Bismarck initiated the Kulturkampf, an early version of a culture war. He attempted to restrain the catholic churches political influence. When he had pushback from the pope he famously said “we would not go to Canossa”. This statement, later put on a monument erected on the Harzburg, summarizes the 19^th century Prussian view that the pope was Germany’s downfall. Going to Canossa became a standing expression signifying humiliating defeat. It is the German equivalent of “eating humble pie”.

After World War II German historians began to de-emphasize the importance of the conflict between pope and emperor. Focus shifted to the reasons for the tensions between the emperor and the princes. A view emerged that the Investiture Controversy was mainly a German civil war over hegemony where the pope could tilt the balance but was not driving events. The ineptitude of Henry IV and the military success of the princes ended the command monarchy of the early Salians, not Canossa or the Concordat of Worms.

Whilst Germans were looking at the Investiture conflict more as a continuation of broader longer-term trends, English historians like Norman Cantor, Chris Wickham and most recently Tom Holland put the Investiture Conflict in a line with the French and the Russian revolution as one of the great turning points of European, if not world history.

A World Revolution they call it. Well, was it that? What is a “World Revolution”? Mike Duncan is on his 326^th episode of Revolutions has not mentioned the Investiture Conflict once.

If I have taken anything away from listening to the Revolutions Podcast it is that all of Revolutions seem to have the same structure. It starts with an existing political and economic order that has some serious structural weaknesses. These weaknesses are getting exposed by a combination of specific events, lost wars, bad harvests, financial collapse etc.. The whole thing blows up because an incompetent or excessively stubborn ruler fails to see the opportunities to avoid disaster and hurtles the creaky wagon of history down the precipice.

Imperial rule being exposed to unreliable bishops and rebellious dukes, I.e., structurally weak – tick;

Untimely death of Henry III, papal schisms and abduction of the king at Kaiserswerth exposing weakness of the regime – tick

Henry IV acting like a bull in a China shop towards Gregory VII and the Saxons -tick, tick, tick

Once a revolution has started, we cycle through the degrees of extremism where last year’s hard left are this year’s conservatives until the process is led at absurdum. After that last spasm of revolutionary energy, the surviving protagonists begin to rebuild society by combining bits of the old and bits of the new.

Again tick, tick, tick. We go from moderate reformer Leo IX to revolutionary Gregory VII, inventive Urban II to extremist Paschalis II, only to end up with Calixtus II who tries to put Humpty Dumpty together again.

In episode 30 I suggested a structure for the narrative across three strains, the rise of the papacy, the conflict between the princes and the emperor and the rise of lay piety. Even now, 12 episodes later, I think this structure is still valid and a great way to look at how this new order differs from the old.

Let’s start with the papacy.

Before 1042 the pope was little more than the bishop of Rome and an authority that could be called upon to resolve conflicts within the church that could not be resolved at a lower level. There were no rules about the selection or investiture of popes and formally the emperor had a significant role to play in that selection process. Whenever the emperors were active in Italian politics, they appointed and dismissed the popes.

By 1125 the idea that the emperor could legitimately appoint popes was dead as the Dodo. Yes, Henry IV and Henry V had appointed antipopes, and future emperors will do too, but their power didn’t reach much further than the tip of the imperial spears. From now on, the only legitimate pope was the one elected by the College of Cardinals – full stop.

Again, before 1042 the pope had no direct influence in the churches outside Rome. He would hold synods, usually together with the emperor, to determine doctrine and resolve disputes. But the pope had little if any executive power. When we look at the situation in 1125, the pope, usually represented by his legates, exercised more hands-on control over church on the ground. Legates would depose or install bishops, demand changes in liturgy and enforce doctrine set in Rome. That is not to say the church in France or in Germany was at the Pope’s back and call. There are bishops like Hartwig of Magdeburg who were trying to be both supporters of the Gregorian reform and loyal vassals of the emperor. But relative to where we came from, the role of the papacy has become so much more significant.

And finally, the papacy began determining secular policy. Even though the Gregorians were focused on the spiritual world, they ended up becoming more and more political. The proposal of pope Paschalis II if we assume it wasn’t a cunning trick to discredit Henry V, would have been the most radical expression of Gregorian thinking. The church giving up its entanglement with the lay world and focusing entirely on the spiritual well-being of their flock would have pleased Peter Damian and Humbert of Silva Candida no end. But it never happened. Rather than severing the links to the world of power politics, the Gregorian reform dragged the papacy deeper into it. Calling the Crusades to Jerusalem might have been high politics but could still be seen as linked to the spiritual role of the church. When it comes to the military conflict between Gregory VII and Henry IV, that line was crossed. Using the Normans in Sicily and Matilda of Tuscany as a counterweight to the imperial armies meant the pope had to get his hands dirty. It is not just the sack of Rome by Robert Guiscard but the absolution of soldiers fighting the emperors that made the spiritual and political objectives of the church becoming indivisible.

And that is why the papacy did not really win in the investiture controversy. Yes, the pope stood now on par or even above the emperor, but he did so on the same playing field, the field of power politics. Being a significant secular player had its advantages, but in the long run undermined the role of the church as an organization, leading ultimately to the faithful searching for salvation outside the established church hierarchy, in ne monastic orders like the Franciscans, in new forms of religious communities like the Albigensian, Waldensians etc., and ultimately in the belief that salvation is to come from the individual itself, a process the culminated in the Reformation. In a way it comes full circle, because the Gregorians objective was to make the church a vehicle that allows the faithful to reach the gates of heaven. Like so many other well-intentioned plans, it failed in the end.

The rise of the papacy displaced the emperor in several of his roles. The Ottonian emperors had been universal sacred rulers. The 10^th and early 11^th century was the time of the sacred rulers. Saint Stephen in Hungary, Edward the confessor in England, Saint Olaf in Norway. Above these sacred kings was the sacred emperor, anointed to lead all of Christianity. His title was Vicar of Christ and most humble servant of the apostles. This is the time where people believe the king could heal diseases by laying his hand on people – like Aragorn of Gondor.

The transition to this state of sacred ruler was bestowed upon them when they were anointed during their coronation. You may remember that the child king Otto III was rescued from an early death by the mere fast that he had been anointed as king literally hours before news arrived that his father had died. A king, and even more so an emperor anointed by the pope was no mere mortal, he was a being halfway between this world and the next. And some of them, namely Otto III and Henry II live the lives of saints rather than those of worldly rulers.

Breaking an oath to such a sacred king was simply inconceivable. Untold horrors would come down on the oath breaker, in this world and the next.

Something happened around the middle of the 11^th century that devalued these oaths. And that happened even before Gregory released Henry’s vassals from their oaths. It was Otto von Northeim’s speech in 1073 (check episode 31) that ends the idea that oaths are inviable. It is when he says “As long as he was a king to me and acted royally, I also kept the oath I swore to him freely and faithfully; but after he ceased to be a king, the one to whom I had to keep loyalty was no longer there.”  

Otto von Northeim denies the king sacred status. For him he is just a human in a two-way relationship with his subjects. The king has to provide peace and justice in exchange for obedience. When he fails to do his bit, the oath is no longer binding.

When Gregory VII releases everyone from their oath to Henry IV and the emperor then has to do penance in the snow outside Canossa the idea of sacred, unbreakable oaths vanish. How little they are worth becomes so clear when Paschalis II releases Henry V from his solemn, public oath made before innumerable relics to never challenge his father.

By 1125 a king is just a man, an important man, but a man nevertheless.

And that gets us to the second strain of the narrative, the conflict between the princes and the emperor. If you think back over the last 20-odd episodes, most of the time was spent talking about the wheel of fortune that pulled good old Henry IV up to dizzying heights of military and political success before dropping him deep into the depth of desperation.

All this came about because we are in a period of transition. This is the transition from a time where wealth and power was tied to large agricultural estates to a more martial time where all that mattered was the strength of your stone castle. Encastellation had been held back in Germany until Henry III but went stratospheric during the minority of Henry IV. The king’s mother, Agnes of Poitou was unable to stem the process and the subsequent government of Anno of Cologne had no interest in doing so.

In these barely 15 years royal authority was gravely undermined. Once the vassals had gained a castle, they could very much do whatever they wanted, as no one could touch them on their mountain tops. Castles were a bit like nuclear weapons today.. All those who have them want to prevent anyone else to get them. Whilst the world in the 20^th and 21^st century was somewhat successful with its non-proliferation policy the medieval empire wasn’t. On top of that the size of the nobility grew alongside or faster than overall population. Chroniclers of the Ottonian era like Widukind and Thietmar mention roughly 500 individuals amongst the aristocracy from presumably a much smaller number of families. By 1125 this number has likely doubled. Add to that the proliferation of Ministeriales who also often held castles, you can easily assume a tripling of the numbers. In the end there will be 20,000 castles across Germany.

And when the king himself wanted a piece of the action and get his own superweapons in Saxony, the civil war started. And that was a war nobody could win because everybody by now had castles. Presumably some aristocrats did not build castles, but they were never heard from again.

With castles came something else, territorial power. Once you have the castle that overlooks the local town, the bridge and the market, it is only a question of time before the castellan will have gained control of the town, the bridge and the market, even if these rights had been granted to someone else, a bishop, a monastery or another knight.

By 1125 we are well en route to territorialization of the empire. The princes are consolidating their holdings both horizontally as well as vertically. The emperor is no longer able to prevent this process. Even worse, there are large parts of the country like Saxony where effective power has transitioned from the emperor to the territorial princes, like for instance in Saxony. The five duchies are no longer enough to satisfy the demand for status amongst ambitious families like the Babenberger, Zaehringer, Welf, Wettin etc., and gradually we see a proliferation of ducal title combined with a deterioration of the ducal function as one of the few institutions the empire possessed.

The same thing had happened in France, only some 50 years earlier. Where the story differs is that the French monarchy over time consolidated into an absolutist regime, whilst central authority in Germany continuously weakened. As always in history there is never just one reason or one event that creates a specific outcome, but during the hundred years of Salian rule decisive steps were taken that facilitated the outcome.

The first one we already talked about, the collapse of the sacred kingship under the battlements of Canossa which was never really recovered. In France the Investiture conflict had the opposite effect. It created an alliance between the pope and the French king that materially enhanced his prestige. Several subsequent rulers could expand on that prestige, recuperating some of the sacred component of kingship, which culminated in the reign of Louis IX, later to become Saint Louis.

The second key decision point was the assembly in Forchheim in 1077. There the nobles asserted their right to freely elect their king purely on merit. The kingdom they claimed was not a personal property that could be passed from father to son like a horse or a castle. It was the res publica, the common good in which all members of the aristocracy had a stake. We will see that there will be transfers of royal and imperial power from father to son, but these will still be based on elections which at least in principle were based on merit or size of bribe.

Making the empire an elective monarchy created an incentive for the holder of the position to transfer as much of the royal rights, lands and other assets to his family, rather than expanding central authority. Any subsequent occupant of the throne will then have to dig deep into his own wallet to maintain his authority. At the end of the process the emperors will derive their power not from the fact that they were emperors, but from their personal territorial wealth. Politics are driven by the dynastic interests of the Staufer, Luxembourger and Habsburgs, not by the interest of the empire. This is the second crucial difference with France, where the Capetians were better at producing sons, they usually promoted to co-king during their lifetime until the election process became a pure formality and fell into disuse.

Was the decision in Forchheim irreversible? Surely not. If one of the emperors had been able to expand their personal territory to ultimately comprise all of Germany, surely the Empire would have turned into a hereditary monarchy. But that was made harder thanks to some of the political choices the Salians had made. 

One was the excessively generous sponsorship of the Imperial church. Compared to France in particular the imperial church was extraordinarily rich not just in private goods but also in territorial lordships. Under the Ottonians and the early Salians these donations did not diminish the royal position as the bishops and abbots on the whole though with exceptions acted as organs of the emperor. During the later years of the Salian reign the imperial church stopped being an organ of the state and the bishops began operating like territorial princes. You remember Anno of Colognes acquisition of the territories of the Ezzonen and Adalbert of Mainz attack on Trifels. This development is usually believed to have been caused by the Investiture Controversy and specifically the Concordat of Worms. Modern historians take a more differentiated view. The concordat did not differ much from the settlement in England where the church remained under closer control of the king – Thomas a Beckett notwithstanding. And the trend to consolidate the territorial position started before the investiture conflict. For instance, the Lothringian bishops in Toul, Verdun, Liege and Utrecht were proactively pursuing territorial policies against Godfrey the Bearded in the 1050s. It feels that the urge to create a territorial power was a combination of opportunity and simple, old-fashioned greed, something not even a bishop is immune to. I would also throw in the betrayal of the bishops in 1111. When Henry V agreed with Paschalis II to expropriate the clergy, the remaining sense of fealty to the emperor evaporated.

Having lost so much of the royal resources to the church the emperors were now dependent upon their own territorial power. And again the Salians came up short. Henry IV tried create a territory under direct royal control outside interference of local dukes or counts around Goslar in Saxony. Henry IV defeat in the Saxon wars meant that the most valuable of the directly held royal territories was lost. Subsequent attempts for instance by Henry V around the family holdings in Worms were kept in check by a united front of the princes. With expansion in Germany blocked, the emperors had to find resources abroad. Henry V tried England, the Staufer looked to Italy, the Luxembourger and Habsburgs to Bohemia and Hungary and finally Prussia occupied lands to the east that were formally outside the empire.

That seemed a viable shortcut at the time but was not sustainable. Ruling Germany based on foreign resources was something even Emperor Charles V in whose empire the sun never set failed. In contrast  The kings of France  built their territory slowly and methodically, one castle at a time using only their domestic resources and a bit of help from the popes.. Again, the forks in the road the Salians went down or were dragged down were not roads that inevitably led to the fragmentation of the German states that could only be overcome by a militaristic regime. But it was a major contributing factor.

The flipside of imperial weakness is the enhanced role of the princes. Under the Ottonians the role of the dukes, counts and bishops was to support the emperor who was the sacred incorporation of the empire. By the time of Henry V’s death, the princes saw themselves as guardians of the empire. They had both the right and the obligation to defend it against its foes, to maintain peace and to protect the church. The emperor and the princes were the pillars on which the empire rested. That meant the princes can call royal assemblies, even royal assemblies where the emperor is not present or even NFI. The empire becomes a coordination mechanism that settles disagreements between the princes by consensus, rather than a state that settles it by force.

We have talked about the change in the relationship between emperor and pope and between emperor and princes which leaves the third strain in our narrative, the rise in lay piety.

As we talked about before, the period between 1000 and 1300 is a period of massive demographic and economic change. Population numbers overall roughly doubled thanks to improved agricultural technology, the abolishment of slavery and an absence of deadly pandemics. The improvements in agriculture allowed for a repopulation of the ancient Roman cities and the growth of new ones. Urbanization went hand in hand with the growth in trade. The large cities created markets for goods and ideas that travelled along the great rivers, the Rhine, Main, Danube and Elbe. These increasingly prosperous people demanded better from their clergy and better from their rulers.

These demands transformed from specific calls for say celibacy of the cathedral canons to broader claims for participation in city politics. The process started in Milan with the Pataria uprisings in the 1070s and then spread rapidly. Cologne rose up against its Bishop in 1074. That same year Worms sides with the emperor against their bishop. Once independent, the cities themselves became political players. Henry IV allied with Pisa and Lucca against Matilda of Tuscany. Mainz and Cologne were Henry IV’s strongest allies in his fight with his son. By Henry V’s time a city like Mainz would negotiate with its archbishop as equals, demanding freedoms and privileges in exchange for support in war.

On the underlying issue, the improvement in the quality of the clergy, the years 1024 to 1125 saw major shifts. Under the Ottonians we find many learned and sincere bishops, monks and abbots. But their ability to expand and project their knowledge was limited. By 1125 more and more Christian doctrine is written down and passed around the clergy along the same routes the goods are now shipped from Venice to Norway and from Cordoba to  Kiev. We find that by 1076 most bishops owned a more or less comprehensive compilation of canon law that they consulted to determine how to react to the excommunication and deposition of their king. The scholastic method, this great invention of the Middle Ages begins to spread amongst the intellectuals of the age. An early form of university opened its doors in Bologna in 1088, teaching amongst other things Roman law.

For the layman, on the still unpaved street these debates mattered. All they wanted was a priest who could help them into heaven. But that was no longer so easy. Is my vicar properly ordained by the right bishop? If not, what does that mean for the sacraments I have received. If not, how do I get a priest who will be able to pave the road to the final judgement? Can I make sure my town is loyal to whoever I think is the true pope, rue archbishop and bishop.

Mostly they had little ability to determine political outcomes. To mitigate their risk of ending up in purgatory or even hellfire, laymen became ever more pious. They tried to incorporate some of the habits of the apostles into their own life, fasting, regular prayer, good works and the like. In many ways this upped the ante for the priests who had to be even more devout in order to stand out and justify their elevated status. Most bishops saw these developments which is why, on the whole, they were supportive of church reform even when they were not supportive of the Gregorian popes.

This urge to find a way to heaven for oneself found its culmination in the First Crusade. Finally there was one thing any individual, rich or poor could do that was quite obviously in line with God’s wishes, that was outside these debates and civil wars. The first Crusade, though an amazing and unexpected military success must have been a terrible let-down for its participants. Instead of experiencing a period of bliss within the grace of god, the crusaders unleashed unimaginable horrors. We talked about the death and destruction the German participation in the First Crusade caused but even those who made it to Jerusalem must have wondered whether the slaughter of the cities Muslim population, the burning of its Jews inside their Synagogue was synonymous with walking in the footsteps of the apostles.

We asked at the start of this section whether the Investiture Conflict was a “World Revolution”. Sure, the Investiture conflict has all the hallmarks of a revolution, an old order is replaced with a new structure. That makes it a Revolution, but a “World Revolution”. That would be a revolution that fundamentally changed the whole of the humanity. It describes a series of events that stands unique in history as a turning point that, if it had not happened, would have left us with a materially different world.

Of all the things we talked about so far, the rise of the papacy, the loss of a central power in Germany or the emergence of cities and city states is not something that in similar form had happened before in other parts of the world and even in Europe itself. What could make it a “World Revolution” is that last consequence of the Investiture Conflict, bringing people the obligation and the right to choose your spiritualty.

That unleashed the scholastic method, universities, disputations, the Franciscans, the early heretics, the Hussites and the Reformation. Without the Reformation and the plethora of belief systems it seeded, the philosophers of the Enlightenment would not have dared to replace God with reason and modern life would indeed be fundamentally different. The crusades manifested a restlessness of spirit and body that drove European society to expand both their intellectual and their physical horizon until it had consumed the whole world.

So maybe it was a World Revolution. And even if it wasn’t, it was an epic tale, one I hope you enjoyed.

I will take a break now until early January to prepare for the next season, the Hohenstaufen. These ultimate glamour emperors may now have to work in this unwieldy new order, but hey do they make a story out of it. You can look forward to Emperor Fredrick Barbarossa still asleep under the Kyffhauser mountain waiting for the day his people need him to protect them from harm, Henry VI who used the ransom paid for Richard Lionheart to buy himself a kingdom, Frederick II the child of Puglia who allegedly grew up on the streets of Palermo to become one of best educated men in Europe living the lifestyle like his friend Salah ad Din. His son Enzo who was betrayed by his golden locks and his grandson Konradin who was beheaded on the market square in Naples.  I can barely wait. I hope to see you then.

And in the meantime, should you feel like supporting the show and get hold of these bonus episodes, sign up on Patreon. The links are in the show notes or on my website at historyofthegermans.com.

This week the wheel of fortune will turn again, tumbling our antihero Henry IV down from the heights he had so recently scaled. We will see him sink to the point of utter despair. And all that because a 43 year old woman marries an 18 year old.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 37 – The Two Grooms

This week the wheel of fortune will turn again, tumbling our antihero Henry IV down from the heights he had so recently scaled. We will see him sink to the point of utter despair. And all that because a 43 year old woman marries an 18 year old.

Before we start a just a reminder. The History of the Germans Podcast is advertising free thanks to the generous support from patrons. And you can become a patron too and enjoy exclusive bonus episodes and other privileges from the price of a latte per month. All you have to do is sign up at patreon.com/historyofthegermans or on my website historyofthegermans.com. You find all the links in the show notes. And thanks a lot to Steven and Jay who have already signed up.

We should probably quickly recap where we are in the year 1090.

Things aren’t looking too bad for Henry IV. He has a modicum of control over most of Germany. The 17 year long war with the Saxons had been brought to an end, largely by giving them what they wanted, but peace is peace. In Italy his bishops were in charge of the northern part of the country and his anti-pope Clement III was on and off in control of Rome.

As for his enemies, there were essentially three centres.

In Swabia the deposed dukes of Bavaria and Carinthia, Welf IV and Berthold of Zaehringen kept fighting. Henry had entered peace negotiations with both, but their demands were unacceptable. They required the anti-pope Clement III to be removed and they themselves re-instated as dukes.

The second key enemy was the great countess Matilda of Tuscany, one of, if not the most formidable woman in 11^th century Europe. Matilda had been reigning an area of Northern Italy, ranging from near Verona down to the papal states, including important cities like Mantua, Lucca, Pisa, Modena, Reggio and Florence. Matilda had been at war with her imperial kinsman and overlord since at least 1082, though the conflict dates back to the marriage of her mother to Godfrey the Bearded in 1054. She had stood loyally with her friend Pope Gregory VII until his very end at great personal expense.  At times she had been reduced to her indomitable mountain fortresses around Canossa and even needed to melt down her gold and silver treasures. Once Henry had left Italy, Matilda could free herself from the encirclement and won a great victory against the Lombard Bishops at Sorbara. That brought her back into her previous position as the most powerful secular ruler in Italy.

And finally, there was the Gregorian papacy. After Gregory VII had died in 1075 his remaining cardinals refused to recognise Pope Clement III, the man Henry had elevated to the seat of Saint Peter. Instead, they elected one of their own as Pope Victor III. Barely ever had anyone been so reluctant to become pope as Pope Victor III. He had been the abbot of the great monastery of Monte Cassino, founded by Saint Benedict and under his leadership the foremost seat of learning, literature, arts and monastic life in Italy. He had not just been an outstanding abbot but also a great negotiator on behalf of the church. He had good relations with his neighbours, the Normans. It was thanks to his efforts the initial agreement between the papacy and the Normans came about in 1059 and he also helped bringing Robert Guiscard to Rome in 1084.

And Victor III was a realist, not a fanatic like Gregory VII. He knew too well that after what Guiscard had done to Rome, the Romans would not voluntarily accept a Gregorian pope. Ad that meant getting into Rome was only possible in the train of a Norman army. What is a pope whose authority comes from the bloodied swords of Northmen and their Saracen soldiers? Well, not one Victor III aspired to be.

Having resisted the election for a year he was finally coerced into accepting the election in Rome. But just 4 days later, before he could be consecrated, he had to leave the Holy City as riots broke out. He returned to Monte Cassino and put the papal regalia into the bottom drawer. He remained as an elected but not consecrated pope for another year before The Normans again smashed into the Holy city. Victor III was finally consecrated. The Romans were still unconvinced of the benevolence of the Papal allies and so Victor III ran away after 10 days and hid in Monte Cassino, before the Normans dragged him back into Rome in June. He stayed a month before claiming he needed to go home for health reasons. He died in Monte Cassino in September 1087.

That should have been that. By now the Gregorian papacy had proven to be nothing more than a Norman plaything. The Antipope Clement III could hold at least parts of Rome and enjoyed the support of the local population. Clement III was also not against church reform so that the urban population saw some of their demands to get a better sort of vicar for their churches fulfilled.

The reason the Gregorian ethos survived owed a lot to Victor III’s successor, pope Urban II. He became pope in 1088 and – since Rome was in the hands of Clement III – was elected and consecrated in the stunningly beautiful, but tiny city of Terracina, halfway between Rome and Naples.

Urban II had grown up in France, son of a local aristocrat in Champagne and had joined the fabled monastery of Cluny. He rose through the ranks and was made prior of the abbey. In 1080 Pope Gregory invited him to become Cardinal Bishop of Ostia, the highest-ranking member of the college of cardinals.

Urban II shared Gregory VII’s view of the role of the papacy as the preeminent institution of Christendom, superior to kings and emperors. Where he differed was in his methods.

Where Gregory was rigid and doctrinal to the very end, Urban II had the polish and diplomatic finesse needed to get the papacy out of the hole Gregory had dumped it in.

The first order of service was to get out of the dependency on the Normans without irritating them. On that front he was lucky as Robert Guiscard died in 1085. His successor as duke of Apulia was Roger Borsa. Borsa means “Moneybags” in English suggesting he had less ambitious goals than his father more interested in “counting and recounting his money”.

Leadership of the Normans fell to Roger I, count of Sicily, the youngest of the 12 brothers of Robert Guiscard. Roger had been busy conquering the island of Sicily since 1063. Sicily had been an Arab emirate since the 9^th century but had broken apart in the 11^th century into small warring factions which created the opportunity for Roger. By 1090 he had removed the last of these mini emirs and set out to conquer Malta. What I am saying is that Roger was busy consolidating his rule over Sicily and less in need of a pet pope.

Urban then applied the old rule that my enemy’s enemy is my friend and concluded that in order to get rid of Clement III he needed to remove Henry IV. And that means he needed to forge a coalition of Henry’s enemies.

And that coalition came about in the form of a marriage, a marriage that even today would be seen as scandalous. Urban II’s proposal was simple, Matilda of Tuscany should marry the son of Welf IV, leader of the German opposition. That would give the anti-henry forces control over a coherent area stretching from the border of the Papal State all the way north, across the alps into Switzerland and Southern Germany. Henry IV and his pet pope, Clement III could be shut out from Rome.

Sounds great. Only issue was that Matilda of Tuscany was no spring chicken anymore. At 43 years of age she had little chance of further offspring, which was according to the doctrine of the church, the main purpose of marriage. And Matilda’s track record as a wife had not been quite in line with the expectations of the time.

She had separated from her first husband, Godfrey the Hunchback after a short marriage. The marital differences had come less from the lack of mutual attraction but from her reluctance to grant him political control over her rich lands. Matilda very much took the view that these lands were hers and hers alone and that no man, husband or otherwise were to command them. To put that into context, it took until 1963 before Italian women were allowed to hold a public office contested by a man.

For an 11^th century red-blooded nobleman Matilda as a wife was a nightmare. 

And now let’s talk about the groom. His name was Welf V, son of -guess it – yes Welf IV. Not only was his name unimaginative in the extreme, but he was also no more than 18 years’ old.

The logic of the union was so blatantly obvious, it barely needs explaining. The lands of Matilda were to fall into the hands of the Welf family upon her soon to be expected demise, making the deposed dukes of Bavaria the most powerful princes in the empire.

Matilda was not keen, but a silver tongued Urban II convinced her that she had to make this last great sacrifice for the cause of god and the papacy. Young Welf V presumably was told to grin and bear it for a few years.

The betrothal of this unlikely couple took place in 1089.

With this announcement all peace negotiations between Henry IV and the Southern German opposition ended. War was to resume; the question was where? Henry IV could either continue his operations in Southern Germany and subdue the Welf and their allies, leaving Matilda well alone until that was resolved. Or, he could go down to Italy, knock out Matilda and end the schism once and for all by capturing Urban II.

Option 2 was bolder and – we know our Henry – for him bolder is better.

He appears in Italy in May 1090 at the head of a sizeable army. This time he brought along some of his German followers including Frederick von Hohenstaufen, his son in law and closest ally. That suggests he was looking to make Italy the place where the final battle was to be fought. Equally Welf V joined his new wife in Tuscany, together with a contingent of his German allies. 

As before Henry can count on the support from the Lombard bishops though their numbers are somewhat depleted as the archbishop of Milan had changed sides. Henry also no longer commanded the cities of Pisa and Lucca who returned into the fold of Matilda, having received all they needed from the emperor.

Hostilities in the first year are taken up by the siege of Mantua, forever one of the military linchpins of Italy.  Mantua barred the way to the heart of Matilda possessions south of the Po river. After 12 months of siege the city yielded and Henry entered the city in triumph. Two further strongholds nearby fell too opening the road towards the Po river and the heart of Matilda’s possessions.

This success was significant enough for Welf IV, father of Matilda’s husband to resume peace negotiations. It seems the marriage alliance has failed to yield the desired benefits. And with some of his supporters amongst the bishopric having passed this last year, it was time to look for a compromise.

As before Welf’s demands were twofold, return the duchy of Bavaria to me and abandon your antipope Clement III. With henry now in an even better position that two years before, he saw no reason to accept these demands and by summer 1091 hostilities resumed.

The year ended with another success for Henry. Matilda had sent out 1,000 of her knights to capture the emperor she had been informed had travelled with a small contingent close to her lands. Well it was a trap and her soldiers were routed by a much superior imperial force. 

At that point Matilda did what she had done previously when things had turned against her, she returned to her string of fortresses around Canossa and employed a defensive strategy.  In spring 1092 Henry began to systematically besiege and break these fortresses. First Montemorello, then Montalfredo. When he proceeded to Monteveglio, progress slowed. He wasted the whole of the summer before the walls of that castle.

There were around nine strongholds around her heartland of Canossa. Having lost two and one on the verge of going, Matilda’s vassals became concerned and wanted to bring this process to an end. Matilda was initially reluctant, but negotiations began in October 1092. But they went nowhere. A hermit, named John showed up and declared a vision that Matilda would prevail, and salvation was close at hand.

I usually do not set much store by hermits, but this one was right.

After the failure of the peace negotiations, Henry feigned a retreat towards Parma, but doubled back to attack her home and the heart of her defensive system, Canossa itself. Matilda left the castle with most of its garrison and moved a few miles down the road to another of her castles, Bianello. Bianleeo was by the way where most of the initial negotiations over the lifting of the excommunication had taken place 14 years earlier. This time the roles were reversed. Henry was at Canossa and Matilda in Bianello. But as before, Henry was not inside Canossa but besieged the castle from below.

It might well be that Henry thought that Matilda and most of her soldiers were inside the castle of Canossa or thought she had left for somewhere far away. In any event, on one foggy afternoon Matilda’s garrison came down from Bianello whilst the troops inside Canossa attempted a sortie. In the dark and foggy chaos henry’s troops had a hard time distinguishing friend from foe. The most dispiriting moment came when Matilda’s soldiers captured the royal banner, creating panic in the royal army.

Henry fled the site of his now second humiliation and took his remaining army north. News of his defeat travelled fast and two of the fortresses he only just had captured were returned to Matilda. One of them held the imperial train with supplies and  the campaign funds.

Christmas was a difficult feast for Henry who had lost most of the progress he had made that previous year. At the same time his German enemies smelled the morning air.  Berthold von Zaehringen had himself elected duke of Swabia though there was already a duke of Swabia, Frederick von Hohenstaufen. And so, Frederick von Hohenstaufen who had been with Henry these last 2 years has to go back home and take his remaining troops with him.

Another member of Henry’s entourage had also left, his eldest son Konrad. Konrad had lived in Italy for neigh on 10 years by now after his father had left him in the care of the Lombard bishops when he returned to Germany in 1084. He was now 20 years of age and his father entrusted him with an important mission.

Henry’s mother-in-law and Konrad’s grandmother, Adelheid countess of Savoy had died at the end of 1091. She was, like Matilda, one of these exceptional women who ran a state against all the laws and customs of the time. Her state was the margraviate of Turin and the county of Savoy, in essence what is today the Italian province of Piemonte and the French region of Savoy. And most importantly she controlled a number of Alpine passes, including Mont Cenis which you may remember her daughter Bertha tobogganed down.

Adelheid had no heir in the male line and had designated one of her grandson’s to inherit her lands. To Henry’s annoyance this grandson was not Konrad. But as emperor he could determine the succession of his vassals should they die without direct male heirs. That was the law of the land, but to enforce it, an army needed to be deployed against the obstinate new count of Savoy. Konrad was put in charge of that army and dispatched west.

So far so good. Konrad campaigned gingerly around Asti and Turin until in the summer of 1093. But then disconcerting news reached Henry at his camp in Verona. His own son had joined up with Matilda and pope Urban II.

What brought this treachery about has long been debated. Some later writers point out that Konrad was a bookish man who preferred reading over riding into battle. Some suggested that he had a falling out with his father over points of canon law and the claims of papal supremacy. The imperial propagandists describe him as a feckless boy who had lent his ear to bad councillors.

Modern historians like I.S. Robinson and Egon Boshof attribute him with more political intelligence. Konrad saw his father’s position deteriorating rapidly after the rout before Canossa. His army shrunk and the ranks of his enemies were swelled by formerly loyal Lombard bishops and  emerging independent cities. And there was no way this could be resolved as long as Henry clung to his anti-pope Clement III. And Henry could not let go of Clement III, because that would invalidate his Imperial Coronation.

Konrad may well have come to the conclusion that the only way the Salian house can remain in possession of power was if he would be crowned emperor by the right pope, i.e., Urban II. If that happened, he could fulfil the two conditions Welf IV had set for a lasting peace, setting aside Clement III and giving him the duchy of Bavaria. Peace with Welf IV and an arrangement with urban II would end all conflicts and bring Konrad on the throne of a now united empire.

That sounds like a plan. A plan Konrad went into without reservation. He met pope Urban II in Cremona. When the pope approached, Konrad went out to meet him and there performed what is called “the office of the groom”. Konrad would get off his horse and he would take the papal bridle, guiding the  vicar of Christ into the city.

This act of imperial submission to the papal authority had not been performed since the emperor Louis II, who was in fact no more than an Italian warlord. Allegedly it had been introduced by the emperor Constantine who performed it for Pope Sylvester after he had cured his leprosy by bathing him in the blood of young boys or some such nonsense.

By performing the office of the Groom or Stratordienst Konrad accepts the Dictatus Papae of Gregory VII and becomes a vassal of the Pope. And from now the popes will demand the office of the Groom at every Imperial coronation

For Henry this must have been a stab through the heart. All he fought for was the preservation of the Salian rule he had inherited from his father and grandfather. His son joining the papal camp makes all that worthless.

And this is not all. The next attack comes from his new wife. Empress Bertha who had faithfully followed her husband to Canossa had died 5 years earlier and Henry had married Eupraxia, a Russian princess. This marriage seemed to have been quite unsuccessful. Eupraxia does appear in only one charter during their marriage, which is a very low number compared to other Salian empresses and Henry’s first wife who appeared very regularly. That suggest she had little if any influence at court.

Early in 1094 Eupraxia sent a plea for help to Matilda of Tuscany.  Matilda then sent a small elite force who extracted Eupraxia from the imperial court at Verona and brought her to Canossa. There she quote  “complained that she had suffered so many and so unheard-of filthy acts of fornication with so many men as would cause even her enemies to excuse her flight”.  End quote.   eupraxia will repeat these allegations of gang rape by her husbands me. in public at a Papal Synod in 1095 and they have been recounted again and again ever since. There is no way to determine the veracity of these statements since propaganda in the 11^th century generally pays no regard to facts.

And it does not matter, Henry had been betrayed by his son and accused of infernal crimes by his wife. His military position is now absolutely dire. His empire has shrunk to a couple of counties in Northern Italy held by his ally, the duke of Carinthia. He cannot return to Germany because his enemies control the Alpine passes. He cannot overcome his Italian enemies whose numerical superiority is now overwhelming. It may well be that he contemplated suicide or its 11^th century equivalent, riding your horse into the middle of a melee.

As Henry’s star had sunk, Urban II is heading to the crowning moment of his papacy. On November 27^th, 1095 in a field outside the French city of Clermont Urban II had gathered not just the bishops and magnates of the council, but also the local landowners, the castellans, their knights and the common people, the peasants, the artisans of the city and even the urban poor

 “A barbaric fury has deplorably afflicted and laid waste the churches of God in the regions of the Orient” Urban declares and this barbaric fury has “even grasped in intolerable servitude its churches and the Holy City of Christ, glorified by His passion and resurrection”. He calls upon all to “free the churches of the East”, and promises that “If any man sets out from pure devotion, not for reputation or monetary gain, to liberate the Church of God at Jerusalem, his journey shall be reckoned in place of all penance” “Deus vult, God wills it” is the crowds response, not just in Clermont but all across Europe. The crusades have begun.

Whilst Urban is making world history up in France, the wheel of fortune turns again, unexpectedly. It is not just Henry’s marriage that is on the rocks, the match made in heaven between Matilda and Welf V had also run its course. The marriage that brought all this misery about in the first place is now over.

We do not know who left who, but the bottom line is the same as in Matilda’s first marriage. The Lady is not for turning. Welf V may be a strapping young lad, but that does not mean Matilda will leave him her lands or take his political advice. Matilda’s life and work is bringing about her friend Gregory VII vision of an all encompassing and all controlling papacy. And hence the heir to Matilda will be the one who had been her master all along, The Lord and his representative on earth, the Pope. Little Welf will get nothing.

When this notion trickles through to the older Welf IV, deposed duke of Bavaria, he realised that everyone was in it for themselves, surprise. Time for Welf to finally get something for himself.

He opens negotiations with Henry and the two men quickly reach an agreement. Welf IV offers fealty to the emperor in exchange for the duchy of Bavaria. There is no mention of Pope Clement III or the schism or church reform. Let’s just bring this nonsense to an end.

In spring 1097 Henry IV returns to Germany after 7 years, most of which spent in despair and inactivity. He was so inactive that there is not a single imperial charter for the year 1094. None, nada, zilch.

Next week we will leave Henry to his own devices and talk a bit about the next great achievement of the Gregorian papacy, the First Crusade. We will talk about the horrors it unleashed for the Jewish communities in Germany and the misery it brought to the children and adults who walked all the way to Turkey only to be mercilessly slaughtered. And the men who in the main went, not for pure devotion but for reputation and monetary gain. I hope you will join us again.

And in the meantime, should you feel like supporting the show and get hold of these bonus episodes, sign up on Patreon. The links are in the show notes or on my website at historyofthegermans.com.

Today we will look at what went on with Gregory VII after Henry had left to fight his rivals in Germany. Spoiler alert, things will not turn out the way he had hoped.

Transcript

Hello and Welcome to the History of the Germans, Episode 35 – To Rome to Rome

Today we will look at what went on with Gregory VII after Henry had left to fight his rivals in Germany. Spoiler alert, things will not turn out the way he had hoped.

Before we start a just a reminder. The History of the Germans Podcast is advertising free thanks to the generous support from patrons. And you can become a patron too and enjoy exclusive bonus episodes and other privileges from the price of a latte per month. All you have to do is sign up at patreon.com/historyofthegermans or on my website historyofthegermans.com. You find all the links in the show notes. And thanks a lot to Alon and Bengt who have already signed up.

When Henry IV left Pope Gregory in Canossa in January 1078, Gregory thought he had won the ultimate victory and Henry would from now on be an obedient son of the church. And that should give him room to look after his other ambitions, namely, to bring the King of France to heel and to cash in on the support he had given to William the Conqueror, you know the guy who invaded England whilst Henry was fighting to establish his personal rule in 1066.

Let’s start with the  conqueror, Gregory had ensured he had the full support of the papacy and even received a papal banner to be carried into battle. His objective was to gain control over the English church. And William it seemed delivered, at least initially. He removed the existing Anglo-Saxon bishops wholesale and replaced them with reform-minded Norman clergymen. His new archbishop of Canterbury, Llanfranc was a man of international standing, originally from Italy. And though Lanfranc did all the right things and collected his Pallium in person in Rome and swore to be obedient to the pope, relations soured. When it came to Gregory’s claim to be the overlord of all secular rulers, Lanfranc was not falling in line. His allegiance was first and foremost to the man who put him in his post, William the Conqueror. He sided with his lord when Gregory insisted on the appointment of the bishop of Dol and even more importantly when Gregory insisted on splitting the country between the archbishops of York and Canterbury. Gregory wrote a string of angry letters to William and Lanfranc, but England being a country far, far away and his ruler well established, all he could do is write and be angry.

Geography matters – like a lot. And on that score, France looked like an easier place to assert papal authority. And Gregory had good reason to castigate the King of France for the way he selected his bishops. In the second half of the 11^th century the kings of France were by all accounts the poor relations of the European rulers. Their land barely extended beyond the Ile de France. One of the few sources of income to the king was the right to invest his bishops and charge handsomely for that. Gregory’s man for French affairs was Hugh bishop of Die and later archbishop.

Gregory’s letters were a lot more effective in France then they were in England as the powerful magnates used it to further constrain the power of the king.

It was mostly with an eye to France rather than Germany that Gregory VII declared in 1080 (quote):

Following the statutes of the holy fathers, [] now we decree and confirm: that, if any one henceforth shall receive a bishopric or abbey from the hand of any lay person, he shall by no means be considered as among the number of the bishops or abbots; nor shall any hearing be granted him as bishop or abbot.

Moreover, do we further deny to him the favour of St. Peter and the entry to the Church until, coming to his senses, he shall desert the place that he has taken by the crime of ambition as well as by that of disobedience – which is the sin of idolatry. []

Likewise, if any emperor, king, duke, margrave, count or any one at all of the secular powers or persons shall presume to perform the investiture with bishoprics or with any ecclesiastical dignity, – he shall be bound by the bonds of the same condemnation” (unquote).

This is the famous ban on lay investiture. And what it says is quite simple. If any bishop, abbot or priest has been put into his role by a layman he is automatically excommunicated and so is the layman who had put him there.

There were bans on lay investiture before, but they were rarely as clear and uncompromising as this.

The real investiture conflict starts here, in 1080. Sure, the struggle between Gregory and Henry had its beginnings in the conflict over the investiture of the bishop of Milan. But the heart of the conflict had not been over the investiture of bishops but over whether the pope ranks above the emperor.

This ban turns it from a struggle for supremacy into a fight over the institutional integrity of the empire. The. An emperor who cannot appoint his bishops means the imperial church system collapses, and without the bishops the emperor has no soldiers. And that does just apply to the empire. As we saw some episodes ago, the power of the Norman dukes and later the kings of England was as well dependent on their control over the bishops. The. Inflict has become a fundamental question over the respective responsibilities o, the ecclesia, the church and the mind us, the world

Initially ban on investiture as well as the second excommunication of Henry IV on the same synod went nowhere. Gregory’s excommunications have been raining down on people in such frequency that people stopped caring. Practically all Lombard bishops had been excommunicated for years already. Many of Henry’s supporters in Germany are now excommunicated for the second time. And now the king of France and even the king of England were on the verge of being banned. But it wasn’t just the die-hard supporters of Gregory’s direct adversaries, neutral bishops were required to come to Rome and receive the Pallium or were refused consecration. Their reform efforts were criticized and constant demands to do this or that issued. And if one takes the wording of the ban on lay investiture literally, more or less everybody was excommunicated, because pretty much every bishop, abbot and priest had received at least his worldly fiefs from a secular lord. And these secular lords were now also technically under the ban. And as they say, if everybody is excommunicated, nobody is. Never will a ruler kneel in the snow before a pope again. The greatest weapon of the papacy had been utterly spent in just 3 years.

Henry’s reaction to this Synod of 1080 was his own synod of Brixen. Having first gathered his support amongst the bishops in Germany he brought his Italian and German support together, a total of 30 senior clergy. This synod did something the Synod of Worms did not dare to do, it “canonically deposed and expelled Gregory and condemned in perpetuity, if, having heard this [decree], he does not step down.”.

The synod accused Gregory of various misdeeds including of simony, violence, false oaths, the support of heresy, murder, watching pornographic floor shows and even of having a demon, all based on testimony of Hugo the White, cardinal bishop of San Clemente and sworn enemy of Gregory VII. So far so traditional. These kinds of arguments had been made as far back as the deposition of John XII by Otto the great who was accused of congress with all sorts of occult spectres.

But as time went on, the arguments for a deposition of Gregory changed in quality. It is right around this time that Roman law, specifically the Justinian Code was being studied again for the first time in centuries. Until now, most secular law had been Germanic law codes that had very limited internal coherence and some argue have actually rarely been applied. Royal judgements tended to be a bit ad hoc and often political. The church had raced ahead, and Canon Law had gained a lot of internal coherence during the 11^th century. By the time of Gregory, most bishops would have a collection of Canon Law in their possession and would base their decision who to support in the ongoing conflict on these compilations. There are conflicting sources who ordered the codification of canon law and who actually produces the first approved version, but by the end of the century Canon law had a solid structure and coherence.

If the church has a coherent system of law, then secular lords needed one too. And that law was the Roman law compiled during the reign of the emperor Justinian in the early 6t century. If in canon law the pope was the source of all justice ad truth, under the Justinian code, that role fell to the emperor. Secular ruler really fell in love with the Justinian code once they could interpret it such that Emperor does not mean Henry IV, but any king, prince, count or baron.

One of the key provisions of the Justinian Code was the Lese Majeste – disrespecting the crown, a crime punishable by death. And that is what Gregory was accused of. He had offended the dignity of the ruler by claiming his excommunication.

For now, these arguments did not carry much weight, nor did other legal constructs from the Justinian code used in the case of Henry IV. But as we will see, the Roman law and its notion of the role of kings will become a key justification for the expansion of royal power, culminating in absolute monarchies almost everywhere in Europe, except for outliers like Britain, Poland and Venice.

This split of law into church law and secular law rare outside Europe is just another result of the events we describe here and call the Investiture Conflict or just Canossa.

The synod of Brixen did not just depose Gregory, it also elected Wibert archbishop of Ravenna as successor to Gregory VII. Clement III was of the same age as Gregor but different in background. Wibert was an old-school prelate in the mould of Leo IX. Of aristocratic stock he had pursued his career in the wind shadow of Emperor Henry III and rose to be Imperial chancellor for Italy. Empress Agnes made him Archbishop of Ravenna and despite his initial support for the antipope Cadalus was given his pallium by Pope Alexander II. Gregory thought him insufficiently fervent in his support for reform and excommunicated him – another one.

He took the name of Clement III but declared that he would not act as pope until he had been properly enthroned on the seat of Saint Peter. That might have been Clements’s own choice or a move by Henry IV to leave a way open for reconciliation with Gregory is not clear.  What is clear is that for the policy to work, Henry will have to bring Clement down to Rome, remove Gregor and affect a proper coronation of his pope. To get that done proved time consuming.

By 1081 Henry had suppressed the rebellion in Germany sufficiently to mount an attack on Italy and took a small army across the alps. The Lombard bishops swelled the ranks of his army and he was thinking that he would be back into Germany within a mere 4 months.

Gregory had not only lost a lot of ground within the church, he had also excommunicated Robert Guiscard the Norman lord the church had been relying on for the last decade. Gregory and Robert did patch up things in 1080, but the Norman was anything but an obedient vassal. His main focus was Constantinople which had fallen into complete disarray after a terrible defeat against the Seldjuk Turks at Manzikart. Robert, freebooter to the last instead of defending Christendom against the Muslim onslaught thought of benefitting from the chaos and pick up as much of the Byzantine empire as possible. So, not much help to be expected from that side.

Matilda was forever loyal, but powerful as she may be, could she hold out against the combined forces of the Empire and the Lombard bishops.

The last part of Henry’s calculation was that the population of Rome should be on his side. The former praefect Censius had already tried to abduct Gregory in 1075 and now assured the king of the support he should encounter in the city.

Henry marched gingerly through Italy which had become a lot more supportive of the Imperial party since his last visits.

Henry arrived in Rome at Pentecost expecting to be greeted by a procession of the senate and people of Rome accompanying him into the city under the singing of hymns and prayers. He was sorely disappointed. The people of Rome stuck by their pope. The church reform movement was a movement of the people and that is why they supported Pope Gregory as a representative of reform versus the conservative backlash.

Rome’s defences, built by the emperor Aurelian in the 3^rd century were still strong and well maintained. And Gregory had created the Papal militia as his own military force that now manned the fortifications. Henry’s supporters came dressed for a party, not for war. They had no siege equipment, and their army was small.

But most importantly, it is already Pentecost, i.e., early May and Rome’s greatest defence mechanism, Malaria is getting into gear. There is nothing Henry can do but retreat with his tail between his legs. This is the first time an imperial progress towards a coronation had failed. The embarrassment of the failed coronation was almost as detrimental to his standing as the kneeling in the snow of Canossa.

As things stood, Henry now needed to get crowned, cost it what it may. If he did go back to Germany without a crown his enemies would feel vindicated, and the wavering middle would believe that God had made it clear that Henry should not be king.

The next 2 years Henry roamed around Italy, fighting Matilda od Tuscany and gathering armies he brought before Rome to besiege the city.

His army consisted initially mostly of the contingents of the Lombard bishops. But over time he gathered ore supporters. Amongst them were the Tuscan cities of Lucca and Pisa. Lucca had been the pre-eminent city of Matilda’s lands. Lucca was most famous for its silk weavers who initially imported their raw materials from the near East via Genoa before producing it themselves. Their silks replicated and improved Byzantine designs that proved extremely popular. Lucca was also home to prominent members of the Kalonymos family, which must count as one of the most creatively productive families in history. They can trace their lineage back to the 8^th century and numerous rabbis, preachers, poets, teachers, authors, moralists, and theologians, and many prominent leaders of Jewish communities up to the 15^th century came from its ranks. The family had branches in both Italy and Germany where they had been invited to settle by Charlemagne or one of his successors. They played a major role in the great Jewish communities of Speyer and Mainz.

Sorry, I digress. I simply cannot help myself looking at history I frankly did not know anything about before researching this episode but clearly features heavily in the history of other communities.

Back to Lucca. Henry IV offered the city more or less total freedom from oversight by either the margrave of Tuscany or the emperor himself. The city was allowed to build and maintain its own defences, was no longer obliged to build or maintain the imperial Pfalz, could no longer be billeted with soldiers, received market rights, customs privileges, and jurisdiction over everything but the most severe crimes. Lucca became thereby the first city in the empire to be officially granted the full rights of an imperial free city.

But Lucca was not the first free city in Italy. Seafaring cities like Venice, Genoa, Pisa, Amalfi and Naples had been de facto free cities for a long time already. But even these saw value in being granted rights and privileges by the empire. Pisa valued the confirmation of its rights sufficiently to side with Henry IV.

Whilst Henry was gathering troops in Italy, the situation in Germany oscillated. At times the new anti king Hermann managed to gain control of Saxony and the bits of Swabia and even at some point contemplated a march on Rome to support the pope. That effort collapsed when Otto von Northeim finally died, and Herrmann had to focus on holding Saxony.

For Henry that meant he had to rush back and forth between Rome, the lands of Matilda of Tuscany and the Alpine passes, never able to fully deploy his forces for a lengthy siege.

He showed up in Rome in February of 1082 with an army. But that siege failed again at the staunch defence of the Roman population.

Despite Henry’s efforts going nowhere, Gregory’s position also became desperate. He was simply running out of funds. He had called a synod for Lent in Rome, but hardly any bishops made it through and when Gregory asked for approval to pawn church property to fund the ongoing war, the few bishops who had gathered refused. Matilda, herself under enormous pressure had the great gold crosses and liturgical objects held at Canossa melted down and sent to the pope as bullion. 

By 1083 Henry found a new ally, Jordan of Aversa, the other Norman. You may remember that Pope Nicolas II had elevated two Norman warlords to become dukes, Robert Guiscard and Rainulf of Aversa. The idea was to split the Norman power in the South to ensure the papacy does not get too dependent on just one ruler. Robert Guiscard was a lot more successful than his countrymen, but the Aversa Normans were still around. These now joined Henry’s side in an attempt to push back Robert Guiscard. Guiscard himself was at the time fighting in Greece and what is now Albania, having upgraded his ambition from just taking over chunks of it to making the whole lot a Norman kingdom.

In the year 1083 Henry showed up before the gates of Rome again. As before he set up camp on the Vatican side of the Tiber. His troops made two attempts to overrun the Leonine walls that protect Saint Peter but were rebuffed. At the third attempt, the Romans attempted a sortie to break the siege. Fighting ferociously driven by the pangs of hunger and desperation, they pushed Henry’s forces all the way back into their camp. Henry, seeing that his rule may come to an end in this skirmish joined the fray and his soldiers followed him with renewed vigour driving the Romans back behind the walls of the city.

This fight had broken the resilience of the Romans who found themselves bereft of food, supplies and any hope of relief. Matilda was unable to help, the Normans were overseas. Morale deteriorated and discipline became slack. A few days later Henry’s soldiers noticed that a stretch of wall had no guards on them. In the dark they brought the ladders and climbed in without encountering any resistance. They opened the gates and the Imperial soldiers flooded in.  Gregory and his closest associates rushed for the safety of the Castello di Sant Angelo whilst resistance on the Vatican side of the city was quickly overcome. The papal militia was however able to hold the bridge over the Tiber and the main city of Rome remained in Gregory’s hands.

After that, negotiations started again. From Henry’s perspective the best solution would be if Gregory could be made to crown him. That would remove the stain of excommunication and end the conflict. Hence he and his pope-elect Clemet III left Rome. He kept a garrison there and tore down the walls of the Vatican city.

Thigs looked good for a while as Gregory, pressured by the Roman people, called a synod and promised to subject himself to whatever that synod decides about how the conflict could be resolved.  How sincere this promise was soon became quite clear. His invitation to the synod included clear instructions to the bishops attending. They were told to defend the church against the king a king he had once again excommunicated  from the walls of the Castello di Sant’Angelo. Gregory really did not care for compromise. Henry had no option than to sabotage the synod by apprehending the Gregorian bishops travelling to Rome.

In the meantime, he had received some financial support from the emperor in Constantinople who had come under pressure from Robert Guiscard. The Byzantine emperor wanted Henry to invade Robert Guiscard’s lands in Southern Italy and thereby forcing him to abandon his attacks against the Eastern Empire.

Henry used these funds to bribe the Romans who were now seriously tired of the stubborn Holy Father. They may support church reform, but they were even more keen on bringing these endless sieges to an end. And even in his college of Cardinals dissent was rising. His autocratic style had already irritated some of these eminent churchmen, but his insistence on fighting to the death was the last straw.

In 1084 16 cardinals went over to Henry’s camp and finally Rome opened its doors. Henry and the archbishop of Ravenna moved into the palace of the Lateran. A synod was called which deposed and excommunicated Gregory VII. Clement III was elected (again) and consecrated by the cardinal bishop of Ostia as was right and proper.

And then, finally, finally Henry IV. King of the Romans since 1056 was crowned emperor in St. Peter in the 28^th year of his reign by Pope Clement and in the presence of many bishops, cardinals dukes, counts and the Roman people. If it wasn’t for the previous pope still holding out in the Castello di Sant’Angelo, it would have appeared as if finally, the good years of Emperor Henry III were back.

Are they? Well, we will see next week. Gregory is still around, and there is Robert Guiscard whose adventure in Byzantium is going pear-shaped. When he returns to defend his lands now under threat from henry in Rome, the rollercoaster that is Henry Iv’s reign will take another turn, a turn the brunt of which will be borne not by Henry but by the people of Rome who will see their worst fears realised. I hope you will join us again next week.

And in the meantime, should you feel like supporting the show and get hold of these bonus episodes, sign up on Patreon. The links are in the show notes or on my website at historyofthegermans.com.

The Council of Sutri in 1046

In 1046 Henry III finally has time to go to Rome and claim the imperial crown. All he wants is get in, get crowned and get out before the Malaria season. He encounters a problem when he finds out that the current pope Gregory VI has bought the papacy for cold hard cash, a sin that could invalidate his coronation. Henry III gets involved, deposes all three competing popes and inadvertently starts a chain of events that ends in what Norman Cantor calls “the first of the three world revolutions”.

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Transcript

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans – Episode 28 – 3 Popes with one Stone

In today’s episode we will witness the very beginnings of what Norman Cantor described as the first of the tree world revolutions. We are laying the foundations to that moment Tom Holland compares to the crossing of the Rubicon or the storming of the Bastille. An event that shaped Western Europe into its own specific narrative that let it to get ahead of civilisations far older and far more sophisticated than its own. History would call this the Gregorian Reform, though it starts well before pope Gregory VII and Gregory VII was by no means its intellectual leader.

And like all great revolutions it starts with something the significance of which is overlooked by contemporaries.. Remember Louis XVI diary entry for the 14^th of July 1789 “rien”, nothing.

Well in the case of the Gregorian reform it starts not with a nothing, but with something we have seen many times before in the History of the Germans podcast, a standard imperial expedition to Rome to acquire the imperial crown.

Henry III’s intention was in all likelihood to cruise down to Rome, get crowned during the now traditional winter months and be back across the alps before the malaria season starts in spring. That is what his father Konrad II and his predecessor Henry II had done. Neither of these had had any interest in getting embroiled in Roman affairs. They all remembered Otto III and how that had ended.

In October 1046 Henry III arrives in the capital of the Lombards, Pavia where he holds a synod. He could travel with just his bodyguard. The last 7 years he had made good decisions as regards Italy. It started with his mediation in the Milanese uprising we had discussed in Episode 26. He appointed sensible bishops who supported the reform of the church, and where he had made a mistake, reversed decisions based on advice. The Italians were glad to see him and regarded him as a good, if mainly absent overlord.

In November he meets the current pope, Gregory VI in Piacenza to hammer out the details of the upcoming coronation. Things are fine and both pope and emperor treat each other with the respect their offices afford.

Sometime after this meeting Henry III has concerns. The more he hears about the way Gregory VI has been elevated to the throne of St. Peter, the more he wonders whether his coronation would be valid.

To understand his concerns as well as the background to our much bigger story, I need to bring you up to speed with the history of the papacy since the death of Otto III.

The last time we have seriously talked about Rome was in the last years of Otto III, the young emperor who dreamt of a Renovation of the Roman Empire with its actual capital in the actual city of Rome. Otto III had appointed 2 popes, first Gregory V, one of his close relatives and then his tutor and spiritual counsellor Gregory of Aurilhac, who took the name of Sylvester II.

Gregory V and Sylvester II had tried to clean up the papacy, which for hundreds of years had been a plaything of the Roman gangster aristocrats and had failed to project any spiritual leadership outside the Contado of the city of Rome. Sylvester II tried to bring the two-sword theory into practice. On this general theory the Pope yields the spiritual power and the emperor the secular power. Pope and Emperor are to work in unison at spreading the word of Christ and preparing the people for the coming of the antichrist. He worked tirelessly at improving the moral and educational standards of the clergy, papal administration and ecclesiastical authority.

But Sylvester II only lasted a year after Otto III had died in 1002.

As soon as Otto III had left Rome in 1001 John Crescentius took control of the holy city. John Crescentius was the son of Crescentius II, the man Otto III had executed on the roof of the Castel Sant Angelo and whose body was hung upside down from the gallows of Monte Mario. Unsurprisingly John Crescentius did not like the Germans very much.

Like other secular rulers of the city of Rome before him he appointed a string of tame popes, John XVII, John XVIII and Sergius V, who did as far as I can see pretty much nothing of note. The only thing they did was refusing to crown emperors which is why Henry II took his time to become emperor.

John Crescentius died in 1012 probably of natural causes. With his death the Crescenti rule of Rome ended. They were replaced by the other leading family of Rome, the Theophylacts. We met them before. They had graced papal history with such impeccable spiritual leaders like the Senatrix Mariucca and the debauched child Pope John XII.

The intervening years in the wilderness had turned the Theophylacts into battle-hardened warriors. To avoid the whole Malaki of having to find a suitable prelate to be pet pope, count Gregory of Tusculum decides to do the job himself. He gets ordained as priest and elevated to the see of St. Peter on the same day as Pope Benedict VIII.

Benedict VIII was a competent administrator and soldier. He mended the relationship with the empire and crowned Henry II in 1014. He even travelled to Bamberg to consecrate Henry II’s magnificent new cathedral.

When Benedict VIII died his brother had to pick up the job. Another same day ordination, election and elevation takes place. This Tusculum count took the name of John XIX. Things continued pretty much as before. John XIX crowns Konrad II in one of the most splendid and best attended coronations of the Middle Ages. He does however pursue a more independent policy from the empire.

In 1032 the next count of Tusculum ascends the throne, Benedict IX, a nephew of John XIX and Benedict VIII. He was quite young, probably 18 or 20 when he became the leader of Christianity. There are some chroniclers who claim he was only 12 when he was elevated, indulged in rape and murder and even displayed homosexual tendencies, though all that is likely imperial propaganda. But even 20 is not really an age when one should become pope. It is likely that his personal conduct fell somewhat short of the moral demands the office is usually associated with. Be that as it may, the emperors did not care as long as Benedict IX pursued a generally imperial friendly policy. HE even joined Konrad II during his campaign in Southern Italy in 1038.

Things get complicated for him in 1044. A “new aristocracy” in Rome is emerging that challenges the traditional mafia oligarchy that had ruled the city since the 9^th century. The upstarts throw Benedict IX out and bring in a new pope, Sylvester III. By 1045 Benedict IX is back. For reasons that are somewhat unclear he decides that the papacy is not really for him, and he sells it to a gentleman called John Gratian. That sale is not propaganda, that actually happened.

John Gratian takes the title of Gregory VI and it is this pope our friend Henry III encounters in November 1046 in Piacenza.

News trickle through that Gregory VI has paid to become pope, which constitute the sin of Simony. That causes a serious problem for Henry III. If Gregory VI had indeed acquired the papacy in such a crass manner, then what is any of the sacraments worth he will be conducting. Could he, Henry III be taking part in a sinful act if he had himself crowned by a pope whose foul act condemns him to eternal hellfire.

He is now on theologically thin ice. And to say it in German “Wenn ich nicht mehr weiter weiss, gruende ich einen Arbeitskreis” which loosely translates as “if I am at a loss, I will found a taskforce”. That task force was the Council of Sutri in December 1046. For that he convened the main churchmen of Italy as well as the German church leaders who had accompanied him on his journey.

The assembled bishops easily dismissed antipope Sylvester III as uncanonical. When Gregory VI admitted to have bought the papacy in order to bring an end to the travesty that was the papacy of Benedict IX, that made this question easy. And Benedict IX did not even show up. Henry III in one fell swoop deposed all three popes.

He now needed a new one. And this time it had to be a proper churchman who cleans up the mess the papacy has become. Henry III knew a lot of proper churchmen, all of whom were members of the German Imperial church. He first asked Adalbert archbishop of Bremen/Hamburg and eternal scorn of the Saxons but he refused. Bishop Suitger of Bamberg was more amenable and is made Pope Clement II on the spot.

Clement II crowns Henry III and sends him back on his way home to avoid the Malaria. Clement II stays behind and dies of the disease within 10 months. The next volunteer was Poppo, bishop of Brixen, who as Damasus II lasts just 30 days before being taken down by the disease. In 1048 Henry appoints his cousin, Bruno, bishop of Toul to become pope as Leo IX.

Leo IX lasts almost 5 years. These five years are a crucial time for the papacy and ultimately European history.

The first smart thing Leo IX does is to make his acceptance of the papal crown dependent upon the consent of the Romans. That may not be quite a free election as such given Leo arrives with a contingent of imperial soldiers, but he shows the Romans respect which they appreciate. He is also coming back to a city of Rome that has changed. The Crescenti have died out and the counts of Tusculum are on the run. The whole place is looking for a new equilibrium.

The new thing is that the pope is now appearing on the international stage. Leo IX will undertake three major journeys to Germany in his 5-year reign, travel extensively across Italy and will hold a total of 12 synods. The key topics of his synods were simony, the purchasing of holy offices and the marriage of clergy.

Until Leo IX these gatherings of German or Italian bishops were usually presided over by the king or emperor. Now the pope takes a more hands-on role in managing the church. He begins a fundamental reform of the church infrastructure. That includes introducing the college of cardinals as an administrative body. Up until then the cardinal was just a honorific given to priests of the major basilicas of Rome. Now they get directly involved in the management of the global church. Leo paves the way to solve theological disputes using the new techniques of logic and dialectic that would ultimately become the scholastic method which will dominate European thinking in the high Middle Ages. The objective here is not just to make management as usual more effective, no, Leo IX is driving fundamental change and reform.

To understand the significance of Leo IX we have to see his actions in the context of some major changes happening in the early 11^th century.

The 11^th century is not short of momentous change. For one, there is a dramatic rise in economic activity brought about by climate change, improved agricultural methods and the replacement of slavery with feudal obligations. The agricultural surplus allows for the creation of markets, trade and cities. People as a whole are wealthier. They are climbing up Maslow’s pyramid having much higher security of food and shelter than 150 years ago. That drives the demand for peace, as defined as the absence of violence we discussed last episode. In areas where such security is provided, self-actualisation becomes a more and more significant desire.

In the 11^th century being the person, you always wanted to be did not involve yoga, veganism or podcasting. What people wanted to do is live the right life so that they would be chosen at the day of judgement. And the day of judgement was imminent as a 1000 years had passed since the passion of Christ.

We have encountered these extreme forms of piety amongst lay men already in the personalities of Otto III and Henry II. As the century progresses, more and more often just ordinary people feel the need to follow Christ’s example without becoming priests or monks They spend long time in religious devotion, give money or their labour to the church, help the poor and in extremis embark on self-flagellation or wearing of hair shirts. Going on arduous pilgrimages to Rome or Jerusalem is no longer something only churchmen and holy hermits do, in 1034 Robert, duke of Normandy leaves his worldly possessions to his 8-year-old bastard son and goes on pilgrimage to Jerusalem where he dies. In 1096 ordinary people follow Pope Urban’s call for a crusade and set off on foot to Jerusalem, crossing Germany and the Balkans before being sent to their certain death by the Byzantine emperor.

This rise in lay piety scared the church no end. How can the church maintain their moral authority in society when the flock lives more saintly lives than the vicars sent to lead them in prayer. At the same time the laymen ask how effective prayer by a bent prelate could be.

We have been talking about church reform several times before. Led by the Abbey of Cluny and the reform monasteries inside the empire the church had responded. Since the time of Henry II monasteries were regularly reviewed as to their adherence to the rules of Saint Benedict.

Weakness in discipline usually meant (i) priests and monks living in relationships or even got married, (ii) the sin of Simony, i.e., the buying of selling of holy offices, which usually led to (iii) laziness, greed and incompetence.

If weaknesses in discipline are discovered, the abbot would be replaced, and things were put right.

The chronicler Hermann of Reichenau, himself a monk at that famous monastery describes the process as follows:

Quote: “In Reichenau on the death of Abbot Werner the brethren elected the monk henry. King Henry (that is Henry II), loathed his arrogance -although he had received money from him. Henry was hostile to the brethren, who had been subject of accusations in his presence. Against their will he appointed to rule them a certain Immo. Abbot of Gorze, a harsh man who at the time also held Prum. Some of the brethren, therefore, left that place on their own accord and some of them were severely afflicted by him with fasts, scourges and exile. Thus the noble monastery suffered for its sins a heavy loss in great men, books and church treasures..” unquote.

Two years later “King Henry, after hearing at last of the cruelty of Immo, removed him and appointed Bern, a learned and pious man….he was joyfully received and gathered the scattered brethren together again.”

This little story tells us not just about the effort going into the church reform but also the degree of success. Leaving aside the hypocrisy that Henry II had taken money from the abbot elect. But bringing Immo in and accepting a loss in the economic viability of a monastery as important as Reichenau was a considerable financial effort on Henry II’s part. However, it seems the measures did not achieve their ultimate goal as Immo had to be removed. The new Abbot presumably had to scale down standards to entice the brethren to return.

Such ultimately half-hearted efforts failed to cut the mustard with the increasingly pious laymen. They were looking for more and for better.

In the 1030s the next iteration of church reform, call it Church Reform 2.0 took hold. This next generation of reformers had little in common with the grand abbots of Cluny. They revived the ancient tradition of hermits and holy men who had thrived in the Eastern Roman Empire since the 5^th century.  

According to Norman Cantor Ascetics came back in fashion in Western Europe during the 11^th century because now people had enough to eat. Before that everyone was going hungry, making it hard to differentiate between a poor man and a saint.

We have met some of these hermits already, unsurprisingly in the company of Otto III the epitome of lay piety amongst early medieval rulers. There was St. NIlus who accused the emperor of overreach when he had Crescentius II cut to pieces and pope John XVII mutilated and humiliated. Another was St. Romuald who founded his own ascetic order. His motto was: Sit in your cell as in paradise. Put the whole world behind you and forget it. Watch your thoughts like a good fisherman watching for fish. The path you must follow is in the Psalms — never leave it.

From this purely eremitic tradition the community of Vallombrosa near Florence emerged. Their aim was to combine the ascetic, eremitic lifestyle with life in the community, preaching the gospel and doing good works. The rules were much stricter than the traditional Benedictine rule and involved vows of silence, seclusion and poverty.

It is out of these communities and spiritual tradition that two of the four most important Gregorian reformers come.

The first one is St. Peter Damian or Pietro Damiano.  He was born an orphan of a noble but impoverished family. He was badly mistreated in his early youth before being taken in by a cousin who was a priest. Once his intelligence is noticed, he is sent to study theology and canon law at the cathedral schools of Ravenna and Parma. In Parma he becomes a lecturer at the age of 25. 

He joins the hermitage of Fonte Avellano where he becomes prior in 1043. He will remain in this role until the end of his life. Pietro Damiano embraces the life of an ascetic hermit enthusiastically and subjects himself to extreme forms of devotion and penitence, including regular flagellation up to a point where he is near death.

But the solitary life of an hermit is not really for him. His true passion is to meet people, preach on street corners and squares, reaching out to the Common man.. In between excessive religious exercises and itinerant preaching he gets involved in the controversies that shake the church in his time. He has a habit of sending out treatises analysing and judging ecclesiastical decisions.

How smart or well informed they are, is a bit doubtful since he constantly declares individuals as the harbingers of a golden age, which includes the debauched Pope benedict IX and the simonistic Gregory VI, two issues he is particularly opposed to. 

His pet hates were Simony and Homosexuality.

Simony probably needs a bit of explanation. It is named after Simon the Sorcerer who makes an appearance in the deeds of the Apostles, chapter 8 verse 9 to 25. A sorcerer, as we all know is a wizard without a hat. Simon was -according to the account – a very successful sorcerer with a large followership in Samaria. When he saw the apostle Philip preach, he became a believer, was baptised and began to follow him around amazed by all the great signs and miracles Philip performed. At one point they were joined by Peter and John who could bring down the Holy Spirit by placing their hands on the heads of the believers.

Simon was mightily impressed by that and offered Peter and John money to learn this skill. He said that they should give him this ability so that everyone on whom he lays his hands may receive the holy spirit.

Peter was not happy and answered: ““May your money perish with you, because you thought you could buy the gift of God with money! You have no part or share in this ministry, because your heart is not right before God. Repent of this wickedness and pray to the Lord in the hope that he may forgive you for having such a thought in your heart. For I see that you are full of bitterness and captive to sin.”

The interesting point about simony is that it is not a sin of bad intention but a sin of bad means. Simon the sorcerer is not ill disposed to the church. Au contraire, he wants to  do good, spread the gospel and bring the Holy Spirit to the believers. His sin is that he wants to buy the skills needed, which shows that his heart is not right. Hence when Gregory VI tried to justify his payment to Benedict IX with the argument that it was all for the good of the church, the argument does not cut it. He may have the right intention but uses the wrong means. We will find out how important that distinction is.

Pietro Damiano wrote a long work on Simony and how to define it and what its consequences are. The important question is what constitutes the “offer of money”. In the case of Gregory VI it is quite obvious, I pay you X to become pope. But what about the usual payments a new bishop or Abbot has to pay to his new liege lord? What about the abbot or bishop’s feudal obligations to the king? And then there is the question, are the sacraments performed by a simonistic priest still valid? Is a priest ordained by a simonistic bishop properly ordained, and if not, are his sacraments invalid as a fruit of the poison tree? Pietro Damiano writes three books on this subject, generally taking a somewhat pragmatic view.

Where he is not pragmatic at all is on licentiousness. His argument was -not unreasonably – that a priest or bishop engaging in every kind of immorality undermines the authority of the church and would bring down the wrath of the pious laity on them. He is particularly concerned about sexual relationships between priests and adolescent boys that were often covered up by their superiors – plus ca change. And then he is a full on rabid homophobe promising fire and brimstone to men loving men. Just when you thought, maybe the guy is not so bad, that thing comes out.

The other thought leader of the Gregorian reforms who appears in the 1040s is Humbert, usually called da Silva Candida after the church whose priest he was in Rome. He was a lot more dogmatic and radical than Pietro Damiano. In particular he believed that all sacraments of simonistic priests were invalid, including the acts of priests ordained by a simonistic priest. He also firmly believed in a very wide definition of simony that included any involvement of the emperor in the election of bishops or abbots.

I guess you get an idea of what is going on here. The church is under pressure to improve its image. Reform has been ongoing for a long time, but the outcome is underwhelming against the backdrop of growing lay piety. That creates room for new and revolutionary ideas about monastic life, priestly conduct and ultimately the roles of temporal and spiritual power.

And Pope Leo IX, cousin of emperor Henry III, member of the imperial church jumps right on to that bandwagon. Actually, the emperor himself is massively in favour of the early reform.

For Leo IX, Henry III, the mighty abbot of Cluny and even Pietro Damiano, there is no question whatsoever who should ultimately lead the reform effort, the emperor. After 200 years of papal agony and irrelevance, there simply cannot be anyone else who has the moral and physical assets to push through major change.

Ever since Otto the Great the world had operated in what Norman Cantor called the early medieval equilibrium. The world and the Church are one and the same. The rule of the world is in principle divided between the spiritual and the temporal, the pope and the emperor. But they are just two sides of the same coin. The emperor brings not just peace and justice, he also promotes Christianity to far-flung pagan lands and looks after the spiritual well-being of his people. Him getting involved in theological debates or church reform is not meddling, but part of the job. The pope should in principle do the same, but in all protagonists’ lifetime to date never did any of it. Henry III was simply happy that his cousin was shouldering some of the work.

A papacy that actually does something is new. Being present, living a moral life and caring about the spiritual well-being of the people dramatically improves the standing of the papacy. That is why Leo IX is so important. His change in papal standing creates an alternative that simply did not exist before. If the realm of the spiritual is managed well, there is less justification for an emperor to be involved. If we have a well run church, why do we have a theocratic ruler who claims to be the vicar of Christ on earth? After Leo IX the direct involvement of the emperor in church affairs is no longer the natural state of affairs. The two sides of the medal are drifting apart.

The other component that allows the two sides to drift apart is even less obvious to Leo IX and even more unexpected. The Normans.

I told you in episode 25 that the Normans will appear in the narrative and that they matter, like a lot. The Normans I talk about are not exactly the ones you probably think about right now. I am talking about the Sicilian Normans.

We are in the year 1048 now, 18 years before William the Conqueror sets sail for the English coast.  Normandy is the most tightly run state in western Europe outside the empire. Like in the empire central power is able to maintain order, prevent the construction of castles and stop the nobles from feuding. That is great for peasants but not great for the second, third, fourth and fifth sons of the Norman knightly class.

One outlet for their ambition had been to take service as a mercenary in Southern Italy. Southern Italy was a perennial mess where Lombard dukes, Byzantine viceroys, independent cities and the emir of Sicily are tied up in near incessant fighting. The Normans, the superheroes of the 11^th century, show up from 999 onwards and everyone wants them in their army. Initially they work for cold hard cash, but as that is scarce, accept land and fiefs as payment. Konrad II for the first time enfeoffs a Norman lord with the county of Aversa in the 1030s.

From there it goes bang, bang, bang. Ranulf of Aversa takes over the much bigger Capua. Then the 7 Hauteville brothers arrive. They were the sons of a Norman nobleman, Tancred of Hauteville. The first to come to prominence was William, called Iron hand. The name came about when he decapitated the emir of Sicily with just one stroke of his sword. He becomes count of Puglia in 1042 after taking it from the Byzantines. William and his brother Drogo then attacked Calabria. William died in 1046 and was succeeded by Drogo who was murdered by a local mercenary. On whose orders, nobody knows. But there were still a lot of Hauteville brothers left. The next count of Apulia was Humbert. Humbert picks up Bari and by now, large parts of Southern Italy is in the hands of various Norman lords, with the Hauteville family the most powerful.

The rise of the Normans concerns Leo IX a lot. The last couple of hundred years the papacy’s neighbours to the south were the Lombard princes of Benevento, Capua and Spoleto. These guys may be well armed but spent most of the time fighting each other or the Byzantines or the Emir of Sicily, leaving the pope well alone. Projecting the development of the last 15 years forward Leo IX concluded that soon the Byzantines and Lombards would be gone, and he would look down the barrel of a heavily armed force of Scandinavian giants.

In 1053 he decided to act. Leo IX raised an army amongst the Lombards and Northern Italians supported by a small contingent of imperial troops. Near the town of Civitate in Puglia, the papal army meets the Norman forces led by Humbert of Hauteville and another Hauteville brother Robert Guiscard (“The Cunning”). The Normans were outnumbered and undersupplied. The situation was so dire that Humbert asked for a truce which Leo IX refused. When the two sides met the Normans did however win quite unexpectedly. The Norman troops displayed the discipline and cohesion needed to hold the line, something the motley crew of Papal allies lacked. Only the Imperial troops in the centre fought all the way to the end but were ultimately defeated. Pope Leo IX was captured and brought to Benevento, which the Normans quickly annexed.

Leo IX was held for nearly a year and treated with all the honours of his office. He finally made an agreement with Humphrey and Robert Guiscard, the contents of which are not known.

One man in Leo IX’s company direct observed these developments and drew his own conclusions, Hildebrand Cardinal priest of the Basilica of St. Paul outside ethe Walls. He realised the Normans were not only a military force that could counterbalance any emperor’s troops in Italy but also that they craved acceptance by the Holy See. Even before Hildebrand ascended the papal throne as Gregory VII did he forge an alliance with Robert Guiscard which made the latter king of Sicily and the former the most powerful Pope the world had ever seen.

We will spend a lot of time talking about Gregory VII in the upcoming episodes, so there will be a lot of opportunity to dive into his background, worldview and deeds as we go along. The only thing to point out here is a grandiose twist of Irony. Gregory VII whose great reform objective was to end Simony started his career in the chancery of pope Gregory VI, the one and only pope who definitely bought the papacy for cold hard cash. Hildebrand followed Gregory VI into exile in Cologne, never officially renounced him and even chose his papal name after his old simonistic boss.

Next week we will go back to Germany and look at the remaining years of Henry III’s reign, where we will find the other strains of history that inevitably drag the Salian regime onto the frozen field outside the castle of Canossa.  I hope to see you then.

The main role of a medieval monarch is to bring peace to his subjects. Peace is not so much absence of major international conflict, but protection from feuding lords. Whilst in France central power is far too weak to maintain any semblance of order giving rise to the Peace of God movement, the empire under Henry III can rely on its monarch to fulfil his role.

But his rule is not without tension. The dukes of Saxony and Lothringia are moving into opposition to the king and emperor who falls severely ill in 1045.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans – Episode 27 – Peace in our time

Last week we saw the young emperor Henry III taking a Gold medal in the imperial sport of subjugating the East. After the campaigns of 1040, 1043 and 1044 he finally had the dukes of Poland and Bohemia and the king of Hungary swearing fealty to him and all his successors. The last emperor who may have got there was Otto III, but that is very much disputed. Henry III’s position is clear, mainly because the blood on his sword was still fresh.

As a medieval emperor Henry’s job is not only to expand the reach of Christianity, but also to bring peace and justice to his lands. The monarch’s obligation to bring peace is one of the distinguishing features between the dark ages and the Middle Ages. A dark ages king was expected to provide opportunities for plunder and tribute, whilst in the Middle Ages the population has settled down and cares more about safety and security than about raping and pillaging.

In the 11^th century the call for peace gets louder and louder, in particular in France. Peace is not so much the absence of large international war. What the population suffered most from were the incessant feuds between rival lords. When two rival lords had a disagreement, they rarely went into trial by combat to see who was the stronger. No, no, no, that was actually dangerous. The better solution was to burn down the rival’s fields and murder his peasants. Unarmed peasants could not inflict much harm on an armoured rider and when the rival lord comes with his equally well-equipped men, you can always race back into the safe stone castle you had just built.

The simple equation is more stone castles equals more feuds equals more peasant misery. A king who wants to have peace in his lands needs to do one thing first and foremost, which is preventing his nobles from building castles. In an ideal world only the king would build and man castles. However, the 11^th century is far from being an ideal world.

The world is particularly far from the ideal in France. King Henri I (1031-1060) is considered one of the weakest French kings in history. He was off to a bad start since he had to give the duchy of Burgundy to his brother Robert, shrinking the already modest royal possessions even further. Note, this is the duchy of Burgundy, which is part of France and roughly equivalent of what we call Burgundy today. It has obviously nothing at all to do with the Kingdom of Burgundy or the County of Burgundy.

His brother was one of Henri’s less pressing problems. He also had to deal with his overbearing magnates. The two most irritating ones were the counts of Anjou and the counts of Blois Champagne who would usually fight each other. Count Fulk III the Black of Anjou was famous for building castles. He is said to have built almost 100 castles mostly in stone, the ruins of which are still terrifying. Then you had the dukes of Normandy and the dukes of Aquitaine who were a bit further afield from Henri’s direct zone of control, but often intervened in the struggles. New powers rose as well like the counts of Flanders and the Count of Holland. But even the magnates were not able to maintain order much beyond their castle walls, which meant every little count, baron or castellan built his own castle(s) and went merrily along brutalising the villeins.

In this chaotic environment the Peace of God or Truce of God movement gained traction. The idea was to bring the perpetrator of violence to heel by threatening them with sanctions meted out by heavenly intervention. The Church took the lead and held several councils, the first in Le Puy in 975, but then quite regularly during the early 11^th century with a frenzy of activity in the 1030s, the millennium of Christ’s passion and potential date for the arrival of the antichrist.

According to the monk Adhemar, these events were religious festivals where the bishops would whip the crowd into a frenzy through a generous display of relics and calls upon the saints to intervene. The warriors in presence would then declare their intention of making war on those who violate the peace of God.

These attempts of pitching an army of saintly warriors has more than the whiff of crusaders to it and indeed the Crusader movement incorporates elements of the Peace of God movement and develops them further by sending the most violent and aggressive lords out of the country. 

That being said, these holy armies or more accurately holy militias were rarely successful against the battle hardened Seigneurs. That is why from the 1030s onwards a more manageable Truce of God was sought. The concept was that the lords would make vows on powerful relics promising to suspend warfare during the weekend, Saturday to Monday or even Wednesday to Monday as well as on high days and holy days. If they breached this obligation, they would be subject to all forms of spiritual sanctions from banning from mass to full excommunication. The imposition of these sanctions as well as the whole management of the Treuga Dei was initially in the hands of the church, mainly the bishops and Abbots who regularly suffered from incursions by secular lords. The Abbey of Cluny became a key sponsor and coordinator for the Treuga Dei.

The Treuga Dei was needed most in the parts of France where central power was weakest. The dukes of Normandy whose duchy was tightly run were able to maintain public order by themselves without having to take recourse to the church. 

Equally the empire did not feel the need for a Treuga Dei. The central power was strong under Henry III and entirely capable to prevent feuds and control the construction of stone castles.

Henry III however borrowed some elements from the Treuga Dei movement. 

In 1043 he holds a Synod in Constance where he assembles the nobles of Swabia. He first forgave every trespass committed against him. And then through prayers and exhortations he achieved a mutual reconciliation amongst all the Swabians presents, whereby they in turn forgave each other any trespass committed against them. The chronicler Hermann of Reichenau described the outcome of this peace happening and similar ones taking place all across the country as “a peace unheard of for many centuries that the king confirmed in an edict”.

The last sentence is what matters most in that description- confirmed by edict. In other words, Henry III did order peace or more precisely banned feuding by secular law. There were only two rulers at this point who had enough centralised power to do that, the duke of Normandy and the Emperor.

So, when the great wits on social media refer to this period as the Holy Roman Empire that was neither Holy nor Roman nor an Empire, they could not be further from the truth. Leaving aside that the term Holy Roman Empire only coming into usage 200 years later, by 1044 the Empire was indeed sacred, led by a sacred ruler, it was Roman since it saw itself in the succession of the Roman empire in the same way as Constantinople saw itself, and it was very much an empire, the by far most powerful political entity in Western Europe.

The reason Henry III could impose his peace across the land had a lot to do with the fact that he still directly controlled pretty much all of Southern Germany. He is still himself duke of Swabia and Carinthia as well as King of Burgundy. He did give the duchy of Bavaria to a member of the Luxembourger clan in 1042. But according to Egon Boshof this did not significantly reduce his level of control. The new duke had not been elected by the Bavarian nobles and had little personal power base in the duchy. Under these circumstances he would be completely dependent upon the king, essentially an office holder rather than a magnate. Henry will do the same thing with the duchy of Swabia and Carinthia in the next few years, something I will discuss at length in a future episode.

The situation is somewhat different in the Northern duchies of Upper and Lower Lothringia and Saxony.

Let’s start with Saxony. Saxony was the heartland of the Ottonians. The success of the early Ottonians had clearly rubbed off on the Saxons in general and they saw themselves very much as the nucleus and foremost tribe in the empire Otto the great had created. After the Ottos had died out, the Saxons did not directly participate in the election of the last kings. Instead, Henry II and Konrad II had to come to Saxony after their elections and negotiate a separate acclamation. That acclamation was granted in both cases in exchange for recognition of ancient rights and probably the issuance of new privileges.

That already set Saxony apart. The other difference was the role of the duke. You may remember that Otto the great had made his old comrade in war, Hermann Billung, duke of Saxony. That elevation had initially been more of a governorship. Hermann Billung was to take orders from Otto in respect of the duchy and the main ducal lands, including the immensely valuable silver mines in Goslar remained in the personal possession of the Ottonians. Furthermore, Saxony had some immensely wealthy and powerful counts, such as the Margrave Gero and then later the Margraves of Meissen. One of the Margraves, Ekkehard had even tried to become king and died under suspicious circumstances as we heard in episode 17.

Therefore the dukes of Saxony were less powerful within their duchy, operating more like Firsts amongst Equals. On the flipside the protection of the ancient rights of the Saxons meant that the Billungs could make their duchy an inherited fief, whilst all other duchies were offices the king could -in principle – assign to whoever he wanted.

For Konrad II and Henry III this situation was unsatisfactory. Both tried to strengthen royal authority in Saxony, using the Ottonian crown lands and the Imperial church as their base. The bishops of Hildesheim and Halberstadt were given generous donations. The dominant churchman in Saxony was however archbishop Adalbert of Hamburg-Bremen. Adalbert was made archbishop in 1043 and clashed with duke Bernhard II of Saxony right from the start. The duke saw Adalbert as the king’s spy and agent in Saxony, sent to find the weakness in the Saxon defences. And he was probably not wrong in that. Adalbert and Henry had a strong alignment of interests. Henry wanted control over Saxony and Adalbert’s plan was to make Hamburg the metropolitan seat of an archbishopric that would cover all of Scandinavia and Saxony, from Lapland to Leipzig. On the latter front, Bernhard tried to torpedo Adalbert’s plans by marrying his son to the daughter to king Magnus of Norway and Denmark.

The other royal initiative was to expand the Ottonian heartlands in the Harz mountains. Henry III aggressively sponsored Goslar where he built his new imperial Pfalz. This building actually still stands today, another impressive testament to the great building boom of the Salian period. Furthermore, he also established a very special monastery in Goslar, the Priory of Saint Simon and St. Judas. This priory became a sort of stationary imperial chancellery. The main chancellery travelled with the peripatetic emperor, but some of its members would stay in Goslar. The members of the chancellery and the priory were trained to become bishops or abbots taking up the key positions in the imperial church. Under Henry III we are reaching the zenith of the Imperial church system we have discussed so many times in recent episodes.

Goslar was a provocation to the Saxons. Not only was the regular presence of the king an expensive exercise since the neighbouring counties had to provide the food to the court, it was also an affront to ancient Saxon rights. The Saxons would traditionally hold their assembly at the ducal palace in Werla, a place that no longer exists 20km from Goslar. Werla was a large palace covering nearly 20 hectares enclosed by a stone curtain wall with two or more gates, several towers, two palaces, one of which had a heating system etc., etc. pp. This was a place of Saxon pride and a demonstration of its ancient power. By building out Goslar, the Salians cut Werla out of the equation. The place emptied out and by the 15^th century had entirely disappeared.

To cut a long story short, Henry III had it in for the Saxons and in particular its dukes, the Billungs.

In 1047 the Billungs had enough. Henry III had gone to a royal estate in Saxony called Lesum to meet with the archbishop Adalbert. Lesum was a bit of a red rag as well, since Konrad II had taken it off the Billungs under some legal pretext 10 years earlier. Whilst the Emperor and Archbishop met, the Billungs, duke Bernhard II and his brother Thietmar come around with a large retinue. During this probably rather uneasy stay one of Thietmar’s vassals, a certain Arnold confides in the archbishop that Thietmar plans to kill the emperor.

Arnold is made to accuse Thietmar openly which results in another trial by combat. There is no evidence on either side, so God is to decide. Thietmar is happy to go along, maybe less on grounds of actual innocence but more on his recognised prowess with the sword. Anyway, the Lord reveals that Thietmar was lying by means of Arnold’s sword sticking between his rips.

There is no record of how Bernhard II explains the situation to his overlord, but not much happen to him. Henry III may not yet have enough assets in place to take the duke of Saxony on directly.

There is a prologue to the story. A few years later Thietmar’s son captures his father’s killer and has him strung up between two dogs. That gets Henry III involved again. The son is exiled for life and his lands are given to the bishop of Halberstadt, further undermining ducal power in Saxony.

Apart from this attempted murder the Saxons held still and watched the erosion of their ancient rights and privileges with growing contempt and anger as long as Henry III lived.

Lothringia is another case again.

You may remember that the Brun of Cologne, the brother of Otto the Great had divided the duchy of Lothringia in two parts, Upper and Lower Lothringia in the 960s. Under Konrad II the two duchies were put together again by Konrad II. Konrad needed a strong duke of Lothringia as a counterweight to Count Odo of Blois-Champagne, his rival for the Burgundian crown. Odo’s lands bordered Lorraine and in 1037 he attacked Lorraine to seek revenge for the loss of Burgundy. Konrad II calculation worked and Odo was defeated and killed by the new duke of all Lothringia, Gozolo.

Gozolo’s success was a double-edged sword for his family. On the one hand he was successful in removing Odo, whose lands were divided amongst his sons. On the other hand, now the emperor no longer needs a strong Lothringian duke to fight the count of Champagne. In fact, the emperor wanted the exact opposite. He, and that is our friend Henry III now, he wanted a weaker duke who owes his office to him, the king.

That became even more so when Henry III met up with king Henri of France in 1043. In the meeting Henri agreed to let Henry III marry Agnes of Poitou, the daughter of the duke of Aquitaine and linked to the counts of Anjou through her mother. Henry now has a big enough stake in the French power play to keep any count of Champagne in check.

In 1044 he got the opportunity when Gozolo died. Henry III pressured Gozolo into changing  Gozolo  will. Instead of leaving the whole duchy to his able son Godfrey, he split the duchy up again. The duchy of Upper Lothringia went to his son Godfrey and the duchy of Lower Lothringia to his younger son Gozolo II, who according to the chroniclers was “ignavus”, which means something like lazy, slothful and cowardly.

That came as a huge surprise to Godfrey, known as Godfrey the bearded. As ever so often there are no contemporary pictures of Godfrey the Bearded but the 19^th century went to town on his beard. I will put some of the best images on the blog.

Godfrey had been sharing the running of the combined duchy with his father since 1044. Hence, he must have had an inkling that this division had not come about because his father suddenly found his younger son competent.

Godfrey simply could not understand why this was happening. Hadn’t his father and he himself served the Salians faithfully, spilled their blood to bring down the mighty count Odo? Had Lothringia not always been one entity since its creation in 843 with the recent division just a matter of administrative ease?

He made his disappointment known to all and sundry, which may well have involved bringing up an armed retinue to the royal assembly Henry III called him up to. Some sources claim he had conspired with king Henri of France promising the duchy of Lothringia. As we know every single king of France believes the duchy of Lothringia is his and wants it back. But it is unlikely Godfrey had already come to this point in 1044. Like Duke Ernst of Swabia, he thought he could negotiate with a Salian Emperor. Nope. As soon as he had arrived at court, Henry III’s court removed him as duke of Upper Lothringia. For Henry the role of Duke was an office, not feudal position. Hence if a duke refuses to accept the redrawing of the borders of his duchy, he is guilty of high treason.

As we know there is now only one thing for Godfrey to do – rebel. The fighting was ferocious, and Lothringia was beaten up severely. Henry III ultimately prevailed even though he did have to fight in Hungary and Burgundy at the same time. Godfrey was taken to the castle of Giebichenstein, the state prison.

In 1046 he was re-instated as duke of Upper Lothringia having handed over his son as a hostage. Lower Lothringia was taken away from the inept Gozolo II and given to another member of the Luxembourger family, who now ruled both Bavaria and Lower Lothringia. I know, me too. I cannot see why you bring down one family only to give it to another, equally powerful.

Another odd move was to enfeoff the count of Flanders with lands on the Schelde river and around Valenciennes. That irritated Godfrey, whose land it was, but the counts of Flanders were an ambitious lot with great plans, none of which involved strengthening the empire.

In between the defeat of Godfrey and the re-organisation of Lothringia two things happen, one definitely significant, the other possibly important.

Let us start with the potentially important one. Henry falls gravely ill in 1045. What he suffered from is unclear. What is noticeable is that Henry III takes several decisions after his recovery that seem to be driven more by heightened personal animosity than political calculations. Or maybe he could just never stand duke Godfrey.

The other definitely significant event is his marriage to Agnes of Poitou. You may remember that Henry III had been married to Gunhild, the daughter of King Canute. Gunhild died in 1038 on return from Konrad II’s last expedition to Italy, probably of Malaria. Gunhild was an expensive miscalculation. King Canute drove a hard bargain, and Konrad II had to hand over the duchy of Schleswig to get the marriage alliance over the line. Canute repaid him by dying shortly afterwards, which lead to the disintegration of his Nordic Empire, making Gunhild politically worthless.  Moreover, the couple only had a daughter, Beatrice who became abbess of Quedlinburg.

Henry III should have got married quickly after that, but for some reason this did not happen. It took 5 years before he arranged the marriage with Agnes of Poitou. As I mentioned before, Agnes was the daughter of the duke of Aquitaine and the stepdaughter of the count of Anjou. That brings Henry great contacts in France but also some headaches.

As most nobles of that period, Agnes and Henry III were too closely related to get married according to canonical laws. The marriage immediately attracts criticism from the reform church, including from the influential abbot Siegfried of Gorze. Being French did not help either as some of the older curmudgeons disliked the fancy French dresses, haircuts and armour.

Another thing Agnes brought apart from Parisian, or more likely Bordelais fashion was a particular brand of church reform represented by the abbey of Cluny. I think we discussed Cluny a bit in the Germany in the Year 1000 episodes. Cluny was not just a monastery; it was a monastic empire. There were existing imperial centres of monastic reform like Gorze and St. Maximin near Trier. These monasteries supported reform by sending their monks out as abbots to bring back the strict interpretation of the rule of Saint Benedict. And that was it.

Cluny was different. If you asked Cluny for help to sort out your monastery or create a new one, they would require you to make it a daughter house of the Monastery of Cluny. That means it’s abbot reports to the Abbot of Cluny, who in turn reports to the pope. That in turn means the secular lord who held the monastery as an Eigenkirche until then, loses it to the abbot of Cluny.

A high price to pay for reform, but one the lords of France had been happy to pay, probably because their list of sins was so long. In Germany Cluny had made inroads, in particular with empress Adelheid, but were held back by the later Ottonians and Konrad II. Agnes opened the doors wide for the abbots of Cluny. Abbot Hugh of Cluny, known as the great, which makes him I think the only abbot who is called the great, anyway, Hugh of Cluny becomes godfather of Henry III’s son and heir.

There we are. You may not be aware, but in this short episode we have met some of the dramatis personae that will lead us to that great medieval turning point, the road to Canossa. Agnes of Poitou, Adalbert of Hamburg-Bremen, Bernhard, duke of Saxony, Godfrey the Bearded and the great abbot of Cluny. Some people are still missing for the great play, but they will make their appearance next episode, when Henry III will take down three popes with one shot. Yes, it is time for our favourite pastime, an expedition to Italy. This expedition will be the most important imperial coronation journeys to Rome, not just for German history, but for the history of the papacy as well.

Stay tuned, things are hotting up.

And if you enjoy the History of the Germans, tell your friends, your family, your neighbours, your followers, or anyone else you think may enjoy the podcast. It makes a huge difference.

See you next week.

The first seamless transition of power from father to Son in 70 years

For the first time in almost 70 years the transition from one king/emperor to the next is smooth. Konrad II was not only one of the most successful medieval rulers, he also managed to live long enough for his son Henry III to grow up to adulthood before taking over.

Henry III is outwardly quite different from his father, well educated, deeply immersed in the concepts of sacred kingship and immensely powerful even before he had become king. But at the same time he shares Konrad’s steely determination and aggressive nature.

Items 1-3 on his agenda are Poland (a mess), Bohemia (a pseudo-Boleslav) and Hungary (an old grudge).

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans, Episode 26 – Henry III Comin’ in Smooth

Last week we discussed the last few years of Konrad II’s reign, which despite some setbacks in the trial of Adalbero of Carinthia and a pretty pointless Italian expedition still counts as one of the most successful rules of the Middle Ages. Not only does Konrad leave an empire behind whose central authority is undisputed, but he also managed to live long enough for his heir and successor Henry III to grow up to adulthood before taking over. The transition from Konrad II to Henry III 1039 is the first smooth handover of power since the transition form Otto I to Otto II in 972, 67 years ago.

With these two exceptions, the death of a king or emperor had always been a period of huge uncertainty and upheaval. Henry the Fowler, Otto the Great, Otto III, Henry II and Konrad II all had to fight opponents for the throne forcing the magnate to take sides. Once one side had won, the deck of cards was reshuffled and previously powerful men lose their position, like the kingmaker Aribo of Mainz did in 1039.

Henry III’s transition was entirely smooth. He had already been elected and crowned king in 1028. Beyond his royal title he had already become duke of Bavaria in 1027, duke of Swabia in 1038 and in the same year he also became king of Burgundy. In 1041, two years after taking over he also became duke of Carinthia. On top of that he controlled his family estates that amounted to almost a duchy in Franconia as well as the royal demesne which comprised the private Ottonian estate in Saxony, including the silver mines of Goslar. Never in medieval history did a German king concentrate so many powerful offices in his own hands.

That is not the only contrast to his father who ascended the throne backed by merely a portion of his family’s estate and the wealth his wife had brought into the marriage.  When Konrad was a 6’6 feet action man who could ride a hundred miles in a day and fight when half submerged in a swamp. Henry III may have borne some physical similarity to his father but failed to match him in strength and energy. He fell ill from an unknown illness in 1046 from which he never fully recovered.

Other than his father, Henry III had been diligently prepared for kingship from an early age. He was seven years old when his father ascended to the throne and from then on, he was educated by the leading clerics of his day. His first tutor was Bruno, bishop of Augsburg and brother of the former emperor Henry II. It is likely that he developed his notion of sacred kingship that was so similar to Henry II under Bruno’s influence. After Bruno’s death in 1029 Henry is given into the care of Egilbert, bishop of Freising, another member of Henry II’s inner circle. Another major influence was Wipo, the member of the imperial chancellery and chronicler of Konrad II’s life.

Henry’s worldview is very similar to Henry II. He sees his role as emperor in providing peace to his people, both from external foes as from internal strife. The king’s main job as a secular ruler is to uphold the law and dispense harsh justice if necessary but show mercy wherever possible.

But the emperor is not just a lay ruler, he is also the vicar of Christ on earth and a sacred individual making him responsible for the wellbeing of the holy church. And that means supporting the movement for church reform that emanated from Cluny and other reform monasteries. Like Henry II, this henry also believes that he has to make sure that prayer is effective, and the sacraments are dispensed by individuals educationally and morally qualified. Behind that is a firm belief that the wellbeing in the afterlife is way more important than wellbeing in the here and now. The emperor as the lord of all he surveys is hence primarily responsible to provide the infrastructure needed to prepare for the afterlife. And that includes competent priests who received their office on merit rather than bribes, who live by the rules of the bible, which includes increasingly the notion of celibacy.

In that latter, theological component Henry III differs from his father. Konrad II, whilst pious, had little time for theological disputations. He spent most of his time on horseback, sword in hand, rushing form one part of the empire to the other bashing heads together. Henry III will do his fair share of travelling and axe-wielding, but his true pleasures lie in reading the bible, prayer and listening to sermons. It is all party, party, party at the court of Henry III.

But before you think he is a bookish geek who shrinks away from his father, think again. In 1031, just 14 years old he signs a peace agreement with the Hungarians that brings down the wrath of his father and the disgrace of his tutor Egilbert of Freising. But Henry III does not kowtow. When a few years late the whole thing comes up again in the context of Adalbero of Carinthia’s dismissal, Henry III refuses his father’s explicit demands. Henry is now about 18 and his father, an absolute bull of a man with the subtlety of a sharpened axe gets into such a rage with him, he actually faints with anger. But Henry III still holds out. He only relents when his father begs him on his knees. There is a real steeliness to his character that may be covered by his preference for consensus and mercy, but, as we will see, comes out on occasions when it is needed.

Enough with the preliminaries, lets get into the action.

When Konrad II died in 1039, Henry III takes over seamlessly. Though no coronation as such is required, he still goes through a formal enthronisation on Charlemagne’s chair in Aachen but he does not have to undertake a full royal progress as both Konrad II and Henry II had done.

It is straight onto the desk and item 1 on the agenda.

A you may remember Konrad the II had made a right old mess in Italy in the year before. Konrad had been called to mediate in a conflict between the archbishop of Milan and his vassals where he took the side of the rebellious vassals. That resulted in an uproar by the Italian clergy, which up until then had been the bedrock of imperial power in Italy. Konrad managed to make things really bad by apprehending the archbishop of Milan. At that point all inhabitants of Milan who only weeks earlier were at each other’s throat united behind their archbishop. They may dislike their current archbishop but that does not mean they would let a foreigner run roughshod over the head of their city. Konrad ended up besieging the city of Milan without success. In his desperation he even granted the smaller nobles the right to inherit their fiefs, even the fiefs of the church which brought the red mist down over the Italian bishop’s eyes. The whole thing was quite an impressive blunder given that 4 years earlier the Milanese had been fielding an army to support the emperor’s cause in Italy.

Henry III quickly reversed his father’s policies. He made peace with bishop Aribert and mended the relationship with the bishops. He reverted to the tried and tested imperial policy of granting the bishops fiefs and rights in exchange for support in war. Henry III also relied heavily on the system of Missii, royal envoys usually counts or bishops who come to act on behalf of the king in resolving disputes and allocating fiefs that have become vacant. What he did not manage though was to revoke the vassals inheritance rights his father had so foolishly granted.

That brought stability to the imperial rule in Italy but not to the city of Milan. For the third time in a row bishop Aribert is getting expelled from his city, this time by a rebellion of the lower classes. This had nothing to do with anything Henry III had done but was a clear indication of the shifting economic and demographic environment. When 10 years earlier the big conflict was between the higher nobles, the Capitani and their sub-vassals, the Valvassores, now it is between the third estate against the whole lot of nobles and bishops lording it over them.  This is not the first city in Italy where the new class of merchants and artisans demand a role in the management of city affairs, but this is Milan, at this point possibly the largest city in western Europe of almost a 100,000 people. 

Again, the Milanese ask for mediation by the emperor and Henry III takes a more delicate approach than his father. Through a combination of carrots and sticks he gets the nobles to come down from the castles and horses and agree a new way of communal living in the city based on a city constitution. Within a hundred years most Italian cities will have constitutions that give its most important burghers participation in city affairs.

Apart from this patch-up job, Italy did not feature highly on the imperial agenda of the first few years. Most of Henry III’s energy in the first 5 years was taken up by the empire’s neighbours to the east, Poland, Bohemia and Hungary.

Poland as you may remember from previous episodes had tumbled into some sort of anarchy after the deposition of Miesco II. Konrad II and the grand prince of Kiev had decided to split the Polish kingdom into three parts given to the three remaining members of the Piast family. One of these was Kasimir, son of Miesco II and his wife Richeza, a German of the highest aristocracy and granddaughter of Otto the great. Kasimir had a difficult time in Poland and had to regularly ask for asylum in Germany where he effectively grew up.

In 1037 Kasimir and his mother had another of their many attempts to regain the crown, which again failed. This effort compelled the still largely pagan population to rise up and smash up the Christian infrastructure of the kingdom. Kasimir tried again in 1038 but had to flee again, this time to Hungary.

As I said before, the states east of the empire are a bit like communicating pipes. If Poland goes down, Bohemia rises, which is exactly what happened. In 1039 Bretislaus, duke of Bohemia invaded Poland. He marched almost unopposed to the former Polish royal heartland and took away the relics of Saint Adalbert from the Cathedral of Gniesno. Adalbert, the friend of Otto III was not any old saint, but the saint of eastern Europe. He was revered for baptising king Stephen of Hungary, he had been bishop of Prague where he had performed many miracles and had died on a mission to the Prussians. Emperor Otto III had come in parson to pray barefoot and in hair shirt at his grave. With the relics of Adalbert, Bretislav could hope to have his own archbishopric which would make the Bohemian church independent from German influence. Remember that Mainz still had control over the bishopric of Prague putting Bohemia at a disadvantage against Poland and Hungary who both had their own archbishops reporting directly to the Pope. Apart form the spiritual trophies Bretislav also took the rich lands of Silesia for himself.

This rise of Bohemian power was intolerable for Henry III and it seems also for Jaroslav the Grand Prince of the Kievan Rus. The two agreed to help young Kasimir to create order in Poland. Jaroslav gave Kasimir his daughter and a lot of gold and Henry III gave him 1000 heavily armed soldiers and they sent him on his merry way.

This time Kasimir succeeded. He could establish some form of central government and embarked on the long and arduous process of putting Poland back together again, which is why he is known to Polish history as Kasimir the Restorer. In exchange for his generous help, Kashmir recognised Henry III as his overlord, confirmed vows made by his predecessors Miesco II and Bezprym

Sending Young Kasimir off to remake Poland was however not sufficient to put Bretislaus of Bohemia back into his box. Henry III mustered an army almost as soon as he heard about Bretislaus invasion of Poland. War is avoided in the last minute when Bretislaus sends hostages, including his son promising to come to Germany and give homage to Henry III as well as to “perform what was commended of him. That however turned out to be a lie. Breteslaus saw no need to submit to this fresh and untested king. Instead, he used the time to strengthen his defences, made a deal with Hungary and expand his military awaiting Henry III in the following year.

At least initially Bretislaus plan worked and Henry III’s army perished in an attempt to take a border defence. The losses must have been very severe. The chronicler Hermann of Reichenau reported that the king departed with a loss of very many knights and princes and with his purpose unfulfilled. Even worse, he had to hand back the hostages in exchange for his captured men, making him look really weak and incompetent.

But there is always next year. And so henry mustered an even bigger army, as usual, mostly from the Imperial church. The abbot of Fulda reports that even though most of his soldiers including their commander had died in the campaign of 1040, he had to provide an even larger contingent in 1041.

This time Henry III was cleverer.  Instead of attacking the border defences he snuck into the country by an unfrequented route with one army, whilst the margrave of Meissen came by another route further east and the margrave of the Eastern March came up from the south. Once Henry was in Bohemia, Bretislaus ran out of options and had to give in. He came to a royal assembly in Regensburg and renounced his acquisitions in Poland except for Silesia for which he paid tribute. He made an oath of fealty and Henry III accepted him as his vassal. That was the end of Bretislaus dream to become the next Boleslav the Brave.

One of the things that hampered Breteslaus in his last campaign was the loss of Hungarian support. In his first round King Peter Orseolo of Hungary had come to his aid and attacked the Eastern March, aka Austria. This time he could not, since King Peter Orseolo himself had been expelled from his country. 

There is an obvious question here, which is, who is king Peter Orseolo. Even if against all the odds you do not speak Hungarian you would know that this is not a Hungarian name.

The confusion is all my fault – as usual. Though Hungarian affairs have popped up regularly these last few episodes I have put off bringing you up to speed about the fascinating History of Hungary.

Now we can no longer postpone and it is time to bring us all up to speed with Hungary again. Last time we took a closer look at Hungary was just after the battle on the Lechfeld in 955 which brought an end to the Magyar incursions. After the defeat Hungary reconsolidated during the long reign of prince Geza (972-997). Geza decisively shifted Hungary towards Christianity and in particular favoured Western Christianity over the Greek version. This religious distinction had an underlying political and ethnic dimension as well. After the emperor in Constantinople had subjugated the Bulgars, Hungary had a border with Byzantium in the South and the Empire in the West. As tensions between the west and the east intensified, the country balanced on a tightrope. The southern and eastern part of the country, the so-called “black” Hungarians leant towards Constantinople, whilst the so-called “white” Hungarians leant towards Roman Christianity and the Ottonian emperors. This conflict and the still resistant pagan population led to regular revolts and uprisings.

Geza’s son who was initially called Vajk took over in around 997. Vajk had been brought up in the Roman Christian tradition and had been married to Gisela, the sister of Emperor Henry II.

Transition was anything but smooth and his first act was to use soldiers sent by Gisela’s father to besiege and capture his uncle Koppany who had claimed the throne. Koppany was hung, drawn and quartered and parts of his body were sent around the realm pour decourager les autres.

In either 1000 or 1001 Vajk became king of Hungary and took the name of Stephen, later known as Saint Stephen. The Hungarian view of the coronation was that Hungary received the crown and sceptre from the pope and that Stephen was crowned without having to become a vassal to either the emperor or the pope. The in inverted commas German version is that the crown and sceptre was indeed sent by pope Sylvester II, but that Sylvester II acted in this matter as well as in all others in with the “favour and urging of emperor Otto III, in other words that Hungary had accepted ultimate suzerainty of the empire.

Saint Stephen ruled for an astonishing 40 years, until his death in 1039. During his rule he turned Hungary into a medieval kingdom, modelled on the Carolingian empire. He introduced ~40 counties, managed by counts who were royal officials. He established 2 archbishoprics and 8 bishoprics as well as many monasteries. Other than in Bohemia the Hungarian church always only recognised the papal authority and was not part of the Imperial church system.

In 1028 (or maybe a lot earlier) Stephen removed the last magnate still adhering to the Eastern church, Ajtony, prince of the black Hungarians who ruled an area equivalent to today’s Romania. After that, all of Hungary, which was a lot larger than today’s sate of Hungary had become part of the Roman catholic church, tying the country firmly into Western Europe.

Despite the clear religious orientation towards Rome, Hungary still had to balance its link to the West with maintaining good relations with Byzantium. It seems that Hungary would at times provide troops to help with Byzantine efforts to subjugate the Bulgarians.

Hungary found itself in a situation not dissimilar to Venice as the link between west and east. Both were sort of rooted in the Western empire and were catholic, but also had close links to the empire in Constantinople. Venice began creating a string of ports along the dalmatian coast, whilst Hungary controlled much of the hinterland of these ports. Though the two states could not be more different, one a sophisticated, independent city republic built on international maritime trade and the other a nascent medieval kingdom created by steppe nomads, they formed a close alliance. Stephen married his sister to the Venetian Doge Otto Orseolo.

Saint Stephen had one son with his wife Gisela, Imre or Emmerich in German. At Konrad II’s election in 1024, Emmerich was the nephew and hence the closest relative of the previous emperor Henry II. Nevertheless, the chronicles do not report any explicit claim made by Emmerich or his father during the election. That was different when it came to the succession in Bavaria after the death of its duke in 1028. Bavaria had traditionally been run by members of the family of Henry II. Emmerich therefore had some claim and may have sounded out the Bavarian nobles for his chances of election. Bavaria would have been a great prize for Hungary lying just access the border. However the plan failed and, as we know, the duchy went to Henry III.

The rejection of the Bavarian succession added to tensions with the empire. Other issues included Konrad’s aggressive policy against Venice which led amongst other things to a deposition of the Stephen’s brother-in-law, Otto Orseolo who fled to Hungary with his wife and little son, Peter. Border skirmishes mainly by Bavarian border counts escalated into all-out war after 1028. This war was mainly led by Bavarian and Carinthian troops under the formal command of the 11-year-old Henry III. That war did not go well, and Henry suffered a severe defeat forcing him to agree a peace in 1031 whereby Hungary gained a stretch of land on the eastern frontier of the empire.

Konrad II did not like this treaty one bit and it resulted in the dismissal of Henry III’s tutor and guardian, Egilbert of Freising who I mentioned earlier this episode.

After 1031 the relationship with empire improved, mainly because Stephen’s son and heir, Emmerich died in a hunting accident and took all claims to the Bavarian title to his grave.

Meanwhile in Hungary the situation became complicated. The closest relative of Stephen in the male line was a man called Vazul (my pronunciation is likely totally wrong so forgive me). Vazul was believed to harbour pagan sympathies and Saint Stephen rejected his claim and appointed his nephew Peter Orseolo as heir.

Vazul was obviously unhappy about that and got into conflict with Saint Stephen. Whether he made an attempt to have him murdered is unclear, but Saint Stephen had him seized and killed anyway. According to some sources the saintly ruler had his enemy’s ears filled with molten lead – a sort of discount version of the poring of molten gold down Crassus’ throat. Vazul’s three sons, Levente, Andrew and Bela were expelled from the kingdom.

When Saint Stephen died in 1038, his nephew Peter Orseolo took over. As a foreigner he lacked support amongst the Hungarian elite and hence relied heavily on German and Italian foreigners who had migrated to Hungary during the reign of Saint Stephen.

In foreign policy he took an active stance against the empire and in particular Henry III, presumably because the Salians had forced him and his father into exile. He supported Bretislav of Bohemia in his raid on Poland and used the opportunity to invade Bavaria and Austria. Given this policy was quite successful it would have likely continued if peter could have managed his domestic issues more successfully.

His key policy was to increase the royal demesne at the expense of Hungarian nobles and magnates. He overstretched it when he seized the lands of the royal widow, Gisela the wife of Saint Stephen and imperial princess. That pushed the party of Stephen into the opposition who deposed Peter and replaced him with another nephew of Stephen, Samuel Abas.

Peter fled to his brother-in-law, Margrave Adalbert of Austria whose lands he had raided just the previous year. There he found a surprisingly warm welcome and Adalbert recommended him to emperor Henry III. In 1041 he showed up at the royal assembly in Regensburg where his former best mate and comrade in arms, Bretislaus of Bohemia was also asking for imperial mercy.

Samuel Abas who had no particular beef with the empire was also trying to agree some sort of lasting peace. However, negotiations failed, probably because Henry III insisted on full submission to his suzerainty and return of the lands seized in 1031.

War was now inevitable, and Samuel Aba attacked Bavaria and Austria in 1042. The army sent against Austria was destroyed by Margrave Adalbert whilst the army sent against Bavaria caused much damage. It took Henry until the autumn to raise troops and push the Hungarians back. Henry, or more likely his Margrave Adalbert sacked Bratislava, then a Hungarian fortress. And took most of what is now Slovakia.

The two sides agreed a peace treaty in 1043 whereby Samuel Aba returned the lands seized in 1031, which were given to the counts of Austria, thereby much improving their fortunes.

But by 1044 the king of Hungary was back on it. Henry III mustered a comparatively small army and invaded. Samuel Aba whose army was much larger let Henry progress fairly deep into Hungarian territory, presumably hoping to cut Henry off from supplies and capture the king himself.

However, Henry mounted a surprise attack by his armoured riders having shipped his army across the river Raab. The large Hungarian army turned to flight or surrendered right there and then. King Peter was reinstated as king and Samuel Aba was captured and killed shortly afterwards.

With this battle of Menfo Henry III had achieved a clean sweep of the eastern frontier. The rulers of Poland, Bohemia and Hungary are now all vassals of the empire. This completes his father’s policy that started with breaking the empire of Boleslav the Brave. Savour the moment, because only 2 years later king Peter is deposed again and presumably killed. His successor, Andrew, a son of Vazul who had been so cruelly killed by the saintly King Stephen will take over.

He and his successors will no longer make the mistake of letting an imperial army loose inside their kingdom. Despite all their internal squabbles the Hungarians will strengthen and man their border defences making all subsequent attempts to invade futile.

But this is two years down the line. Right now Henry is the master of the East, duke and lord of Burgundy and Southern Germany. Two items are still outstanding before he climbs to the absolute high point of the medieval empire, asserting control over The last two remaining duchies, Lothringia and Saxony and the big Biggy, reform of the Papacy. Some or maybe all of it will be in next episode.

I hope you will join us again. And in the meantime if you enjoy the podcast why don’t you tell your friends about it. If they want to check it out, send them to my website historyofthegermans.com or my Facebook page History of the Germans Podcast. Thanks a lot for doing that.

Speyer Cathedral as a symbol of Salian imperial power

In his last years Konrad tries to further strengthen his power, first by fighting the Hungarians, unseating the duke of Carinthia and a second Italian expedition. Al three of these endeavours backfire. The Hungarians win the war, the duke of Carinthia gets unexpected support from Konrad’s son Henry III and the Italian campaign ends in a fiasco entirely of Konrad’s making.

Despite these setbacks Konrad leaves a well ordered kingdom when he finally dies in 1039 after 15 years of rule. His kingdom is booming, the creation of Ministeriales and the growth of the cities create opportunities for peasants who find themselves under increasing pressures from their landlords. Castles and churches are being built on an unprecedented scale, culminating in the Cathedral of Speyer, the largest building in Europe at the time (together with the Abbey Church of Cluny)

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans Episode 25 – Konrad II, The Construction of an Empire. Before we start, I have updated the HistoryoftheGermans.com website and you can find separate pages for the Salians and Konrad II with transcripts, some interesting pictures and maps. Take a look, it is worth it. You can also subscribe on the website and I will email you every time a new episode comes out.

Last week we followed Konrad’s great acquisition of Burgundy and his sometimes brutal pacification of the Eastern border. Today we cast our eyes south, first to the south-eastern corner made up of Hungary, Croatia, the duchy of Carinthia and Venice and then we shall look at core Northern Italy where Konrad will again shift the focus of Imperial policy. We will close with a look at the kingdom of Konrad at the end of his 15-year reign, the re-definition of kingship, the social changes that are now under way and the acceleration of construction activity that left us with the great cathedrals of Speyer, Worms and Mainz.

But let us start with the South-East. This is a place that has some significance to Konrad in so far as his family had traditionally held the duchy of Carinthia which often included the March of Verona. Carinthia is more or less the eastern border of the empire against Hungary and Croatia, stretching from Vienna to Trieste. The March of Verona is then Northern Italy, stretching from Aquileia to Verona including the Brenner pass. There is a map on my website where you can see it. The duchy itself had a fairly weak internal structure, in particular the Babenberger counts of Austria and the Patriarch of Aquileia were pretty much independent. Equally the Italian cities in the region began to assert themselves.

That may have been the reason the Salian family was never hugely invested in their duchy in the far south-east, so put up little resistance when Henry II took it off them and gave it to a certain Adalbero, member of another aristocratic clan. Even though Carinthia did not matter that much, Konrad still held a grudge against Adalbero and just waited for his chance to take Carinthia off him.

That however has  to wait. For now, Konrad needs Adalbero to deal with another problem – the axis Venice/Hungary.  We have not talked much about Hungary these last few episodes so let me put you back up to speed.

By 1030 the king of Hungary was still Saint Stephen who had taken power in 997 and had been baptised probably by Saint Adalbert sometime between 997 and 1000. In 1000 he was crowned king with a crown sent to him by Pope Sylvester II, the great friend and tutor of Otto III. Stephen seems to have received permission from emperor Otto III, which suggests he would have had to accept the emperor as his overlord. However, Hungarian sources deny that vigorously and, should there have been a concept of overlordship by 1030, it was not of much use to Konrad.

Conflict between Konrad and Saint Stephen emerged over the inheritance of Henry II. Stephen had married the sister of emperor Henry II which made his son, Emmerich, a theoretical contender for the throne. If he had ambitions to that role it did not make it into the chronicles since he does not feature as a candidate in the election in Kamba in 1024.

Apart from the imperial crown, Emmerich had a justifiable claim to the duchy of Bavaria, thereby standing very much in the way of the elevation of Konrad’s son Henry to the ducal title. Whether it was a dispute over the rights to the Bavarian title or escalating border skirmishes we do not know, but what is fact is that Konrad raised a large army to subdue the Hungarians. That effort ended in a total fiasco. Stephen prevailed and even occupied Vienna in 1030. Konrad may have wanted to have another go, but 13-year old Heinrich, or more accurately his tutor and regent for Bavaria, the bishop of Freising, signed a peace agreement with Stephen giving away a stretch of land to Hungary, something that irritated Konrad a lot.

The Hungarian problem largely resolved itself for now when Emmerich died causing a crisis of the succession after the elderly Saint Stephen.

With Hungary neutralised, Konrad no longer needed the cooperation of Adalbero of Carinthia. Time to grab another duchy for the family. This time the power grab was totally blatant. Rather than waiting for the current incumbent to pass away peacefully, Konrad called a court in Bamberg in 1035 where he made a not further detailed accusation against Adalbero. A later chronicler claimed it was for high treason because Adalbero encouraged the peace with Hungary in 1031. But that is a slippery slope since the actual signature on the peace treaty was that of Konrad’s beloved son and Hope of the Empire.

It seems the jury of nobles called to adjudicate over Adalbero were also unconvinced by the allegations and requested to hear young Henry III’s perspective.

Henry stood up against his father and said that he could not recommend a conviction of Adalbero since he was bound by oath to support him.

Konrad realised that the whole thing had backfired really badly. Like really, really badly.

If he would have to let Adalbero go free, the imperial prestige would be seriously dented which would encourage the magnates to rebel and roll back the centralisation efforts of the last few years.

Equally if he would disregard his son’s intervention and force the nobles to convict Adalbero, his son’s honour would be attacked, and he could have another Liudolf rebellion on his hands.

When Konrad heard his son taking Adalbero’s side he berated, begged and threatened him until he fainted with anger. That must have been terrifying for the now 18-year-old henry to have his 6’6 father with arms like tree trunks shouting at him at the top of his voice accusing him of supporting his enemies and bringing shame and disrepute on his reign. But Henry held out.

The only thing Konrad to fall on his knees in front of the whole court and beg him under tears to reconsider. At that point henry had to concede. An emperor begging on his knees is a sort of ultimate trump card that is deployed sparingly and only to achieve the most important of objectives. His predecessors had used it too, so for instance Henry II begged on his knees for permission to create the bishopric of Bamberg. As we will see the Salians will have to pull that card a couple more times in increasingly dire situations until it finally stops working.

But in 1035 it still worked. Henry relented and the nobles convicted Adalbero of being in the way or whatever it was Konrad had accused him of. Adalbero was sent into exile where he died 4 years later. As often in these times, even heavy judgements against the head of a family does not preclude their descendants to return into their previous positions. And that is what happened here. Adalbero’s sons would later regain the duchy of Carinthia.

The duchy of Carinthia remained vacant for a year before Konrad gave it to his cousin, Konrad the Younger who after nearly a decade in the wilderness was now considered loyal. When Konrad the Younger died the duchy went to Henry III, making him duke of all of Southern Germany and King of Burgundy.

But Henry’s time has not yet come. Konrad still has one more campaign to run, this time in Italy.

If there is one thing, we know about Imperial Italy it is that it is a mess. Konrad had come to Italy in 1026 and tried to put some structure in. Like in Germany he tried to broaden the imperial powerbase by complementing the control of the church with a closer control over secular lordships. The most important of the latter was that belt across most of northern Italy from Florence to Mantua controlled by Bonifaz of Canossa. But he also sponsored other, lesser lords.

This system looked very successful from the outside. The Italians even contributed an army to support the Imperial efforts to acquire Burgundy, something that is a rarity in pretty much the whole of the Germano-Italian history.

This army consisted in one part of the troops of the secular lords, namely the margrave of Canossa. The other part were the troops of the bishops, in particular the troops of bishop Aribert of Milan. These soldiers are now the problem. To understand where the problem comes from we need to understand a bit more about the structure of the big Italian cities.

In Italy the big Roman cities had not been abandoned as it happened in Gaul but remained relevant centres of commerce even throughout the dark ages. Importantly the upper classes remained in the cities creating an urban aristocracy.  As they remained strong, control over cities did not fall to bishops merely because they were there, as it happened North of the Alps. In Italy the bishops had to fight for it. That fight concluded in the early 10^th century when King Hugh of Italy awarded responsibility for the administration of the cities and their surroundings to the bishops, effectively expelling any counts still claiming control.

In the fight with the counts the bishops had to rely on an army of vassals recruited from the urban aristocracy. These were given fiefs or administrative rights like justice, holding of markets etc. This upper level of the administration became known as the Capitani, who would in turn have their own vassals who provided military or administrative services. These latter vassals were known as Valvassores. The main difference between a Capitani and a Valvassore was that the former would always be able to pass his position down to his offspring, whilst the humble Valvassore would need to be appointed, meaning he could lose the fief. Below this disunited layer of aristocrats were the urban plebs who included not just the poor labourers but also prosperous artisans and rich merchants.

The Valvassores were unsurprisingly unhappy about that situation. They did all the work but had very little security of inheritance and wealth. And that became very obvious when they came back from their glorious fighting in Burgundy. Hoping to be rewarded for their effort, they instead found little coming down to them. As the chronicler Arnulf reported, “Bishop Aribert came to lord it over all, considering his will, not that of others”.

When in the summer of 1035 another one of the Valvassores had his benefices removed without much justification, the cauldron boiled over. The rebels picked up their weapons and attacked the Capitanei and the bishop in his palace. Aribert managed to escape and mobilised an army from other bishops and magnates who were facing similar problems with their Valvassores. The Valvassores in Milan also received help from their comrades in other Northern Italian cities.

The two sides met at a place later called Campo Malo, the Field of Evil, for all the human gore that irrigated it. The ensuing great slaughter ended when the bishop of Asti, a mighty warrior fell. The bishop, disoriented by the loss of his best fighter and the decimation of his army left the battlefield.

Both parties now asked for the emperor to come down to adjudicate.

Konrad with his customary swiftness collected an army and appeared before Milan in 1036. Konrad took one look at the situation and concluded that the group he cared about most were the Valvassores, since they were the actual soldiers Konrad would need. Aribert was understandably unhappy about that and when the next morning the urban plebs rioted it is not hard to figure out how that has come about.  Konrad had to retreat to Pavia and called Aribert to a royal assembly to defend himself Aribert showed up, took one look at the jury bench Konrad had assembled to adjudicate him and went “no comment” and renounced the emperor’s jurisdiction.

Konrad had him arrested and handed him over to the Patriarch of Aquileia for safe keeping. He than put him under the ban, had him deposed and replaced by one of his chaplains.

With that move he managed to turn one small problem into two very large ones.

The Milanese seeing their archbishop locked up and deposed on a pretext immediately stopped their internal bloody squabbles and united as one. Konrad now had to besiege Milan, the largest and richest city in Italy. A city that just 18 months earlier had sent him soldiers to fight his private battle for Burgundy.

If that was pretty bad, the other problem was even larger. The emperor moving against one of the most eminent bishops in Italy rattled the other bishops who had been the main pillar of imperial power to date. Konrad’s actions showed that this emperor relied much more on secular lords and knights than bishops. With their position as de facto rulers of Italy at stake a number of bishops rebelled. Konrad had summoned them to court as well where they were convicted of treason and exiled to Germany, presumably “pour encourager les autres”.

The only encouragement that produced was for the Patriarch of Aquileia to release Aribert who returned to Milan in triumph and began preparing for a siege. Konrad brough his army before the walls of Milan, but struggled to gain any advantage against the well-fortified city, an experience that will become familiar to his successors.

In an attempt to break the unified front of defenders he issued his famous “Constitutio de Feudis”. This law declares that no vassal can lose his fief except through a decision by a court of his peers. All fiefs are inheritable and can even be inherited when the vassal is at war with his overlord, provided adequate compensation is offered. And finally, the vassals are guaranteed not just the fiefs received from secular lords, but also those received from the church.

Several German historians, including Stefan Weinfurter make this out as a sensible move within a broader context of formalisation of the feudal rules and obligations. I am not sure. For me these smacks of desperation. Giving away the church fiefs is the diametrical opposite of previous imperial policy of strengthening bishops and helping them regain lands occupied by secular lords. That was a steep price to pay, not just in Italy but also in Germany where these events did not remain unnoticed.

And it did not work. Milan did not fall. The Valvassores did not flock to Konrad’s banner in gratitude. They said, thank you very much, and kept poring boiling tar on the heads of the German soldiers. When the summer heat set in, he had to retire into the mountains.

He did not come back to Milan the next campaign season. Instead, he took his forces down to Southern Italy in order to reorganise the Lombard duchies. This looked to me like an effort to create some tangible success out of this otherwise dismal expedition. The impact of his activities was insignificant in the near term, but had one very important long term effect. Konrad invested the leader of a band of Norman mercenaries with the county of Aversa.

The Normans had come to southern Italy from around the year 1000. Their journeys tended to be a combination of pilgrimage and mercenary service. Most likely they came in small numbers, between 40 and 250 in the first wave getting involved in the endless fighting between the Byzantines, the Lombard dukes and the Emir of Sicily. They would play each of these players against the other until 40 years later they will have conquered both Southern Italy and Sicily becoming the key powerbroker for the papacy.  I am pretty sure I will do a whole episode on the Normans in Sicily and the six sons of Tancred of Hauteville, because it is an amazing story.

But not yet. Konrad, having “organised” Southern Italy returned home. He had left it too late, and the army had to march through the heat of summer, and more importantly, through the malaria-infested plains North and South of Rome. Disease struck that killed many, amongst them Gunhilda, the daughter of King Canute who had married the heir to the throne, Henry.

Konrad arrives home at the end of 1038. He orders his Italian vassals to besiege Milan next spring, even if he would not be there to lead him. He celebrates Pentecost 1039 in Utrecht where he experiences great pain in the intestines, lies down in bed and dies a few days later.

Despite his last unsuccessful Italian expedition, Konrad had left a well-ordered kingdom to his son and heir, Henry III. Henry III had already been crowned king in 1028 and was duke of Bavaria, Swabia and Carinthia as well as the king of Burgundy. No Ruler had yet held such a formidable personal position upon ascension to the throne.

And the kingdom was booming. The economy benefitted from more efficient agriculture, improving climate and the opening up of trade routes from Italy to England, Poland, Scandinavia and Russia, countries that have long been on the periphery or simply inaccessible. It is not quite clear how much society changed. On the one hand the creation of the Ministeriales created opportunities for Serfs to become lords, but on the other hand, lords, both secular and spiritual became more sophisticated in managing their estates, inventing new obligations their serfs were to deliver. The peasants tried to halt this expansion and sometimes even managed to gain the king’s ear. In 1035 Konrad issued a charter where the abbot of Limburg had to list explicitly all the obligations he expects his unfree peasants to provide “so as to make sure no future abbot requests more than is his due”.

In principle peasants were not able to leave their lord’s lands, but the rapid development of city populations suggests that at least some made it out. Cities not just in Italy but also in Germany were expanding at a rapid pace, some growing five-fold in the span of a 100 years. Konrad was the first ruler who systematically fostered commercial activity by granting rights to markets, coinage, building of bridges and awarding of freedoms. Building techniques improve and the first multi-story buildings are emerging. Wooden city fortifications are being gradually replaced by stone walls. And the legal position of city dwellers improved. Konrad issued a charter for the city of Speyer whereby children of unfree peoples could become partially free when they lived in the city. The leadership of the city lay in the hands of the bishop’s Ministeriales, themselves also unfree. In the largest of the cities like Cologne and Regensburg early forms of communal government were created. We are only 35 years away from the first attempt to expel a bishop from a German city.

It is not just the cities where building activity goes into overdrive. The 11^th century is the time when castles spring up all over the country. These are the seats of the aristocrats on the one hand, but also those of the Ministeriales who were given a fief to pay for their service. 

The greatest buildings of this time are the churches though. The activity already started with Henry II’s grandiose plans for Bamberg or his friend Meinwerk’s privately funded building program for Paderborn. But under Konrad and his successors this is going into overdrive. The cathedrals of Strasbourg, Mainz, Worms, Wuerzburg, Eichstaett, Hildesheim, and Hamburg to name a few were completely rebuilt. In this episcopal cities the activity is not limited to the cathedral. Whole cities are remodelled in the form of the cross, like Utrecht, Minden and Trier with secondary churches and abbeys punctuating the endpoints. In Cologne, Constance and Eichstaett the bishops are attempting to replicate the topography and holy sites of Rome. Bishops also build sumptuous palaces that re needed to host the emperor who would stay more and more in bishops’ palaces rather than his own Palaces of Pfalzen on his perennial travels across the realm. Some cities turn gradually into sacral landscapes like the temple cities of ancient Egypt. There was such attention to detail that Meinwerk would send one of his abbots to Jerusalem to take exact measurements of the church of the Holy Sepulchre to rebuild it in rainy Paderborn.

Who built all this? The villeins, who else. There are stories of bishops driving their peasants to complete exhaustion, neglecting the sowing of crops leading to famine the next year. Bishop Benno of Osnabrück was known for beating up his peasants if they refused to work. I was not sure about that comparison to ancient Egypt, but now it sounds quite plausible, doesn’t it.

But the crowning glory of Salian construction frenzy is undoubtably the cathedral of Speyer. Speyer is a modest city of 50,000 inhabitants on the left bank of the Rhine south of Frankfurt roughly on the level of Heidelberg. It is part of the heartland of the Salian family possession near Worms. Though it had a bishop since 346 AD at the time of Konrad’s accession of the throne, it was a poor bishopric, its church old and decrepit, was on the verge of ceasing to be a bishopric and tiny with maybe 500 inhabitants.

Konrad, who had seen the splendour his predecessor had lavished on Bamberg wanted a similar monument to his reign. Speyer had the great advantage of already being a bishopric, even if it wasn’t a very prestigious one. That would save him the hassle of begging his bishops for permission to create a bishopric from scratch.

So right from the get-go Konrad grants Speyer privileges and supports. However, other than Bamberg, the bishop himself gets only modest help. All the resources are going into the construction of the enormous new church. Even the layout of the city differs from the sacral landscapes actual bishops are building. All roads are aligned to the main façade of the church, a bit like absolutistic rulers in the 18^th century designed their cities with streets radiating away from their Palace.

Equally the design differs considerably from Henry II’s Dom in Bamberg and Charlemagne’s imperial chapel in Aachen. These were buildings you entered from the sides, with all four, or in Aachen’s case, eight sides of similar length. They were places for people to congregate and worship together.

Speyer is different. It is clearly aligned from West to East. When it will be finished the main nave will be 134 metres long and 33m high, drawing the eye to the elevated eastern Choir. In Konrad’s design concept that choir would sit on top of a crypt whose entrance would open out to the main nave. The first thing a visitor would see as his eyes are drawn to the Eastern end would be the entrance to the crypt. And that is where the funeral monument of Konrad was to go. It is actually still there, though the crypt had now disappeared under the floor of the Cathedral.

When Speyer Cathedral was finished in 1101 it was, together with the abbey church of Cluny, the largest building in Europe. It still stands today despite some ill-fated restorations and a re-romanisation in the mid-20^th century, but even then, you can sense the immense scale of Salian ambition.

And Salian ambition is what we will hear more about as we go through the next episodes. Next week we will look at the reign of Henry III, the son of Konrad. IN many ways he is the opposite of his father, well read and the emperor that will turbocharge the program of church reform emanating from Cluny. Like Konrad he will expand the powers of the monarch, never yielding ground to foreign or domestic adversaries. Let’s see how he can manage the resulting tensions with his magnates. I hope you are going to join us again next week. 

The Last Kingdom to be added to the Holy Roman Empire

The event looming over Imperial politics since around 1000 is the Burgundian succession. King Rudolf III is childless leaving several contenders with varying degrees of blood relations. If Henry II who was a nephew of Rudolf III had outlived the king of Burgundy, thigs would have been easy. But the old codger outlived the sickly emperor. His successor, Konrad II had no real inheritance right to Burgundy, apart from what came from the tips of spears. Follow the epic fight against Odo of Blois over the ultimately modest riches of the Burgundian Kingdom…

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans, Episode 24 – Konrad II’s acquisition of Burgundy. I know, you have opened this with some trepidation thinking, is he going to tell some more weird legends again or are we getting the podcast we have signed up for? No worries, this episode will be entirely fact based. I still hope you enjoyed meeting the king of Grippia and the Flat Hooves and if not, I am sorry for taking away 7 minutes of your life that you will never get back.

But now, as promised, let us go for some hard-nosed dynastic politics. As you may have heard in the last few episodes, there is a major political issue brewing in the background since around 1000. The last king of Burgundy, Rudolf III had failed to produce any offspring so that the vultures have been circling the kingdom for most of his 40-year reign.

Before we go into the intricacies of the Burgundian succession, let us talk first about what Burgundy is. This of you with exceptional memory may recall episode 4 when we discussed the three different Burgundies. But since I myself can barely remember how it works, here it is again.

The name of Burgundy goes back to a Germanic tribe that occupied a territory comprising more or less the Italian region o Piemonte, French speaking Switzerland, the current French regions of Bourgogne-Franche Comte, Rhone Alpes and Provence, Alpes Cote d’Azur. The area kept its name but went through multiple hands including being the core territory of the kingdom of Lothar created in 843. After the kingdom of Lothar had fallen apart in the late 9^th century, the area of Burgundy broke up into three parts. The first one is the region we today know as Burgundy. That became the Duchy of Burgundy, which, to confuse everybody, is not part of the kingdom of Burgundy. The kingdoms of Burgundy were originally two, upper and lower Burgundy. These were united under king Rudolf II with a lot of help from Henry the Fowler and Otto the Great in the early 10^th century.

This kingdom looks quite impressive on the map, but its kings were weak. Similar to the kings of France the Kings of Burgundy had little control over their vassals. Thietmar of Merseburg said about Rudolf III that there was no king like him. All he has is a title and a crown. He awards the bishoprics to anyone the local magnates demand and there is no count who does not act as independent as a duke. The king really only controlled the region around lac Leman, centred on the bishoprics of  Geneva, Lausanne and Sitten, the estates of Vevey and Orbe and the monasteries of St. Maurice, Romainmoitier and Peterlingen.  Yes, this is today real estate worth Quasillions, but in 1030 it was a nice but ultimately modest possession, the value of which lay mainly in the control of alpine passes. The local magnates, including the future dukes of Savoy and counts of Provence acknowledged a nominal overlordship of the King, but otherwise did as they pleased, very similar to the situation in France more generally. The absence of a central power allowed for constant feuding between lords and the emergence of proper robber barons, all of which put immeasurable pain on the local peasantry. 

At the same time the kingdom came under external pressure, mainly from the duke of Burgundy, Otto-Wilhelm, who was the son of Adalbert, former king of Italy and adversary of Otto the Great in his Italian wars. If you want to fully geek out on Burgundies, here is a fourth on. Otto-Wilhelm at some point lost the duchy of Burgundy and was reduced to a territory around Besancon, which he christened the County of Burgundy. Since the County  was part of the Holy Roman Empire, rather than France, it became called the Free County of Burgundy or in French the Franche Comte. Ok., let’s leave it here, the Franche Comte will not be on the test.

I guess from what I said so far it is clear that the Kingdom of Burgundy was not a great prize. But, whoever took it on would gain prestige, a title and controlled access to Italy. The latter is what mattered most to the emperors, since owning Burgundy means that the king of France would not be able to deploy troops into Italy.

Because of this strategic situation the emperors have been involved in Burgundy since the 930s. Family ties were close, most famously as the formidable Adelheid, wife of Otto the Great, was the daughter of a previous king of Burgundy. Equally, the mother of emperor Henry II was a daughter of again another king of Burgundy. In line with family ties, the emperor would regularly provide military support to keep the rickety kingdom going and in return the king of Burgundy would regularly attend the imperial court.

For all intends and purposes, Burgundy was a vassal state of the empire, but that relationship had never been formalised as such until 1016. In that year emperor Henry II made the support in another border skirmish conditional upon Rudolf III formally promises him to make him heir. In a lavish ceremony Rudolf handed crown and sceptre of Burgundy to Henry II, who handed it back hem, which should be understood as Rudolf becoming Henry II’s vassal.

Had Rudolf III had the decency to die before his nephew Henry II, all would have been ok. As it happens the old codger clung on to life, whilst Henry II though 20 years younger succumbed to his wide range of illnesses.

Now we have a problem. Henry II could claim Burgundy both on the grounds of being its overlord and the fact that he is Rudolf’s nephew and hence one of his closest relatives.

Konrad II has no such personal claim. Yes, he is sort of related since his wife Gisela is a niece of Rudolf III, but to be frank, there are another two nieces and a sister, al married to powerful aristocrats. One of these powerful aristocrats is Odo, count of Blois and Champagne, one of these quasi-independent French magnates whose lands lay just north of Burgundy.

Konrad – as always – tried to get on the front foot. His argument was that he may not have a personal claim, but that the empire had an institutional claim on Burgundy. We already heard that view of the empire being a separate entity from the emperor when Konrad told the citizens of Pavia off for destroying the royal palace. Here it is again, just with a lot more significance than in the Pavia example.

As ever, subtle legal arguments work a lot better when they come with sharp and pointy things attached. Konrad may not have been a legal scholar of great renown, but he did know how to yield a sword. Already in 1025, so within months of his coronation he occupied Basel, a city Rudolf had occupied immediately after Henry II’s death. He took the opportunity to appoint a tame cleric as bishop of Basel without even consulting with Rudolf who was nominally required to acknowledge the appointment. That demonstration of force plus intervention by the actual heiress, empress Isela, had the desired effect, an agreement was reached, and Rudolf showed up for Konrad’s coronation in Rome in 1027.

As agreed, Rudolf ordered the insignia of the Burgundian crown to be sent to Konrad upon his death, which duly happened on September 6, 1032. So far, so good.

Where things became unstuck was when it came to the Burgundian nobles. They had gotten so used to a feeble king, the last thing they wanted was the powerful and energetic Konrad taking over. They very much preferred the much less resourceful Odo of Blois who was invited to come to Burgundy. It seems Odo was a bit unclear what he was really doing there. Instead of aiming for a quick election and coronation, he wandered around Burgundy collecting the odd acclamation, but mainly plundering and trying to expand his territory.

Hesitation is something Konrad II did not suffered from. As soon as he heard of Rudolf’s death, he jumped on a horse and rode hell for leather to Burgundy. The slight difficulty was that he was on the Polish border at the time, a good thousand kilometres from Burgundy. But by Christmas he had made it to Strasburg and on February 2^nd he gathered his Burgundian supporters in the abbey of Payerne/Peterlingen where he was duly elected and crowned king of Burgundy.

That was a smart move as Odo’s wavering meant he was the only crowned king who could claim legitimacy. But legitimacy alone does not equate to control and Odo had captured a large number of strongholds across Burgundy. Konrad got to work besieging one after the other.

It was a miserably cold winter, a winter so cold that the horses would literally freeze into the ground over night so that they could only be freed with axes and stakes. The men were constantly frozen so that their faces were constantly white with frost and even the beardless adolescents looked like old men. One man who could not find help to free his horse killed it and skinned it upwards as it stood. Basically, it was like Stannis Baratheon’s attack on Winterfell.

Other than Stannis, Konrad knew when enough was enough and retreated to Zurich, where he received homage from some more Burgundian magnates who were disappointed with Odo’s indecisiveness.

The other move was for Konrad to sign an agreement with king Henry I of France. Not that Henry has much power or resources given France has been in a more or less perennial civil war following the long and disastrous reign of his father Robert II. In the 1030s we have the houses of Anjou and Blois fighting over supremacy whilst the king looks on. At this particular point in time Henry had sided with Anjou so allowed Konrad to enter French territory to devastate the homelands of Odo. Seeing his home under threat Ode had to hurry back home, giving up positions in Burgundy.

In the next year, 1034 Konrad finally put the boot in and attacks Burgundy on two fronts. One army is coming down from Germany, whilst his allies in Italy, the archbishop of Milan and the count of Canossa brings up an Italian army. I am not sure, but that might be the only time the Italian possessions of the empire ever provided support to imperial policy outside Italy.

Odo of Blois had to give up all his possessions in Burgundy and return home. He remained hostile until he attacks again in 1037 but gets comprehensively beaten by the duke of Lothringia in a battle where Odo himself dies.

And with that Konrad is universally acknowledged as ruler of Burgundy. However, he immediately passes the crown to his son the future king Henry III who actually has a hereditary claim to the throne through his mother Gisela.

Henry III is now by far and away the most powerful secular lord in Germany. He is duke of Bavaria, duke of Swabia after his stepbrother Hermann had died and now king of Burgundy. He controls all alpine passes, which means he is de facto in control of imperial policy in Italy as well. This shows more clearly than anything how Salian policy differed from the Ottonians who usually appointed local lords as dukes into vacant duchies.

And, from then on until 1648 the lands of Burgundy, which comprises most of South-Eastern France including the Provence, the lands around Lyon, Macon and Besancon remained part of the Empire. How much use Burgundy was is debatable though. Neither Konrad nor any of his successors will make serious attempts to streamline the Burgundian kingdom in the same way they did Germany and tried in Italy. The magnates of Burgundy remained semi-independent, and the only effective control was over the royal heartlands around Lac Leman and the main alpine passes of Mont Cenis and St. Bernard. That kept the French out of Italy, which was the main objective in the first place.

As for the lands of the kingdom of Burgundy itself, in particular Provence, Franche Comte and Alsace, they kept a somewhat separate status even after they had come under French suzerainty giving them a distinct character.

Before we leave the western frontier, there is another topic that always plays a role in the region and that is Lothringia. As you may remember the very large duchy of Lothringia had been split into two by Otto the Great in the 950s. Since then, the respective dukes of upper and lower Lothringia playing a complex game of three-dimensional chess between the Emperors, the local powerful families like the Luxemburg’s and the powerful bishops.

By 1030 the counts of Flanders had to be added to the mix as they built up another coherent territorial polity just across the border in French territory. Amidst all this the duke of Upper Lothringia died without a male heir. He had two daughters who became wards of the empress Gisela but no son. For once he did not invest his son Henry III with the vacant duchy. 

Instead, Konrad decided that Lothringia needed to be streamlined and so reunited it under Gozolo, the duke of Lower Lothringia. That created on the one hand an entity that could assert itself against the rising powers of the counts whilst being able to repel attacks such as the assault by Odo of Blois in 1037. On the other hand, it created a new centre of power that could challenge the emperor – swings and roundabouts.

So much for the western border.

The East and in particular Poland had been a major challenge to imperial power pretty much since the Slavic uprising of 983. Henry II despite being the most domestically powerful German ruler since Otto the great had comprehensively failed to control Boleslav the Brave. Henry, saintly or not, had even allied himself with the pagan Liutzi against the Christian poles to no avail.

Since 1018 Poland and the empire maintained a somewhat uncomfortable truce which allowed the empire to focus on Italy and domestic affairs, whilst Boleslav continued his astounding string of successes by invading the Rus and occupying Kiev.

When Henry II died in 1024 Boleslav used the opportunity to again assert his claim to be a king, an honour he believed had been awarded to him by Otto III at the congress of Gniezno. Henry II never acknowledged the title and consistently referred to him as duke Boleslav.

Irrespective of whether he was already king or not, Boleslav had himself crowned king of Poland sometime around the end of 1024 or early 1025, i.e, during the period when Konrad II was ascertaining his position in Germany.

Boleslav died shortly afterwards and was succeeded by his son Miesco II who had himself crowned in December 1025 in Gniezno. Conrad protested, but was at that point preoccupied with consolidating his rule in Germany and the upcoming expedition to Italy.

Whilst Konrad was in Italy the German opposition around Duke Ernst of Swabia and the Lothringian dukes tried to build links to the King of Poland. Around 1026 the duchess Mathilda, mother of Konrad the Younger and wife of Duke Friedrich of Upper Lothringia sent Miesco a valuable manuscript which in one of the pictures shows Miesco enthroned as king. In the accompanying letter she praises him for his excellent education, honour and charity and calls him the invincible king, who has been granted the royal diadem by the grace of God. Despite this combination of flattery and high treason however did not yield a material support to Duke Ernst’s rebellion.

Only by 1028 did Miesco II act. What has driven that is unclear, but it may well be the developing links between Konrad and King Canute that would culminate in the marriage of Henry III with Canute’s daughter Gunhilda 8 years later. Remember that Canute’s kingdom comprised not just England, but Denmark and large parts of the Baltic coast, making him Poland’s neighbour in the north.

Miesco begins a kind of Guerrilla war with Konrad where he avoids an open battle and lures the imperial troops into the endless swamps and forests of Poland where their horses are useless and armour cumbersome. But despite his smart tactics, success eluded him. Whilst his father managed to put the fear of god into all his neighbours, expanding Poland at the expense of the empire, Bohemia and the Kievan Rus, his son lacked the authority required. Furthermore, he was not the only son of Boleslav. His brother -and I will now properly embarrass myself- called Bezprym had contested the father’s will and fled to Russia.

His three enemies created a powerful coalition taking back the lands Boleslav had gained. The Grand Prince of the Kievan Rus attacked Poland from the North with the intention of putting Bezprym on the throne. The duke of Bohemia came from the south taking back Moravia and the emperor took back the county of Lusatia that Henry II had to grant to Boleslav.

In 1031 Miesco was expelled from Poland and his half-brother Bezprym was put on the throne by the Grand prince of Kiev. Bezprym immediately reconciled with the emperor by sending him the royal insignia of Poland thereby renouncing the royal title. However, his reign did not last long. There are reports of riots caused partially by Bezprym’s persecution of Miesco’s followers and he was murdered after just a year. Miesco II came back to Poland in 1033 but gave up his hostility towards the empire. He submitted to Konrad at a royal assembly in Merseburg where he gave up his pretensions of kingship and reverted to being a mere duke and gave up all claims on Lusatia.

Konrad ordered Poland to be split up amongst the three surviving members of the Piast dynasty. That separation did not last long as Miesco II’s two contenders met a violent end. But after the upheaval of the last decade, order was almost impossible to restore. The peasants revolted and aristocrats expanded their positions. When Miesco II died, his wife and little son, Kazimir, fled to the court of Konrad II. Kazimir made several attempts to regain control, which initially failed. We will talk about Kazimir’s return to the throne when we talk about Henry III’s reign.

As for Konrad, he effectively broke the Polish hegemony of the eastern lands and recovered Lusatia. This is something his predecessor Henry II had been unable to do, though his adversary was Boleslav the Brave, one of the most accomplished soldiers and politicians of the age.

Management of the Polish border was given to the last descendant of Margrave Ekkehard of Meissen. He is most famous for being married to Uta von Ballenstedt, whose sculpture on the cathedral of Naumburg is one of the most recognisable pieces of medieval art. In the 1930s she was appropriated both by the Nazis as the ideal Arian woman and by Walt Disney as the Evil Queen in Snow White. When Umberto Eco was asked which woman of European art he would be most like to spend an evening with, he replied: In first place, ahead of all others, Uta of Naumburg”. I will put a picture of her in the blog on the website and you can make up your own mind.

The issue with the countries on the eastern side of the empire is that they are a system of communicating vessels. If one goes down, another goes up. So when Poland went down, Bohemia came up. The duke of bohemia, Udalrich, had benefitted materially from Miesco’s weakness and recaptured Moravia, which had been lost to Boleslav the Brave 20 years earlier. He even managed to capture Miesco when he had to flee from his half-brother. This rise in Bohemian power caused concern in the empire, so when by 1033 Miesco and Poland had become embroiled in their internal fighting, Konrad sent an army under the nominal command of his son Henry III to Bohemia. Udalrich had to submit to Konrad who deposed him. Bohemia was split up again and Udalrich was replaced by his brother Jaromir, whilst Moravia was given to Udalrich’s son, Bretislav. By 1034 Konrad changed his mind upon pressure of Bohemian magnates and gives Udalrich the duchy to rule jointly with Jaromir. No prizes for what happen next. Udalrich takes over the whole of the duchy and blinds his brother Jaromir. That is not quite what Konrad wanted, so he would have invaded Bohemia again had not the sudden death of Udalrich solved that problem. Udalrich’s son, Bretislav, was made duke of a now reunified Bohemia. He paid homage to Konrad, provided hostages and promised to help with an expedition against the Slavs.

Yes, the Slavs, or more precisely, the Liutzi, former allies of henry II were still around. Though they paid tribute to the empire, they were still independent and largely pagan. With Poland and Bohemia largely under control the natural next political step had to be to strengthen control over the Slav lands between the Elbe and the Oder.

There was however a real problem in justifying an attack. The Liutzi had been allies and were paying tribute. There were regular raids by probably both sides into each other’s territory, but assigning blame was difficult. In 1033 a Saxon Count Liudger had been killed by the Slavs together with 40 of his comrades. The Slavs claimed that it was the Saxons who had provoked the fight, and they had only acted in self-defence.  As there were no Christian witnesses, the emperor, on advice from his princes, proposed to determine the veracity of the respective claims through a trial by combat.

The Saxons put up a fighter who was full of the Christian faith, but, as the chronicler Wipo said, did not take seriously that God is the truth and decides all and everything in his proper judgement. The heathens on the other hand put up a fighter whose one and only focus was the truth. The Slav fought hard and fair until the Christian defender was hit and fell.

The judgement was clear for all to see, there was no just reason to go to war against the Liutzi. The Saxons and Konrad had to abandon their expedition. To pacify the border, Konrad built a strong fortification at Werben on the Elbe River. The following year they finally got their casus belli. The Liutzi it says had taken the castle of Werben by treachery and killed or captured the garrison left there by Konrad. Whether that is true, or we have an early version of the Gleiwitz incident. In any event, Konrad mobilises his army and enters the territory East of the Elbe River. As his army marches around in the lands of the Liutzi, they burn and devastate the lands but leave the fortifications and towns alone.

The emperor is not shy getting his own hands dirty. He performs great feats of military courage, still fighting when up to the elbows in swamps and leading his men from the front. I probably have not made enough of the fact that Konrad is the first emperor since Otto II who was leading his men in battle. His bravery and quite frankly astonishing physique must have reminded his court of the warrior kings of old and provides a strong contrast to the sickly henry II and the emaciated Otto III.

With his warrior credentials came a taste for cruelty, specifically towards the pagans. Based on a probably false accusation the pagans had desecrated a wooden crucifix by beating it with fists, torn out the eyes and cut of hands and feet, Konrad proceeded to apply the same treatment to actual humans, and not just a few of them.

It is hard to get an understanding how contemporaries saw these kinds of events. It is interesting to note that Wipo, who was writing a eulogy of Konrad and always, always errs on the side of glorification of the emperor is uncustomary hesitant about this episode. First he emphasises very strongly that the Liutzi were in the right and that the Saxons had provoked them. And when it comes to describing Konrad’s activities he does not – as usual – describe it as the eye witness, he actually was, but refers to a poem written by someone else who declares Konrad an “Avenger of the Faith”. I cannot shake the thought that Wipo, and probably many others, felt uneasy about these murderous expeditions.

And in the end, these campaigns were not designed to integrate the Slavs into the empire. All they were meant to do is increase the tribute they were paying. Clearly not Konrad’s finest hour.

Before we close the narrative on the eastern frontier one last thing about Denmark. As mentioned before, Konrad developed a close relationship with king Canute, ever since the two men had met at Konrad’s coronation in 1027. This culminates in the marriage of Henry III to Canute’s daughter Gunhilda who was called Kunigunde in Germany. It had taken a little while for this marriage alliance to come together as Konrad had initially attempted to find Henry a bride in Constantinople. Several missions had failed to produce a suitable candidate, not so much out of reluctance of the Byzantine court but more out of a lack of suitable females. The ones with sufficient blood link to the emperor were too old and Konrad was not prepared to settle for another Theophanu (or Theophano as I am reliably informed, she is called in Greek).  

That being said, Gunhilda was not second best. The marriage was important enough for Konrad that he offered a truly royal present to king Canute, the whole county of Schleswig just across the border from Denmark. This is the beginning of the Schleswig Holstein question, a question so complex Palmerstone is alleged to have said in 1864 that only 3 people ever understood the Schleswig Holstein Question, one was the Prince Consort who was already dead at the time, a German professor who had gone mad, and Palmerstone himself, but he had forgotten. 

And here is my ambition for the Podcast. When we get to the war over Schleswig Holstein, e will all collectively understand the Schleswig Holstein question, ideally without going mad in the process. But until then is still a long way to go. Next episode we will conclude the reign of Konrad II, discuss his second Italian expedition and look at more examples how Konrad’s idea of the res publica manifests itself, putting the needs of the state above the commitments and relationships of the individual. And we will take a look at the greatest of Konrad’s legacies, the magnificently beautiful cathedral of Speyer, a building that will replace the imperial chapel in Aachen as the largest building North of the Alps. All that next week. I hope to see you then.

A Medieval Story about LOyalty and Friendship

In this episode Emperor Konrad II (1024-1039) consolidates his reign adding a secular leg to his control of the imperial church by placing his son Henry on the ducal throne of Bavaria,. This is the first of many ducal and royal titles he will acquire.

This push for centralised control leads to a rebellion, led by the emperor’s 16-year old stepson, duke Ernst II of Swabia (1012-1030). Ernst fights bravely but when his vassals put the oath to the emperor above the fidelity they owe the duke, he has to succumb. Konrad first locks him up but is prepared to reinstate him if he hands over his friend and loyal vassal Werner of Kiburg. When Ernst refuses he becomes an outlaw and – in the legend – has great adventures in weird and foreign lands where the Flat Hoofs and the Grippians live…

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans – Episode 23: Duke Ernst of Swabia stepson and rebel.

Last week we began our new season with the unexpected and rapid rise of Konrad, a middling count of impeccable lineage but modest means to first king and then emperor. He and his wife Gisela were crowned emperor and empress at Easter 1027 in Rome. By June they were back in Germany holding a royal assembly at Regensburg. Item one on the agenda was the succession of the recently deceased duke of Bavaria. Konrad proposed none other than his son, the future king Henry III to become duke of Bavaria. It is testament to the level of authority Konrad had built in the last 3 years that the Bavarian magnates unanimously elected the 11-year old Henry to be duke.

This demonstrates more than anything the difference between Salian and Ottonian domestic policy. The Ottonians had not given any major ducal or Margrave positions to members of their immediate family after 955. The background to that was the rebellion of Liudolf that was at least in part fuelled by secular lords frustration that all routes of potential advancements were blocked by Ottonian family members. Otto I, Otto II, Otto III and Henry II would appoint members of the powerful clans, the Konradiner, the Luxembourger, the Ezzones, the Babenbergers etc. as dukes. Some dukedoms, like Saxony had become de facto inherited positions.  To curb the power of the dukes, the Ottonians, in particular Henry II, hollowed out the duchies by shifting possessions either to the royal demesne directly or the imperial church. Another way to reducing the power was by splitting the large duchies into smaller units. Lothringia was split into Upper and Lower Lothringia. Carinthia was cut out of Bavaria and the marcher lords like the Margraves of Meissen and those of Austria were given considerable autonomy relative to their dukes.

Konrad II’s decision to make his son duke of Bavaria is a break in this policy. He deliberately goes back to the pre-955 policy of Henry the Fowler of consolidating secular power immediately within the royal family. That would provide a second leg to imperial power beyond the imperial church.

Chris Wickham points out that there is a similar development taking place in Normandy at the same time. The dukes of Normandy are consolidating their power first by expanding a church system, mainly through abbeys as Eigenkirchen that give them a strong base of military and economic resources. They then subjugate the secular lords within the duchy using these resources so that by 1066 William the Conqueror commands one of the most unified and coherent political entities in Western Europe.

It is extremely unlikely that the Salian rulers looked at Normandy as a role model or were even thinking remotely in these political terms, but as we will see in the next dozen or so episodes, one of the planks of Salian political practice is to strengthen the royal demesne by confiscating vacant fiefs for the crown and reclaiming royal possessions given away by their predecessors.

For instance, Konrad II ordered an investigation and listing of all royal rights in Bavaria. The Bavarian counts were ordered to declare under oath all assets that are owned by the crown or had been passed out of the hands of the crown. This exercise did not have anywhere near the depth of the Doomsday book, but it had a similar intention, identifying what resources were there and which of those were available to the king.

And Konrad did not hesitate to take on the most prestigious of inheritances. When empress Kunigunde died, he had all former royal possessions confiscated for the realm. The fact that they were granted to her by Henry II and that she had been instrumental in his ascension of the throne counted for nought.

This again showed that Konrad firmly believed in a separation between private and state property as he made so clear in his response to the inhabitants of Pavia. By removing royal possessions from Kunigunde’s inheritance he sets the precedent that a king cannot dispose privately over state assets – a major departure from Carolingian thinking.

Konrad’s political shift towards secular lordships as a foundation of Salian rule had sometimes been seen as a departure from Henry II’s policy of being a theocratic ruler using the imperial church to achieve his objectives.

Konrad clearly was no theologian or a “king of the monks” like Henry II. Au contraire. He had been called an “idiota” by an Italian cleric. Idiota at that time did not mean stupid, but more that he could not read and write and lacked understanding of theology.

He was still a pious man though and he started the greatest church building project since the imperial chapel in Aachen, but we rarely see him actively intervening in theological disputes as Henry II did. He formally presides over synods of bishops, but I guess he thought that most of their learned Latin disputations to be utter Gobbledegook.

That however does not mean he would let go of control over the imperial church system. Konrad is not the sort of guy who lets anything slip through his hands. He maintains Henry II’s policy of selecting and investing bishops and abbots on his command with the canonical election being a mere formality. He also continues Henry II’s support for the reform movement that continues to spread. Cluny was the epicentre of this movement that required the monks to stick to the Benedictine rule of Ora et Labora – to pray and to work. Konrad, like literally everybody at the time believed that prayers by saintly monks improved your chances to go to heaven and that the more saintly the monk, the more effective the prayer. It was therefore a king’s obligation to foster good behaviour amongst churchmen. What he and his descendants did not think about was that a reformed church would gain moral authority rivalling the moral authority of the anointed monarch who derives his right to rule from the same source the grace of God.

What Konrad was less concerned about was Henry II’s obsession with ‘incestuous’ in inverted commas marriages. You may remember for Episode 18 that Henry II together with bishop Aribo of Mainz extended the notion of what constitutes incest. These two took the view that anyone related in the seventh degree is not allowed to marry. That is a tall order, since the aristocratic families of East Francia were still few and so practically everyone, including the now reigning emperor was in breach of this interpretation of the rule. Konrad, rather than having a lengthy theological discussion about it, simple withdrew his troops enforcing the rule. In particular he ended the persecution of the Hammersteins, whose castle had been besieged by Aribo and Henry II and count Hammerstein was forced to agree to an annulment of their marriage. Once the imperial troops had withdrawn the couple got together again and lived happily ever after.

Konrad also ruled on the other great church controversy, the fight between the bishops of Mainz and Hildesheim over the abbey of Gandersheim. That had already been going on for decades when Konrad’s vote was called upon. Konrad sided with Hildesheim, which drove a last and final nail into archbishop Aribo of Mainz’s ambitions.

The man who had been the effective #3 of the realm after Henry II and Kunigunde, the man who brought Konrad to kingship and had crowned him in his cathedral of Mainz suddenly stood in the rubble of his political ambitions. The great fight against incest was over, Gandersheim lost and most significantly the right to crown the king had shifted to Cologne. In 1028 he announced that he would leave Mainz and go on pilgrimage to Rome. He never returned and died of disease in Como, Northern Italy.

Other changes Konrad II brought in were even more momentous. We are in the period when feudalism gradually takes over. The rights and obligations between lord and vassal are being defined more and more specifically. As this happens, in particular the lower nobility increasingly asserts the right in inherit their father’s fiefs, a process that gets formalised around the middle of the 11^th century. These feudal obligations are hard to enforce, specifically if the vassal has managed to build one of these new-fangled fortifications called castles. The vassal can always find a reason why he does not owe service and as a free man, the only way to force him is by force.

In this situation a new type of armed warriors emerges, the Ministeriales. These are “unfree” men, in other words peasants with an aptitude for violence. This peasant is trained up to the standard of the noble knights, but their status remains that of an unfree man. Hence, he can be ordered to do whatever the lord requests, can be dismissed and his sons have no direct right to take their positions. Ministeriales first appear on church lands as bishops and abbots look for ways to defend themselves against their secular neighbours without becoming dependant upon the next lot of noblemen. Under Konrad II Ministeriales enter royal service and these unfree knights become a major part of the troops the emperor can call upon, both his own Ministeriales as well as those of his bishops.

All this adds up to a further concentration of power with the king, going beyond what even Henry II had achieved. That was clearly not at all what the lords who elected Konrad II had in mind. We already heard that the dukes of Lothringia, the duke of Swabia and Konrad the Younger had to be less than gently encouraged to recognise Konrad II during his royal progress in 1025.

2 years later when it had become clear what Konrad was up to, the discontent turned into open rebellion. The dukes of Lothringia did not actively participate, but it is duke Ernst II of Swabia who takes the lead, together with count Welf II of the Welf family that we will hear a lot about in this podcast and who are famously the ancestors of Queen Elisabeth II.

Ernst II was Konrad’s stepson. You may remember that Konrad had married Gisela, the widow of the duke of Swabia. She had two sons out of her first marriage, the oldest, Ernst succeeded his father as duke of Swabia. Ernst was probably 11 or 12 years old at Konrad’s coronation which means his mother’s guardianship would have ended shortly after that. What motivated young Ernst to oppose Konrad almost from the get-go is not quite clear. It might be that he just hated his stepdad. These things happen. But there are good political reasons for Ernst II to oppose his stepfather.

The big event everyone is waiting for in the 1020s is the death of Rudolf III King of Burgundy. Rudolf had no children and only three sisters, one was the mother of emperor Henry II, one was married to Count Odo of Blois and the third had been married to duke Hermann of Swabia, grandfather of our friend Ernst. Swabia and Burgundy are neighbours and their ruling families had been close since basically forever.

When Henry II was still alive, it was fairly clear that he would inherit Burgundy as the nephew of Rudolf III and proud owner of a lot more guns than anybody else. The new emperor and proud owner of self-same guns was Konrad who was not personally related to Rudolf III’s family, only his wife Gisela was. It would not be mad for Ernst to believe the game was open again and he was in with a chance to become king of Burgundy.

Therefore, step one for Ernst would be to assert his claim to Burgundy in the manner most appropriate in the 11^th century, by violence. Konrad had tried to stop Ernst from going down this route by first taking him along on his trip to Italy, and when he wanted to go back home, by giving him the abbey of Kempten as a consolation prize.

Kempten, despite being gorgeous and close to some excellent skiing was not good enough for our ambitious young Ernst, now maybe 15 or 16 years old. As soon as he had come back from Italy he began an assault on Burgundian territory. He also built a castle near Zurich from where he began devastating the lands of the rich imperial abbeys of St. Gallen and Reichenau.

The plan seems ton have been to on the one hand gain supporters by handing them the land taken from the two abbeys, whilst at the same time making a statement that he was absolutely serious abut his claim to the Kingdom of Burgundy. This behaviour would have been considered completely normal and justified in the late Carolingian period, i.e., before Henry the Fowler.

So, when Conrad II called Ernst to a royal assembly I Ulm to justify himself, Ernst was happy to come. He believed that he could bully the emperor into accepting his demands by appearing with his full military might, bringing along all of his vassals he could find along to the royal assembly. And should the bullying tactic not work, he and his troops could always fight his way out of the imperial hospitality.

Whilst he is camping outside the walls of Ulm, he has a last meeting with his vassals asking them to renew their vows of support, reminding them of the Swabian nobles’ long tradition of fidelity to their dukes. He appeals to their sense of honour and promises untold glory and riches, presumably from Burgundy, should they stick with him. What Ernst did not expect is what happens next. Two counts, Friedrich and Anselm stand up and say (quote): “We do not deny that we have sworn never ending fealty to you. We are prepared to fight for you against anyone, except for one, the one who has put us into vassalage to you. If we were unfree servants of the king, and he had given us to you as your serfs, then we would have to stay with you. But we are free men and the highest protector of our freedom on earth is the king and emperor. If we abandon him, we would lose our freedoms, whish as is written, no honourable man will ever give up. On these conditions we will serve you in all your honourable and just endeavours. If however you ask us to go against our honour, we will return to where you had summoned us from ”. (unquote)

That suggests the king’s rights to vassalage penetrate through the mid-layer of dukes all the way down to all free men. As someone growing up in English or French history that would not be much of a surprise, but for me it is. I always understood that one of the reasons the medieval German emperors failed to establish a centralised monarchy like the French and English kings was that in the empire the oath of vassalage was only ever to the next lord up the food chain, i.e., the knight would pledge to the count, the count to the duke and the duke to the king, whilst in England and France all free men would swear an oath to the king. This scene shows that at least in the early 11^th century, the free men felt bound directly to the king by oath, even in the empire. That will ultimately change and by the 14^th century there will be a formal distinction between immediate vassals to the emperor (“reichsunmittlebar”) and those who owe allegiance mediated by their respective overlords. But for now, the emperor still has direct vassalage rights over all free men. The other interesting thing is that the unfree men have no choices to make. Whoever owns/controls them can ask them to do whatever he wants, even order them to commit high treason, as if they were not really human.

For duke Ernst, this was a major blow. Without his supporters there was no point in continuing the rebellion and Ernst surrendered unconditionally to the emperor’s and his stepfather’s mercy. The other conspirators, Welf II and Konrad the Younger gave up too. By 1028 the rebellion had collapsed.

Ernst lost his duchy of Swabia and was incarcerated in the fortress of Giebichenstein next to the city of Halle and der Saale, a castle that had already become the state prison for Henry II and would continue to hold eminent prisoners throughout the Middle Ages.

Ernst situation should now be quite dire. The Ottonians had established a “Two strikes and you are out” policy. That meant a first revolt would normally be forgiven against renewed commitment to service. Once that is done publicly, the rebellious noble would receive most, but not all of his possessions and offices back. But if the noble rebels again, it is game over. All titles and possessions are granted to someone else, and the offender will have to flee into exile to avoid being hanged.

Technically Ernst was on his second strike since he had briefly opposed Konrad’s election by force of arms in 1025. But he is released after less than a year, and it seems returned to Swabia.

This preferential treatment may well have a lot to do with the fact that Ernst was the emperor’s stepson.  Ernst’s mother, the empress Gisela was another one of these formidable early medieval empresses like Mathilda of Ringelheim, Adelheid, Theophanu and Kunigunde. Her influence and wealth had not only been instrumental in getting Konrad to the throne, but she was also his most important counsellor. More than half of the imperial charters include the opening phrase “upon recommendation of the empress Gisela”, suggesting she was instrumental in making the decision laid out in the charter. She took a lead role in the crucial negotiations with the king of Burgundy as well as taking part in synods and royal assemblies. Gisela was no pushover and clearly able to assert her wishes, one of which was for her son to be shown mercy.

In 1030 Ernst was called to Ingelheim to discuss the terms of his formal reinstatement as duke of Swabia.  Konrad had one key condition for his re-instatement. Ernst should go and persecute Werner (or Wezel) of Kyburg, one of his most loyal supporters who had kept the rebellion going whilst Ernst was in jail. The order was to treat him and all his family as enemy of the state, which means capturing and hanging them without trial.

Some sources say, Werner of Kyburg had grown up with Ernst and that they were close friends and almost brothers. But even if that was not so and Werner was just a vassal, albeit a very loyal one, the situation for Ernst is now extremely difficult. If he follows through with Konrad’s demands, what are the other vassals going to think about a duke who wipes out one of his loyal supporters, including his entire family. On the other hand, if he refuses, he will lose the duchy.

Ernst does the honourable thing and refuses. He loses the duchy and Konrad goes one step further. He gets a court of princes to convict Ernst as an enemy of the state, which makes him an outlaw or, as the Germans call it “vogelfrei”. That means anyone can kill him, steal his possessions, devastate his lands without persecution. To complete the circle the bishops excommunicated Ernst and all who followed him and order all their possessions to be confiscated.

Where is Ernst’ mother in all of this you ask? The chronicler Wipo says that the empress Gisela, though saddened by developments, gives a public commitment that she would not seek revenge against anyone following through with these judgements.

This decision has forever blackened Gisela’s name. One may argue that at this point in the proceedings there was little she could have done to rescue her obstinate son. But nevertheless it is remarkable that though her husband had de facto called for the murder of her son, Gisela remained at his side and there is no record of a cooling of the imperial couple’s relationship. These were sometimes rather unemotional times it seems.

Duke Ernst and his friend and vassal Werner von Kiburg flee from Ingelheim and began a life of outlaws.

And here the narrative splits. The legend of duke Ernst written in the 13^th century tells us that Ernst and Werner embark on a journey to the holy land. This trip leads them to the most weird and wonderful lands.

The first land they reach after a terrible storm that left them disorientated. In the distance they see a splendid looking city.. As the duke and his party approach the city they find a beatific park outside where a sumptuous meal laid out on gold and silver dishes, but no-one to be seen anywhere. After they have  eaten, Ernst and Werner enter the city telling their fellow travellers return to the ship. There they saw stately palaces -beautiful, grand and strangely formed – with arches and lofty doors which were more ornate than any others and sparkled like stars. Nearby the park they had eaten they find a place which had a gold roof and skilfully fashioned emerald walls that gleamed bright green. In it Duke Ernst found a room which was gracefully decorated with jewels set in shining gold. In it was a bed trimmed with gold and pearls arranged in squares, the bedstead adorned with lions, dragons and snakes, all skilfully wrought of gleaming gold. There was also a chair made from ivory and decorated with amethysts shining red, and so on and so on. Finally they saw in the courtyard two streams, one warm, one cold flowing into a bathhouse with an arched roof of green marble. Inside gleamed two red gold vats into which water flowed through silver pipes that were cleverly arranged to supply a strong flow of either warm or cold water, whichever one wished. The vats drained off into a bronze pipe that conducted the water all across the city to clean its marble roads, since the people liked their city to look nice.  And, since there was no one in the city, Ernst and Werner decided to take a bath and then lay down for a snooze on the bed. When they woke up they began to seriously wonder which community of Russian oligarchs was living in such beautiful a city.

They put on their armour and kept watch at one of the palace’s windows. That is when they heard a strange cry, mighty and terrible which came from the plain outside the walls and sounded like the screeching of a huge flock of wild cranes. The din was very loud and frightening, as fierce a clamour as has ever been heard. The two knight retreated deeper into the palace and kept watch.

Finally, they caught side of a throng of men and women in front of the city gate. Both young and old had well formed hands and feet and were in every aspect handsome, stately people, except that their necks and heads were like those of cranes. They wore clothing of satin and silk and no fault could be found with their bodies, which, both men and women, were strong and beautiful.

These were the people of Grippia, whose king was distinguished by having the neck and head of a swan. They had just come back from an expedition against the king of India who they had killed and whose beautiful daughter they had captured to become the king of Grippia’s new wife.

The banquet laid out in the park had been the wedding banquet for his marriage, which duly proceeded. The two knights saw the beauty and sadness of the girl and decided to rescue her. Duke Ernst’s plan was to jump into the middle of the wedding party, kill the king and his retinue and fight their way back to the ship. Werner held him back from that complete madness and so they waited for the king to take the girl to the luxurious bedchamber. Once the king and 12 of his magnates had entered the bedchamber where the girl was being undressed, the two dukes fell upon them. However, as they were hacking their way to the princess the Grippians close to her stabbed her with their beaks. The knight had killed all, including the king but save for one who ran away to alarm the whole city. The princess heavily wounded lay sorrowfully, stained by her warm, red blood, for she was in great pain and near death. She promised them the riches of India if they could rescue her, but finally succumbed to their wounds.

The two knights then had to fight their way back to the gates of the city where their companions had come hearing the din of battle. So far they had not lost a single man, but on their way back to the ship they were attacked by a Grippian army on Horseback who pelted them with arrows but avoided hand-to-hand combat – Hungarian style. Only after severe losses di Ernst, Werner and their comrades make it back to their ships.

Their ordeal was far from over though. As they fled, they came close to the Mountain in the Congealed Sea. This rock draws to itself in a short time all ships built with iron nails that sail within 30 leagues of it. There was nothing to be done and the knights commended their souls to the lord and awaited their end. The rock pulled the knights ships in faster and faster. As they drew nearer, they saw a great fleet of ships all drawn to the rock. Then its power dashed their ships towards the shore with such force that all the vessels crashed against each other, and their masts collided again and again. The knights miraculously survived the falling masts and in fear jumped ship and swam to the rock. The rock was barren, and the knights began dying of hunger. And every morning two griffins would come to the island from afar and grab the knights who died in the night to take them as food to their nest. After a month there were only six knights left, Ernst, Werner and four others. Werner suggested a last daring attempt to escape. He and Ernst put on their full armour and then get their comrades to sow them up in strong cowhides. Then they were laid out on the deck of the ship for the griffins to pick them up. So they duly did and the two valiant knights were brough to the Griffin’s nest. The griffins’ young tried to get at the knights inside their armour, but after a while gave up. Once the griffins had lost interest the two knights cut open the cowhide with their swords and escaped. All of their comrades, except for one escaped by the same route to continue their journey.

They next come to the land of the cyclops where they find a great jewel that now adorns the imperial crown. They helped the cyclops in a fight with their neighbours, the Flat Hoofs. These man had such large feet that when it rained they would simply lie down, raise their legs and shelter under the cover of their enormous feet. The king of the cyclops was so happy about his help that he gave Ernst a duchy to rule and generously rewarded his followers.  Ernst was however restless and began a war with a people called the Ears, whose enormous ears reached all the way down to their feet and which they used as clothing. Needless to say, he won that war as well.

His next expedition was to the Prechami, the smallest people in the world. The Prechami lived in perennial fear of the giant armoured  Cranes that stalked their land and picked them up and ate them whenever they left the dense forest, they lived in. No surprise, Ernst and his men, valiantly supported by the Prechami army prevailed over the armoured Cranes and just asked for a few men of his race as reward.

Next up are the Caananites, a race of giants who ran an equals sized protection racket. When they decided to expand their operation to the land of the cyclops, duke Ernst urged the king to hold out. The king agreed and rejected the giants demand for tribute, who promptly send an army of 1000 giants tall as five men standing on top of each other. Duke Ernst decided to attack them inside a thick forest. Under the cover of the forests canopy the giants could not see duke Ernst’s men who cut off  their lower limbs with swords and javelins. One giant after the other fell, crashing into the forests whilst their comrades smashed everything with their rods, doing more harm to their own side than to Ernst’s cleverly protected men. The giants had to retreat, and Ernst managed to capture one of them. He healed his wounds, and this adolescent giant became his servant and friend.

After six years Ernst decided that he should finally complete his pilgrimage and travel to Jerusalem. He took the treasures he had accumulated as well as a Flat Hoof, a Prechami, one of the Ears and his giant and travelled via Ethiopia and Egypt to Jerusalem. There he prayed at the church of the holy sepulchre, fought the heathens and gave donations to the church.

Finally, he returned home via Rome and went secretly to Bamberg where the emperor was holding a diet. The day before Christmas he managed to contact his mother and they arranged to call upon the emperor’s mercy. On Christmas eve he kneeled in front of the emperor and asked for forgiveness. He brough him the treasures he had collected on his travels as well as his giant, his Prechami and Flat Hoof. The emperor was best pleased with these presents and understood that he had been misled by his advisors in banning Ernst. And so they lived happily ever after.

That is what the legend says.

The reality is more prosaic. Ernst and Werner first tried to gather some support with French magnates but were sent packing. They then hid in a wilderness that was called the Black Forest living of banditry. Finally, one of the soldiers the emperor had sent to capture him got hold of his horses making them immobile. He took one last stand with his comrades in a clearing near the castle of Falkenstein. Ernst, Werner and all his remaining supporters died as did the count who had pursued him. His body was brought to Constance and, after his excommunication was lifted, was buried in the church of Saint Mary. When Conrad heard of the death of his stepson, he is supposed to have said: “Viscous dogs rarely have offspring” Unemotional times indeed.

The duchy of Swabia first went to his little brother Hermann who died young and was afterwards awarded to the heir to the throne, king Henry III.

That is all we have for you today. Next week there will be no more Flat Hooves and Prechami, but cold, hardnosed politics. We will look at how the biggest political question of his time, the succession in Burgundy will be handled. We will also hear about the wars against the would-be king of Poland and the actual king of Hungary.  I hope you will join us.