The perception history of the Ottonians

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

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

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

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

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

Ok, so let’s get going.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That notion ran into a whole busload of problems.

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

Looking further back also yielded little joy.

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

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

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

Let me quote from the preface of his monumental works:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How a pious monarch organises his succession

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

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

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

I am looking forward to your questions.

With that, back to the show.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Wars with Boleslaw Chrobry

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

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

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

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

So, with that, back to the show.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

War had now become inevitable.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fighting the rivals for the imperial crown

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Imperial Church System

Last week we discussed the economy and infrastructure of Germany in the year 1000 and looked at the first two social states of the Middle Ages, the Laboratores, those who toil and the Bellatores, those who fight. Today we will look at the third and highest-ranking group, the Oratores, those who pray. And then we will discuss the role of the king-emperor in the Ottonian realm, the institutions, if there are any and how they differ from other polities of the time.

But first let’s talk about the Oratores. This is the most heterogenous group ranging from the simple country parson to major European political operators.

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 16 – Germany in the year 1000 (part 2)

Last week we discussed the economy and infrastructure of Germany in the year 1000 and looked at the first two social states of the Middle Ages, the Laboratores, those who toil and the Bellatores, those who fight. Today we will look at the third and highest-ranking group, the Oratores, those who pray. And then we will discuss the role of the king-emperor in the Ottonian realm, the institutions, if there are any and how they differ from other polities of the time.

But first let’s talk about the Oratores. This is the most heterogenous group ranging from the simple country parson to major European political operators.

At the lowest level you have the village priest. As always in this time period we have little consistent data on how many priests there were, whether there were places of worship in most villages, how the priest was paid etc. But best guess is there weren’t many priests and in the outlying villages the priest would show up once a month or even only once a year to do the major sacraments like baptisms and marriages. The training of the priests should have happened predominantly in the cathedral schools that were attached to a cathedral. These were often very prestigious institutions. Quite regularly the bishop himself would do some of the instructing. We for instance know that Gerbert of Aurillac went to Rheims to run the cathedral school and would later become an archbishop and finally pope.

What I am unclear about is the social setup for the pupils at the cathedral school. Some of them are the sons of the highest aristocracy, for instance the future emperor Henry II was taught at the cathedral school of Hildesheim. I am struggling with the idea that he would have rubbed shoulders with a gifted peasant’s son who was destined to become the village priest. The schools were also small with about 100 pupils at any given time, some of whom sons of local rulers who would not become priests at all. Therefore, most priests in the villages most likely have never been close to a cathedral school in their life but have started out as the apprentice of an established priest. They were supposed to be literate and knowledgeable about liturgy, but there are regular complaints about illiterate priests.

Parish priests would often, if not regularly have families. There were regular complaints about priests living with their consorts amongst the more zealous religious figures. However, nobody really cared as long as the priest’s offspring would not be able to inherit. If they would have been able to inherit, that would have been a major problem. If the vicar’s son would become the vicar, it would have created a parallel aristocracy alongside the secular one, and that was a no no.

The other large group of religious people were the monks and nuns. Western monasticism started in the 6^th century with Benedict of Nursia who established the Benedictine rule. The Benedictine rule asked monks to do two things, “ora”, i.e. pray and “labora”, i.e., manual work. The rule also encouraged reading as part of the praying bit and production of books as part of the labour bit. Under Charlemagne in the 9^th century the Benedictine rule became the basic guide for most monasteries in Europe. By 1000 there were still some Greek-style monasteries around as well as actual hermits, but we find less and less of those in the following centuries.

By the 10^th century some monasteries had grown to be large operations. For instance, Corvey where our old friend Widukind was based, had over 300 monks at its peak. Add to that their lay servants, the monastery itself had a population rivalling many cities at the time. The monasteries were rich, mainly thanks to generous donations by high aristocrats, who often would end their days as monks in the monasteries to atone for their sins. A great example is Gernrode founded by the genocidal Margrave Gero in a likely futile attempt to be forgiven for his sins. High aristocrats would often designate their daughters to become abbesses of the “family” abbey, which meant giving their dowry to the abbey. The sisters of Otto II and Otto III with one exemption would all become abbesses, one of the reasons the dynasty disappeared so comprehensively and abbeys like Quedlinburg, Gandersheim and Essen became so fabulously rich. Check out the treasury of the abbey of Essen on the internet and be amazed.

One common feature of German churches and abbeys was that they were often so-called “Eigenkirchen” or proprietary churches.”. That means the church or abbey was fully owned by a layman, usually the founder of the church. Fully owned meant that the church was treated like any other property that could be bought, sold, inherited or given as a present. The patron would appoint the priest without having to ask the local bishop and – most importantly – would take 2/3 of the Tithe and a big chunk of all other income. Basically, creating one of these Eigenkirchen was a highly profitable investment, which puts these pious donations into perspective. The reason the church did tolerate this until the middle of the 11^th century with little murmuring was that the bishops themselves did not have the money to build all the churches needed as the population gradually adopted Christianity.

This concept survived at least to a degree until the 19^th century. In some Jane Austin novels, you sometimes have the lord giving the plum vicarage to a family friend – no bishop involved. The difference is that in Germany in the year 1000 these Eigenkirchen could be huge. They include the so-called royal abbeys like the already mentioned Corvey, Fulda and Lorsch. With their right to collect the tithe, these churches became de facto tax collectors for the king. Not only that, but they were also required to send soldiers. When emperor Otto II asked for replacement troops from Germany in 982, about a fifth of the contingent was demanded from abbots.

The great abbeys were also centres for the arts. In particular the abbey of Reichenau on an island in lake Constance became the predominant centre for the production of illuminated manuscripts. Reichenau is where the most celebrated illuminator, an anonymous monk that art historians called the Gregory Master worked. He illuminated amongst others on the Codex Egberti, examples of his work you may have seen in my Instagram and Facebook feeds. But there were many more illuminators in Reichenau as well as in Trier, Fulda, Regensburg and Echternach.

The most famous and storied abbeys of the time, Corvey, Fulda and Reichenau had been founded in the 8^th or sometimes 9^th century and by the late 10^th and early 11^th century were mainly focused on estate management and cultural output, not so much on manual labour as Benedikt of Nursia had demanded.

In the 10^th century a new “reform” movement took hold in western monasticism. Reform is nothing new in so far that monasteries always had a tendency to become lax in the adherence to strict rules as money and patronage flows in. What makes the “reform” monasticism in the 10^th and 11^th century different is its streamlined organisation headed by the monastery of Cluny. Cluny had been created as small foundation by a duke of Aquitaine in 910 in a remote corner of Burgundy. IN an act of unusual generosity, the duke did not make it one of his proprietary churches but made it answerable only to the pope, which in 910 meant to nobody as the popes in Rome were mere playthings of the formidable Mariucca, Senatrix of Rome.

Cluny’s first abbot, Odo, enforced strict adherence to the Benedictine rule and established a particularly beautiful form of liturgy which made the monastery attractive to donations from lay lords. So far, so normal. What makes Cluny special is that Odo went out to reform other monasteries as some sort of ecclesiastical mister fix-it. In exchange for his services, these reformed monasteries would then become subordinates of Cluny, which means they are removed from the direct control of their local bishops and counts. As their fame spreads, monks of Cluny were invited to found new monasteries all across Europe, including the monastery of Selz which empress Adelheid had founded and where she ended her days.

Cluny managed to expand until it had as many as 300 daughter monasteries all across Europe. Its alumni were holding major bishoprics and finally the papacy. The abbot of Cluny had become a major political player in Europe, often seen close to popes and emperors. Abbot Odilo of Cluny was a close associate of Emperor Otto III who made large donations to Cluny. There were other centres of monastic reform around that time like Gorze in Lothringia and St. Maximin near Trier, but they did not create a tight knit network and were ultimately sucked into the holy vortex of Cluny.  We will see how far the power of Cluny reaches when we get into the Salian emperors.

Whilst monks were supposed to pray in solitude for the souls of the people, or at least their major donors, the bishops were supposed to be active in the lay world. Their job was the administration of the diocese and to train and lead the parish priests. In the Ottonian empire this spiritual role was playing very much second fiddle to the political ambitions of their occupants.

There were 6 archbishoprics in the German part of the realm, Trier, Mainz, Cologne, Salzburg, Hamburg and Magdeburg. Mainz was the oldest and most prestigious archbishopric in Germany – not quite as dominant as Canterbury in England but the primate church of the land. You have heard about the archbishops of Mainz in our narrative already, first the arch-conspirator Friedrich of Mainz who was supporting the uprisings against Otto the Great, then Otto’s son William who was nowhere near as obedient as his dad had hoped for and now Willigis of Mainz, kingmaker of the Ottonians. Willigis stands as he was the son of a free peasant and not a high aristocrat like most of the bishops of the time.

Next down the pecking order was the archbishop of Cologne, who had the advantage of Aachen, the coronation church, to be in his diocese. Again, the occupants of the seat like for instance Brun, the brother of Otto the Great was a major political player on a European level.

A number of the most eminent bishops in the 10^th century like Willigis and Brun but also Ulrich of Augsburg had been made saints pretty shortly after their deaths, even though their spiritual leadership often left something to be desired.

As we have gone through the narrative of the last 80 odd years you may have noticed that the entourages of our king emperor had subtly shifted. Henry the Fowler spent most his time with his fellow dukes and other secular leaders. That is still true for Otto the Great but becomes less so with Otto II who relies more on the advice of his friend Giselher, archbishop of Magdeburg, then his German nobles. By the time of Otto III, we find mostly churchmen in his inner circles. Some of these are holy men like Adalbert of Prague, Nilus and Franco of Worms, but mostly they are powerful bishops like Heribert of Cologne and Bernward of Hildesheim.

The bishops have become immensely powerful on the back of royal donations. In particular after 955 the bishoprics were increasingly awarded secular lordships. That could take the form of Brun, archbishop of Cologne becoming duke of Lothringia, a position that ended with his death. but as time went by, whole counties were permanently awarded to bishoprics or abbeys. This created the famous German Prince-Bishops and Prince-Abbots. The concept behind it was that the formerly purely administrative role of count had gradually become an inherited position. Therefore, the king had lost control over the day-to-day management of the counties and he was looking at ways to get it back. Usually when counties became vacant because the incumbent had died without issue, they had to be re-distributed to members of the major aristocratic families, at least that was the situation after 955. Confiscating them for the crown no longer worked. There was a way out of the dilemma though. If the county would be awarded to a diocese or an abbey as a pious act, the local aristocrats had a hard time arguing that they should get it instead of the holy church.

A bishopric has the great advantage that it cannot be inherited, in part because the bishop has no legitimate offspring. Moreover, a bishop is elected to his spiritual role by the congregation, usually represented by the cathedral clergy. For the bishop to then get hold of the lands, rights and treasures of the bishopric, i.e., the money, he needs to be invested by the king. A bishop without money is no use to no-one so the king was increasingly deciding who would be bishop and the clergy just rubber stamped the choice. There were cases where the clergy had chosen a new bishop and the king refused, proposed a new candidate and the clergy then appointed that one. So, every time a new bishop is elected the king can ask for allegiance or concessions or whatever else he needs at that point. Basically the county is now under royal control.

There is another specifically German quirk, which is the so-called advocacy. Advocacy solves the problem that a priest is not allowed to bear arms, which is unhelpful when he is effectively commanding the military levy of the county he had just received as a donation. To get around that problem, the bishop or abbot could appoint a layman to be in charge of the soldiers and the other administrative duties that come with his worldly possessions. That layman is the advocate. Now smart move here is for the king to make himself or one of his confidants the advocate of the bishop or abbot and hey presto, the assets of the diocese are now under the direct control of the king. In some cases the control could be even tighter, if the abbey or bishopric was an Eigenkirche or proprietary church, at which point the king would also collect all the income himself.

Another control mechanism over the church were the synods, meetings of the bishops. These were usually called to debate church issues, either for a specific region, the whole of the kingdom or the whole of Christendom. During the Ottonian period, the king or emperor would regularly preside over the local synods, and during Otto III he would even preside over a global synod in Rome, albeit shared with the Pope. 

This sounds very neat and to a large degree this Ottonian/Salian imperial church system is the source of the dominance of the German emperors in this time period. Based on the one document we have about the composition of the Ottonian army, 70% of its soldiers came from bishops and abbots.

But it is not entirely straightforward either. The emperor cannot just choose anyone to be bishop or abbot willy, nilly, but has to take the expectations of his nobles and magnates into account. You remember when Otto the Great at the height of his might still could not freely choose who he wanted to be archbishop of Magdeburg.

As always with the Middle Ages, central power is fragile, built on mutual personal obligations and consent of the ruled has to be reaffirmed regularly by meeting and greeting the nobles, pretend to hear what they have to say, kiss their children or stand godparent etc, etc pp. Failure to do so has serious consequences.

Last but not least, at the top of the ecclesiastical tree should be the pope. But in the 10^th century that is simply a joke. With the exception of the popes that Otto III installed, the vicars of Christ in the Ottonian period are at best the punchbags of the local Roman aristocracy or depraved murderers and adulterers. Their moral authority is so weak that Ottonian emperors dismiss and appoint popes at will, something they would not ever dare to do with their own bishops and archbishops. On the flipside, when the emperor gets a papal bull that allows him to establish an archbishopric in Magdeburg against the wishes of the archbishop of Mainz, he does not even use it, knowing full well it is not worth the rather expensive vellum it is written on.

In effect there is a vacuum at the top of Christendom, that cries out to be filled.

Well, not a complete vacuum, there is also the emperor. But what is an emperor, in particular at the turn of the millennium?

Having been crowned emperor made no difference even to Charlemagne or Otto the Great as it comes to the number of soldiers, landed estates or piles of gold he controls. That is different to the crown of Italy which comes with clearly defined rights and obligations. The imperial crown is just an ambition. What that ambition is and how it may be achieved differs fundamentally from emperor to emperor.

Before we go into the imperial ambitions, we first need to take a look at the assets and tools the Ottonians have at their disposal. In other words, we need to look at what kind of “state” (in inverted commas) they ran.

Let’s start with Henry the Fowler. Henry the Fowler relied mainly on his personal demesne, the duchy of Saxony and the power of his personality. There was technically a royal demesne left over from Carolingian times, but what that was worth is more than unclear. For instance, the royal palace at Regensburg, which was the favourite seat of Charlemagne’s son, Louis the Pious, had firmly gone into possession of the Bavarian dukes. Even Aachen was lost to the French and Ingelheim was only part of the Royal estate because the Franconian duke allowed it.

As we transition from Henry the Fowler to Otto the Great, royal power strengthens. Henry the fowler had already gained the right to invest bishops and abbots in most duchies and Otto the Great added more royal domains, mainly by confiscating Franconia. Some possessions in Lothringia were also added to the royal demesne, including Aachen. Between 919 and 955 Henry and Otto the Great placed their close relatives, brothers, sons and sons-in-law as dukes so that by 955 all duchies were in the hands of just one family. That however backfired as the rebellion of Liudolf exposed the level of disaffection amongst the major aristocratic clans who were left out of the plum jobs.

After 955 the Ottonians gradually relinquished direct control of the duchies and the important marches to pacify the aristocratic clans. Whilst they gave up secular power, they build out their control over the church. As mentioned before the emperors handed more and more land and rights to the church, not necessarily for piety, but as a way to create an administrative infrastructure that they could control. The increasing reliance on the church is quite visible in the royal itineraries, which after 955 included more and more stays at the seats of bishops, where they would hold royal assemblies as well as synods. 

By the 980s – as we said before, 70% of the Ottonian army was supplied by the German church, not by the German nobles.

The big financial boost to the imperial coffers came from the silver mines in Goslar that remained the largest silver deposits in Western europe for the next 100 years.

What the emperors lacked and will continue to lack is tax-raising powers. By the year 1000, the only states that had tax raising powers were the emperor in Constantinople, the Muslim states in Spain and Sicily and England. The reason for Constantinople and the Muslims to have taxation is easily explained by the inheritance from the Romans. England is a different matter. England’s king Ethelred the Unready was an ineffectual ruler who could not fight back Viking invasions. His solution was to pay the Vikings the famous danegeld, essentially a bribe for them to go away. That had the entirely predictable effect that the Danes came back every year to ask for more. To raise the funds, king Ethelred had to tax his people. It was either that or being raped and pillaged by the Vikings, so people paid. Once the Danes were themselves in charge, they still collected the Danegeld as a regular tax so that over time the English became used to being taxed. That tax income made the kings of England some of the richest medieval rulers who could punch well above their weight in the hundred years war.

The German emperors were unfortunately too successful against their invaders, namely the Hungarians, so that they never got into a situation where they could justify asking all their subjects for taxes. There were some taxes in Germany in the 10^th century though, the Tithe, the 1/10^th of the income you had to give to the church. Through the system of Eigenkirchen and Advocacy, the king could get a share in the tithe, so that in some weird indirect way he had some tax revenues.

There is the justifiable question why the German emperors did not introduce taxes when they were at the height of their powers in the 10^th century. Establishing taxation requires two things, a bureaucracy that reaches down to the individual taxpayer to assess the level of tax to be paid and a means to enforce the tax dues, in extremes by military power. And that is why we have a catch 22, without tax income already you cannot afford the bureaucracy and the standing army required to collect the taxes. What you need is either an existing infrastructure or an extraneous event like the Viking invasion or in the case of France the 100 years’ war that justifies raising taxes.

But at the turn of the millennium, the German emperor was the most powerful ruler in Western Europe, despite his lack of tax income, because he could draw on the resources of the church. Again, not without restrictions, but in principle, yes.

The only other polity in Western Europe that had similar control over the church was the Duchy or Normandy. The dukes in Normandy had gradually assumed control of the abbeys and the bishopric of Rouen, having turned them into proprietary churches. The Normans however managed to get one step further. They used the soldiers the church provided them with and subdued their local lords. They tore down their castles and, if they were still not yielding, had them expropriated. Therefore, when William the Conqueror arrives in Britain in 1066, he comes as the head of the most coherent medieval polities that is entirely at his command. And the combination of the streamlined Norman political system and the English population’s willingness to pay taxes is the secret sauce of English power in the Middle Ages. Just keep this bit in mind when we are talking about the next 100 years of German history.

So, to recap, the emperor has some legal rights over the church resources, his own private lands and the silver mines in Goslar.

These are the assets, but how does the software work. What are the processes and institutions that the emperor uses to run the country?

In terms of royal institutions, there is only one, the chancellery. I guess I mentioned before that the chancellery was an invention of archbishop Brun, the brother of Otto the Great. The chancellery was originally just the place where the royal scribes would produce the royal or imperial charters. Under Brun and later Otto the Great, they turned into something more significant. The Chancellor became the chief advisor to the king and his de facto chief administrator. He would organise and sometimes adjudicate court cases and send out the missii, royal envoys who would be sent to enforce the royal orders. Apart from the immediate role, the chancellery was also the training ground for future bishops. If you were a young aristocrat with ambitions to become a church leader, the imperial or royal chancellery was the place to be. As the emperor had the ultimate say on who would become bishop, being close to him and making yourself useful in his service gave you the ticket to great power and riches. From the emperor’s perspective, he gets the chance to evaluate potential candidates and choose those he can hope to be loyal.

Historians of the 19^th century had concluded that this was a coherent and streamlined system where the emperor would end up commanding a squad of fully obedient bishops who had been his PAs before. That has been successfully challenged by modern historians and it is now generally believed that the king would have to take the big aristocratic clans into account when appointing his bishops. That meant they were generally loyal and more loyal than they would have been without the stint I the Chancellery, but they are not at his beck and call.

By the late Ottonian period we would usually have two chancellors, a chancellor for Germany and a chancellor for Italy. But beyond the Missii, the administration did not go any deeper. Any order or request needed to be implemented by the local powers, be it a bishop, abbot or count.

Otto III tried to expand the administration and appointed all sorts of roles mimicking the court in Constantinople. But absent an infrastructure below these titles, they were just empty shells. You remember the chief admiral with no ships?

To achieve their compliance, the emperors would hold assemblies and synods. The difference between the two is that a synod is in principle only for churchmen to discuss church issues whilst an assembly would be mainly for the secular rulers, though the bishops and abbots would be there in their function as secular rulers. Again, when we look into the detail, the distinctions are fluid, and you find assemblies discussing church matters and synods being attended by laymen discussing secular matters.

The purpose of these gatherings was to gain approval for the imperial policy. The king-emperor rules by the consent of his people, because he does not have the funds to maintain a standing army and an administration that reaches all the way down to the individual peasant.

And that is most visible when it comes to the question how you become king. We are still in a transition period between the Germanic kingdoms of the dark ages and the high Middle Ages. In the Germanic kingdoms, the king was usually elected, based on military prowess, i.e., whoever promised the most plunder becomes king. Being a member of the aristocracy and even being related to the previous king mattered but was not the main consideration. As the kingdoms became more stable, hereditary monarchies became more prevalent. The Merovingians were mostly hereditary with the added quirk of being ginger and still in possession of a full head of hair to be king. When we get to the Carolingians, it looks on the outside like a hereditary system, but the exact rankings of various claimants to the throne had not been established, in particular there was the horizontal succession from brother to brother competing with the vertical succession from father to son. And then there were all sorts of questions about the female line and illegitimate sons that in the end, the king was often elected.

As the kingdom of Germany emerges, the situation does not fundamentally change. Henry the Fowler is elected, though only by about half the kingdom. He does get the consent of the rest later.

We do not know whether Otto the Great was formally elected, but he was acclaimed by the nobles before his coronation, which suggests an election of some sort had taken place, possibly at a time when Henry the Fowler was still alive. Otto II and Otto III were both formally elected, but under the watchful eye of the then reigning emperor, making it more of a formality than an actual election.

A way to describe this is as a hereditary elective monarchy, where the reigning emperor can force through the election of his offspring, but if the situation arises where the emperor dies before his successor is elected, election is the correct way to choose the next ruler. And that election would then be free in so far as the closest blood relative does not necessarily have to become the next ruler.

Apart from inheritance and election, consecration by the church is the third source of imperial legitimacy. The coronation rite is in many aspects similar to the consecration of a bishop. The king is anointed with the holy chrism like a bishop, and he swears an oath to defend the church.

With the popes being so weak, the position of the Ottonian emperors was even higher than a bishop. The emperor could see himself as the leader of Christendom and head of the church above the pope. Under Otto III we reach a first peak of this theocratic notion of kingship. Otto III behaves more like a spiritual than a secular leader, more like a future saint than an emperor.

Such an elevated status also meant that rebellion against the emperor was not undertaken lightly. In particular if the king had enjoyed signs of divine favour, as Otto the Great had in the battles of Birten and Andernach. Henry the Quarrelsome would have had Otto III killed, had he not been consecrated almost at the last minute. The Saxon nobles who turned against Henry the Quarrelsome did so largely because they feared divine retribution if they had broken their oath to the anointed king.

For the act of consecration to be valid, it had to be performed by the right people and with the right pieces of kit. You needed the archbishop of Mainz, the Holy Lance as the most valuable of the imperial regalia, but also the imperial crown, sceptre, coat and a whole long list of other accoutrements.

To sum up, you ideally need to meet three requirements to become emperor, direct male descendance from the previous incumbent, election by the majority of the magnates, and valid consecration with the correct regalia. Btw, France under the Capetins had a similar system. But the French kings were blessed with more powerful loins and produced male heirs in such a consistent manner, that a free election never happened and at some point, the French simply forgot that they could elect their king – until 1789.

In Germany by 1002, these key requirements still need to be fulfilled.  And this is where we are. Otto III had no children and no successor has been elected during his lifetime. There is no direct male descendant apart from Henry of Bavaria, who can trace his line back to Henry the Fowler, 80 years earlier. A new king will need to be elected. Will it be Henry, or will others stake a claim? Who will Heribert of Cologne give the Holy Lance to, the one he had sneakily sent ahead from Rome as soon as Otto III had breathed his last? Can you be king without meeting all three requirements?

All will be revealed next week. I hope you enjoyed this episode and will listen in again next week and in the meantime, do not hesitate to share, comment or give feedback and encouragement. You can do that on social media, on my Facebook, Twitter, refit or Instagram under History of the Germans Podcast, or on the review section of Apple, Podbean or any other platforms

Climate, Agriculture, Economy and medieval hygiene

In this episode we will talk about the economy, society, infrastructure and art at the turn of the first millennium. We will talk about changes in agriculture, monetary system and warfare. And finally, we will look at the changes in the political set-up since Henry the Fowler, the role of dukes and counts, bishops and abbots and the definition of what an emperor is for.

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans Episode 15 – Germany in the year 1000 part 1

Last week we said goodbye to Otto III, one of the more complex personalities amongst the German emperors. I am a bit sad that we did not dive deeper into the different layers of political objectives, personal friendships and religious fervour that mad up his captivating personality. But on the other hand, I am glad we can now talk about facts in the real world that move the story forward.

My initial plan was to move straight on to Otto III’s successor who is usually counted amongst the Ottonians. However, I am feeling we need a bit of a breather, take stock on where we are and what kind of country and society we are talking about. And I also realised that Otto III’s successor has much more in common with the next dynasty, the Salians than with the Ottonians so that it would be better to deal with him in that context.

Therefore, in this episode we will talk about the economy, society, infrastructure and art at the turn of the first millennium. We will talk about changes in agriculture, monetary system and warfare. And finally, we will look at the changes in the political set-up since Henry the Fowler, the role of dukes and counts, bishops and abbots and the definition of what an emperor is for.

Let’s start with agriculture. The reign of the Ottonians falls into what has been called the Medieval Warming period that started around 950 Northern Europe. There is no consensus whether this was a global, synchronised phenomena or a set of regional phenomena. But, as far as Northern Europe is concerned, we can see from Greenland ice cores that the temperature around the year 1000 was 1 to 1.5 degrees higher than in the preceding centuries and in the 14^th to 19^th century. With that much less frost, a wider variety of crops could be planted and yields in Northern Europe should be higher.

On top of that we see a material improvement in productivity. That was achieved in part by a gradual introduction of a crop fallow system, whereby land would be seeded with oats or barley in the autumn, that would be harvested in late summer of the next year. The following spring the same field would be seeded with Wheat or Rye that could be harvested again in the late summer. In the third year the land was either left fallow or used for grazing.  The alternation of crops helps the land to recover.

At the same time new plough systems became more widespread. The mould board or turn plough gradually replaced the traditional hook plough. The difference is that the turn plough lifts and then turns the soil to create the classic furrows you see on fields today. That brings fresh nutrients to the surface whilst burying weeds and old crop under to decay.

I think I mentioned in episode 1 that by the time of Henry the Fowler a peasant would expect a yield of 3 grains of wheat for every grain seeded. By the time of Otto III this had increased to probably 5 grains for every grain seeded. Still a long way from the 30 grains we harvest today and about a 1/12^t of the carbohydrates contemporary Song dynasty Chinese farmers could harvest, but still a big step forward.

In some parts of the country, namely the western parts that had been under Roman control until the 5^th century, further productivity improvement came from social change. Under the ancient Romans large estates were mainly operated using slaves. When the Merovingians took over from the Roman Empire they saw little reason to change that. Only when Christianity extended deeper and deeper into society, the slaves often converted as well, which brought the church into play, who opposed the holding of Christians as slaves. I have little good to say about the church in the Middle Ages, but this is one score on the plus side. By the 10^th century the classic slavery had largely disappeared, and the former slaves have become serfs, which means they were allowed to manage some land for themselves alongside ethe work for their master. As we know from Soviet Russia and Communist China this permission of even just small holdings has a major impact on productivity.

What has not yet happened by the year 1000 are the other two drivers of the agricultural boom of the Middle Ages, (i) the large-scale forest clearing and (ii) the colonisation of the lands east of the Elbe river. Following the Slav uprising in 983, these lands were back in control of the local Slav tribes and would largely remain so for almost 150 years. 

With agriculture expanding from a pretty much hand to mouth model to one of modest surplus, population expanded. Moreover, it allowed for specialisation. Rather than having to grow all major foodstuff yourself, farmers could specialise in one or two crops their land was most suited to, say wheat or vegetables and buy the other things, like wool, meat, and wine from someone else. That again boosted productivity.

To facilitate that exchange you need money. Charlemagne had created the silver penny at 1/240^th of a pound of silver, a denomination that remained in force well beyond the Middle Ages. These silver pennies were a lot more useful than the Byzantine gold Solidus which was simply too large a denomination to use in daily commerce. But in Carolingian times there was simply not enough silver around to mint a sufficient number of coins. That makes the silver mines in Goslar which started in around the 970s so important. They were the largest silver mines in Europe for about 100 years and a major source of Ottonian wealth. Apart from funding the conquests in Italy these little coins pushed the economy forward.

If we talk about money, you should not assume that a 10^th century peasant would walk round with a bag of silver pennies to spend at the market on Friday. A penny was still a lot of money, 4 of those could for instance could buy you a sheep. Therefore, most transactions were credit transactions, where debts were offset against services or other merchandise. Though relatively few pennies moved around, you still need them because the parties have to be sure that pennies could be procured should the chain break.

When you have agricultural surplus and money, the thing you get is local markets where the peasants of the area could trade their goods. Do you remember the Burgenordnung of Henry the Fowler? In that he not only ordered the building of castles, but also that markets should be held near these castles. The king’s order may not have been the only reason that they usually sprung up under the walls of castles, the presence of an armed guard for the traded goods may well be another, but it did give a further impetus.

But we have to keep things in perspective. According to the Doomsday book, which came 70 years later, about 10% of the population of England was living in cities. Chris Wickham estimates that at that time about 2% of people in Scandinavia lived in cities versus 15% in Italy. Now we are 70 years earlier, so it is likely that maybe about 95% of Germans in the year 1000 lived in villages in the countryside as peasants. And amongst those, the majority would be living in these still rather embryonic market towns.

But Germany also has some real cities, two of which I would like to discuss.

The first one is Cologne. Cologne had been founded by the Romans and was named Colonia Agrippina, after Nero’s mum who was born there. At its peak in Roman times the city may have had 30,000 inhabitants. That dropped already in the 3^rd century to about 15,000 but held at around 10,000 throughout the chaos of the great migration[1]. By the year 1000, Cologne was very much on the up. Charlemagne had made Cologne the seat of an archbishop by the 9^th century and during the reign of Otto the Great, his brother, Brun, was not just archbishop of Cologne but also duke of Lothringia and de-facto Regent of France. He founded a number of important churches, including St. Pantaleon, where the empress Theophanu is buried.

Though the bishop dominated the city, Cologne was first and foremost a commercial centre. Cologne was located on the all-important Rhine route that connected Italy with Flanders or the Mediterranean with the North Sea. Trade moved not only on the Rhine river but also on the ancient Roman road from Strasburg via Mainz, Koblenz and Bonn to Cologne and from there via Maastricht and Brussels to the sea.

Trade along those routes was dominated by luxury goods, the only merchandise that warranted the effort of arduous travel. There is no data on the kind of merchandise that was transported, but we find things like glassware from Syria, expensive cloth coming up through Venice and, in the opposite direction, slaves. The slave trade involved predominantly the sale of prisoners captured in the Slavic lands to the east. They were pagans and hence not under the protection of the church.  One particularly gruesome trade was in eunuchs, who, how can I say that delicately, experienced a root and stem mutilation. The merchants of Verdun in Lothringia specialised in this particular product that was highly prized in both Constantinople and the Muslim world. As we see, international trade existed, but it was not anywhere near the volumes it would reach by the end of the middle ages. Cologne also had one of the oldest Jewish communities in Northern Europe that first existed back in the 4^th century and is confirmed to be there either still or again in the 11^th century.

Beyond trade, Cologne also had a long-standing manufacturing tradition in glass and ceramics that went back to Roman times. There is even a suggestion that the imperial crown, the one that had been in continuous use until the end of the Holy Roma empire in 1806 had been produced in Cologne around 970 by a jeweller, not by a monk in an ecclesiastical outfit.

These wealthy merchants and artisans may already have been rubbing up against the rule of the bishop and may have harboured ideas of self-determination. They rebelled 70 years later, but true autonomy has only been achieved in the 13^th century.

The other end of the spectrum is the city of Magdeburg. Magdeburg had been created as a fort by Charlemagne in 805 as part of his efforts to subjugate the Saxons. Henry the Fowler expanded the fortifications, but it was Otto the Great who gave the city its major boost. He turned it into an archbishopric and built an enormous cathedral, which unfortunately burnt down and has been replaced by the current construction in the 13^th century. He is buried there together with his first wife.

Magdeburg’s purpose wasn’t trade, but conquest and Christianisation. It was the foremost frontier town looking towards the east. This is where the Ottonian emperors gathered their armies to conquer or harass the lands east of the Elbe. The archbishop of Magdeburg was designated to supervise the Christianisation of the Slavs. Part of that effort to conquer the East required the building of roads, both west towards the Rhineland, but also south to Bavaria and its capital at Regensburg. Though the purpose was warfare, Otto II realised the need to foster trade and grants privileges to the traders at Magdeburg. This gave the burgers of Magdeburg a leg up over the more established towns. Magdeburg’s merchants had a representation in the city government as early as 1128 and its city statutes from 1188 became the blueprint for city statutes across Germany.

What both cities had in common was that they were terribly unhealthy. Even if Cologne would have had a sanitation system left from Roman times, it had gone into disrepair. Disease was rife and the general assumption is that the only way cities grew was by immigration as births and deaths roughly balanced.

Maybe one thing that often comes up, which is personal hygiene. Let’s be clear, the story that medieval people refused to bathe for religious reasons is a myth. Preachers warned against excessive use of bathhouses, but that was more to do with the fact that some bathhouses were also brothels. Cleanliness was something people aspired to, then as they do now. I am just not sure it was that easy to achieve. Peasants could wash in lakes and rivers. In the cities there were bathhouses which offered warm baths, but that water had to be brought in by hand, meaning communal baths where water would not be exchanged that often. Only very rich people have been able to afford solo baths. All that tells me that a peasant had a much better chance of being properly clean than a city dweller, but neither of them wanted to be dirty. So much for the dirty peasant myth. Back to the cities.

What we do not have in Germany is a capital city, and we will not get one until 1871. The kings and emperors did not stay in one place but travelled around from one Pfalz to another. I have tried to use other words for the German word Pfalz, but there aren’t any. So here is the definition. Pfalz is an old German word that is the same route as our word palace or the modern German word Palast. What it describes is a royal or imperial residence. This could be one that is actually part of the royal demesne like Ingelheim, Aachen, Thionville and Quedlinburg. There are also Pfalz’ owned by dukes, like Regensburg, or by bishops. What they have in common is that they are available for the king’s use.

And use they did. All Ottonian emperors are constantly on the road. That is in part down to logistics, i.e., no single location is capable of permanently feed and house the whole court. That is particular true for the regular royal assemblies and synods where the leading magnates of Germany but also leaders of for instance Italy, Burgundy, Bohemia and Poland come with their retinue. The other reason for the incessant travel is that the presence of the emperor projects and legitimises his power. We have seen several times in our narrative what happens if the emperor fails to come through at least in regular intervals.

There is however something changing in the Pfalz system in the 10^th century. The old Carolingian Pfalz like Aachen or Ingelheim were country estates without any defensive structure. They were built along the lines of the Roman country villas of the 3^rd and 4^th century. The new Pfalz, like Quedlinburg or Magdeburg look very different. They are heavily fortified castles, not open villas. That may initially have been justified by the risk of Slav and Magyar incursions that dominate the first half of the Ottonian reign.

But even after that had come to an end with the battle of the Lechfeld, the kings and their magnates kept building these new-fangled fortifications that we now call castles. They were initially only meant to offer protection for men, crop and animals in case of an attack, but as people realised how difficult it was to take them, everybody got busy building them. Because once you had a castle, your negotiation position with the next one up in the aristocratic pecking order changed. Yes, you still owed fealty to your liege lord, but if push comes to shove, you can refuse and hide out on the top of a mountain until a solution is found.

It is not that the kings, the dukes and the bishops did not realise that allowing their subordinates to build castles diminished their power. The problem was that they struggled to stop it. If they wanted a vassal to follow them into battle, your vassal expected royal or ducal or episcopal generosity in return. Given the king or duke or bishop rarely had ready cash and did not want to part with land, he ended up handing over privileges, which included the right to build a castle.

Next time the king or duke or bishop comes round and asks for the liege service, he may find himself with a less than satisfactory answer. It is estimated that about 20,000 castles were built in Germany during the Middle Ages. The process really accelerated from the middle of the 11^th century when the kings lost control of the process. Where we are now, in around 1000, we are in an early period of castle construction, where only the king and some of the most important lords are able to build castles.

And that gets me to the social order. It is right around now that the idea of the three social orders takes hold. There are the “oratores” i.e., those who pray, the “bellatores” i.e., those who fight and finally the “laboratores” i.e., those who do all the useful stuff, like work, build, create etc.

That kind of division is a new thing in the 10^th century. In the old Germanic tradition, there was no division between fighting men and peasants. The army would consist of a very thin class of aristocrats and a horde of free peasants. Around the 10^th century cavalry in the form or armoured horsemen became massively superior and to the extent infantry was called for, for instance to defend castles or support armoured knights, this required a well-trained infantry, not just some peasants with sticks. Again, if you remember the Burgenordnung of Henry the Fowler, every 9^th peasant was made to live in the castle and train with weapons, whilst the other eight stayed on the fields, essentially providing food to the 9^th man.

This emasculation of the peasant did not happen overnight and not in the same places at the same speed. In some areas, namely in France, England and western Germany where large estates were the norm, the free peasants were much smaller in number than in the more “Germanic” areas like Saxony or Scandinavia. Hence the transition to the classic medieval model of a manorial farm with serfs that owe work to the local lord and tenants who owe rent happened faster in the West. For a lot of the former slaves, the manorial system was in a way an improvement. On the other hand, in the East you have villages where the majority of peasants are free men who are now pressed into a system of dependency and serfdom. That process is by its nature slower and requires more pressure. The German peasant also has escape routes should the lord become overbearing. Some underpopulated areas on the frontier, like for instance Austria, welcomes new settlers who want to give a fond adieu to their tormentors. That ability to give dos fingos to the landlord would become even more prevalent during the 12^th century when the Eastern expansion gets going in earnest.

When German peasants had a different life experience in the 10^th and 11^th century in Germany compared to the French, their aristocratic overlords were even more different. In the 10^th century the central power of the king was immense compared to the French king. Otto the Great had control not just of his own duchy but all other duchies in Germany as well as the kingdoms of Italy and Burgundy. The king of France could not really put his mark on any of his main vassals. Under the Carolingian kings, Louis and Lothar, their rule was limited to the surroundings of their capital in Laon. Under the Capetins, Hugh and Robert, it was very much the city of Paris and the lands of the Loire. That meant the fragmentation of power and the emergence of small, coherent lordships happened much quicker in France than it happened in Germany.

The German lords were still somewhat at the back and call of the king-emperor. The role of duke had originally been an office and Henry the Fowler and Otto the Great in the first half of his reign installed members of his family as dukes until such a point that all five duchies were held directly or indirectly by the king. Otto even allocated counties contrary to aristocratic perceptions of succession rights when he gave the eastern marches to Hermann Billung and Gero. But the rebellion of Otto’s son Liudolf in 955 changed that. Liudolf had found so much support amongst the aristocratic clans who felt shut out from the most appealing jobs, that the regime realised it could not go on like that. After 955 all the plum jobs went to senior members of aristocratic clans. By the time of Otto IIIs death, the duchy of Saxony is in the hand of Hermann Billung’s descendants, Swabia is held again by the Konradiners. The duchies of upper and lower Lothringia are held by old Lothringian families. The former duchy of Franconia that Otto had confiscated to the crown had begun to re-emerge under another branch of the Konradiners. Equally we get new entities, one in the east where Margrave Eckart of Meissen is addresses as the duke of Thuringia and the Ezzelino’s who had carved out a large demesne around Cologne on the lower Rhine. The only family possession in the loosest of senses was Bavaria, held by Otto III’s cousin three times removed.

The way the king interacts with his nobles is through royal assemblies and a process best described as management by walking around. We already talked about the importance of the king showing up regularly on his Pfalz to meet the nobles, solve disputes and renew friendships.

The other key process is to hold large assemblies, usually in the big imperial palaces of Aachen, Ingelheim, Frankfurt or Quedlinburg. There the king would discuss the affairs of state with his nobles, which both legitimises his rule and makes the nobles feel involved in the big decisions. When they get home, they can tell their followers that they had convinced the king to do x, y or z. It is also the place to display power by inviting foreign rulers who would publicly pay homage to the king. These royal assemblies are sometimes replicated on the levels of duchies and as time goes by in even smaller entities like counties and cities. For the avoidance of doubt, this is not democracy. The king has the last word, but people can vent their concerns and get a great meal with party late into the night.

At the same time the make-up of the aristocracy changed. By 920 when Henry the Fowler took over, the leaders of Germany were the descendants of a very thin slither of Carolingian aristocrats who maintained an international outlook. People like the Welf family would hold positions in Burgundy, Bavaria and Italy and would later rule Saxony before ending up as kings of England. As we enter the 11^th century, these kinds of “international” aristocracy receded. The main French or German families stayed within their “country”. Even when the Ottonians took over Italy, very few of their German followers were given fiefs in the country. We also see “new” families emerging who have gained wealth and recognition in the imperial service without being a member of an ancient lineage.

The Burgenordnung is another system that created social mobility. The peasant who was chosen to be the 9^th man who would live at the castle could -with a bit of luck – become a miles or knight in the service of a major lord or even the king and from there could become a minor aristocrat.

What we do not have in Germany at this time is the concept of the Seignior that is developing in France. A seignior would consolidate all power within a coherent geography. He would be the landlord, the chief justice, has the right to hold markets and collects tolls for miles around. The German system was still much mere intertwined. A count or lord would own land and rights distributed across a larger geography, rather than in one consolidated area. So, a market town may have been built around the castle of the secular lord, but the local monastery would own the market rights, the bishop has the tolls on the bridge and the king is still in charge of justice and the minting of coins. It will take a long time for German nobles to consolidate these rights and in many areas, it would not happen until the 18^th century. That makes for comparatively weak individual counts or even dukes. On the other hand it forces cooperation amongst the different stakeholders who will look to expand their set of rights at the expense of the weakest one amongst those involved. That would often be the church, but as we will see later, could also be the king.

Now we have covered 2/3 of society, the laboratores, i.e., those that toil and the bellatores, i.e., those that fight. Next week in part II of our review of Germany in the year 1000 we will cover the third group, the Oratores, i.e., those that pray and we will take a closer look at how the role of king/emperor had developed during the Ottonian reign, including the question of how you become a legitimate king.

I hope you enjoyed this little overview, and you feel keen to join me again next week. If this is the first episode of the podcast you listened to, you may enjoy listening to the whole story of the Ottonian from episode 1.

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[1] Koelner Stadtmuseum

Let’s pick up our teenage hero where we left him last week. He had come down to Rome for a second time to bring his cousin, pope Gregory V back into the holy city from where he had been expelled by the prefect of Rome Crescentius II. Otto III had besieged and captured Crescentius had him beheaded, thrown from the walls of the Castel Sant’Angelo and finally strung up by his feet at the gallows of Monte Mario. He then embarked on his most ambitious policy, the Restoration of the Empire of the Romans, which was actually more an attempt at copying the Byzantine Empire.

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 14 – Otto III The Collapse of a Dream

Thanks again for sticking around. We are now on episode 14 and if you have listened to all the episodes until now and the three prologues, you have endured a touch over 8 hours of me droning on about long forgotten German rulers – you definitely ooze stamina.

I also need to make a correction. Last episode I said that during Otto III’s first expedition to Rome, Crescentius had appointed a priest as Pope John XVI who we know literally nothing about, no name, no background, nothing. Well, on further review I realised that the reason he is so obscure is because he did not exist. Note 1166c of the Regesta Imperii, where I got this nugget from is -to use a technical term – bollocks. The author struggled with counting pope Johns beyond number XV, so he invented one to make his failed maths add up, and I fell for it…GRRRR. And that also means Johannes Philagathos, the anti-pope Otto III had mutilated and deposed was John XVI, not John XVII – not that he much cared about that additional indignity. Apologies and I will now be super-vigilant to avoid such mistakes in the future, but no promises.

Let’s pick up our teenage hero where we left him last week. He had come down to Rome for a second time to bring his cousin, pope Gregory V back into the holy city from where he had been expelled by the prefect of Rome Crescentius II. Otto III had besieged and captured Crescentius had him beheaded, thrown from the walls of the Castel Sant’Angelo and finally strung up by his feet at the gallows of Monte Mario.

He then embarked on his most ambitious policy, the Restoration of the Empire of the Romans, which was actually more an attempt at copying the Byzantine Empire. He organised his court and administration along Byzantine lines awarding fancy Greek titles like Logothete and Strategus to his German senior aristocrats and prelates. He even had a Prefectus Navalis, a Lord Admiral, who sadly had no fleet. He also began to style himself as a Byzantine emperor. He dined alone at an elevated semi-circular table. If you take a look at the most famous image of Otto III, the one that I use for the artwork for this series, you see him clean shaven with a Byzantine style crown on his head, much larger than the figures surrounding him, sitting on a throne looking into the middle distance. Now compare that to the picture we have of Otto the Great, his mighty grandfather. Otto the great is shown as an imposing man but similar in height to the people surrounding him, including the figure kneeling in front of him. He has flowing locks, a beard and if you look closely, you can see his chest hair “like the mane of a lion” that he was so proud of. Clearly times have changed, and the emperor had distanced himself a long way from his Germanic roots. There was not a shred of the Primus inter Pares in this ruler.

At the same time as he presents himself as the all-powerful emperor, ruler of the whole world, his life as an extremely devout Christian begins. He makes pilgrimages to shrines where he humiliates himself by walking barefoot in rags up mountains or into cities.

The first of these pilgrimages leads him to the Monte Gargano in Puglia, Southern Italy. The Monte Gargano is the spur of the Boot of Italy, a mountainous peninsula that sticks out into the Adriatic. In a cave near the top of the mountain the archangel Michael is supposed to have appeared to the local bishop. The archangel Michael is the one who on the day of reckoning will divide humanity into those who go to hell and those who will rise up to heaven. Clearly a good guy to be on the right side of. Otto III climbs the mountain on his bare feet wearing a hare shirt regularly declaring himself unworthy and a sinner.

Only a few weeks after his return from Gargano he takes his friend, the bishop of Worms, and locks himself up in a holy cave near Rome to fast and pray. That is followed shortly afterwards by another pilgrimage to a nearby shrine.

This religious fervour will become a constant feature of his live from now on. He maintains a punishing fasting regime where he sometimes would not eat except for Thursdays and is likely to have worn a hair shirt all throughout the rest of his life.  Just for those of you who do not know what a hairshirt is. It is a garment woven from tough animal hair, usually goat, that is really, really uncomfortable. Some extreme penitents would weave in pieces of metal or glass to make the process even more painful.

His next great expedition is to pray at the grave of his old friend Adalbert in Gniezno in Poland. You may remember that Otto’s friend and spiritual mentor Adalbert had been killed by the Pruzzi, the ancestors of the Prussians. After his death Adalbert had almost immediately become revered as a martyr by people in Poland, Hungary, Bohemia and Germany. Maybe with some nudging on by Otto III, a synod in Rome formally canonised him in 999.

Otto III arrives in Poland in the spring of the year 1000 and is welcomed by Boleslav the Brave, duke of Poland. Boleslav pushes the boat out big time for his important visitor. He has his soldiers and nobles arranged in long columns in a field like an enormous choir. His subjects were told to put on all the bling they could find, cloth embroidered with precious metal, fur and shiny armour. This event is basically the Polish equivalent of the field of cloth of gold.

But it is much more than that. According to Polish chronicles Otto III found what he saw far exceeds the rumours he had heard of Boleslav’s wealth and power. And then, upon consultation with his great men, Otto III declared that such an eminent man should not be called merely a count or duke but should be elevated to the royal throne. Then, taking the imperial diadem from his head, Otto placed it on Boleslav’s head in a bond of friendship. And then he gives Boleslav a replica of the Holy Lance with a small shard of the nail of the cross in it.

The German chronicles are not completely in line with this. They do record a splendid reception by Boleslav, a bond of friendship and an elevation of Boleslav to become a “friend and ally of the Roman people”. But crucially they do not record an elevation to kingship.

I am not going to unpick all this here because if I did, the narrative would simply collapse. But do not worry, we will get to it.

After the great gathering Otto and Boleslav proceed to Gniezno, the place where Saint Adalbert is buried.  When he sees the city from afar, Otto gets off his horse, takes off his shoes and his imperial clothes and humbly walks into the town barefoot. At the church he is received by the bishop of Poznan who guides him in, the emperor kneels down in front of the sarcophagus of his friend and mentor, weeps profusely and prays for god’s grace through the intercession of the martyr.

Upon rising Otto declared the elevation of the church of Gniezno to an archbishopric. You may remember that in episode 11 Boleslav’s father, duke Miesco had essentially given the whole of Poland to the Pope as a donation. That had already weakened the link between the archbishopric of Magdeburg which was technically still in charge of Polish bishops. By creating the archbishopric of Gniezno, Otto III removed Poland from the control of the archbishopric of Magdeburg for good. The brother of Adalbert who had been ransomed by Boleslav is made the first archbishop of Gniezno and thereby the first primate of the Polish church. It also means that Poland is now separate from the Empire in terms of ecclesiastical organisation, which makes it easier to become independent in its secular relationships. You see the difference when you look at Bohemia or Czechia, where the bishop of Prague remains subordinated to Magdeburg for longer allowing the empire to integrate the Czechs.

Upon leaving Poland, Boleslav showers Otto III with gifts, including all the gold and silver vessels, goblets, drinking horns, bowls, platters and dishes, the carpets, bedding, towels, napkins, and anything else that had been used in the last three days. But Otto declines them as too valuable. What he does accept though were the 300 armed knights Boleslav threw in as well as an arm of St. Adalbert.

The two men now travel to Germany together, first to Quedlinburg where Otto holds a royal diet and then on to Aachen. In Aachen, the venerable capital of Charlemagne, things are getting ghoulish. Otto III ordered the grave of Charlemagne to be found and opened. When workmen lifted the floor of the imperial chapel in Aachen, they find great emperors last resting place. Let me now quote you the eyewitness report of count Lommo who was there with the emperor:

“He (Charlemagne that is) did not lie, as the dead otherwise do, but sat as if he was living. He was crowned with a golden crown and held in his gloved hand a sceptre. The fingernails had protruded through the gloves and stuck out. Above him was a canopy of limestone and marble. As we entered, we broke through this. At our entrance, a strong smell struck us. We immediately gave Emperor Charles our kneeling homage, and Emperor Otto robed him on the spot with white garments, cut his nails, and put in order the damage that had been done. Emperor Charles had not lost one of his members to decay, except only for the tip of his nose. Emperor Otto replaced this with gold, took a tooth from Charles’s mouth, walled up the entrance to the chamber, and withdrew again.”[1]

 Ok, I told you he would be a bit of a weird one. Again, I will not unpick this right now. Let’s follow the story to the end, take a breath – preferably of fresh air, and look at it then.

After these two rather unusual events, the rest of the trip through Germany is rather uneventful. The only significant matter that preoccupies Otto III in Germany is the re-establishment of the bishopric of Merseburg. You remember that the Slavic uprising in 983, when the Empire lost all its possessions east of the Elbe, was blamed on the blasphemous suppression of the bishopric of Merseburg. The background of that suppression had been that Otto II wanted to make his close friend and advisor, Giselher archbishopric of Magdeburg. But Giselher was already a bishop, the bishop of Merseburg and therefore wedded to his church in an unbreakable bond. Otto II suppressed Merseburg, making his friend free to become archbishop. That apparently upset god quite a bit so that he helped the pagan Slavs to throw off the German yoke.  Anyway, Otto III is now trying to reverse his father’s error. That however requires the bishop Giselher, who is still alive, to admit to the severe allegation of episcopal polygamy, i.e., being bishop of two diocese. Giselher the old weasel had been avoiding a public review of his status with endless excuses but had to accept a general council review in Rome. I will not bore you too much with this, but it matters in so far as Giselher was in no position to object to the creation of the archbishopric of Gniezno and subsequently the sovereignty of Poland.

And it matters because that was pretty much the only thing Otto III did in Germany. Despite almost 2 years of absence there seem to have been little for him to decide or do up north. This may be due to the fact that actually nothing much is happening, and everybody is happy …or the opposite.

And so, Otto returns to Italy is where we find him again in the summer of the year 1000. 

The situation in Italy has not improved during his absence. Do you remember king Berengar of Italy, the tormentor of Adelheid and general pain in the neck of Otto the Great? Well, he had a grand nephew, Arduin who for some reason was allowed to inherit their family fief, the March of Ivrea, after Berengar and his son had been locked up or exiled. That Arduin had now become the focal point of the anti-Ottonian party. These anti-Ottonians were not so much against the Ottonian rulers per se, they were more interested in church land. The Ottonians had, in a similar way to their policy in Germany, based their rule in Italy on the church, specifically the bishops and archbishops. By transferring land and privileges to the bishops the Ottonians could create the powerbase they otherwise lacked. However, the nobles of Italy and, interestingly, the growing urban population of Italy were pushing back. So, every time the Ottonian rulers left Italy to look after their possessions north of the Alps, the Italians start to take back the land from the abbots and bishops. Every time the emperor returns, he forces the nobles give the land back. Under Otto III these judgements to return land had become extremely harsh. At some point he was having a count hanged for stealing church land – quite an unusual and deeply humiliating punishment.

In the year 997 Arduin had upped the ante. Not content with taking the bishop of Vercelli’s land, he took his head as well. In return, by 1000 Arduin had all his own lands confiscated and passed on to the respective bishoprics. But he himself was still at large. When Otto III travelled through in 1000, Arduin’s son had been imprisoned in Pavia. But on Otto’s arrival the boy was allowed to escape suggesting the support for Arduin ran quite deep even in the Ottonian capital of Italy. Otto makes efforts to stabilise the situation and appoints a new margrave of Ivrea, but ultimately the situation remains fragile.

In an attempt to tip the balance in Otto’s favour he is creating close links to Venice. He had already stood as godparent to the doge’s son and had on multiple occasions granted positive judgements to Venice in its disputes with its neighbours. Venice constitutional position was a bit unclear. In principle it was part of the kingdom of Italy, but since Charlemagne had tried and failed to take the city, the Venetians pretty much did as they pleased. Venice is also beginning to build its Adriatic empire capturing cities along the Dalmatian cost. What makes the Venetians an incredibly valuable ally to Otto is their fleet. The empire has no ships at all, which is why it cannot capture the Byzantine cities in Southern Italy and there would be no way they could conquer the Muslim emirate of Sicily.

To strengthen the relationship with Venice he embarks on a cloak and dagger mission. One evening he claims to be ill and retires to his bedchamber in Ravenna. He slips out in the night and boards a Venetian ship that takes him down to the doge’s palace. There he and the doge meet in secrecy and discuss ways of closer cooperation. After three days, Otto III returns by the same way back to his bedroom in Ravenna. The next morning, he tells his friends and followers of the successful mission. What they have thought about that is not recorded and if it was, it would probably not be suitable for a family show. To put that in context, it would be not dissimilar to Donald Trump leaving the White House in the middle of the night, getting on a Russian plane and sitting down for a tete a tete with Vladimir Putin and then, against all the odds, being returned safe and sound after three days. So, not the weirdest thing he had done, but close.

Leaving the situation in Northern Italy as it is, Otto III travels to Rome. His cousin, pope Gregory V had died very suddenly in 999, just 27 years old. The rumour in Rome was that the curse the hermit Nilus had thrown at him for mutilating Johannes Philagathos had killed him. Not sure about that, my money is on malaria or some other disease that was rife in Rome.

Subsequently Otto III had appointed none other than his old friend and mentor Gerbert of Aurillac to be the new pope. Gerbert took the title of Sylvester II. That name is quite programmatic. The first pope of this name ruled during the times of emperor Constantine. He was the pope who laid the foundation of the relationship between the pope and emperor. Gerbert’s choice of name suggests he wants to create a new model for the relationship between pope and emperor.

Some key planks of the new relationship are becoming clearer. Otto declares the Constantine Donation the fake, that it undoubtably is. He then hands over the same lands to the pope but on his own free will. This makes the pope his vassal as far as the secular rule is concerned.

Otto further changes his title to “Servant of the Apostles and by the grace of god, the saviour, august emperor of the Romans.” The first part of the title is almost a copy of the papal title, who is the “servant of the servants of the lord,” whilst the second part is the title of the Roman emperors of old and the Byzantine emperors. In other words, Otto III sees himself as the secular ruler as well as the spiritual ruler at least equal or even above the Pope.

Sylvester II then embarked on church reform. He specifically tries to eradicate Simony, the buying and selling of church positions, and enforce celibacy. Like many other churchmen in Otto III’s circle he is influenced by the growing reform movement that is driven amongst others by the monastery of Cluny.

Otto III whilst eating his meals alone on his high table surveying his subjects must feel that things are very much in track. He has brought the imperial capital back to Rome, the church is being reformed in a joint effort of a pope and an emperor joined at the hip. He is creating a Byzantine Imperial bureaucracy with specific responsibilities for different offices. And at the same time, he looks after his soul and the souls of his people by praying and meditating. A Byzantine bride is on her way to Rome so that he can get working on prolonging the dynasty. 

But that was not last.

In January 1001 the citizens of Tivoli a town just 30 km east of Rome rebelled and killed the officer Otto had put in charge there. Otto takes his soldiers to Tivoli and the citizens quickly yield, handing over the murderers to the mother of the victim who forgives them. Otto III is merciful this time.

Not that it helped. A week later the people of Rome rebel. The rebellion includes even members of Otto’s court like the Prefectus Navalis, his chief admiral of the non-existing fleet. The papal administration may equally be involved given the papal reforms.

Things are getting not just tense but threatening. Otto III is surrounded by an armed mob in his newly built imperial palace, whilst his personal bodyguard is spread out across the city in different defensive structures. The larger armies of Henry of Bavaria and Hugh of Tuscany are even further away, camping outside the city walls.

After three days Otto and his men make a desperate attempt to break out. The bishop of Hildesheim took their confession and says a final mass. By nightfall Otto and his small band of friends take up their weapons. The desperate band of maybe 20 men crashes into the mob, following the Holy Lance glinting terribly in the hands of bishop Bernward. And they make it. Whether it was the sight of the holy relic, the sharp swords of the armoured men or the insanity of the whole action, the mob disperses and lets the emperor pass.

The next morning the situation improved a bit. The Emperor’s successful breakout encourages his supporters to come out of hiding. The people of Rome congregate at the tower where Otto is now holding out. From the top of the tower, he makes his most famous address:

“Are you not my Romans? For your sake I left my homeland and my kinsmen, for the love of you I have rejected my Saxons and all Germans, my own blood. I have led you to the most remote part of our empire, where your fathers, when they subjected the World, never set foot. Thus, I wanted to spread your name and fame to the end of the earth. I have adopted you as sons. I have preferred you to all others. For your sake I have made myself loathed and hated by all, because I have preferred you to all others. And in return you have cast off your father and have cruelly murdered my friends. You have closed me out, although in truth you cannot exclude me, for I will never permit that you, whom I love with a fatherly love, should be exiled from my heart. I know the ringleaders of this uprising and can see them with my eyes. However, they are not afraid although everyone sees and knows them.”  On that the mob grabs the ringleaders, beat them half to death and throw them at the emperor’s feet.

Otto returns to his palace on the Palatine, but it would never be the same. His military leaders, Henry of Bavaria and Hugh of Tuscany urge him to leave Rome and after two weeks he relents. The Imperator Augustus sneaks out of the holy city in the middle of the night. They initially camp outside the city hoping to subdue the inhabitants, but the army is too small and the summer heat pregnant with disease is on his way. Otto and Pope Sylvester retreat to Ravenna.

Otto requests more troops from his vassals in Germany which arrive slowly over time. He makes an initial attempt in May/June to take Rome again, but it takes too long, and he has to go back into the mountains to avoid the disease.

Over the autumn things in Germany are getting unstable. The bishops of Hildesheim and Magdeburg have entered into an epic fight over the extremely wealthy abbey of Gandersheim. The quarrel is involving more and more of the German nobles and bishops and at times escalates into military confrontation. As a consequence, sending soldiers down to support Otto’s manic fight over Rome is not high on the priority list of his vassals. There is even talk of insurrection, though the plotters fail to get support from Henry of Bavaria and whatever it was, peters out.

In December 1001 Hugh of Tuscany the main pillar of the Ottonian regime in Italy dies without an heir. His lands are quickly split up between his relatives, none of whom is as powerful and as loyal as Hugh had been.

In the meantime, some of Otto’s closest friends like Bernward of Hildesheim and his brother Thankmar have already returned to Germany.

Despite being somewhat underpowered Otto III marches on Rome. He gets ambushed by Roman troops and retreats into the fortress of Paterno, 60 km north of Rome. Otto begins to feel ill on January 11^th, 1002. It is likely Malaria, an illness he may have caught as early as the summer of 999.[2] Despite his weakening state he insists on maintaining his fasting regime.

On January 24^th Otto III dies surrounded by valuable but clearly not very effective relics and by some of his companions, including the pope, Sylvester II, his chancellor, Heribert of Cologne and his cousin Henry, duke of Bavaria.

The friends of the dead emperor try to keep his death secret. Heribert of Cologne sends some of the imperial regalia, in particular the Holy Lance ahead, whilst Henry of Bavaria takes command of the transport. He draws in troops from outlying fortresses as they move ahead. However, the news is spreading fast. Arduin of Ivrea breaks cover and his soldiers begin to attack the funeral cortege. Otto’s friends led by Henry of Bavaria fight their way north for 14 days until they finally reach the safety of Verona on February 7^th. Behind them Otto III’s political system collapses. Arduin of Ivrea is elected as King of Italy and is crowned in the church of St. Michael in Pavia. Pope Sylvester is allowed to return to Rome, but his reforms are stopped, and he dies shortly afterwards.

And thus ends the dream of the Restoration of the Empire of the Romans.

But what was this Restoration of the Empire of the Romans? Was it real or just a hare-brained scheme of a very, very underfed adolescent?

If you ask two historians, you get three answers to this question. I could try to give you a run-down of the main theories, but that would take me at least an hour. Therefore, I will give you my take:

Otto III saw himself from his earliest days more as a Roman than a German. Roman in this context means Roman in the same way the Byzantines considered themselves Romans – i.e., the heirs of ancient Rome. This goes very deep, all the way back to the time of his abduction by Henry the Quarrelsome where his mother could only secure the guardianship by claiming that she and her offspring were under Roman, not German law.

Therefore, he wanted to create a Byzantine system of government with an all-powerful Emperor, a fixed capital and a functioning bureaucracy. Such a system was so far advanced from what they had in the Ottonian realm that it makes all the sense in the world to try to emulate that.

I said last time that it did not work because he had no tax income. Whilst this is not the only reason, others such as geography, German culture and customs, the role of the Pope and the emergence of Italian city states are others, to my mind it is the reason why even if the other ones had not existed, a simple replication of Byzantium would have failed.

What I do not know is whether Otto III realised that as well. It is quite unlikely he did. I find very little mention of tax in contemporary sources. Saint’s miracles outweigh economics 100 to 1 in the 10^th century writing.

Whether consciously or not, Otto III tried to make up for the lack of tax income with another source of effective political power – religious devotion. We are at the beginning of what is known as the time of medieval piety, where people go on crusades to get absolution for their sins, when in the true sense of the word, sky-scraping cathedrals are built, and the church gets reformed. I will put a special episode on medieval piety out in the next few weeks.

Otto III’s extreme devotion, association with saints and hermits as well as his title as “Servant of the Apostles” taps into these developments. Positioning the Emperor as the moral and spiritual leader of the empire is not just a metaphysical position. As history tells, the moral authority of the pope has translated into secular power, land and armies. If Otto could have brought the power of the Germanic kings and the ecclesiastical authority of the pope together, he could have achieved something like a Restoration of the Empire of the Romans, even without taxes. A very different Empire of the Romans, but an Empire, nevertheless, ruled by a priest-emperor.

That is not to say that he did his acts of extreme devotion out of cold-hearted political calculation. I am pretty sure he was fasting and walking up mountains barefoot out of a deep desire to be forgiven for his sins not for material gain.

That notion of a priest-emperor is also what drives his policy towards Poland and Hungary. I cannot say whether or not Otto III really crowned Boleslav the Brave as King of Poland. It ultimately does not matter, because by 1025 Boleslav is definitely King of Poland and Poland itself a sovereign state. What matters more is the relationship between Poland and Germany. Even if Otto had crowned Boleslav to be King, he did see him as subordinate. Otto comes to Poland like an Ancient Roman Emperor making a neighbouring country a friend and ally of the Romans. That makes them a client nation, subordinated to the Empire, but not part of it and ruled by its own king, The Ancient Romans did that using their Legions. Otto III does not have those. He has found a different way. He comes as a pilgrim. His devotion and his rank make him out as a religious authority. And then he hands over a copy of the Holy Lance, not the original, as a sign of both friendship and subordination. That was enough for Boleslav to follow Otto to his, Otto’s, royal diet at Quedlinburg and Aachen. Boleslav presence is as good as paying homage to Otto III. That is what Otto III meant when he said to the Romans that he “led them to the most remote part of our empire, where your fathers, when they subjected the World, never set foot.”

A similar policy is employed towards Hungary – which we did not discuss. 

Did it work? Well, if we look at the situation in February 1002, the answer should be – not really. Or more precisely – total catastrophe.

Next week we will see what and also who will rescue what was left after the collapse. And we will see another priest-king, this time one that lasts longer and ends up an actual saint even if he fights the Christian poles in a coalition with the pagan Slavs. But that concept of the emperor being more and more a religious ruler will remain the great legacy of Otto III.

I know this was a really complex story. You may have noticed that I try to simplify things and frequently link the narrative back to previous episodes. Please let me know whether this is either annoying or whether it would help to have more link-backs. I am trying to find the balance between moving the story forward and not leaving anyone behind.

I am also working hard on a new and better website where I can post more background stuff like maps, photos and additional information which may help. Please have patience, it will come.

Until then, I hope you are still enjoying the podcast and I hope to see you next week.

---

[1] Altoff p. 105

[2] RI II,3n. 1450IVa

Otto III is one of the most contentious subjects in German medieval history. The problem is not so much the facts, though some of it is in dispute. What people disagree most about is the why he did the things he did. Otto III took so many guises as he experimented with the concepts of imperial power that following generations were able to project almost whatever they wanted onto him. So we are now left with an emperor who is more made up than any love island contestant.

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Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 13 – Otto III the Wonder of the World

I hope you all had a nice easter break and are now ready and eager for more German history.

This is going to be a bit of a weird one. Otto III is one of the most contentious subjects in German medieval history. The problem is not so much the facts, though some of it is in dispute. What people disagree most about is the why he did the things he did. Otto III took so many guises as he experimented with the concepts of imperial power that following generations were able to project almost whatever they wanted onto him. So we are now left with an emperor who is more made up than any love island contestant.

I have read several books about him in preparation of this episode, some very recent, some fairly old and I found myself at times very much befuddled. Whereas for Henry the Fowler and Otto the Great and even Otto II the underlying perception and objectives are fairly clear, there is no general consensus not even on the broad outlines of Otto III’s political  views and objectives. Hence what you will hear now is very much my best effort at interpreting his actions, not an unassailable set of facts. Almost everything has been argued over ferociously leaving a field of historical debris to sort through. For a narrative podcast like this one, that means I have to put the pieces together in some form, a form that likely ends up disagreeing with everybody. If you disagree with my conclusions, or find me having got my facts muddled up, let me know. I do not mind at all. The purpose of this podcast is not to give you the be all to end all in German history but to get you interested and engaged. And if that comes at the cost of me being embarrassed, that is a small price to pay and one I am used to paying.

So, end of procrastination,, here is my life of Otto III.

The first thing you need to know about Otto III is that he is very young. He begins his reign aged 14 and though his grandmother remains at hand for another 2 years, he is very much in charge from then on. There is a notion that people in the middle ages had to grow up quickly which is certainly true. But that does however not mean the physiological process of adolescence had been any different. The human brain goes through a fundamental reorganisation process between the ages of 13 to 22. You can see on brain images that the adolescent brain does not engage the pre-frontal cortex the same way an adult does. The Prefrontal Cortex is the bit that constrains emotional reaction by emphasising rational decision making. That does not mean that adolescents lack the ability to take rational decisions, but it means that in emotionally laden situations, e.g., under peer pressure or on the promise of a reward the balance will swing towards taking risky or extreme decisions[1]. This is the case in many other mammals as well, suggesting it has an evolutionary purpose, allowing the young to experiment with extreme positions. If you want to hear more listen to Dina Temple-Raston podcast “What were you thinking”. That really opened my eyes to how different the adolescent brain operates and why adults stand aghast before some of the decisions or opinions teenagers come up with.

The second thing that is important is that he had a very unusual upbringing not just by medieval standards. He spent a lot of time with his mother, who after the experience with Henry the Quarrelsome did not let him get out of her sight except for when she travelled down to Rome in 990. Not only that but his mother herself was extremely unusual as you know. She will have told her son about the splendour of Constantinople and its powerful emperors to her son. Constantinople at the time had half a million inhabitants 20 times the size of the largest German city, it had functioning aqueducts, fountains, vast squares, a hippodrome holding 100,000 people and an imperial palace covering 200,000 square feet. The emperor is all powerful, largely in control of his nobles thanks to his tax income and the leader of the church, the Patriarch is appointed by the emperor and usually acts in synch with the ruler. Otto learns Latin and Greek from her and from her sophisticated entourage. Her court included many Byzantine nobles and priests like Johannes Philogathos who could give him even more detail about the sophistication and learning of the ancient Roman civilisation. In the process Otto III became one of the best educated political leaders of the Middle Ages, and if he had lived long enough might be seen on par with Alfonse the Wise of Castile of Frederick II of Hohenstaufen.

After his mother’s death his education is taken over by his grandmother Adelheid who adds a deep understanding of his grandfather Otto the Great’s reign. He spends a lot of time in Charlemagne’s Pfalz in Aachen. Check out the 3D reconstructions of the complex and you realise that this was not a medieval castle at all. It was built more like a Roman villa of antiquity with internal courtyards and colonnades. Its beautiful chapel was built with Roman columns brought over from Ravenna, it is covered in golden mosaics appearing in most aspects like an imperial Byzantine church, not like the Romanesque churches built during his own period.

All this is a long way from the upbringing of most of his nobles who were steeped in Germanic tribal traditions focused on individual bravery in warfare and elected leadership.

Otto gradually takes over effective rule in 994 having been declared of age at a royal assembly. This is not an abrupt break but more of a transition where the regency council remained closely involved for at least the first 2 years.

Otto III has the advantage that he can skip the traditional conflict over who rules the kingdom that all his three predecessors had to go through. That process had already been concluded when he was a small child and thanks to careful management by the regency, everything stayed calm during the transition. Henry the Quarrelsome died in 995 and he urged his son, also called Henry to remain loyal to his king. We will get to know this Henry a lot better in the future but for now it is enough to know that he is loyal to Otto III and for that is rewarded with the duchy of Bavaria.

 In these first two years he continues his mother’s and grandmother’s policies, which means regularly raiding the Slavic lands east of the Elbe –as before  in close coordination with the Poles.

Just a word on France, which was an important part of his mother’s reign. As we mentioned last episode, the new French dynasty of Hugh Capet is -at least for now- more interested in consolidating their position in France than in reconquering Lothringia. Part of that consolidation process was an attempt to take control of the important archdiocese of Rheims. King Hugh and his successor Robert II wanted to replace the current archbishop with Gerbert of Aurillac – you remember that genius polymath of the 10^th century. That plan runs into all sorts of issues with canon law. The imperial government is trying to resolve the issue by organising a synod of German and French bishops under the leadership of a papal legate. That synod was ultimately boycotted by the French side, allegedly because Otto III had planned to capture and murder the French king(s) on their journey to the synod. Teenager, ay or maybe not true at all. What is important is that the dispute over Rheims did not escalate militarily.

That means the home front is stable and Otto III can look down to Italy. You may remember Pope John XV. That is the one who reigned a record breaking 11 years by operating a precarious balancing act between the local rulers of Rome, the Crescenti, and the imperial forces North and South of the holy city. Well, in 995 he seems to have fallen off his tightrope, had to flee Rome and asked Otto III for help.

As per standard process, Otto III musters an army in Regensburg in 996. Hurrah, Adventure awaits!

From Regensburg Otto takes his troops down to Italy where he arrives in April. In the meantime, Pope John XV had died. The Crescenti make a short-lived attempt to elect one of their own as pope John XVI.  It seems the population of Rome was not that keen on a siege by imperial troops and make this pope disappear so quickly, we do not even know who this John XVI actually was, no name, nothing.

The Senate of Rome then sends a delegation to Otto III and asks for advice about who should be elected pope. Otto III does not bother much with the advice bit and appoints his cousin Brun, the son of the duke of Carinthia to become pope. Brun was a chaplain in the royal chancellery, i.e., a close political advisor to the king. He was also just 24 years of age, making him one of the 4 youngest popes in history.

He took the name Gregory V, presumably because pope Bruno would not really work. He travels ahead to Rome, gets consecrated, moves into the Lateran palace all on the strength of the imperial spears. A few days later Otto III comes to St. Peter where Gregory crowns him emperor. 

Christendom is now in the hands of two young cousins, one 16 years of age and the other 24. It is the dawn of a new age. Pope and Emperor joined at the hip – just as they do it in Constantinople.

To demonstrate that new unity of temporal and spiritual rule, Otto and Gregory hold a great synod of bishops from across Europe to discuss all open ecclesiastical matters of the old Carolingian realm. To demonstrate how joined up this new system is, Otto and Gregory jointly chair the synod and Otto even signs papal Charters as the Advocate of the Church of St. Peter.

At the synod Otto meets two men for the first time who will play an important role in his life from here on. The first we already know, Gerbert of Aurillac and the other is Saint Adalbert of Prague.

Gerbert had come to Rome to gain approval for taking over the archbishopric of Rheims as per the French king’s demand. Whilst his efforts ended up being fruitless, he did make a speech that impressed the synod and Otto III enormously. Otto III must also have known about the role Gerbert played in rescuing his reign and life in 984 and so may have felt an obligation towards him. He invites Gerbert to become his teacher and political advisor to, in his words, help him overcome his Saxon rusticity and acquire Greek sophistication. There are no reports about whether these words were said in public, but I can only imagine how that must have gone down with Otto’s army who were sitting in a sweltering city full of disease whilst their newly crowned emperor kid just dissed them as country bumpkins.

The other person Otto is excited about is Adalbert, bishop of Prague. He is the diametrical opposite of Gerbert. Gerbert is a sophisticated political operator and a proto scientist with wide ranging interest in the natural world. Adalbert is a deeply religious man who leads an ascetic life of prayer. He had to leave his seat as bishop of Prague because the locals did not take kindly to his excessive piety, or more precisely his idea that the wealth of the church should serve the poor. It also did not help that Adalbert’s powerful family was opposing duke Boleslav of Bohemia. Things had come to a head when Adalbert tried to stop the mob from lynching a woman accused of adultery by sheltering her in his church. Adalbert fled to Rome and did what he really wanted to do, which is commit himself to prayer and extreme forms of ascetic exercises as a monk. But that was not to be. He was dragged in front of the Synod because as a bishop he was not allowed to abandon his flock for the delights of regular prayer, fasting and self-flagellation. Under canon law the link between a bishop and his diocese was an eternal bond like marriage that could not be broken. And that went both ways, i.e., as long as Adalbert was alive no new bishop of Prague could be appointed. That is why Adalbert’s superior, Archbishop Giselher of Magdeburg insisted on Adalbert going back to Prague. Giselher did not care much that Adalbert would almost certainly be killed upon arrival in Prague, like all the other members of his family who had been massacred by the duke.  Quite frankly that was all for the better, because Giselher could then appoint a new, more reliable bishop. Gregory V sided with Giselher and Adalbert was ordered to go back.

Otto was mightily impressed with the bishop’s piety and from then on spent a lot of time with Adalbert discussing religion and praying – I mean a lot of praying.

Otto leaves Rome at the end of May and goes to Ravenna as he said for health reasons.

Gregor V had to stay behind. Most historians believe that at this point the unity between the emperor and the pope already cracked. The two men began falling out over the Ottonianum and the Constantine donation, the documents that conferred the temporal rule over central Italy to the popes and specifically the rule over the Emilia Romagna and Ravenna. You may remember that way back in part 2 of the Prologue I mentioned that Pippin the Short, king of the Franks and father of Charlemagne had donated the Emilia Romagna to the pope, even though he did not own it. Otto the Great had reconfirmed the rights of the pope in a document called the Ottonianum That I mentioned in Episode 7. Beyond the land grant the Ottonianum also declared the pope being somehow subordinated to the emperor.  Basically the Ottonianum had made things even more convoluted than they already were, making it easy for pope and emperor to fall out. Even though Gregory was entirely dependent upon Otto’s support, It may have made sense for him to establish a more independent profile by taking a stance on the possessions of the church. That is not the same as a breakdown of the unity. My take is that Gregory and Otto are still largely in synch despite the occasional tiff.

Otto III had returned to Germany in the autumn with Adalbert and Gerbert in tow. In Germany Otto resumes the peripatetic lifestyle of a Ottonian ruler, moving from one royal palace to the next. At Christmas 996 we find them in Cologne celebrating a momentous event. King Waik of Hungary is getting baptised as Stephen, or later known as Saint Stephen of Hungary. The baptism is performed by Adalbert of Prague and Otto III stands as godparent over the Hungarian king who is five years older. To tighten the link Stephen marries Gisela, daughter of Henry the Quarrelsome and sister of Henry Duke of Bavaria. Furthermore, he is offered a contingent of Bavarian knights that help him to crush his domestic pagan rivals, making the shift to Christianity permanent. With that the Magyars who were feared raiders just 40 years earlier enter the political systems of Western Europe.

The peace with Hungary has the knock-on effect that the hitherto largely uninhabited buffer zone between Hungary and the empire can be repopulated. We now know this former desert as Austria. Technically an Eastern March was founded in 976 but it is from around the 990s on that an initially small and impoverished county begins its’ inexorable rise to become a world power where the sun never sets. In 996 Otto III issues the first ever document that mentions Ostarrichi or Austria.[2]

Adalbert is still under orders from the pope to go to Prague when Otto finds a compromise. The pope will allow him to give up his post as bishop of Prague if he would go as a missionary to Poland. Adalbert sets off for Poland, where a new duke, Boleslav the Brave has succeeded his father. Boleslav welcomes Adalbert with open arms and suggests a mission to the Pruzzi, a pagan tribe living on the Baltic, northeast of Poland. There Adalbert goes, does a bit of self-flagellation and preaching of the gospel, and is promptly taken for a Polish spy and killed. And that is how the Pruzzi or Prussians make their first appearance in the history books – around the same time and in connection with the same saint as the Austrians.

Boleslav the Brave of Poland is terribly embarrassed and promptly ransoms the body of Adalbert as well as his surviving brother from the Pruzzi. He brings the body of Adalbert to Gniezno (Gnesen in German) where he is buried in the main church. When Otto hears about the death of his friend and spiritual guide, he is clearly shaken, having encouraged his friend to go to Poland in the first place. Otto instantly began creating shrines and altars for the memory of Adalbert.

Meanwhile in Rome, the pope Gregory despite standing up for the rights of the church does not find any support inside the holy city. Once Otto’s mighty army had turned towards the Brenner pass, the actual ruler of Rome, Crescentius II returned and threw Gregory out. Gregory tried to regain the city with the help of the key Ottonian allies, Hugh of Tuscany and Konrad of Spoleto, but it fails. Gregory spends the next few months wondering about the place with no fixed abode.  

Meanwhile in Rome, Crescentius II declares the “election” of Gregory V null and void and the Romans elect Johannes Philagathos to become pope. We have met him before. He was one of Theophanu’s closest advisors and Otto III’s teacher. What made him change sides is a bit unclear, but he had been side lined by Adelheid and even after Otto had taken over seem to have struggled to get back into the imperial favour.

We now have two popes at the same time. This begins another tradition in the relationship between pope and emperor during the Middle Ages, the regular Schisms. We may look at these things as just power battles, which to a degree they were. However, for the people of the Middle Ages, they were terrifying. If your priest had been ordained by a bishop whose own ordination was invalid because it had been undertaken by the wrong pope, was your confession valid. If you had not confessed properly, could you still go to heaven? And we are approaching the year 1000, the time when the apocalypse is supposed to begin. Just on the year 1000, the perception to the degree it existed was not that on the 24^th of December 1000 on the dot the world would end. That makes little sense since that is the day of Jesus birth. It was more likely the apocalypse begins a 1000 years after Jesus crucifixion which may mean April 1033, but again that could also be out by a couple of years. So “the year !000” was actually a moving feast sometime broadly between 1000 and 1050. That means for the contemporaries by 997 we are entering the danger zone whilst the church is divided by the schism.

For now, Otto cannot do much about this apart from sending angry letters to Rome. He does have an army, but that army has been convened to fight the Slavs in the east not the Romans. The campaign in 997 did not really go very well as rival commanders including nasty Archbishop Giselher squabbled and got beaten by the Slavs. That meant the whole thing dragged on much longer than expected. Only towards the end did Otto himself take command of the final raid that which at least looked like a success. 

The Slavs sorted Otto can finally gather troops to return to Italy. He crosses the alps in the middle of winter 997, which means he must be in a real hurry. He rapidly descends via Verona, Pavia, Cremona and Ravenna down to Rome, where he arrives in February.

The inhabitants of Rome panic and open the gates. Johannes Philagathos or pope John XVII as he calls himself decides it is time to split from the Crescenti and looks for ways to get clemency from the emperor.[3] No luck on that front. Once the imperial soldiers find the unlucky Greek, they blind him and then cut off his nose, tongue and ears. The terribly mutilated man is then brought before a synod that deposes him. He is ceremoniously stripped of his vestments, his pallium is broken and he is driven through the streets of Rome sitting backwards on a donkey holding the tail of the beast as its reins[4]. Contemporary sources are shocked by this treatment of a man who was godparent to both the emperor and the pope and if not legally the pope, he was still the consecrated archbishop of Piacenza. Otto III is getting publicly rebuked for this by a hermit called Nilus, who curses him, saying that unless he forgives those he holds in his power, neither will the holy father forgive him for his sins. Not great PR.

But the slaughter does not end there. The real instigator of the rebellion was still around, Crescentius II. He had fled to the Castel Sant Angelo, the former mausoleum of the emperor Hadrian that over the previous 800 years has been turned into an impregnable fortress. It had witnessed the famous defence against the Goths in the 6^th century and since then had been impossible to capture. Otto had the Castel surrounded but did not really attack it for the next two months whilst he is waiting for special siege engines. As is customary in the period the parties began negotiations during the siege, however they fail to agree. What then happens is unclear. According to Thietmar of Merseburg some super-smart siege engine is deployed that allowed the imperial troops to enter and overpower the defenders. At the other end of the spectrum is the story by Italian chroniclers that Crescentius had come in for negotiations and on his return the Germans broke the truce, attacked and forced themselves through the gate.

Despite my general Germanness, there is something odd about the Vorsprung durch Technik thesis. The Castel Sant Angelo had remained impregnable for the rest of the medieval period and even Renaissance armies 500 years later failed to take it. It is not clear to me what unusual design could have overcome the defences and why the knowledge had not been preserved for when the next emperor comes down to Rome[5].

The way he captured the fortress is not the only thing that would hamper Otto III’s reputation amongst the Romans. Once he has got hold of Crescentius II he has him beheaded and thrown from the battlement of the Castel Sant Angelo for all of Rome to see. His corpse is then dragged to the Monte Mario and strung up from the gallows by its feet. The same treatment is then administered to 12 of Crescentius’ supporters. From then on, the Italians called him Otto the Red and that was not for his red hair.

This gruesome punishment was widely reported across Europe and even unrelated charters in Wessex reference the date of Crescentius beheading. The Castel Sant’ Angelo will for the next 200 years be known as the castle of Crescentius

Why such cruelty? One reason is certainly that Crescentius had already been given clemency by Otto III the last time he had come down to Rome. Awarding it another time would look too much like weakness of the emperor, though it was not unheard of that people were forgiven multiple times.

Another way to look at it was the enormity of the crime. Crescentius had created a schism, not just at any special time, but in the year 997, not long before the year 1000. If a schism is terrifying in and of itself, a schism just when the apocalypse could start any moment is unfathomable [6].

Having taken back control of Rome, it must have been clear to Otto that his previous approach had not worked. In 996 when he first came down to Rome, he handled the situation very much in the tradition of his father and grandfather – go to Rome, get a pope, get crowned, get out. Even in the times of Otto the Great that might not have been sufficient to ensure stability of the empire. The rapid collapse of Gregory V’s regime in Rome told him in no uncertain terms, that the old model did not work anymore.

He needed to replace it with something new. He is 18 years old and has been brought up with stories about the power of the Byzantine emperors and their capital Constantinople. Is it a surprise that he wants to replicate the empire of the Romans here in its birthplace?

Otto III styles himself on his seals as Otto Imperator Augustus with the motto Renovatio Imperii Romanorum. He is represented on this seal as a mighty emperor, seated on a throne holding the orb and the sword, whilst everyone around him is represented as @a supplicant. That is miles away from the Germanic model of an elected leader linked to his nobles through ties of blood, friendship and prayer. Otto organises his court along Byzantine lines giving Byzantine titles to his chancellors and military commanders. He eats alone at an elevated semi-circular table overlooking his courtiers – like the Byzantine emperor. And most significantly he makes Rome his capital by ordering the construction of an imperial palace on the Palatine hill. The Palatine is where the Roman emperors of antiquity created their enormous residence, a residence so enormous and famous that all imperial residences were called the Palatine, which is where we get our word Palace and the medieval Germans the word Pfalz.

An imperial capital is a concept entirely alien to the East Francian kingdom of Henry the Fowler and even Otto the Great. The kings and emperors were expected to constantly travel around their kingdom, dispensing judgements, making donations and award military or political posts to the local nobles. Having access to the king and emperor was a key element of the power of his major vassals, which makes these journeys so important. How would the empire function with an emperor permanently residing in Rome?

The answer is simple, it would not. The reason the Byzantine empire could have an emperor who was permanently based in Constantinople was tax. The tax income meant that the emperor could award all major military and political positions fairly freely. He even paid the major nobles to live in Constantinople, in the same way as king Louis XIV paid his aristocrats to live in Versailles. Otto III simply did not have the money to pay a standing army or bribe the nobles of the country to live in Rome.

Not being able to raise taxes he needs is another pillar of his reign.

What could that other pillar be? We will find out next week. We will follow him on a trip to the grave of his old friend Adalbert, where he elevates Boleslav the Brave of Poland to, well to what is subject to debate. We will see our old friend Gerbert to be raised even higher as Pope Sylvester II and good old Charlemagne gets literally dug up.

I hope to see you again, and if you enjoyed this episode, please let others know about the podcast be that through podcast reviews on social media or in the good old face to face technique. 

And that comes from being a religious authority.

At the same time as he presents himself as the all-powerful emperor, ruler of the whole world, he also begins pilgrimages to shrines where he humiliates himself by walking barefoot in rags up mountains or into cities. In another shift of titles, he adds servant of the Apostles to his title as Imperator Augustus.

The first of these pilgrimages is to the Monte Gargano in Puglia, Southern Italy. The Monte Gargano is the spur of the Boot of Italy, a mountainous peninsula that sticks out into the Adriatic. In a cave near the top of the mountain the archangel Michael is supposed to have appeared to the local bishop. The archangel Michael is the one who on the day of reckoning will divide humanity into those who go to hell and those who will rise up to heaven. That is the kind of guy you want on your side after having just killed and mutilated your adversaries. Otto III climbs the mountain on his bare feet wearing a hare shirt declaring himself a sinner.

These seemingly opposing behaviours, on the one hand brutal distant ruler who executes and mutilates his opponents and on the other hand self-humiliation as a sinner before God may be explained as an extreme behaviour typical for an adolescent, but it also makes sense as a definition of the emperor. The emperor is at the same time the highest amongst men, whilst the lowest before God. There is some authority that can be gained by extreme deference before a religious authority. You can see that with actual religious figures like the pope and bishops who every Easter ritually wash people’s feet in commemoration of Jesus’ washing of his disciple’s feet. This humiliating gesture o washing the dirty feet of the poor is designed to show the pope as the servant of the poor.  Humiliation does not per se diminish a person’s authority, it is the feeling and display of shame over the humiliation that does it.  The foot washing pope does not have his authority diminished by this humiliating act. People who are very secure in themselves do not feel shame at humiliation and can maintain or even increase their dignity. Take for example Alfred Dreyfuss who maintained and increased his moral authority despite if not because he was publicly degraded on false accusations. The greatest example of that effect is Jesus himself who derives his authority from the humiliation of being crucified. What I am trying to say here is that the image of an emperor climbing a mountain with bleeding feet and wearing a hare shirt gives him as much power as a battalion of soldiers. Soldiers he cannot otherwise pay.

But Otto III’s piety is not just for public display. Even though it may serve a political purpose, it does not mean that it was not real. Otto III was clearly an incredibly spiritual man. Having spent a lot of time during his formative teenage years with a saintly figure like Adalbert of Prague has clearly rubbed off on him. He will fast regularly, sometimes to extremes. In 999 he spends 14 days in prayer with his friend Franco the bishop of Worms in some cave near Rome. A few weeks later he takes a trip to another pilgrim place in Subiaco, again to pray intensively.

And this is where we leave him for now, deep in prayer.

---

[1] Brain Development During Adolescence Neuroscientific Insights Into This Developmental Period Kerstin Konrad, Prof. Dr. rer. nat.,*,1 Christine Firk, Dr. PhD,2 and Peter J Uhlhaas, Dr. PhD3 Dtsch Arztebl Int. 2013 Jun; 110(25): 425–431.

[2]  RI II,3 n. 1212

[3] RI II,3 n. 1259c

[4] To the personal responsibility of Otto III see Althoff, Otto III p.73-75

[5] Althoff, p. 79

[6] Weinfurther: Otto III in Herrrscher des Mittelalters p. 91

Last week little king Otto III was rescued from the clutches of the kind of cousin twice removed you don’t want to talk to, Henry the Quarrelsome. Members of the odd rescue squad, namely  his mother Theophanu, his Grandmother Adelheid and archbishop Willigis of Mainz now formed a regency council that would run the country for the next 11 years. Theophanu will be in charge from 984 to 991 when she dies at only 40 years of age. Adelheid will then take over for the remaining roughly 4 years when Otto III gradually comes into maturity and takes over control of the kingdom.

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Hello and Welcome to The History of the Germans – Episode 12 –The regency of Theophanu and Adelheid

Just a bit of housekeeping first. You may have noticed that this episode did not hit your inbox on the customary Thursday. That is basically because I have just left my job and had to do quite a bid of admin to bed everything down. It is quite remarkable how much time one can waste with these things or how much time putting this podcast together actually consumes. In any event, the next episode will come on a Thursday, albeit Thursday the 15^th of April, as Easter and the easing of lockdown means we can spend some more time with friends and family. I am sorry to deprive you of podcast listening pleasure  over the holidays but let’s take your earphones out for a while and talk to our children, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins twice removed, friends, acquaintances, work colleagues, gym buddies and baristas – don’t we all miss it.

Back to the show. Last week little king Otto III was rescued from the clutches of the kind of cousin twice removed you don’t want to talk to, Henry the Quarrelsome. Members of the odd rescue squad, namely  his mother Theophanu, his Grandmother Adelheid and archbishop Willigis of Mainz now formed a regency council that would run the country for the next 11 years. Theophanu will be in charge from 984 to 991 when she dies at only 40 years of age. Adelheid will then take over for the remaining roughly 4 years when Otto III gradually comes into maturity and takes over control of the kingdom.

Saving the 4-year-old king and gaining the regency over the kingdom was no mean feat, but it did not solve the fundamental problems of the kingdom. If you have listened to all 12 episodes so far, you are now quite familiar with the main objectives of any German ruler of the time, which are:

1. Holding on to the Duchy of Lothringia,
2. Secure the eastern border and expand where possible,
3. Establish a sustainable rule in Northern Italy,
4. Keep control over the Papacy, and
5. Hold down the powerful dukes, counts, barons and their extended clans.

Having five often conflicting policy objectives at the same time condemned the Kaisers to a perennial game of whack a mole. If he spends too much time down in Italy trying to establish control there and organising the papacy, he risks his magnates going AWOL, the king of France nibbling away at Lothringia and Slavs throwing off their chains. If he pushes hard on the eastward expansion, the local magnates tend to pick up the spoils making them more powerful, whilst back down in Rome, the population cuts off the noses and ears of the Kaiser’s envoys.

That is why in the 30 years since Otto the Great’s marriage to Adelheid our two emperors have been frantically rushing back and forth across the alps without a moment of rest.

What makes the next 11 years of the regency of Theophanu and later Adelheid such an achievement is that pretty much nothing bad happened. That may be a painful state of affairs for historians and podcasters, but great news for peasants who do not have to endure constant raiding and pillaging.

The way the imperial regency achieves this relative calm has some element of luck in it, but it is also down to a coherent policy of the two imperial ladies. When I talk about policy, this is not a policy in the modern sense with white papers developed by think tanks, ministerial working groups and discussions in cabinet, let alone debate in parliament. A lot of it is created on the hoof and by trial and error. But the absence of policy documents and the vagueness of stated objectives does not mean that rulers in the middle ages acted purely on impulse or to achieve short-term goals. There are things that are known to work and which imperial policy reverts to again and again.

Each imperial administration differs in the way they deploy or deviate from these basic policy approaches. When I look at Theophanu and Adelheid, I find their choices smarter than most, which makes the positive outcome of the regency more than just a function of luck.

Let us look at their approach in more detail, starting with policy objective number 1:  Holding on to the Duchy of Lothringia

The question which bits of the old kingdom of Lothar belongs to France and which bits belong to Germany is a perennial source of conflict that is only really put to bed in 1945. During the regency of Theophanu and Adelheid the Lothringian question was a particularly hot topic for the following reasons:

1. King Lothar of France had been brought up by his father and his mother with the explicit objective of getting Lothringia back. His mother was the wife of Gilbert, the former duke of Lothringia who had drowned at Andernach. And his father named him Lothar after the Lothar who created Lothringia.
2. King Lothar’s archenemy was his brother Charles. Charles had accused Lothar’s wife Emma of adultery with the bishop of Laon. When she was acquitted by a synod of bishops, Charles had been sent into exile. Otto II then threw oil in the fire by making Charles the duke of lower Lothringia – at which point the red mist came down in front of Lothar’s eyes. He took his forces to Aachen, almost caught the imperial couple and occupied the capital of Charlemagne for a few days.
3. And finally © Lothar had managed to occupy Verdun in 984 when everybody was busy chasing  Henry the Quarrelsome around the place. Verdun was and remained for another almost thousand years a key psychological border town between France and Germany. Those of you who have read ahead may remember that the longest battle of World War 1 was fought around Verdun and that it is the original place where a bearded guy shouted “They Shall not Pass” though that was said in French at the time and not by a guy whose future acts left him in good stead in French history. Verdun also became the place where one of the most famous images of Franco-German reconciliation was taken in 1984 – Francois Mitterrand and Helmut Kohl spontaneous holding hands in front of the memorial to the fallen. I digress – massively. In 984 Verdun had not yet become a symbol but was simply an important border city and fortress with a slightly dodgy side hustle in producing eunuchs for the courts of Constantinople and Cordoba. But nevertheless, Theophanu and the regency council needed to get it back. In September 984 the regency mobilises the loyal magnates of Lothringia to make an attempt at reconquering the town, which they seem to have managed by October[1]. Lothar came back in January 985, this time with a large army, allegedly comprising 10,000 men[2]. They surprised the occupiers and managed to capture them. Amongst the captured were the leaders of the Ottonian party in Lothringia, namely the duke of upper Lothringia, the count and the bishop of Verdun as well as others. These guys are then distributed across different fortresses held by the supporters of king Lothar. We are not off to a good start here.

The established Ottonian policy towards France was to exploit the constant squabbles between the king and his magnates, in particular between the king and his largest vassal, Hugh Capet. These squabbles were practically eternal because their resources were roughly evenly matched and they each held almost impregnable fortresses. Hugh Capet had Paris, and specifically the Ile de la Cite, which was surrounded by the Seine river on all sides. The king held Laon, which sits atop a solitary hill with 100m sheer cliff faces. Next time you drive down the Autoroute des Anglais look to your right halfway between Calais and Reims you will see what the French call the Montagne Couronne, the crowned mountain.  

Theophanu policy follows in the same vein. After the capture of the defenders of Verdun she prods Hugh Capet to intervene. Hugh Capet disrupts a major gathering of Lothar’s supporter by force, which stalls further aggression from the French king.

Theophanu then benefits from the last Carolingian monarchs in France going into self-destruct mode. King Lothar died in 986 and his wife Emma becomes regent. Emma is swiftly pushed aside by her son Louis V who warms up the allegations of adultery. That conflict between mother and son paralyses the kings of France politically until Louis V succumbs to a hunting accident.

After Louis’ death the time is ripe for the last real change in the reigning dynasty of France. In 987 Hugh Capet is elected king of France. That now causes a problem for Theophanu. She urgently needs a challenger to the French king who re-establishes the previous internal divisions in the kingdom.

Fortunately, one is at hand, Charles of Lower Lothringia. As brother of the before-last king he considers himself the heir to the kingdom. Since Charles is her vassal, he can expect some support from her against Hugh Capet, making the two sides evenly matched. Charles is quite successful in this war and gets hold of Laon and even the most prestigious archdiocese in France, Reims. Hugh Capet makes multiple attempts to storm Laon but without success. Theophanu now has the French where she wants them to be. Hugh Capet and Charles of Lothringia are beating each other over the head for several years, a period during which Theophanu gets Verdun back and the prisoners are released.

The conflict only ends when the bishop of Laon feigns a reconciliation with Charles. How Charles could believe that the man he accused of adultery would ever come round to his side is another one of these 10^th century things we struggle to understand. Anyway, the bishop clearly had not found a great affection for Charles and lets Hugh Capet’s troops into the otherwise impregnable fortress of Laon where Charles is captured. Charles dies a year later in prison.

As a consequence by 991 Hugh Capet controls both his own land and the Carolingian crown lands making him a more powerful French king than his predecessor. Since Theophanu had died in 991 this becomes Adelheid’s problem. The fact that the French king is now stronger than before is offset by the fact that the Capetins are less obsessed with Lothringia compared to the Carolingians. All Adelheid can do is keeping a level of unhelpful interference in a fierce dispute over who is the legitimate archbishop of Reims.

Hugh Capet dies in 995 and his son Robert II takes over. Under Robert II French policy changes focus towards increasing the domestic holdings of the Capet family at the expense of their powerful magnates, the dukes of Normandy, Aquitaine and Burgundy, the counts of Flanders and Provence and anyone else who was either weak or had a daughter with a sizeable dowry.

With this the Regency had achieved its main objectives, regaining Verdun and safeguarding the duchy of Lothringia.

Objective 2 is – Managing the eastern border

When Theophanu took over in 984 the eastern border barely held together. The Slavs living between the Elbe and the Oder rivers had flattened the Christian towns and churches in a major uprising in 983, massacred or thrown out whatever military forces occupied their land and could just about been stopped from crossing into core Saxon territory by an emergency force.

Ensuring the integrity of the Saxon lands was probably the #1 objective of the regency. To do that there were multiple policy options, which break down into two choices.

The first question is whether to actually conquer territory and Christianise the peoples in it, or to just forward defend the home territory. The second question is who to ally with.

Under Otto the Great the policy was very clearly aimed at conquering the land and converting the local populace. Otto the great founded towns and established bishoprics in the lands east of the Elbe river. His general, Margrave Gero converted the locals with fire and sword. Under Otto II this system collapsed virtually overnight when the Slavs sensed a weakening of the imperial power after the defeat of Capo Colonna. Under the regency of Theophanu and later Adelheid, the imperial policy seemed to have changed. Though they invaded in regular intervals and at one point re-occupied the town of Brandenburg, there was no attempt to establish a permanent presence east of the Elbe. That suggests the objective was to create a deterrent and go for loot and enforce tribute.

Once the choice is made to stall rather than to conquer the lands of the Slavs, there are multiple options to join forces with other powers in the region.

The Danes can be ruled out, in part because they have reverted back to paganism after Sweyn Forkbeard had his father Harald Bluetooth killed. Furthermore, Sweyn and his mor famous son Canute were keener on England than on the Slavic lands. In fact, the Danes made some incursions into the empire during the Regency.

The other power in the region were the Bohemians. They were vassals of the empire and as such should support the regency. However, duke Boleslav of Bohemia had sided forcefully with Henry the Quarrelsome and captured the Saxon county of Meissen in the process. That put him on a collision course with Theophanu and Adelheid.

That puts the Poles in pole position. Poland is geographically ideal for a policy of containment. They occupy the lands to the east of the pagan Slavs. Furthermore, Poland had become Christian in 966 through missionary conviction rather than blood and steel, which seems to have been more sustainable. The Polish dukes had been involved in the Holy Roman empire since then and their duke Miesco had attended several royal assemblies. He had sided with Henry the Quarrelsome in 984 but was not as committed as his neighbour to the south Boleslav of Bohemia, making that easier to overlook.

So, Poland was chosen to be the ally. When Otto III was six years old he was send to fight the Slavs in a joint operation with the dukes of Poland. How much fighting he did himself is doubtful, but the duke of Poland gave him a camel for his bravery. The fascinating thing about this story is that nobody asks by which route the camel had managed to get to Poland in the first place.

The politically more significant move came in 991 when the duke of Poland gives his lands to the pope. What that means is not so much that the duke of Poland now becomes a vassal of the pope and has to send him troops or taxes. The most significant effect is that from now on the archbishop of Magdeburg who may have believed Poland to be part of his diocese to lose his rights in the area.

The duke of Poland is unlikely to have done this without agreement with the empress and the archbishop of Magdeburg. Miesco had met with Theophanu just months earlier in Quedlinburg, suggesting that the move had been discussed[3]. We also see no mention of any adverse reaction from the German side. Au contraire, the joint operations against the Slavs continue.

This policy of supporting the duke of Poland as a “friend” of the empire rather than as a vassal like the duke of Bohemia will continue and even intensify under Otto III. It is a major fork in the road for Poland, and this document, the Dagome Iudex is the foundation document of Poland. In many ways the decision by Theophanu and Adelheid may be the most significant of their reign. In the future the policy towards the East in general and Poland in particular will become the key differentiator between different emperors. But whichever policy they pursued, Poland is never integrated into the Roman empire, whilst Bohemia is.

The next major policy objective is #3 – Managing Northern Italy.

You may remember that one of Otto II’s flagship policies was to integrate the kingdoms of Italy and Germany. Otto II himself became first king of the Germans by election of the German nobles and coronation in Aachen by German archbishops. At a later stage he was elected king of Italy by Italian nobles and then consecrated in Pavia by an Italian archbishop.  Otto III on the other hand was elected by both Italian and German nobles and was crowned by both German and Italian archbishops. The idea was to create one source of legitimacy for a unified kingdom. This legitimacy seemed to have held out because when Otto III finally gets to Pavia in 996, he is not crowned king of Italy, but the nobles just repeat the allegiance they have already sworn in 983.

To manage Italy Theophanu started by doing the smartest thing she could do. She asked her mother-in-law, Adelheid, who had been queen of Italy since she was 15, who knew everybody and who owned vast tracts of land in Italy to run the country for her grandson. There is not much documentary evidence of her rule of Italy, but if we look at the end result, Adelheid must have done a great job. When Otto II died, Italy was convulsed by uprisings of the anti-Ottonian party. Supporters of the Ottonians like Pope John XIV and Gerbert of Aurillac were in fear of their life or even lost it. Adelheid arrived in July 985[4] and can relatively quickly put Ottonian supporters back into their former positions[5]. One of the pillars of Ottonian rule was Hugh of Tuscany who ruled not just Tuscany but also the Southern duchy of Spoleto. Hugh was exactly what the Ottonian wanted, an Italian magnate who was integrated into the imperial policy. He was regularly seen at court in Germany, he was even there when Theophanu died. He built himself a palace near the imperial Pfalz in Ingelheim and in most aspects acted like a duke of Bavaria or Swabia.

Theophanu stayed out of Adelheid’s way at least until 988 when she makes one of her Greek advisors, Johannes Philagathos archbishop of Piacenza and chancellor of the kingdom of Italy. In 989 she decides to travel to Italy and further on to Rome. This is the one moment when the two empresses have a serious policy disagreement.

So far, they seem to have been able to stay out of each other’s way without major clashes. In Italy that may have been more problematic. Johannes Philagathos was not very popular and his judgements were considered harsh. Adelheid may have tried to mellow things down whilst she was in Pavia, but when Theophanu travelled through Pavia, Adelheid made sure she was out of town, leaving Philogathus free rein. Adelheid’s first act after she had taken from Theophanu was to sack Johannes Philogathos who barely managed to get back into Germany alive. 

After that interlude Italy held together fine, even after Adelheid returned north of the Alps to take over the regency.

Which gets us to part 4 – controlling the papacy.

Policy towards the papacy breaks down into two separate components.

On the one hand there is the control over the papal states, the city of Rome and the person of the pope, which is what preoccupied us so far. The pope however has another side to his power, which is the moral and spiritual leadership. The reason it did not matter was that there was no real moral superiority. The pope may be the Vicar of Christ by virtue of his office, but these last few popes had little if any personal qualities that made them suitable to lead Christendom in prayer. 

One of those was (anti) pope Boniface VII who had returned from Byzantium shorty after Otto IIs death and proceeded to kill his predecessor, Benedict VII, making him one of the few popes who killed not just one, but two popes. Boniface lasted for just 11 months but quickly became isolated and abandoned by his Crescenti supporters it has been assumed he was either assassinated or may even have committed suicide. So hated was he that after his death men cut and pierced his body with spears, then dragged it, stripped and naked, by the feet to the Campus Martius and threw the corpse on the ground before the feet of the Horse of Constantine, i.e., the statue of Markus Aurelius. The next morning some more compassionate monks found the body parts and buried them.

After that Rome remained out of control for a month as the Crescenti tried to get control of the situation. It seems they had to ultimately accept a new pope, John XV who was a Roman, but from a rival faction of the aristocracy. John XV held out for 11 years which is pretty much a record by pursuing a policy of balancing the local Crescenti and the imperial forces. John XV was hated due to his avarice and general meanness, but in moral and spiritual terms he was a material step up from his predecessors, which may explain his longevity.

Theophanu travelled to Rome in 989 to pray at her husband’s grave, a luxury she did not enjoy in the tumultuous days of December 983. Her presence re-established some control over the papacy, albeit not so tight to provoke a Crescenti rebellion.

Some Historians suggest that Theophanu’s trip to Rome was aimed at a resurrection of her late husband’s policy of bringing Southern Italy under Ottonian rule. That is based on just one document issued in Rome relating to a monastery in the South. Quite frankly that is fairly thin evidence. Last time I checked her husband took the largest army ever seen to pursue his dream. Theophanu travelled with just a personal bodyguard…

Adelheid did not interfere significantly in Roman affairs. When pope John XV finally gets into hot water with the Crescenti and asks the imperial leadership for help, it is Otto III himself who musters an army to do what emperors have now been doing for a while – go to Rome, get crowned, get out.

For now all that matters is control of Rome, the moral superiority still resides with the emperor.

And finally, policy number 5 – keeping control of the magnates in Germany.

There is nothing to report, no uprisings, no grumblings, no disobedience, nothing, which is probably the best rate card you can get. Henry the Quarrelsome seems to have been a regular presence at court supporting the new regime. When he died a few years later in 995 he is supposed to have told his son that he should never oppose his king and lord, something he had regretted ever doing. 

Interestingly, apart from Henry of Bavaria we hear very little about the other dukes. That might be down to the fact that monasteries are better at retaining documents and most chroniclers are churchmen. But it is still noticeable that when we hear of great assemblies, most of the named attendants are bishops, whilst under Otto the Great the emphasis was on the temporal rulers. This is also the time when we first hear that a whole county is given to a bishop, making him a prince bishop. The lack of documentation on the duchies is so severe that we are not exactly sure who was duke of Carinthia at certain points of time, and Carinthia is one of only 6 duchies at the time. The Imperial church system is clearly expanding at a rapid pace during the regency.

What further accelerates the trend is the growing importance of the reform monasteries. Reform monasteries came about because discipline in monasteries had become lax, as it did ever so often. The most important reform monastery in the period was Cluny. Cluny was founded in 910 in Burgundy. By the 990s it has become a spiritual superpower.  Thanks to their ascetic life, care for the poor, regular prayers and celibacy they monks of Cluny became the members of the church lay people both aristocrats and peasants looked up to. Cluny had the privilege to found daughter monasteries that reported back to Cluny. By the end of the 12^th century there were nearly 1000 monasteries that reported back to the abbot of Cluny. These reform monasteries sit at the heart of the more and more intense piety that will dominate the high middle ages and drive the crusades as well as the recovery of papal authority. Adelheid specifically was a huge supporter of Cluny. She founded several daughter abbeys of Cluny, including the abbey of Seltz in Alsace.

Supporting the reform of the church is a double-edged sword for the imperial system. A chunk of the authority the Kaiser exerts stems from his moral authority as the anointed quasi-religious leader. That authority is heightened when it is held against a profoundly corrupt papacy and lazy monks. As the church implements reforms and grows its moral authority, the moral authority of the Kaiser diminishes. And that results in some sort of religious arms race where the temporal rulers try to outpace their abbots and bishops and eve the pope in displays of extreme devotion. You will get what I mean by that when we get to Otto III in the next episode.

The last, but by no means least significant act of the regency was an economic one. I already mentioned that the Ottonians benefitted from a combination of improving climate and loosening of the rules of servitude. That created a surplus of agricultural product, which in turn drove the creation of markets and trade. What turbocharged these trends was the increase in production of small silver pennies, the Adelheid and Otto Penny.  Adelheid increased the production of the silver in mines near Goslar. The increased availability of coins must have hugely facilitated the exchange of day-to-day goods. Her coins were minted for another 100 years and are the most commonly found coins of the 10^th and early 11^th century.

Before we go into Otto III in more detail in the next two to three episodes, I just wanted to close the chapters on Theophanu and Adelheid.

Theophanu died in Nijmegen in 991 when Otto III is just 11 years old. She is buried in St. Pantaleon in Cologne, one of the few churches form that period still standing. If you go to Cologne, don’t waste your time staring at the western facade of the Dom, which is a pastiche from the 19^th century, go around three blocks and look at St. Pantaleon, whose facade is largely unchanged since 980 AD and take a look at Theophanu’s modest grave.

Her biography remains one of the most astounding of the 10^th century –born and brought up at the sophisticated Byzantine imperial court, then sent to the Ottonian court with a 50/50 chance of being buried in a monastery or being married to the heir of the throne, finally ruling the empire together with her husband for 10 years and then taking sole control as guardian for her son for another successful 7 years. Theophanu has forever animated German imagination and views have shifted back and forth between genius politician and hapless puppet of the main courtiers. I personally do not think she was a genius, but that she had common sense. She chose to continue policies that had proven to work and changed those that had not. That is more than one can say about many of her successors up to the present day.

When Theophanu died the situation could have easily gone out of hand again. Luckily Otto’s grandmother Adelheid stepped up to the guardianship. Adelheid had kept a low profile these last few years but had remained close to the court and her grandson so that the transition went comparatively smoothly.

Adelheid’s effective rule lasted just 3 years as Otto III was considered of age around age 14. When Otto III was declared of age at the royal assembly in Solingen in 994, Adelheid gradually retired from high politics. The official end of her guardianship came with the coronation of Otto III in Rome in 996. She enters the monastery of Seltz in Alsace she had founded in 991.

She died on December 16^th, 999 at the age of 68.

Adelheid was one of the most remarkable female figures in early medieval history, of which there are a lot more than one would think. She had been incarcerated and probably tortured by Berengar but managed to escape and rose to become empress. For nearly 40 years she played a decisive role in shaping one of the key axes of medieval German politics, the link between Italy and Germany. She brings the Italian crown into the Ottonian family and through her contacts and relationships makes it possible for this regime to endure. Whether the orientation towards Italy has been a good or a bad thing for the development of Germany is an endless debate, but that it was hugely important, nobody can deny.

Her significance to the abbey of Cluny and its reform program was such that abbot Odilo of Cluny, who we will meet again soon, wrote her autobiography shortly after her death. He paints her as a saintly figure who triumphs over adversity because of her faith and good deeds. In 1047 she was canonised by Pope Urban II and her grave in Seltz became a place of pilgrimage.

That makes it even more depressing to look at where she is supposedly buried. Her monastery at Seltz has disappeared in the Reformation and her remains were transferred to the parish church of Seltz. That church was heavily damaged in the Second World War and the rebuild in the 1950s may not be to everyone’s taste. Her grave is now lost and even the Office de Tourisme of Seltz hardly mentions her.

Next time we will dive into Otto III, the great “what if” of German medieval history. He will continue many of his mother’s policies but will make some audacious moves toward what might have been a very different medieval world, a world that never materialised.

I hope you are going to join us. And if you enjoyed this episode, let your friends know on social media or in that old fashioned way – talking, now that we are allowed to do that again.

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[1] RI II, 3 n 956y2

[2] RI II,3 n. 962g

[3] RI II,3 n. 1028d

[4] RI II,3 n. 972a

[5] RI II,3 n. 972c