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To make it easier for you to share the podcast, I have created separate playlists for some of the seasons that are set up as individual podcasts. they have the exact same episodes as in the History of the Germans, but they may be a helpful device for those who want to concentrate on only one season.

So far I have:

Ep. 84: Frederick II (1196-1250) – Stupor Mundi – The Art of Hunting with Birds

Transcript

Hello and Welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 84 – The Art of Hunting with Birds

In the centre of the city of Heidelberg, former capital of the Palatinate rises the Heiliggeistkirche, the church of the Holy Spirit built between 1398 and 1515. Inside the church you will notice some unusual galleries on the upper floor. This is where the Bibliotheca Palatina, the greatest repository of books and manuscripts in renaissance Germany was once kept. Put together by the Counts Palatinate on the Rhine it contained 5,000 printed books and 3,524 manuscripts. It served as the library of the University of Heidelberg, then and still today one of the foremost places of learning in the country. In 1622 the Catholic league sacked the Calvinist Palatinate. Count Tilly, commander of the Bavarian troops seized the library and was initially ordered to send it to Munich. But the emperor insisted the library was so valuable and famous it was to be sent to the pope in Rome as a sign of his loyalty and esteem.

Amongst the books in the Bibliotheca Palatina, are three of the most famous medieval manuscripts ever made. The Evangeliar of Lorsch made in around 810 at the court of Charlemagne. It was the blueprint for the great art of medieval illuminations that reached its peak under the Ottonians, many of which you may have seen on my social media posts these last years. One half of it ended up in the Vatican library in Rome, the other half was nicked by the cardinal in charge of packing up the books in 1622. That half is today in Alba Iulia in Transsylvania.

The second superlative manuscript is the Codex Manesse, the collection of medieval Minnesang decorated with colourful depictions of courtly life In the Highe Middle Ages. These I have also used extensively on my website and in the description of my Patreon tiers. The codex Manesse was taken along to England before the fall of Heidelberg by the Elisabeth Stuart, the wife of the Count Palatinate. Her descendants ran out of cash and had to sell it. In the 19^th century it was bought back by the University Library of Heidelberg where you can still see it in real life and in an excellent digital version.

The third book and possibly the one outshining even those two was an illuminated manuscript of De Arte venandi cum Avibus, The art of hunting with birds produced around 1260. It contains 111 folios with brilliantly coloured, extraordinarily lifelike, accurate and minute images of birds, their attendants, and the instruments of the art of falconry. This is the famous falconry book of Frederick II. It came back to Heidelberg one last time in 1986 and since I lived there, I managed to see it. I came almost every day since every day the curators would turn over one page to reveal one more of the fabulous images.

Yes, this is a book about hunting and quite frankly I normally put books about hunting in the same category as books about golf – extremely interesting to those who play golf, crushingly boring to everybody else. But this book is not about hunting, it is about nature about the beginnings of science and the awakening of the critical mind. Let’s take a look..

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Frederick II was a hunter. In the 13^th century every nobleman was a hunter. Hunting was one of the three things every knight needed to be able to do, riding, fighting and hunting. Maybe by 1230 he also needed to add a veneer of civilisation and gain skills in putting together some nice verses to the unattainable lady of his heart. Durig the crusades the European aristocracy encountered age-old middle-eastern hunting traditions. One was the hunting with cheetahs or as the European sources called them “hunting leopards”. Cheetahs are extremely fast but tire quickly. Hence, they were trained to ride on horseback to the hunting grounds where they would be released. Hunting with cheetahs was the most expensive and most environmentally destructive sport imaginable since the animals do not easily breed in captivity. We know from court records that Frederick was constantly ordering new cheetahs to be brought across from North Africa and the Middle East.

The other hunting tradition that came across from the Middle East was falconry, the hunting with birds of prey. Falconry is still the sport of the emirs, and it is almost as expensive as hunting with cheetahs would be if still allowed. In 2021 a white gyrfalcon was sold at auction in Riyad for $465,000. In Frederick’s time that was no different. A single Falcon could cost as much as small farm.

It seems Frederick was obsessed with falconry. Some argue that he moved the effective capital of his kingdom from Palermo to the small town of Foggia to be able to better hunt with his falcons. He most likely started this passion as a teenager and wherever he travels, he was always accompanied by his favourite birds.

For Frederick Falconry was not just a way to pass his time but became a scientific endeavour. The fruit of this endeavour was the book I saw in Heidelberg in 1986 – de arte venandi cum avibus – about the art of hunting with birds. Here is in his own words why he wrote it:

Quote: “We have investigated and studied with the greatest solicitude and in minute detail all that relates to this art, exercising both mind and body so that we might eventually be qualified to describe and interpret the fruits of knowledge acquired from our own experiences or gleaned from others. For example, we, at great expense, summoned from the four quarters of the earth masters in the practice of the art of falconry. We entertained these experts in our own domains, meantime seeking their opinions, weighing the importance of their knowledge, and endeavouring to retain in memory the more valuable of their words and deeds.

As the ruler of a large kingdom and an extensive empire we were very often hampered by arduous and intricate governmental duties, but despite these handicaps we did not lay aside our self-imposed task and were successful in committing to writing at the proper time the elements of the art.” (end quote)

So far so good. Frederick is an obsessive falconer who spends every minute he can spare to either. Hunt himself or hear other people talk about falconry and keeping it all in his head. But it is not. just that, he gets his scholars to collect all and everything ever written about birds and falconry. If it is in Arabic or Greek he has someone translate it into Latin. That is how Michael Scot, his astrologer and multipurpose genius comes to translate Aristotle, in particular “de Anima” – about the soul and “de Animalis”, about the Animals. These translations will make their way into the hands of Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinus who will make these books the bedrock of scholasticism. But that is not what he had them translated for. It was for the birds.

And as he was hunting, observing, listening to his falconry experts, going through his books and notes he comes to a set of conclusions that makes this book and its author so different from most things written in the 13^th century:

Quote: “Inter alia, we discovered by hard-won experience that the deductions of Aristotle, whom we followed whenthey appealed to our reason, were not entirely to be relied upon, more particularly in his descriptions of the characters of certain birds. There is another reason why we do not follow implicitly the Prince of Philosophers: he was ignorant of the practice of falconry— an art which to us has ever been a pleasing occupation, and with the details of which we are well acquainted. In his work, the Liber Animalium, we find many quotations from other authors whose statements he did not verify and who, in their turn, were not speaking from experience. Entire conviction of the truth never follows mere hearsay.” End quote

Frederick II says that Aristotle is sometimes wrong, that he paddles hearsay and does not check his sources. Not something you find very often, or ever before the 16^th century.

Dissing Aristotle flies into the face of any scholastic whose primary assumption was that the authorities, i.e., the bible, the church fathers and the great ancient philosophers were absolutely right. And where the great professors of Paris, Bologna or Oxford found the authorities might on the face of it diverge they strained every one of their synapses to find an interpretation that let both still be right. Finally if compromise cannot be found despite all these efforts, the decision which one was right was based on seniority, i.e., bible first, Aristotle. What played no role in a dispute was actual observations, proof that came bottom-up, not top down.

Frederick operates in the diametrically opposite way. As he says in his introduction: “Our purpose is to present the facts as we find them”. And he puts this into practice. His book consists in total of six chapters, the first is about “The general habits and structure of birds” and the other five about specific techniques of hunting with falcons. I am no biologist, but I understand that his observations were a mainstay of ornithology well into the 20^th century. Reading in it, it is clear that what he describes is based on observations. He tests Aristotle’s theories against his observations and where the theory falls short, he puts the prince of philosophers aside and develops his own hypothesis.

Then he tests his hypotheses. For instance he believed ostrich eggs could be incubated in the sun, and found they could, at least in Puglia. Another concerned the habits of vultures specifically whether vultures exclusively eat carrion. For that he left some vultures without food for several days. Then he put live chicks into their cages. Despite being extremely hungry, the vultures did not attack and eat the chicks. That was proof that vultures only ever eat carrion. Then he wanted to find out whether they detect their food by sight or by smell. He took two vultures and had his men stitch the birds’ brows below its eyes, a long-standing technique applied to falcons that may be painful but not long term harmful to the animal. Then again, he left them hungry and presented them with carrion. The vultures could not see it and left the food untouched, which convinced him that vultures find food by sight, not smell.

He describes himself as an inquisitor, at that time not a laden word, but describing someone who seeks the truth by investigating the circumstances.

At his court other biological and medical sciences also flourished. His court doctor, Thomas of Antioch had studied medicine in Baghdad and brought the much more advanced medical knowledge of the east to the university of Salerno, the leading medical faculty in Christian Europe at the time. Thomas also helped design the criteria for the approbation of doctors and pharmacists, something unknown elsewhere. Jacobus Ruffus, nephew of Frederick’s marshal, wrote the very first book about veterinary medicine of the Middle Ages which includes a rudimentary notion of mendelian inheritance identifying recessive and dominant traits in horses.

His insistence that scientific proof was superior to the faith in established authorities added to the bewilderment that his contemporaries experienced in his presence. That came on top of all the other ways in which he deviated from the monarchical normcore of the 13^th century. He had an interest in other religions, he maintained regular exchanges with the court of Sultan Al Malik of Egypt and other Muslim rulers, he had turned his kingdom of Sicily into an absolutist regime and he was in constant conflict with the church.

As the latter conflict, the one with the popes intensified, this mixture gave rise to rumours and tall tales that have been repeated down the centuries. They paint Frederick as a gruesome and godless ruler. And as they keep getting repeated, we will repeat them here too.

One story was that he used men who had been convicted to death in his experiments. One he had put into a sealed wine barrel to find out whether his soul would leave via the bunghole as he suffocated. Another experiment involved two men, both were given the same food, one then ordered to rest and the other to go for a long walk. Once the second men returned, both were killed, and the content of their stomachs investigated to find out whose digestion had proceeded he furthest. And finally, he allegedly undertook an experiment I will not recount here. Google it under Frederick II Language experiment if you are so inclined.

All these allegations are from a book by Salimbene di Parma, a Franciscan Monk who wrote a treatise comparing Frederick II to the ten plagues 30 years after Frederick’s death. So not exactly an impartial eyewitness. Most historians hence dismiss these claims as outright phantasies. I would like to agree, but then if Frederick was indeed of a scientific disposition and – in line with the culture of the time – had little regard for the rights of convicted criminals, these first two experiments are not completely impossible to have happened. The language experiment however must be propaganda.

Falconry was Frederick’s total obsession, but not his only interest. He was as I said before a man of unquenchable curiosity. When he had a chance to meet the great mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci he took it. Whether he understood the Fibonacci retracement, a set of ratios to identify support and resistance levels in a trend, I very much doubt. These calculations are still used today by so=called technical analysts in the markets and drive billions of dollars of investments.

He also picked up another habit of life at the great Muslim courts. Rulers and their courts would send out letters to renowned scholars, seeking answers to questions they had been discussing. Sometimes the scholar would then publish the questions and answers in a book, thereby elevating both their own standing and that of the noble questioner.

The Arab philosopher Ibn Saib wrote a book he called the “Sicilian Questions” which included enquiries allegedly posed by Frederick and his court as well as his responses. Modern historical science has rejected the notion that these queries had indeed originated at Frederick’s court, but the fact remains that one of the most renowned eastern scholars thought it would elevate his standing to pretend the questions came from the emperor.

Even if the Sicilian questions were never posed, we know from multiple sources that Frederick did host and sometimes participated in philosophical and theological debates and posted problems to scholars in east and west . There were not only Christian scholars at his court but also Jewish and Arabic men of letters. A jewish member of his court Jakob ben Anatoli describes debates about the works of Maimonides and whether they could be brought in line with Aristotelian thought. Equally Juda ben Salomon who helped translate Arabic and Hebrew texts reports about discussions of the Talmud, a primary source of Jewish law and theology.

Frederick’s interest in Jewish culture and theology becomes very public during his stay in Germany in 1236 when he is called upon to adjudicate on a case of Blood Libel.

To explain this we have to go back to the year 1177 when Thomas of Monmouth, a monk at the Benedictine abbey of Norwich publishes a book entitled the life and miracles of St. William of Norfolk. According to Thomas of Monmouth, William was a 12-year-old boy of unusual innocence. One day – so Thomas tells us- young William was abducted by Jewish men he did not know who bound and gagged him. They then allegedly shaved the boy’s head, put a crown of thorns on him and fixed him to a cross in a mockery of the crucifixion. Afterwards disposed of the body in a well. In his treatise Thomas quotes a convert from Judaism, brother Theobald of Cambridge who claimed that the Jewish faith required an annual sacrifice of a Christian child to ensure the return to the Holy Land and to punish the Christians for the persecution of the Jews.

The publication of this book led to copycat accusations of Jewish communities for this so-called Blood Libel. In total there may have been as many as 150 such accusations during the Middle Ages which almost inevitably ended with the lynching or burning of members of the Jewish community. I guess I do not have to tell you that not a single one of these accusations had any link to reality.

One such case was brought before Frederick in 1236. The citizens of Fulda had killed 34 of their Jewish neighbours after five children were found burned to death in their house at Christmas. The Jews were accused not just of the usual ritualistic murder but also of drinking the children’s blood and using it to bake matzos, the traditional bread to be eaten at Passover. The citizens of Fulda brought the bodies of the five children to Frederick’s Pfalz in Hagenau. Ever since Henry IV, all Jews were unfree serfs of the emperor and hence under direct imperial protection. The citizens of Fulda needed confirmation that they had acted legally in the destruction of imperial property.

Frederick was familiar with the Talmud and Jewish customs and hence did not believe that any such crime had been committed, well apart from the murder of the 34 Jews that is. But he also understood that if he just decided it on the back of his own knowledge, the general population may not come along with his judgement and Blood Libel would continue.

And so he staged a huge public trial. He invited theologians, scholars who could read Hebrew and also recent converts from Judaism who could credibly describe the Jewish law. They all pointed out not only that there is no requirement to sacrifice a Christian child every year but that their faith explicitly prohibits the ritual shedding of any blood, human or otherwise.

It was more than just a court decision it was an attempt to end this madness once and for all. Unfortunately this did not work out fully and persecution of Jews continued across Europe. The papacy and other monarchs too tried to stop the maltreatement of the Jews. Their approach tended to be a blunt, don’t do it by the order of the king. As far as I know, Frederick was the only one who tried to persuade the people by bringing proper evidence to the table, another sign of how his approach and thinking differs from other medieval rulers.

And that now gets me off to a rant. Over the last 40-50 years or so historians have worked hard to prove that Frederick was not unusual for the Middle Ages. They argue that he was not the first to bring Arabic and Jewish scholars to his court, his grandfather Roger II did so too, they argue Frederick did not write his book on Falconry himself, because it was common for monarchs to be ascribed authorship when in realty their scholars had written it all, his son Manfred is cited as the translator of a Hebrew text when he spoke no Hebrew, they tell us that negotiating possession of Jerusalem for Christianity wasn’t a major achievement because Al Kamil was willing to hand it over anyway. I lost it when I read the Hans Martin Schaller, a highly respected scholar argued that Frederick was a very pious monarch, no different to other men in his position.

I really do not get this. I am not a proponent of the great man theory of history. I am the first to admit the Otto the Great or Frederick Barbarossa were very much a product of their times and one was lucky, the other less so. And I hope you noticed that I believe Frederick’s policy in Germany had a detrimental effect on the long-term development of the Holy Roman Empire.

But Frederick as a pious monarch, give me a break. The man built hundreds of castles and only one church, I repeat one, in a reign of nearly 50 years, one. Compare that to contemporary monarchs. Louis IX of France, admittedly, St. Louis, paid 100,000 livres for the large silver chest that housed the crown of thorns he had acquired from Constantinople and that he had brought barefoot and in a hare shirt into Paris himself. There he had built the Sainte Chapelle the most marvellous gothic treasure that cost him another 40,000 livres. Louis IX went on two crusades that achieved nothing but knightly tales, one of which he died on, he passed severe laws punishing blasphemy and targeted the Jews and had the Talmud burned. That is a pious king.

Meanwhile in England, king Henry III of England was almost equally pious, just less popular. He spent vast amounts on church ceremonies and tried to turn Westminster into a rival of the Sainte Chapelle. Ah, and he had the Jews first robbed and then made to wear yellow badges.

None of these guys had spent time observing the flight of a swan and comparing it to what Aristotle or Pliny the elder or an Arab scholar had said about the flight of swans. None of them had questioned Aristotle’s idea of spontaneous generation that believed that crocodiles suddenly appeared from mud. None of them thought that facts are superior to dusty books.

Yes, I agree that Roger II and the whole Norman court in Sicily was a fascinating intellectual environment rivalling that of Frederick’s court in Foggia. The same goes for Alfonse X of Castile, but these guys are the exception. There is not much science and philosophy coming from Richard Lionheart, Philippe Auguste or any of Frederick II’s own predecessors, except maybe of Otto III.

Sometimes there are exceptional individuals, not superior in all and everything, just very different. Frederick was not the smartest political operator of his time, that was Philippe Auguste. He was not the best fighter, that may have been Richard Lionheart. But to say he was dull, that just is not true.

He grew up with a patchy education from some papal legates who were busy trying to keep a crumbling kingdom together. Maybe that need to make it up for himself is where he got his interests and his contrarian way of thinking from, who knows. But I am not going to believe for a moment that he was the same sort of ruler as Konrad II or Lothar III, two very much run-of-the mill medieval rulers, successful rulers and interesting in their own way, but not exceptional personalities.

o.k. rant over. Do not get me wrong, I am not dismissing modern scholarship. We certainly do not want to get back to the unfettered hero worship of Ernst Kantorowicz though I love quoting him and he is an amazing writer. Without recent publications in particular by Hubert Houben and Olaf Rader this podcast would be utterly lost. So thanks modern scholarship, could you. Just just stop trying to be controversial by making everyone samey!

And that gets us to the end of this episode. Next week we will resume the narrative. Time to go for another attempt at breaking these pesky northern Italian communes with an quick detour via Vienna and maybe we even get to the bit where young Enzo becomes king of Sardinia. I hope you will join us again next week.

Before I go, let me thank all of you who are supporting the show, in particular the Patrons who have kindly signed up on patreon.com/historyofthegermans. It is thanks to you this show does not have to do advertising for products you do not want to hear about. If Patreon isn’t for you, another way to help the show is sharing the podcast directly or boosting its recognition on social media. If you share, comment or retweet a post from the History of the Germans it is more likely to be seen by others, hence bringing in more listeners. My most active places are Twitter @germanshistory and my Facebook page History of the Germans Podcast. As always, all the links are in the show notes.

Episode 83 – The Court of Frederick II

by haradigital on 6th January 202611th March 2026

The Invention of the Sonnet and other tall tales

Near the town of Andria in Puglia rising from a rock that makes it visible for miles stands entirely on its own a stone structure we call the Castel del Monte. Its ground plan is unique, and like many other of the Emperor’s buildings it was probably sketched by Frederick himself: a regular octagon of yellowish limestone; its smooth perfectly-fitting blocks showing no joins and producing the effect of a monolith : at each of the eight corners a squat octagonal tower the height of the wall; two storeys identical in height, each containing eight large equal rooms, in the shape of a trapeze; an octagonal central courtyard adorned with antique sculptures and imitations of the antique, in the centre of which a large octagonal basin served as bath. Every fraction of the structure displays the mental make-up of the Hohenstaufen court: oriental massiveness of the whole, a portal foreshadowing the Renaissance, Gothic windows and rooms with groined and vaulted roofs. The defiant gloom of the tiny-windowed rooms was mitigated by the furnishings; the floors were of mosaic, the walls covered with sheets of reddish breccia or white marble, the groined vaults supported on pilasters with Corinthian capitals, or by delicate clustered columns of white marble. Majesty and grace were fused in one.

In this and the following episode we will look not at the emperor’s deeds but how he lived and what he did away from the world of power politics that made the English Chronicler Matthew Paris call him Stupor Mundi, the Wonder of the World.

History of the Germans

HotGPod is now entering its 9th season. So far we have covered:

Ottonian Emperors (# 1- 21)
– Henry the Fowler (#1)
– Otto I (#2-8)
– Otto II (#9-11)
– Otto II (#11-14)
– Henry II (#15-17)
– Germany in 1000 (#18-21)

Salian Emperors(#22-42)
– Konrad II (#22- 25)
– Henry III (#26-29)
– Henry IV/Canossa (#30-39)
– Henry V (#40-42)
– Concordat of Worms (#42)

Early Hohenstaufen (#43-69)
– Lothar III (#43-46)
– Konrad III (#47-49)
– Frederick Barbarossa (#50-69)

Late Hohenstaufen (#70-94)
– Henry VI (#70-72)
– Philipp of Swabia (#73-74)
– Otto IV (#74-75)
– Frederick II (#75-90)
– Epilogue (#91-94)

Eastern Expansion (#95-108)

The Hanseatic League (#109-127)

The Teutonic Knights (#128-137)

Of all that remains of Frederick II nothing epitomises the personality of the great emperor more than this building, which may have been a fortification or a hunting lodge or an enormous marble crown celebrating the concept of universal imperial power. In this and the following episode we will look not at the emperor’s deeds but how he lived and what he did away from the world of power politics that made the English Chronicler Matthew Paris call him Stupor Mundi, the Wonder of the World.

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So far I have:

Ep. 83: Frederick II (1196-1250) – Stupor Mundi – The Court of Frederick II

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 83 – The Court of Frederick II

I thought we start with what he looked like. And immediately the problems begin. There are as always with Frederick two narratives. The arab chronicler Sibt ibn al-Jawzi describes him as of reddish skin, bold and short sighted and adds that if he had been sold as a slave, he would not brought in more than 200 Dirham. Such biased descriptions are not uncommon during the time.

However, there seems to have been something about his height or lack thereof. Otto IV in one of his pamphlets declared that since Frederick was extremely small and hence either still a child or a dwarf, he was unsuited to rule in either case. Walther von der Vogelweide, now in service of Frederick turns the argument on its head and described Otto IV as physical large but mentally a gnome, whilst Frederick on its inner merits rose to be a giant. Not something you write about a man of medium or large stature.

So, he was short. How short? His son the unfortunate king Henry was found to have been just 1.66m or five foot four. Frederick’s bones are unfortunately jumbled up with king peter of Aragon and an unnamed lady, so we do not know for sure. Best guess is he was not much taller than his son. That was small even by the standards of the time. Charlemagne was 1.82 and Konrad well over 6 foot.

As for the reddish complexion, that is confirmed by many other chroniclers. It should not be surprising. His grandfather Barbarossa was famously ginger, as were some of his Norman ancestors. It is interesting how prevalent red hair was amongst royalty during the Middle Ages. Red hair had been associated with status and honour since the time of the ancient Greeks. Roman aristocratic ladies would die their tresses strawberry blond and a ginger mane became a sign of royal rank amongst the Merovingians. Hence it is not inconceivable that chroniclers would ascribe red hair to almost any ruler whose locks displayed even the slightest tinge of ginger.

But let us then assume he was short ginger.

He was likely physically fit. He spent his life criss-crossing his vast empire on horseback and was a commensurate hunter. Though he so far managed to achieve most of his successes without much deployment of military force, he was, like all rulers at the time expected to fight personally in battle, which meant he must have been constantly training.

His face was described even by the otherwise very critical Salimbene di Parma as beautiful and well proportioned. There are several images produced during or close to his lifetime, in particular the figure of the emperor above the gate of Capua and several images in illuminated manuscripts.

All show the emperor clean shaven like a Roman ruler of antiquity, so not wearing the kind of beard his grandfather and father had sported. His face is symmetrical as one would expect from a depiction created at or near his own court. What is striking about all his depictions is the openness of the face, the intelligent and curious expression that lurks behind the façade of imperial haughtiness. even though these were not meant to be portraits in the modern sense, they did however still convey something of the actual person.

So how did this not very tall, physically lean, attractive ginger live?

Let’s start with the where he did live. Like all his predecessors he spent most of his time moving from one location to the next. That was necessary largely because few locations could feed the entirety of the court apparatus for any extended period of time. We know from a partially preserved register of documents that his court comprised of around 200 personnel, musicians, dancers, cooks, servants etc. On top of that came the imperial chancery and the important court officials with their respective servants. Add to that the bishops, princes and nobles who came to court to seek justice, give advice to the emperor or simply enjoy the famous hospitality und you can easily get to 1000 or more individuals who all need food and shelter.

That being said, Frederick had one favourite residence, Foggia where he stayed over 40 times. Foggia is a sleepy town in northern Puglia. An archway with nice carvings is all that is left of the palace that once sported gardens with fountains and statues. Its interior was clad in marble and its roofs were held up by columns made from a green stone called Verde Antico. It was a like a palace from a thousand and one nights, distinctly oriental in its interplay between inside and outside and the use of water in the heat of Southern Italy. Frederick had antique statues brought down from Rome and Naples and displayed them in his palace in Foggia much like a renaissance prince would have done.

Part of the palace complex was an extended menagerie where the emperor kept his exotic animals, lions, leopards, camels, dromedaries, bears, apes and monkeys, parrots and lots and lots of different kinds of birds. The pride of place was given over to a giraffe, an animal not seen in Europe since the gladiatorial games of ancient Rome. At some point the polar bear he gifted to Sulatan al Kamil must have gone through there as well. As one would expect he also had an Elephant that carried a small turret where Frederick’s court musicians would play the trumpets to receive honoured guests. As we heard last week, some of his animals would accompany him on his campaigns as part of the display of imperial power over all the world and all that is in it.

What added to the exotic ambiance was the personnel. The palace guard was recruited mainly from the Muslim community of Lucera. Frederick employed a number of female dancers and acrobats. Matthew Paris describes what his patron Richard of Cornwall saw when he stayed at Foggia:

Quote: “Amongst other astonishing novelties, there was one which particularly excited his admiration and praise: two Saracen girls of handsome form, mounted upon four round balls placed upon the floor, namely, one of the two on two balls, and the other on the other two. They walked backwards and forwards, clapping their hands, moving at pleasure on these revolving globes, gesticulating with their arms, singing various tunes, and twisting their bodies according to the time, beating cymbals or castanets together with their hands, and putting their bodies into various amusing postures, affording with the other jugglers an admirable spectacle to the lookers-on.” (end quote)

There were also number of black slaves usually employed in menial tasks or as musicians. But there was also Jacobus Morus, who was the son of a female black slave. He rose to be the head of the imperial finances, was made a baron and under Frederick’s son became great chamberlain of the kingdom of Sicily. The famous statue in Magdeburg that depicts Saint Maurice as a black man may have been modelled on him.

This court that probably had more in common with Sultan al Kamil’s residence than with the royal assemblies his grandfather Barbarossa held at his palace in Gelnhausen comprised not just the dancers, jugglers and other entertainers.

The heart of it were the gatherings of Frederick with his family, his closest advisers and scholars of mathematics, astronomy, geography, zoology and many more.

Amongst the members of his family the court of Foggia was dominated not by his legitimate offspring, but by his chosen family, his sons from various dalliances and his mistress, Bianca Lancia.

Just to recap, Frederick had spent very little time with his official family. His wives had a habit of dying very quickly and were usually kept behind closed palace doors in the manner of many eastern courts. His sons he barely saw. We already heard about his eldest, Henry, the king in brackets and his sad demise. His next-oldest son, Konrad from his marriage to Isabelle of Brienne was born in 1227 and from the age of 9 also lived in Germany as elected but not crowned king of the Romans. Frederick’s marriage to Isabella of England produced 2 surviving children, Margaret born 1236 and Carlotto, later called Henry born 1238. These two were still children when his father died, which meant he probably spent little time with them either.

That is very different for his illegitimate children. Most of them grew up at their father’s court, had a close relationship with him and were involved in many of his political plans. We know of 12 in total though there were likely many more. We cannot go through all of them in detail, but three became prominent on the European stage.

The oldest was Enzo, born 1220. His name is an Italian version of Heinz, the German abbreviation of the name Heinrich. Frederick will have a total of 3 sons called Henry – not very imaginative and a nightmare for podcasters. Enzo came from a relationship with a Swabian noblewoman called Adelheid who may have been the girl Frederick had grown up with long ago in the castle of the duke of Spoleto. By many accounts he was his father’s favourite son, though that may have had something to do with him being older and hence more employable. Enzo was extremely handsome and blessed with a cheerful personality. His mane of blond hair left the ladies of Bologna swooning and – so the story goes – betrayed his attempt to escape from prison.

Then there is Frederick of Antioch, born 1226 whose mother is unknown to us. His sobriquet “of Antioch” suggests some link to the Holy Land, but what exactly, we do not know. He too shared his father’s passions and will be placed into important positions in the empire.

The third is Manfred, born 1232 who will rise the highest amongst the sons born outside wedlock. His mother was Bianca Lancia, the one woman we know more about.

Bianca Lancia came from a noble family in Piedmont. Her relatives held various positions within Frederick’s armies. Whether they introduced her, or she first met the emperor and then brought in her relatives is unclear. What the chroniclers all say though is that she was stunningly beautiful, though quite frankly have you ever heard of a royal mistress being described as plain?

The relationship between Bianca and Frederick seems to have started around 1227, i.e., during a period when Frederick was married to Isabella of Brienne. When the young bride had died giving birth to the future kin Konrad IV, Bianca could assume a more prominent position at court. That probably changed again when Frederick married Isabella of England in 1235.

We do not know when she died. The elder literature assumed she died before the marriage to Isabella of England, but modern historians date her death to after 1241. The logic for that is that Isabella of England had died in 1241 and two sources, including Matthew Paris state that Frederick married Bianca Lancia on her deathbed. In order to turn his children with Bianca into legitimate offspring.

We can be confident that this deathbed marriage actually took place since Bianca’s children Constance, Manfred and Violante married members of the high aristocracy including royal houses. If they had been bastards, that would have been most unlikely.

There are many myths about the love between Frederick and Bianca Lancia. In the 18^th century the vicar of the village church of Gioia del Colle, 40km south of Bari announced that he had found the grave of Bianca Lancia. The grave displayed the image of a lady with a child and an Eagle, the symbol of the emperor.

What added to the credibility of the grave was that in the night you could hear sighs and wailing in the ruins of the medieval tower of Gioia del Colle. Bianca we hear had been locked up in that tower by Frederick who had accused her of infidelity. She was pregnant with Manfred at the time and Frederick thought that a page was the real father. Once Bianca had given birth, she had her son brought to Frederick, together with her breasts she had cut off. Frederick instantly saw that he had been terribly mistaken and rushed to Gioia del Colle only to find Bianca bleeding to death and marrying her there. If you look closely at the tower’s ruins, you can see two breast shaped protrusions that appeared that night.

If that is not proof enough for you, The local confectionary sells purple sugar sweets called the Lacrime d’amore di Bianca Lancia alla Violetta.

Apart from Frederick’s patchwork family, the court also comprised the most important advisors to the emperor. His oldest and most constant supporter was Berard the archbishop of Palermo. He had been with Frederick when he went up to Germany as a teenager in 1212 to gain the imperial crown. It was Berard’s presence that convinced the bishop to open the gates of Constance just hours before Otto IV’s expected arrival, an event without which this season of the History of the Germans would have ended long ago.

His other confidant and adviser was Pietro della Vigna. Pietro had come from a modest background in Capua but managed to study in Bologna. He quickly gained the favour of the emperor who made him his secretary, the lord chief justice and finally chancellor. He had already been involved in the constitutions of Melfi but will play a major role in our story going forward.

Apart from these two there were more important functionaries of the state, some like Johann von Morra and Thomas and Rainald of Aquino we have already heard about and others, like Taddeo de Sessa and Richard of Caserta we will hear more about shortly.

These men were all chosen not for their aristocratic lineage but for merit. They were mostly lawyers, trained by the best universities. They were also intellectuals and poets.

Poetry and in particular the art of the Troubadours and Minnesaenger has literally exploded in the first half of the 13^th century. Whilst some of these singers were professional artists, more and more of them were knights, even counts, dukes, kings and emperors. Being able to put together a set of well-judged verses became almost as important as their ferrule strike. Across Europe this is seen as the beginning of the transition from vassal to courtier, a process of civilising the uncouth thugs into knights playing the lute below the maiden’s tower.

For Frederick’s court this does not apply 100%. The members of his court, even those who were knights, weren’t there as vassals but as Officiales, civil servants in other words. They were used to operate through diplomacy and negotiation rather than brute force. The motto that Frederick gave them was that “fame comes through knowledge, honour comes through fame and riches come through honour”. It was a court that rated brain over brawn. Let us not forget that their emperor had achieved most of his astounding victories so far without raising his sword.

These poets did not write and perform their love poetry to contain the rage within them, but for intellectual pleasure. And there was a close intersection between poetry and diplomacy. The chancellor Pietro de Vigna’s superpower was to write compelling circulars and open letters to the courts of Europe. His unique style of Latin merging bible quotes and ancient Roman literature into some highfalutin prose would be copied across chanceries throughout the europe of the Middle Ages. His quill had the power of an army of knights they said.

Pietro easily transferred these skills into writing romances in the Sicilian dialect of Italian, confessing eternal love to an unattainable courtly lady.

His colleague Rainald of Aquino, son of a count and trained knight develops an exhilarated style using maritime terms to woo his girl. It is not recorded whether his poems were successful but in my experience discussing the perfect jibe rarely quickens a girls heartbeat.

Like in Provence and Germany these poems were written and performed in the local language, in this case, the southern Italian dialect. We are gradually moving into a world where national languages squeeze out Latin as the language of culture and power. The chivalric poetry played an important role in the transition to German, the Langue d’OC and Provencal, later also to northern French.

In Italy, the Northern Italian cites and courts adopted the troubadour culture but did not use Italian. They preferred the Langue d’Oc of their western neighbours. Hence the court of Frederick II became the birthplace of the Italian language. Petrarch recalls, “in a very short time this type of poetry, which had been born amongst the Sicilians, spread throughout all Italy and beyond.” As late as Dante all non-Latin poetry in Italian was dubbed “Sicilian.”. Only with Dante who’s writing far exceeded the cheerful but somewhat vacuous songs of Frederick’s court does the development of the Italian language move to Tuscan.

In this context I can now paper over one of my mistakes. Last week I forgot to mention that the peace of Mainz of 1235 was published in both Latin and Middle High German, making it one of the earliest imperial proclamations in the common tongue.

Now though the poetry was a bit light-hearted and silly, it did bring one important innovation to European literature, the sonnet. It was one of the members of the circle of poets at the court, Giacomo da Lentini who first came up with the idea for a “little song” which is what sonnet means in Italian, that consists of 14 lines in a strict rhyme scheme. He may have been inspired by a type of Sicilian folk song. Sonnets were and are written in literally every European language and even in Urdu. They became the choice mode of expressing romantic love. Shakespeare wrote a mere 154 of them.

Given how successful Lentini’s invention was, it is sad that none of his poems remain in their original Sicilian language. They were converted into the Tuscan dialect in the 13^th century and adopted by, amongst others, Petrarch, who is still often ascribed the invention of the sonnet. Whilst poor Lentini is largely forgotten.

Frederick himself and his sons were taking part in these pursuits. There are poems attributed to Frederick himself and several to Enzo, Frederick of Antioch and Manfred. Whether they did write them themselves or had a bit of help like today’s techbros get from professional meme-writers, we will never know.

Poetry was not the only intellectual activity at Frederick’s court. Far from it. Frederick was a man of incessant appetite for knowledge. He was one of those rare people who find simply everything interesting and want to know more and more and more about it. His interests ranged from Astrology to Zoology.

So, unsurprisingly he owned a famed library. Books were revered luxury items and most emperors possessed them You may have seen the psalters of Otto III or Henry II. Henry the Lion had a particularly splendid exemplar designed to underpin his status as an almost royal magnate. Frederick too had Psalters as well as other liturgical texts including the so-called the Exulted role of Salerno which features some of the most stunning 13^th century illuminations. On one page it shows Frederick II amongst his court, an image I used in the artwork for episode 80.

Religious texts -as you may gather – made up only a part of his library. Amongst the secular literature he owned several versions of the Romance of Alexander, the most popular topic of the 13^th century. The Macedonian king Alexander had become the ideal knight whose conquests were always achieved through most chivalric deeds. Several versions exist, from the French knight Walter of Chatillon, from a priest in Naples, another from Lamprecht of Strassburg and then there is the Erec of Hartmann von Aue. Frederick most likely had copies of all of them, including the one written by Quilichinus a justice in Puglia who compared the emperor to the great Macedon hero. And there is one more, written by Rudolf von Ems for Frederick’s son, the unlucky Henry.

Another writer whose works Frederick possessed was Petrus of Eboli. He had written the Liber ad Honorem Augusti, all about the deeds of Henry VI which we quoted several times already. Petrus might have also written one about the life of Frederick II, thought that is sadly lost.

His third book is however the most interesting, it begins with “Nomines et virtutes balneaorum” of the names and benefits of the baths. The baths he mentions are those of Pozzuoli just north of Naples. Pozzuoli lies just across the bay from Baiae, the most luxurious of the ancient Roman spas that dotted the coast between Capua and Naples. It is here that emperor Caligula had a 2-mile-long floating bridge built so that he could ride across. Why did he do that? Because some astrologer had predicted that he had as much chance of becoming emperor as he could ride a horse across the bay of Baiea.

Southern Italy is where the tectonic plates of Africa and Eurasia rub against each other which gives us the sights of Stromboli, Etna, Vesuvius and last not least the 35 different hot springs of Pozzuoli. This book was some sort of spa guide, explaining which of the different baths one should use to achieve which medical outcome. His book became extremely popular and was translated into French and other vernacular languages. There were 12 editions in print between 1457 and 1607. Several original copies exist with beautiful miniatures showing men and women enjoying themselves in what seems to be the ruins of ancient Roman baths. At least one of those is likely to have been in Frederick’s possession. Some argue that the verses and miniatures had a purpose beyond guiding tourists. The depiction of the fallen ruins was meant to urge the emperor to rebuild its fallen glory. Frederick himself had used the baths when he recovered from the fever that forced him to abandon the crusade in 1227. But he never rebuilt them, and the springs disappeared in a volcanic eruption in 1538.

Do not worry, I will not go through the entire content of the imperial library, though I would love to. But let me mention one last set of books. They are by a man called Michael Scot, Michael the Scotsman. He was a translator, philosopher, medical doctor, alchemist, astrologer and according to Dante, a magician who practised in every slight of magic wile. In Dante’s hell he resides in the 8^th circle as a false prophet of the future with his head turned backwards on his shoulders.

It was probably when Frederick II visited Bologna on his coronation journey that he first met the most celebrated of all the scholars of his later court. Little is known with certainty about the Scottish scholar’s life. He began his career at Toledo, where he translated the Spherics of Alpetragius in 1217. Three years later he appears in Bologna, then was for some time in correspondence with the papal Curia, which recommended him to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and he probably came to Frederick about 1227. He had probably made Frederick’s acquaintance first at the same time that the Emperor had made friends with the mathematician, Leonardo of Pisa, better known to us as Fibonacci.

Innumerable marvellous and uncanny stories were current about him and the Emperor and can still be found in the novels and tales of the Romantics. The shuddering awe which Frederick II inspired was shared by his Court Astrologer, whom people called a “second Apollo.” They related that, knowing beforehand the manner of his own death, he always wore an iron cap, and that in spite of it he was killed by a falling stone, exactly as he had foretold. His death probably occurred in 1235 as he was accompanying the Emperor to Germany.

Michael Scot is credited with a considerably larger number of writings than he actually produced. It is, however, certain that he translated several of Aristotle’s most significant works from Arabic into Latin. De Caelo (about the Heavens) and De Anima (about the Soul) with the commentaries of Averroes, and also the Aristotelian zoological writings which Avicenna had grouped under the title of Liber animalium: Historiae animalium, De partibus animalium, and other treatises — nineteen books in all. This work was dedicated, like most of his others, to the Emperor. It introduced the Aristotelian zoology for the first time to the West. Master Henry of Cologne made a transcript of the Emperor’s copy in 1232, and this may well have been the copy used by Albertus Magnus.

Translations of the Physics and Metaphysics were also ascribed, probably incorrectly, to Michael Scot. His authorship of some obscure philosophical treatises such as the Quaestiones of Nicolas the Peripatetic and a Systematic Philosophy is more probable.

Michael Scot’s other role at court was that of astronomer and astrologer. Astronomy and astrology played an important part in court life and were considered one and the same. Michael Scot in his Liber Introductorius and his Liber Particularis compiled a wonderful encyclopaedia of the collective astronomical and astrological knowledge of his time. There is a copy of his book covered in fascinating drawings of the planets, some surprisingly accurate, others, like the ones depicting the location of hell and paradise a little less so.

An imperial library was not just a repository of books, it was a living thing. The books were not just for the emperor but for the members of the court and the scholars there. They would constantly annotate texts and find annotations to their annotations. Thereby new knowledge was incorporated as it appeared.

Frederick took some of his books on his campaigns which is how he lost his most splendid copy of the great Moamin, probably his greatest possession and the biggest loss to posterity.

What is the Moamin? Well that we will find out next week. As well as the other scientific endeavours of the emperor, some of which left him open to accusation of experimentation on humans. I hope you will join us again next week.

Episode 52 – The Honour of The Empire

by haradigital on 6th January 202619th February 2026

Bringing the broken Empire back together

This week we finally get our narrative going. Barbarossa will boost the honour of the empire by burning cities, hanging heretics, slaughtering rabble-rousing Romans and inventing the concept of the university.

History of the Germans

HotGPod is now entering its 9th season. So far we have covered:

Ottonian Emperors (# 1- 21)
– Henry the Fowler (#1)
– Otto I (#2-8)
– Otto II (#9-11)
– Otto II (#11-14)
– Henry II (#15-17)
– Germany in 1000 (#18-21)

Salian Emperors(#22-42)
– Konrad II (#22- 25)
– Henry III (#26-29)
– Henry IV/Canossa (#30-39)
– Henry V (#40-42)
– Concordat of Worms (#42)

Early Hohenstaufen (#43-69)
– Lothar III (#43-46)
– Konrad III (#47-49)
– Frederick Barbarossa (#50-69)

Late Hohenstaufen (#70-94)
– Henry VI (#70-72)
– Philipp of Swabia (#73-74)
– Otto IV (#74-75)
– Frederick II (#75-90)
– Epilogue (#91-94)

Eastern Expansion (#95-108)

The Hanseatic League (#109-127)

The Teutonic Knights (#128-137)

Ep. 52: Frederick Barbarossa (1152-1190) – Unification of the Empire – The Honour of the Empire

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans – Episode 52 The Honour of The Empire

Last week we talked, amongst other things, about this new generation of princes who surrounded Barbarossa. These young men – and I am afraid they were all men – had a very different outlook from their forefathers. They saw the provincial kings of France and England rising up in the world whilst their ruler Conrad III could not even acquire the imperial crown, let alone be the universal monarch his title made him out to be.

The weakness of the king reflected the weakness of the empire and that by extension meant that they, the princes as branches of the empire appeared weak. The sources talk a lot about the honour of the empire, or honoris imperii in Latin as the key motivation in Barbarossa’s reign. What that is exactly is much in dispute. And Barbarossa and his princes who did not speak Latin would not have used that word anyway.

In broad terms it is something between respect and authority. Honour is diminished when imperial orders are disregarded or when someone, usually the pope claims to rank above the emperor. In a governance system with zero institutions, how can an emperor make sure his orders are implemented and nobody contests your status?. Conrad III and Lothar III before him thought that the only way to make people do what you want was brute force. Burn their castles and massacre their peasants until they obey.

Barbarossa and his circle are different. They believe that the emperor by force of his office, his personality and his honour is to be obeyed, as long as he is a just lord. And Barbarossa made sure he was a just lord by delegating all major decisions to a court of the princes. The princes were then bound to uphold the honour of the empire by enforcing that decision. And if the emperor encounters resistance in implementing the decision, it is not just his authority and standing that is at risk, but the honour of the empire as a whole and that of each individual prince as well.

If you listen carefully, you can hear echoes of Otto von Northeim’s speech in 1073 where he attacked emperor Henry IV: “As long as he was a king to me and acted royally, I also kept the oath I swore to him freely and faithfully; but after he ceased to be a king, the one to whom I had to keep loyalty was no longer there”.

And the first thing the honour of the Reich demanded was for Barbarossa to be crowned emperor in Rome. With the empire north of the Alps largely at peace an expedition to Rome was a much easier proposition than it had been for Conrad III just 2 years earlier.

In preparation of the journey negotiations with pope Eugene III began that will end in the treaty of Constance. This is again another indication how the balance of power between popes and emperors have shifted in the last century. A little more than 100 years earlier Barbarossa’s great, great grandfather Henry III had journeyed to Rome not even knowing who exactly the current pope was and, when he had doubts about the validity of the one who presented himself, he had all three contenders to the papacy deposed and a new one put in place. Now, the emperor has to negotiate terms with the pope. Delegations moved back and forth between Germany and whichever small town the pope currently resided at to find an agreement.

The terms of this agreement can be summarised as follows:

Barbarossa shall not make peace with either the Roman commune or the Sicilians without the consent of the pope. The emperor is to make best efforts to subject the Romans to the pope and the holy mother church.
The emperor as advocate of the church was to preserve and defend the papacy and all their legal rights.
The emperor promises not cede any land in Southern Italy to the “King of the Greeks” which was to mean emperor Manuel in Constantinople and should Manuel invade both Pope and emperor would combine their forces to throw him out.
The pope on his part would crown him emperor and would help him in accordance with his duty to the papal office to maintain, increase and expand the honour of his realm.
And finally, the pope promises to warn, and if necessary, excommunicate anyone who dared to trample underfoot or overturn the imperial honour.

Many a tree have been felled and carbon pigment expanded on the question who got one over the other in this agreement. Given that opinion is split almost exactly 50/50 it must have been one of those compromises that left either side believing they got what they wanted until they find out that they did not.

And even if Barbarossa had signed a bad treaty, he still benefitted by calling in the papal obligations first and leaving his own commitments for later..

Pope Eugenius III had already made a number of decisions in Barbarossa’s favour even before ethe ink was dry. First up he deposed the archbishop of Mainz, who you may remember was the only significant elector who had opposed Barbarossa at his elevation. And secondly the pope annulled his marriage to Adela of Vohburg. Barbarossa had no particular liking for his first wife that had been chosen for him by Conrad III. But more importantly, her political usefulness had vanished when her father had died, and even more problematic the couple had no children. A few monks were assembled to go through the rickety Staufer family tree and unsurprisingly, they found a common great, great grandmother and bingo, the marriage was annulled for consanguinity.

Barbarossa used his newly acquired status as bachelor to paper over the most explosive clause in the treaty of Constance, the promise to expel emperor Manuel should he show up in Southern Italy. That would be a big shift in Staufer policy towards Constantinople.

You may remember that Conrad III had maintained a close alliance with Manuel who had cared for him when he had been injured in the Second Crusade. Conrad promised him parts of Puglia as part of a marriage alliance and even received vast amounts of cash to fund a campaign in Italy in 1149.

As you may have heard on the History of Byzantium, Manuel’s #1 political objective was to weaken the king of Sicily and regaining a foothold in Southern Italy and for that he was counting on Stauffer support

It is unclear whether Manuel knew about the clauses in the treaty of Constance but it is not likely that Barbarossa had told him What Barbarossa did Instead of announcing his U-turn was to send envoys asking the Vasilev for the hand of his daughter, the beautiful, purple born Maria. That must have been a ruse to string the Byzantine emperor along. Barbarossa needed his coronation more than any amount of Greek gold and that meant he had to honour the treaty of Constance, at least until he had done the business in St. Peter. But after that, who knows. It is worthwhile to keep the communication channels open.

So far, so good. We have a calm Germany, an invitation to Rome from the pope and we have kept the emperor in Constantinople at bay.

Two more things need to be looked at before the horses can be saddled.

The first is the Commune of Rome. As I mentioned before, the Roman population had increasingly enough of the popes and cardinals in their midst. By 1153 they had become full on radicals. A charismatic preacher named Arnald of Brescia had appeared. Arnald’s key message was that the church should be giving up all the trappings of worldly power and revert back to the life of ascetic preachers. Somehow this did not go down well with the mighty cardinals and confrontation led to the expulsion of the papal court. The commune began to restyle itself as the ancient Roman republic. It formed a senate and elected two consuls.

The old sign SPQR, the Senate and the People of Rome that was once carried before the victorious legions that subdued the known world re-emerged for the first time in 500 years and with it delusions of grandeur. Just as an aside, it is still in use, mainly to grace manhole covers. They had already written to Conrad III and offered to crown him emperor. That letter was at least deferential and polite. The letter Barbarossa received in 1153 was anything but. The writer made it clear that if Barbarossa did not come down pronto, something bad would happen. I guess that is not a way to talk to someone who rates his own honour above everything else. Being threatened by some shoeless rabblerouser was just the thing to make the imperial blood boil. The Roman communal leaders were sent home with some choice words and now Barbarossa had his own reason to go to Rome and tell these jumped-up plebeians what is what.

But these were not the only plebeians asking for imperial support. As Barbarossa was holding court in Constance and putting the finishing touches on the eponymous treaty, two citizens of the town of Lodi in Lombardy happened to travel through and, seeing the line of petitioners waiting for the king, joined in to tell of their plight.

Lodi lies 30 km south of Milan and had come into conflict with the mighty metropolis. Milan was not only the largest and most powerful of the communes in Lombardy, it also did not like competition. And Lodi was though small, still a competitor. So the army of Milan came and razed old Lodi to the ground, removed all fortifications and forced the inhabitants to move into undefended villages nearby. After this catastrophe the Lodese began rebuilding their shattered lives. They set up a new market in a field near the main road and things were slowly improving. But even a small market was unacceptable to the Milanese and they shut that down too.

Barbarossa heard their plight and – without hearing the other side – wrote a harsh letter to the consuls of Milan ordering them to allow the market of Lodi to reopen. One of his Ministeriales, a man called Sicher was dispatched to Milan with the document bearing the imperial seal. Sicher first came to Lodi to tell the population what the emperor had decided. Instead of rejoicing, the citizens panicked. It is all good for some potentate from north of the alps to make some ruling, but nobody had seen an emperor in Italy for 15 years and the Milanese cavalry could be down here in half a day to burn the miserable huts they were living in now. They begged Sicher to go back home and forget about everything, but the poor man did not dare to disobey his master. He went to Milan and the Consuls had the letter read out in a public assembly. That did not go down well. Not only did the Milanese refuse to obey, they tore the order to shreds and Horror of horrors trampled on the imperial seal. Even the hapless ambassador had to flee for his life.

Barbarossa’s honour demands that he comes to Milan and makes the city obey him. Not just Barbarossa’s honour, it is the honour of the realm as a whole that is at stake.

By October 1154 Barbarossa’s journey to Rome finally sets off from Augsburg. He is in great company and many of the new generation princes are with him. Henry the Lion, Berthold von Zaehringen and his bannerman, Otto von Wittelsbach, count palatinate of Bavaria. But his army is quite small. Just 1,800 armoured knights. The king may have brought peace to the realm, but not everyone trusts it will hold when the king is down in Italy and, as we all know it is dangerous down there. Many of the old hands prefer to stay home and see what happens.

The army crosses the Brenner pass and after burning a castle belonging to the city of Verona and hanging its defenders, meanders its way down to the fields of Roncaglia. These fields are a flat area outside the city of Piacenza extremely suitable for royal assemblies in Italy.

By the 12^th century Italy is fundamentally different from the empire north of the alps. A German royal assembly is family gathering of aristocrats that can take place in an episcopal palace or imperial Pfalz. Northern Italy has barely any major feudal lords left.

During the last 150 years the emperors have spent a total of just 22 years in Northern Italy, leaving the place without central authority for long stretches of time. And that is particularly true during the last eighty years of civil war. In the interim the city governments have first taken over all the secular powers of their bishops and subsequently conquered the lands outside their walls. The local lords were made to either flee or integrate into city society so that the area surrounding the cities, the so-called Contado had been cleared of castellans.

And then all these Cities whose Contado share a border tend to be constantly at war. The political map of Northern Italy looks a bit like a chessboard. If you are a city on a white square, you are at war with all the cities on the black squares next to you and you are allies with the ones on the white squares.

Hence, if an assembly would take place in a particular city, half the participants would be on enemy territory. So, the only place where representatives of all these cities can meet without fear of being captured and murdered is an open field – the field of Roncaglia.

This first of Barbarossa’s royal assemblies is a great success. Nearly all the cities of Italy have sent representatives. Most cities have paid the Fodrum, a traditional tax paid when the emperor is in Italy. Some cities go further. Genoa brought him lions, ostriches and parrots they had captured from the Muslims in Spain. Pisa too brough expensive gifts.

The main point of the Meeting was however not to gather trinkets, but to let the Italian subjects of the empire know that the king is back. Barbarossa main concern was the size of his army. So he passed laws that required the cities and vassals such as they were to provide military support upon request. He also banned the sale of fiefs as that would circumvent the ability to call for military service. And he set financial compensation levels for vassals who were unable to attend in person.

And then he began dispensing justice. He ordered the cities of Pavia and Tortona to make peace and exchange their captives from the recent war. Chieri and Asti were admonished for insubordination and their complete destruction ordered. And Lodi was re-established. The Milanese had realised that this emperor was actually coming down to Italy and that he could make things quite uncomfortable. So, they offered an enormous sum, 4,000 pounds of silver and a promise to rebuild Lodi and Como to make amends.

Business concluded the next step was to be crowned king of Italy. To do that he chose the small city of Monza where Conrad III had been crowned. Presumably he did not want to do it in Pavia as was customary since Pavia and Milan were hostile to each other and going to Pavia would make the lovely 4000 pound of silver disappear.

The two consuls of Milan had offered to lead the army from Roncaglia to Monza and Barbarossa was happy to accept this generous offer from his new friends. All this business with the trampled seal was it seems forgotten. But the consuls led the army through a part of the country that had recently been completely destroyed in a war between Milan and Pavia. Lack of food and pouring rain made the journey an utter misery. Barbarossa is getting really angry now. He sends the two consuls home and asks them to come back with food and to open a market where his troops can revittal. But no food, no market appears.

That is the end of the reconciliation with Milan. When they come back with their four thousand pounds of silver, he sends them packing. He takes his army and plunders the lands of Milan for a while. But his forces are far too small to attack the great metropolis itself. Then he moves to Piedmont to raze Chieri and Asti to the ground as promised.

Finally, he begins to point the army in the direction of where he actually wants to go, Rome. On the way there he comes past the city of Tortona, an ally of Milan. When Tortona does not obey his demands to give satisfaction to Pavia, he loses the plot. His army may be far too small to attack Milan, but his honour demands some punishment, and that punishment will be borne by Milan’s ally, Tortona. He besieges the city for two months, two months the Tortonese were waiting for help from Milan that never came. Tortona’s citadel sits on a steep hill overlooking the city and is a hard nut to crack. Though Barbarossa’s allies, the city of Pavia bring siege engines and ruthlessness, but progress is slow. And it is brutal. Any defenders they capture are being hanged at large gallows within sight of the city walls.

The city has one vulnerability. Water supply is from just one well outside the main citadel. Barbarossa’s troops manage to at least temporarily capture the well, long enough to throw carcasses of animals and humans into the well. After that the city surrenders. Barbarossa allows the defenders to leave but once they are gone, he has the city burned to the ground.

It had all gone off to such a good start but look at it now. The Italians are used to brutal warfare. Milan had razed Lodi, Como and Novara to the ground and the others weren’t shy either. But taking sides against Milan so openly and consistently will make it hard to be the impartial arbiter of the city disputes he would like to be.

And as if he needed to make it any clearer whose side he was on, he has himself crowned in Pavia after all.

Time to go south and regroup. And en-route he does a good deed, if not a great deed. In May 1155 he finds himself outside Bologna. Bologna has by now become famous as a place of great learning, in particular its school of law. Its founder, Irnerius had resurrected the Codex Juris Civilis, the law book of emperor Justinian who had ruled 527-565. This was a comprehensive codex of the entirety of existent law in the Roman empire and far, far advanced to the Germanic law texts in force at the time. Irnerius had founded his school in 1050s and by the time of Barbarossa’s visit there were students from all over Europe getting trained in Roman law. But their legal status in the city of Bologna was precarious. In particular the city had made all students from a particular area, say the French or the Burgundians liable for any debt incurred by one of their number. Students weren’t good with money and judging by my own experience still aren’t. And on top of that the typical antagonism between town and gown was already in full swing. Barbarossa took the side of the university and put students and lecturers formally under imperial protection. They are only liable for their own debt, and they should only be judged by their magisters or the local bishop. Not by the city court. This ruling, the Authentica Habita was to be included in the Codex Juris Civilis which made it applicable all throughout Europe. This rule created the model of the independent university that still exists, even if students are now subject to local laws and courts. So, there was something really good in all that bloodshed.

It is now June and as we all know that means time is running out. Rome is already dangerous but in a few weeks it will be a hotbed of disease. All that wandering up and down in Lombardy and the siege of Tortona had cost too much time.

On June 8^th do the new pope Hadrian IV and Barbarossa finally meet. Pope Eugenius III had died in 1153, his successor lasted a year, and now it was Hadrian IV, Nicholas Breakspear from Hertfordshire, the only English pope in history. Hadrian was an energetic and competent man with a long list of problems. The first one was to make sure that Frederick Barbarossa was a good son of the church and sticking to the treaty of Constance.

On that count things were off to a bad start. As the pope arrived in the imperial camp near Sutri he expected the new emperor to perform the service of Strator and Marshall as Lothar III had done. These ceremonial services involve the emperor welcoming the pope at least a stone’s throw from his accommodation, leading his horse to the entrance and then holding the papal stirrup as the pope descends. What exactly went wrong here is unclear. Either Barbarossa outright refused or did it wrongly, sloppily or sourly. In any event, once the pope had descended from his horse and sat down on his chair, he refused the kiss of peace, and all hell broke loose.

Why Barbarossa was unwilling to perform the act has been disputed. The older view was that these services would make him look like a vassal of the pope. And hence his honour would not allow that. Modern historians believe it was a misunderstanding of sorts, which would mean that this was one of the few displays not meticulously planned beforehand.

Anyway, the parties leave without further conversation. The pope insists the ceremony is repeated as that this was an ancient ceremony performed by all emperors in the past. As far as I can see that is untrue. The first emperor to perform this service was Lothar III and it had bad consequences if you remember episode 44.

Barbarossa’s archivists were however not as well versed with their history to refute the papal claims and – as time was running out – 24 hours later Barbarossa repeated the whole procedure and this time did as he was told. The relationship was off to a very bad start.

Pope and Emperor then progressed to Rome where papal authority was limited pretty much to the right bank of Tiber, the Vatican city. The main city was held by the Senate and People of Rome. One thing Hadrian had achieved though was getting Arnold of Brescia expelled from the city when he threatened an interdict. The senate complied and Arnold was tried as a heretic. After the utterly unsurprising verdict, he was handed over to Barbarossa who had him hanged, his body burned and his ashes thrown in the Tiber, so as not to leave a place for his followers to remember him. Whether that endeared the citizens to Barbarossa is unclear.

They did come up to him though and offered to crown him if he would pay 5000 pounds of silver for the privilege. Again, not really a compelling offer even if Barbarossa did not really got on with Hadrian IV. This delegation however meant something was up. Just to be on the safe side Barbarossa deployed a thousand men to hold the leonine walls and block the bridge across the Tiber by St. Angelo.

The next day was a Saturday and coronations normally take place on Sundays. Or so the Romans thought. Hadrian and Barbarossa had decided that to avoid any more trouble, best thing to do was to pull the coronation forward to Saturday.

The emperor arrives surrounded by armed guards at the church of St. Maria in Turri just outside old St. Peter and offers the traditional coronation oath. The pope asks him whether he wants to be a faithful son of the church and he answers three times, that yes he will. The pope now covers him with his mantle and the emperor kisses his chest.

Pope and emperor then enter the atrium of St. Peter through the silver gate where prayers are spoken, then more prayers as he reaches the rota, the giant circular plate of red marble that is still at the entrance of St. Peter. And finally, he is anointed in front of the relics of St. Peter. During the mass Hadrian hands him the sword and sceptre and finally places the crown on his head.

At that the congregation shouts and screams with joy, so loud one might have thought a tremendous thunder had fallen from the sky. And that is what the Romans hear on the other side of the Tiber.

Whilst the emperor returns to his camp and sits down for a great celebratory feast, the Romans are coming out armed to the teeth and angry. They may have still hoped to get their 5000 pound of silver for the coronation or at least some recognition. And what then follows is a brutal massacre. The civilians in Rome have no chance against the battle-hardened knights even if they had not put on their armour. A thousand Romans were killed, 200 captured and – according to the imperial chroniclers, only one of theirs was harmed.

It might have been a great victory, but it also made the position of both pope and emperor in the Holy city untenable. Leaving behind the stench of rotting flesh the two heads of Christendom travelled to Tivoli and then onwards to Spoleto. This journey did not improve imperial papal relations. Wherever they went questions arose about who was who’s vassal, which rights were to be granted by who and just generally who was in charge here. The party arrived at the abbey of Farfa, an imperial abbey since time immemorial and subject to so many imperial charters I used to jump over them every time I saw one – ahh Farfa again. But by 1155 the pope was utterly convinced the abbey was now his if only for the fact that no emperor had shown his face there for half a century. All these unresolved issues weren’t really crucial but they constantly implied that either party failed to recognise the honour and status of the other and gradually eroded the alliance the two sides had formed under the treaty of Constance.

The cities along the way are asked to pay the Fodrum, the tax owed to a passing emperor. Spoleto thought they could fool the emperor and paid him in worthless copper coins. They had hoped they get away with it because they held one of Barbarossa’s followers, a count Guido in their power. That did not go down well, in particular not the imprisonment of an imperial envoy and so Spoleto was besieged, captured and burned. For the next two days the army plundered Spoleto during daytime but stayed in their camp during the night as the smell of burning flesh was overpowering.

This may all be sort of profitable for the soldiers, but it did not really do much for the actual military objectives. Barbarossa had promised the pope to overcome the Roman Commune and to break the hold of the Normans on Southern Italy. As for part one, that had already failed, leaving objective #2.

There were some promising signs for a successful campaign. The great king Roger II had died in 1154 and his son William I was struggling to gain control, in particular over the rebellious feudal lords on the mainland. He and his chief minister Maio of Bari were pushing for ever more centralisation of the government and squeezed the barons out of positions of power. No wonder they called him William the Bad.

This discontent could have provided the opportunity for Frederick to deliver against his promise in Constance. Very much like in Lothar III’s day the barons of Puglia were ready to rise up and the cities were happy to join.

And another advantage was at hand. Emperor Manuel had sent two of his best generals, Michael Paleologos and John Doukas with a small army and a big chunk of cash to Ancona. They were to team up with Frederick and capture Puglia. For several days the two sides negotiate but in the end there is no deal. Two things are stopping Frederick.

The first was the treaty of Constance. Barbarossa had promised the pope not to make an agreement with Manuel that would give the Byzantines control over Puglia or other parts of Italy. And that would have been the demand from Constantinople. These guys were not handing over fine gold just out of the goodness of their hearts. Doing a deal without papal consent would have caused a lot of friction in the already difficult relationship with the pope.

He may have taken the risk if the chances of success would have been high enough. The Byzantines had brought only a small army to add to Barbarossa’s already modest forces. And it is now the height of summer and his vassals have already made clear that they are not keen on a campaign in Southern Italy – again, the same scenario as 17 years earlier when the German princes ended Lothar III’s campaign.

Barbarossa puts all this in the too hard box and decides to go home. The alliance with Byzantium is now dead as is his chance to marry a gorgeous, purple born Greek princess. Palaeologus and Doukas go it alone and have some initial success. They even capture Bari. In the process they drive a final nail in the coffin of germane/byzantine relations by showing letters bearing Barbarossa’s signature that purport a transfer of ownership of Puglia to the Vasilev. These may either be fake or being used without consent. In the end the byzantine endeavour fails, their small army perishes, and the two generals die manfully in battle.

As for Barbarossa, his return home also allowed for true heroism. As the army was about to leave Italy they had to pass Verona, a city whose castles they had sacked on the way down and whose citizens were none too happy to see them coming up again. They did provide a bridge across the river Adige or Etsch in German outside the town for the army to cross but otherwise stayed behind their walls.

The army followed the Etsch for about 25 km from Verona and reached the Chiusa di Verona or Veroneser Klause where the river valley narrows with steep mountains on both sides. And that is where the Veronese had decided to trap the army. They blocked the exit and entrance with large boulders and their archers shot at the advance guard of the army. There was no way out. To the left the ice-cold fast flowing river Etch, ahead and behind well defended enemy positions and to the right, the sheer cliff of the Chiusa de Verona.

The enemy’s demands were not political but purely financial. They required that every knight including the emperor himself was to hand over their armour, their horses and their weapons. This was totally unacceptable. Imagine the emperor returns from his trip to Italy with barely the clothes on his back. His rule would have ended even more ignominiously than Conrad III.

But it did not. If you want to see a great depiction of how he got out of this cliff hanger, you have to go to Munich. There in the gardens of the royal residence, the Hofgarten a 19^th century painter depicted the most glorious moments in the history of the House of Wittelsbach the Kings of Bavaria. And that cycle of frescoes starts with Otto von Wittelsbach in the Veroneser Klause. Otto was an accomplished warrior and he and his Bavarian knights were also skilled climbers. In the night, unseen by their enemies 200 of the brave Bavarians scaled the sheer cliff carrying their weapons and their armour. No ropes, no harness,, no crampons, just straight up the wall. As the sun rose, they planted the imperial banner and with wild screaming descended upon the thieving Veronese. At the same time Barbarossa and his men attacked them from the front. In less than an hour the opponents sued for mercy, but none was forthcoming. They weren’t real combatants, they were robbers after monetary gain, not knights fighting for glory. Barbarossa had all those who survived hanged alongside the road.

And so ended the first of Barbarossa’s journeys to Italy. He had achieved his main objective, he had received the imperial crown, but he had not achieved much else. His relationship with the pope was on the rocks since he neither cleared out the Roman commune nor defeated the king of Sicily. His alliance with emperor Manuel in Constantinople was now permanently dissolved. The Northern Italian cities remember him for the brutal siege of Tortona, the destruction of Chieri, Asti and Spoleto and the hanging of so many.

As he heads back, one idea takes hold of his mind. Italy was so immensely rich, so much richer than Germany that if he were able to establish a permanent rule over Italy he would be truly as powerful as his great predecessors Otto the Great and Charlemagne. He must also have realised that the two biggest issues he had faced were the small size of his army and the unreliability of his vassals who wanted to go home just when things had become interesting.

Fighting for the honour of the empire was a motivator for many of the younger princes, but it seems not for enough for all. Next time he needs to come with more men and stay for longer and to do that his governance model needs a tweak. What that is and how he fares on his next round we will find out next week. Hope to see you then.

And in the meantime, if you want to get deeper into the Byzantine side of the Mediterranean conflicts, I strongly recommend the History of Byzantium by Robin Pierson who you have heard in the introduction. Robin has been tracing the Eastern Empire since 2012 and I have been following him ever since he started. His in-depth knowledge of the subject and ability to distil the most important facts makes listening to his podcast such a joy. Our narratives are currently almost in parallel, so if you want to get the Byzantine perspective on The alliance between Manuel and Barbarossa check out his episode 235.. I cannot recommend that enough.

Episode 25 – Speyer Cathedral

by haradigital on 6th January 202619th February 2026

Konrad II builds the largest Church in Europe

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

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

History of the Germans

HotGPod is now entering its 9th season. So far we have covered:

Ottonian Emperors (# 1- 21)
– Henry the Fowler (#1)
– Otto I (#2-8)
– Otto II (#9-11)
– Otto II (#11-14)
– Henry II (#15-17)
– Germany in 1000 (#18-21)

Salian Emperors(#22-42)
– Konrad II (#22- 25)
– Henry III (#26-29)
– Henry IV/Canossa (#30-39)
– Henry V (#40-42)
– Concordat of Worms (#42)

Early Hohenstaufen (#43-69)
– Lothar III (#43-46)
– Konrad III (#47-49)
– Frederick Barbarossa (#50-69)

Late Hohenstaufen (#70-94)
– Henry VI (#70-72)
– Philipp of Swabia (#73-74)
– Otto IV (#74-75)
– Frederick II (#75-90)
– Epilogue (#91-94)

Eastern Expansion (#95-108)

The Hanseatic League (#109-127)

The Teutonic Knights (#128-137)

As always:

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So far I have:

Ep. 25: Speyer Cathedral – Konrad II builds the Largest Church in Europe

Transcript

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Episode 23 – Duke Ernst Rebel and Legend

by haradigital on 6th January 202619th February 2026

A Medieval Story about Loyalty and Friendship

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

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

History of the Germans

HotGPod is now entering its 9th season. So far we have covered:

Ottonian Emperors (# 1- 21)
– Henry the Fowler (#1)
– Otto I (#2-8)
– Otto II (#9-11)
– Otto II (#11-14)
– Henry II (#15-17)
– Germany in 1000 (#18-21)

Salian Emperors(#22-42)
– Konrad II (#22- 25)
– Henry III (#26-29)
– Henry IV/Canossa (#30-39)
– Henry V (#40-42)
– Concordat of Worms (#42)

Early Hohenstaufen (#43-69)
– Lothar III (#43-46)
– Konrad III (#47-49)
– Frederick Barbarossa (#50-69)

Late Hohenstaufen (#70-94)
– Henry VI (#70-72)
– Philipp of Swabia (#73-74)
– Otto IV (#74-75)
– Frederick II (#75-90)
– Epilogue (#91-94)

Eastern Expansion (#95-108)

The Hanseatic League (#109-127)

The Teutonic Knights (#128-137)

As always:

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So far I have:

Ep. 23: Konrad II (1024-1039) – Duke Ernst, Rebel and Legend

Transcript

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That is what the legend says.

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

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

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

Episode 19 – Henry II, the House of God

by haradigital on 6th January 202619th February 2026

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.

History of the Germans

HotGPod is now entering its 9th season. So far we have covered:

Ottonian Emperors (# 1- 21)
– Henry the Fowler (#1)
– Otto I (#2-8)
– Otto II (#9-11)
– Otto II (#11-14)
– Henry II (#15-17)
– Germany in 1000 (#18-21)

Salian Emperors(#22-42)
– Konrad II (#22- 25)
– Henry III (#26-29)
– Henry IV/Canossa (#30-39)
– Henry V (#40-42)
– Concordat of Worms (#42)

Early Hohenstaufen (#43-69)
– Lothar III (#43-46)
– Konrad III (#47-49)
– Frederick Barbarossa (#50-69)

Late Hohenstaufen (#70-94)
– Henry VI (#70-72)
– Philipp of Swabia (#73-74)
– Otto IV (#74-75)
– Frederick II (#75-90)
– Epilogue (#91-94)

Eastern Expansion (#95-108)

The Hanseatic League (#109-127)

The Teutonic Knights (#128-137)

To understand Henry II you have to start at the end. When he died, he had made no succession plan whatsoever. He was convinced that he had moulded the kingdom into a House of god run by pious monks and observant bishops. If the House of God pleased the lord, he would appoint a new successor, and if not, well the good riddance.

Though his policy of strengthening and dominating the church could be looked at as a political ploy to expand the royal prerogative, the more likely truth is that it was only a side effect of Henry’s spiritual mission.

The actions of early medieval monarchs often appear alien to us, and none more so than Henry II.

As always:

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Ep. 19: Henry II (1002-1024) – The House of God

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.

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.

Episode 202 – Arms and Armour

by History of the Germans Podcast on 16th August 202525th February 2026

How Germany became the centre of the most advanced industry of its day

In 1550 Spanish court records show that the Augsburg armorer Kolman Helmschmied was paid an advance of 2,000 ducats for a full armour for king Philipp II. The final price for this piece was 3,000 ducats. At the same time Raphael could charge at max 170 ducats for an altarpiece. Even the Renaissances’ best paid artist, Michelangelo received just 3,000 gold florins for the painting of the ceiling of the Sistine chapel. Armour, along with tapestries, were the most valuable artworks of the 15^th and 16^th century.

That was just one set of armour made for the most powerful monarch of the time. But what about the thousands of soldiers he commanded, did they have armour? Oh yes they did. Not quite as sophisticated and certainly not as decorated, but they did. And where did these thousands of helmets and breast and back plates come from? From the same places where their prince’s fancy metalwork came from, from Nürnberg and Augsburg. Their swords came from Passau and Solingen and their firearms from Suhl.

How come these mostly southern Germn cities became the armories of Europe whose output clad the armies that fought the never-ending wars of the 15^th, 16^th and 17^th century? How did they supersede Milan, the centre of weapons production in the preceding century in terms of quality, scale and availability, and create a tradition of metalworking and entrepreneurship that lasts until today?

That is what we will look at in this episode.

History of the Germans

HotGPod is now entering its 9th season. So far we have covered:

Ottonian Emperors (# 1- 21)
– Henry the Fowler (#1)
– Otto I (#2-8)
– Otto II (#9-11)
– Otto II (#11-14)
– Henry II (#15-17)
– Germany in 1000 (#18-21)

Salian Emperors(#22-42)
– Konrad II (#22- 25)
– Henry III (#26-29)
– Henry IV/Canossa (#30-39)
– Henry V (#40-42)
– Concordat of Worms (#42)

Early Hohenstaufen (#43-69)
– Lothar III (#43-46)
– Konrad III (#47-49)
– Frederick Barbarossa (#50-69)

Late Hohenstaufen (#70-94)
– Henry VI (#70-72)
– Philipp of Swabia (#73-74)
– Otto IV (#74-75)
– Frederick II (#75-90)
– Epilogue (#91-94)

Eastern Expansion (#95-108)

The Hanseatic League (#109-127)

The Teutonic Knights (#128-137)

How come these mostly southern Germn cities became the armories of Europe whose output clad the armies that fought the never-ending wars of the 15th, 16th and 17th century? How did they supersede Milan, the centre of weapons production in the preceding century in terms of quality, scale and availability, and create a tradition of metalworking and entrepreneurship that lasts until today?

That is what we will look at in this episode.

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Transcript

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 202 – Arms and Armour which is also episode 17 of Season 10 “the Empire in the 15^Th Century”.

That is what we will look at in this episode.

But before we start the usual thanks to our great patrons whose unwavering commitment keeps this show advertising free. And you too could bask in the soft glow of the appreciation of your fellow listeners by signing up on historyofthegermans.com/support. This week we send our warm regards to Pete H., David S., Annette F, Luis, Louis, Daniel, Stephen G. and Christian G., , , who have already done so.ardy, whose upcoming book you can find in the book recommendations, and Eamon M., whose generous help at historyofthegermans.com/support keeps the enjoyment coming.

And with that back to the show

I am approaching this episode with no small amount of trepidation. I know that several of you have a strong interest in arms, armor and fighting technique. And some are taking their passion so far as to learn and apply these techniques in real life as y kids would say. In other words, there are some serious experts here who will catch me out mercilessly when I am getting things wrong.

I on the other hand cannot really distinguish between a rapier and a broadsword. My interest in the topic of arms and armor is purely from a history and economic history perspective. So. if you are looking for a deep dive into the different types of armor and weapons, how exactly they are used, you will be disappointed. I did look for a podcast that I could direct you to if that is what you were seeking, but am afraid I could not find it. There is however a whole world of YouTube videos out there that do a brilliant job at explaining things.

What I can do though is give you an idea how the economics of this business worked and why this amazing industry cluster in southern Germany came to be.

That being said, I will start with a very brief rundown of the development of arms and armor in europe before we go into the question why Nurnberg, Augsburg, Passau and later Suhl and Solingen became the dominant manufacturing hubs for land-based arms and armor.

Armor is as old as human combat. To win a fight you first have to survive it. Hence every time a new weapon was developed, it was immediately followed by the invention of a way to deflect it. And every deflective tool was immediately followed by the development of a new offensive weapon, which created a new tactic to diffuse it and so forth and so forth. Knightly amour as we find it in every half decent museum had its predecessors in ancient Greek helmets, the ornate breastplates of roman emperors and the scale armour of the Persian cataphract.

What interests us here is the armour and arms in europe since the Middle Ages, which followed the same pattern. Every new form of arms and armour is a reaction to a new threat posed by an enemy with a superior technology.

When this podcast started in 919, that threat were first and foremost the Magyars, horse archers who could attack swiftly and release their composite bows on their enemies. And the response of in particular Henry the Fowler, king of East Francia was armored knight on horseback.

This armour consisted mainly of chainmail, rather than plate. This was helpful against Magyar arrows and even more against swords. Swords at the time were too brittle to be used for stabbing. Instead, early medieval warriors were slashing at their enemies, a move chainmail could deflect.

Chainmail never went away and was used for centuries thereafter. However, as external enemies had been defeated and the Europeans moved on to fight each other, military tactics changed.

The preferred weapon alongside the sword was the spear or lance. Up until the 12^th century European warriors used their spears in the same way as we see Native Americans using them in Westerns, i.e, overhand or by thrusting them forward.

The first shift in fighting technique was implemented by the Normans. These guys were, to use a technical term, nutters. So far, armored cavalry had used horses as transport to get close to the enemy where they would be lobbing their spears or slashing their swords before returning back to the line to get a new spear. The Normans came up with the idea to use the horse as a weapon. So, instead of turning around after the spear had been launched, they simply kept going at full tilt into the midst of the enemy forces.

I might have told this story before, but a few years ago I went to see the Palio in Siena. And before the actual race, the carabinieri stage a full-on cavalry attack with swords drawn around the course. I do not think I have ever seen anything more terrifying. Anna Komnene, the daughter of the Byzantine emperor Alexios Komnenos said about these nutters in 1148: “A mounted Frank is unstoppable – he could smash through the walls of Babylon”. End quote.

And that was before they employed the couched lance, aka the kind of fighting with lances we know from medieval tournaments. That came in the very late 12^th and early 13^th century. Fighting with a couched lance means that the lance is held under the Achsel and retained by various kinds of contraptions. The impact of a couched lance on an opponent is roughly factor four of the impact of a lance thrusted or thrown.

This shift in tactics drove a vast number of changes. The focus is now not just on get close to the enemy and then apply whatever weapon one has at hand, but it is all about the speed and the force of the clash between opponents. Getting this right is tricky, seriously tricky. It requires years and years of training. Which is why they invented tournaments at exactly this time. It is to hone their skills in a comparatively safe environment.

When attacking, the knight will aim his lance at three potential targets, the head, which is extremely hard to hit, but would have a catastrophic impact on the adversary. The shield or body, which is a bigger target, but is a lot less likely to do catastrophic damage, or the horse, which leaves the enemy unharmed but would result in an immediate removal of combat capacity.

Chainmail provides very limited protection in this kind of warfare. As we go through the 12^th into the 13^th and 14^th century, new forms of protection emerge. The head is the first to get covered in more sophisticated helmets of varying construction. Breastplates are developed that are supposed to deflect the impact of the lance and finally the horses are getting covered in iron.

The efficacy of a couched lance can be improved if the butt is attached to some form of rest. That rest could be integrated into the breastplate, allowing the rider to use more of his body to deliver the impact. Hence, we find all sorts of attachments to the breastplate that holds the lance.

Couched lance combat has a couple of drawbacks. It is quite inaccurate and a knight who has missed his target will find himself in the midst of the enemy forces, or worse, is unhorsed and needs to continue fighting on foot.

By the 15^th century that has become seriously dangerous, but in line with improvements to armor, sword technology had also advanced. They are now often made of steel, which is harder and less brittle than iron. Swordsmen can now not only cut, but they can also thrust without having to fear their sword will break in two. Which is another nail in the coffin of armour purely made of chainmail.

Gradually plate armour covers more and more of the body. Legs and the back are getting covered and by the mid to late 15^th century we arrive at the kind of armour we can see displayed in all their grandeur in the Metropolitan Museum, the Kunsthistorische Museum in Vienna, the Royal Armouries or one of my favourites, the Wallace Collection.

Even though infantry becomes more important on the battlefield during the Hundred years’ War and firearms show their enormous power in the Hussite Wars, plate armour is still produced and used in vast quantities for almost 300 years thereafter. Because it was still effective.

For one, the absolute top end quality plate armour could sustain the impact of a musketshot, but more importantly, firearms remained one shot weapons well into the 19^th century. Hence a phalanx on armoured riders could still run down a line of arkebusiers busy reloading their weapons. Therefore, military tactics developed that combined firearms with pikemen and heavy as well as light cavalry well into the 17^th century.

The other important factor is that armour is not just a military tool, but also fashion. I took part in the Wallace Collection’s summer school about arms and armour this year and the curator Keith Dowen and the armourer David Edge compared renaissance armour to modern day cars. A spectacular armour, like the one OttHeinrich of the Palatinate or emperor Maximilian would wear, was like driving a customised Ferrari or McLaren. These were status symbols that combined performance at the outer edge of what was technically possible with beauty and bling. These were, along with tapestries, the by far most expensive luxury goods in any princely household.

This is an audio show, so it is simply impossible to describe some of the most astounding pieces made in the 15^th and 16^th century, but I can completely see why some people put Helmschmied, Lochner, Negroli, Wilhelm von Worms and Konrad Seusenhofer on par with some of the great renaissance painters. And that is at least what their contemporaries believed. As I mentioned, in 1550 Colman Helmschmied charged the Spanish court 3,000 dukats for a full armour, whilst Raphael at the absolute height of his fame commanded 177 dukats for an altarpiece. In other words, you could get 15 Raphaels for one Helmschmied.

There would be lots and lots more to be said about the functionality and decoration of armour in the 15^th and 16^th century, but this is not what we are here for. The question we want to answer is why the most magnificent machines or war and masterpieces of art were produced in Nurnberg, Augsburg and Innsbruck and at the same time, why these, together with Passau and later Suhl and Solingen, became the Arsenal of Europe, the place you went to when you needed to equip 5,000 cavalry in a hurry.

Each of their stories is slightly different, and since we have done Augsburg recently, let’s focus on Nurnberg first.

To make armour, in particular to produce it at scale and at the desired level of quality, there are a couple of basic things that are needed.

Water is crucial. To hammer a sheet of metal into shape was extremely labour intensive. Armourers used water mills to drive hammers to first grind the metal ore and then to flatten the steel. Watermills also drove polishing wheels used to smooth and polish armour and to sharpen swords. But crucially, to produce high quality is steel is all about heating the metal to the right temperature. Watermills drove bellows that pushed a consistent level of oxygen into the forge, keeping the temperature steady, In the case of Nurnberg, the Pregnitz was diverted across multiple mill canals that powered water mills throughout the city, not only for armourers but for all sorts of other trades as well.

The next thing an armourer needs is charcoal for the forge, and again it has to be charcoal of consistent quality to keep the temperature steady. . Nurnberg was famously surrounded by poor soil, one of the reasons Barbarossa had granted them free imperial status in the first place. And that soil was therefore still covered in forests, ideal for producing the valuable charcoal.

Then they need iron ore. Thanks to the rapid expansion of all sorts of mining activities during the 14^th and 15^th century, there were multiple sources of iron ore or iron ingots accessible to Nurnberg artisans. But one mountain held and still holds Europe’s largest deposit of the most valuable iron ore, an iron ore that was already marginally carbonized called Siderite or FECO3 to give it its scientific name. That mountain is the Erzberg in Styria, the ore mountain. Do not get that confused with the Erzgebirge, the Ore Montains on the border between Saxony and Bohemia. This is the Erzberg in Styria. Styria was under Habsburg control and once the Habsburgs became emperors, the empire’s foremost cities, like Nurnberg, Augsburg and Passau had ready access to this valuable ore. And mining was and is a capital intensive business. Where could capital to run an open cast iron ore mine come from – correct, the bankers of Augsburg and Nurnberg, who happened to also be the guys who bankrolled the armourers.

Transport infrastructure was crucial. There is no point making vast quantities of helmets, breast plates and gauntlets and then not being able to deliver them to the customer who is readying for war. When Nurnberg was founded, it was not at the crossroads of any major roads. But by the 15^th century, the city had bent Europes flow of goods to its will. New routes have been established that all went through Nurnberg. The Via Imperii that comes down from Stettin on the Baltic then through Leipzig goes all the way to Rome via Venice intersects here with the Via Regia that links Krakow with Paris. Other routes link Nurnberg to other key nodes like Prague, Augsburg, Vienna and Regensburg. By 1500 the city on the Pregnitz sits like a spider in the middle of central Europe’s trade routes. On top of that, Nurnberg merchants held trading privileges with 70 cities across the empire and beyond, making their wares materially cheaper than their competition.

To speak business strategy for a moment, another factor that leads to the development of industry clusters are demand conditions. In an ideal scenario, there is already some major local demand for the product that gets the industry to enough scale to compete internationally. This why a lot of the latest tech is developed in larger domestic markets like the US and China, rather than say, Belgium.

I guess you know where we are going with this. These last 15 episodes have introduced you to a veritable plethora of local conflicts, the Mainzer Stiftstfehde, the seemingly never-ending Bavarian wars of succession, the fight for the Low countries and these are only the ones I selected for being the more juicy and meaningful ones. The Holy Roman Empire in the 15th century was a never-ending rigmarole of armed conflicts between princes, princes and cities, cities and emperors and any other combination thereof, plus there were the larger wars, the ones against the Hussites and ever more importantly those against the Ottomans.

So, domestic demand was not a problem armourers needed to worry about unduly.

Nurnberg’s lead in arms and armour manufacturing kicked off with a rather mundane-sounding invention, mechanised wire drawing. The very first wire-drawing mills in europe opened in the city in 1368. Long, uniform metal wire is produced by pulling metal rods through successively smaller dies. As you can imagine, this was brutally hard to do by hand. Using waterpower to deliver a consistent amount of pull made the process infinitely faster, cheaper and delivered a much higher quality product.

The wire drawing process was one of Nurnberg’s most closely guarded secret. Master wiredrawers had to be Nurnberg citizens, they weren’t allowed to leave the city or take apprentices from abroad. The secrecy around this process was materially tighter than it was on the armourers themselves.

Having access to large quantities of cheap, uniform wire gave Nurnberg an initial leg up in the armourers’ business, since chain mail consists, yes of wire. The Nurnberg chainmail became famous for its strength and durability, it gained its own brand name, the Nürnberg Ringpanzer. Yes, I know you have been waiting for me to say the word Panzer on the podcast for ages, and here it is.

Wire drawers were not the only metalworkers in Nurnberg. One of the city’s main exports were on the one hand rather mundane things like knives, scissors, spoons, basins and funnels, but on the other side there was also a long tradition of producing high-end mechanical works. Regiomontanus, who we met last week, alongside his theoretical mathematics and astrology tables, also produced precision instruments for astrology and navigation. And he was by no means the only one. Nurnberg became famous for the compass or is it compasses they produced. Reading glasses were another speciality. And then, further up the artisanal food chain were the various kinds of gold and silversmiths.

But what of the armourers themselves. How did they become – together with those in Augsburg and later Innsbruck and Greenwich – the foremost producers in Europe.

I think three factors were crucial here, competition, specialisation and co-ordination.

Master armourers in Nurnberg were only allowed to employ two assistants and one apprentice. That prevented the establishment of large, dominant producers. These small producers were in constant competition with each other for lucrative orders. Other than in most cities, large orders did not have to be passed through the guild who would distribute them equally amongst the different masters, but would be given to merchants. The merchants would choose who to subcontract to, based on their reputation for quality, reliability, speed and price.

This competitive pressure spurred the armourers on to constantly strive for improvement. One of the key criteria for the quality of armour and swords was the balance between hardness and flexibility. Steel could be hardened by quenching, aka first heating it up to a high temperature and then rapidly cooling it in cold water followed by tempering, a second round of heating but followed by a very slow cooling process. The trick was to find the right balance between initial temperature and length of the quenching and tempering that hardened the steel but not letting it become brittle. Getting this right involved a whole lot of experimentation and required to improve temperature control of the forge. The latter depended on the quality of the charcoal and the consistency of the air blown into the fire. The German armourers kept tinkering and tinkering with this process until they got it right. Their main competition, the armourers of Milan had chosen to protect flexibility by quenching their steel in less conductive liquid, like oils. That prevented brittleness but failed to achieve the hardness desired.

Alan Williams from the university of Reading did analyse two pieces of late medieval and early modern armour made from similar steel for its metallurgical properties. He concluded that the Italian armour from 1570 scored 183 on the Vickers hardness scale, whilst the German piece scored 514 on the same scale. In other words, by the 16^th century, German armourers were producing armour 3 times harder than the North Italians who had dominated the market in the early 15^th century.

The other thing that made armour great were the mechanics of it. A full armour was supposed to weigh no ore than 25kg to ensure the knight could get up and continue to fight once unhorsed. So, the harder the steel got, the thinner and lighter it could be, which in turn meant more and more of the body could be protected without exceeding the weight limit. And these parts of the body that could now be covered, the legs and arms are full of these complicated connecting bits we call joints. And to be able to fight, the joints need to remain able to move. The German armourers developed sliding rivets and ingenious articulations that let a knight move freely inside what was essentially a metal exoskeleton. Again, master armourers constantly competed with each other to produce ever more elaborate versions of these complex mechanics.

Apart from competition, the other reason German armourers got so good was specialisation. To become a master armourer, the apprentice had to produce his masterpiece, i.e., a piece of armour that showcased his skills and that was of such quality it passed muster with his fellow armourers or the authorities. And depending what kind of piece it was, a helmet, gauntlet, sword or breastplate, this became the only product the newly minted master armourer would be licensed to produce. Those who made helmets were not allowed to branch out into breastplates and vice versa. So the new master would make say helmets on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, He would make helmets In January, February, March, April May, June, July, August September, October, November and December, Helmets this year, next year, the year thereafter and from then on to the day they either died or got bored and left. Dead or bored, he would get better and better and better at it. This is what business people call the economics of experience. And economics of experience are so much more powerful than the better-known economics of scale. Any, even the smallest improvement in the way helmets are made apply to all subsequent helmets until the next round of improvements appears, which again brings the process up again further, and so on and so on.

Radical specialisation was something happened across all kinds of trades in Nurnberg. Nurnberg registered 114 individual artisan guilds. They for instance differentiated between makers of “rough” wire, makers of fine wire and makers of silver-plated wire.

Which gets us to the third reason artisans from Nurnberg and Augsburg churned out such astonishing product, co-operation. A full suit of armour consists of dozens of components, helmets, plates, mail, gauntlets, swords and so forth. Each of these were made by different master artisans. And when it came to the top end luxury armour, the kind of stuff emperor Maximilian paid almost as much for as pope Leo X paid Michelangelo to paint the Sistine chapel ceiling, a whole lot more trades got involved. There were the silver and goldsmiths doing the decorations. When we see armour today, it is mostly polished into a bright shining silvery colour. And quite a lot of armour was indeed polished to that colour, requiring a polisher to do that work. But some, maybe even most armour, was colourful. One process was called blueing, where the metal was burnished until it achieved a peacock blue colour. The Wallace collection holds a piece of armour they believe was originally blue with contrasting shining silver-coloured elements. Other may have been straight up painted. What exactly they painted on this armour is largely lost because the Victorians decided that all and every knight was one in shining armour – no space for fancy-coloured fighters.

The great artists of the time, Albrecht Durer and Hans Burgckmaier too got involved. They designed armour for their clients and painted them wearing it afterwards.

So, who co-ordinated all these trades. It seems that for the top, top end armour the superstars of the industry, the Helmschmieds, Lochners and Seusenhofer most likely had control of the project and chose their suppliers and decorators.

When it came to the commissioning of vast quantities of what is called munitions armour, i.e., armour designed to be worn by simple soldiers on campaign, the coordinators were usually the great merchants. This again was one of the unique advantages of places like Augsburg and Nurnberg. The great mercantile houses, the Fuggers, Welsers, Imhofs and Tuchers had the contacts to the imperial and princely courts to secure orders of such magnitude. And not only that, they would also offer to provide financing to the prince and emperor. And on the other side of the bargain they would also provide finance for master armourers to build up stock after having financed their suppliers as well.

Holding stock was extremely capital intensive. But it could come off spectacularly. Having 500 helmets in stock when the duke of God knows where is finding himself in a bit of a pickle, commanded a massive premium over helmets that arrive when the duke’s capital is already burning. Which is why having five hundred helmets available for pick-up wasn’t something unusual in Nurnberg in the 16^th century.

And these helmets were not just available, they were also of predictable quality. Nurnberg was somewhat unique amongst the free imperial cities in as much as the patricians had broken the power of the guilds. After a failed uprising, the council had taken over much of the guild’s role, including the supervision of quality standards and the branding. Wares that met the standard set by the city council, i.e, the merchants who bought and sold the merchandise, were branded with the letter N.

Quality control is what saved the German makers of arms and armour from the fate of the much more famous makers of Damascus steel. True Damascus Steel was undoubtably superior to the European product. Still the Mughal emperors on the 17^th century preferred European blades from Solingen. Why? Damascus steel is hard to get right. Abd it did not come from Damascus or any other specific place, but from all kinds of places all over the East. There was no central authority that controlled the quality of the end product. So lots and lots of producers were manufacturing what they called Damascus Steel, some of it was of stounding quality, but much of it was not. And nobody could tell which was which. The brand deteriorated.

At the same time the town of Solingen developed its own steel making process and kept such tight control over the quality, that the name Solingen until today stands for top quality knifes, worldwide.

This combination of skill, branding and finance is what made in particular Nurnberg the go-to place for massive orders. The only place to that could match it in terms of mass output were the Habsburg armouries emperor Maximilian established in Innsbruck. He had brought several famous armourers from Augsburg and Nurnberg to Innsbruck. What these artisans did there was on the one hand create spectacular luxury armours for the emperors, but the other, more important function was to arm the imperial armies. And free from the shackles of the guild regulations in Augsburg and Nurnberg, huge workshops could be set up that exploited the resulting economics of scale.

Whilst Nurnberg focused more on volume production, Augsburg took an almost unassailable lead in making the world’s finest luxury armour. Augsburg had already established itself as the home of Europe’s foremost silver and goldsmiths. These guys now brought their skills into the world or armour. Go into any museum of armour and look at the star piece in their collection, it will almost inevitably come from Augsburg.

Ok, that is not 100% right. The museum will likely also hold a astounding looking Italian armour from Milan or Brescia, from masters like the Negrolis or the Messaglias. These are wonderous contraptions covered in elaborate decorations mimicking mythical animals or modelled on ancient Greek or Roman styles. They sparkle in the sun and look fantastic when the emperor enters a city on triumph. What they are pretty useless at, is protecting the wearer against even the most feeble blow from a sword.

Which gets us to the last reason why the centre of armour production shifted from Milan to Southern Germany. And the answer is the third most powerful force on the known universe after compounding and human stupidity, pot luck. Arms manufacturing needs war, but it is important that it is the right amount of war. And Northern Italy in the late fifteenth century got the wrong amount of war. The so-called Italian wars that pitted France against the Habsburgs, the Italian states against each other and the papacy pitching in at various points, these Italian wars were a disaster for Italy.

Machiavelli in the last chapter of the prince appeals to Lorenzo de Medici quote “Italy, left almost lifeless, waits for someone to heal her wounds, to put an end to the sackings of Lombardy, the extortions and plunderings of the Kingdom [of Naples] and of Tuscany, and to cleanse the sores that have festered for so long.”. Whilst Leonardo, Raphael and Michelangelo created the greatest artworks the world had ever seen, the Italian cities they worked were regularly sacked and their industries smashed. And one of these industries that could not keep up in these conditions was the Milanese armourers.

The success of the German armourers did not just produce their own industry cluster. The metalworking industries in general were all cousins. A city known for armor often produced other metal goods: cutlery, tools, machinery, clocks, scientific instruments, you name it. In 1621, of the 3,700 master craftsmen in Nuremberg, about 600 worked in ironwares. The techniques used for one product often fertilized another. The skill to draw fine wire (for mail armor or for strings and cables) helped in making mechanical clock springs. The ability to cast cannon and mix alloys informed bell-making (Nuremberg and Augsburg both cast huge church bells). And the presence of gunsmiths and metal engravers in the same city led to some cross-pollination – for instance, the beautiful engraving and etching seen on luxury firearms and armor was often done by artists who also worked on printing plates and fine art. It’s not a stretch to note that the city that printed the Nuremberg Chronicle and built the first pocket watches (the famous “Nuremberg eggs” by Peter Henlein) was the same city exporting the best mail shirts and muskets. The cultural flowering of Nuremberg in that era – the “centre of the German Renaissance” – was enabled by its prosperous crafts economy of which arms-making was just one pillar.

Nothing lasts forever though. The downfall of the great southern German cities did not come with the gradual decline of the use of armour. That was compensated by their equal prowess in the production of firearms, both handguns and cannon and all kinds of sophisticated instruments.

What broke them was the wrong amount of war, aka the 30 years war. Nurnberg stayed neutral and was protected by powerful fortifications, but their markets had been wiped out by the end. Moreover, their customers, the emperors and princes began introducing standing armies using standard equipment. State-owned arsenals were able to deliver these cheaper and more efficiently than the fragmented master armourers. Nurnberg and Augsburg declined and it took until the industrial revolution before they gradually came back to life.

Nevertheless, some elements of the early success of German industry in Nurnberg and Augsburg survive to this day. The Mittelstand, the backbone of the German economy consists of comparatively small, family-owned businesses that have risen to global leadership in their field through fierce competition, extreme specialisation, co-ordination and quality control.

And this seems to me a good point to end our journey across the empire in the 15^th century. There are many more topics we could have explored, the dukes of Brunswick and those of Pomerania, the involvement of Brandenburg in the wars between Poland and the Teutonic Knights, the silversmiths of Augsburg, the sword makers of Cologne and Passau. But 15 episodes in, it is time to move on. The next season will pick up when we last had a closer look at the Habsburgs, i.e., when Rudolf the Stifter invented the title of archduke. And take the story all the way to Charles V. I hope you will join us again when that kicks off in a few weeks’ time. In the meantime I will drop episodes from other podcasts I admire into the feed. Give them a chance. They are really good in their own way.

And do not forget, you can support the show by going to historyofthegermans.com/support and make a contribution. I have not much to offer, other than my heartfelt and for the most generous, eternal gratitude which should make you feel even more generous.

See you soon!

Episode 201 – Mapping the world

by History of the Germans Podcast on 17th July 202525th February 2026

How two Germans invented America

When you enter the great hall of the Thomas Jefferson building at the Library of Congress in Washington, the first exhibit you will be facing is their Gutenberg Bible. And it is one of the finest Gutenberg bibles around, one of only three surviving pristine copies on vellum. This was the kind of bible that was so expensive to produce, it bankrupted Gutenberg. When the Library of Congress bought it in 1930, they paid $375,000, roughly $7.5m in today’s money.

But this is not the most expensive piece in the library’s collection. That would a work by two Germans, Martin Waldseemüller and Matthias Ringmann. And it is not even a book, but a map. Not a small map, it is 2.3m or 91 inches wide and 1.3m or 50 inches tall. And this map, printed in 1507 claimed to be:

A DESCRIPTION OF THE WHOLE WORLD ON BOTH
A GLOBE AND A FLAT SURFACE WITH THE INSERTION
OF THOSE LANDS UNKNOWN TO PTOLEMY
DISCOVERED BY RECENT MEN

And the authors wrote that the three continents known since antiquity, Europe, Africa and Asis, quote “have in fact now been more widely explored, and a fourth part has been discovered by Amerigo Vespucci (as will be heard in what follows). Since both Asia and Africa received their names from women, I do not see why anyone should rightly prevent this [new part] from being called Amerigen—the land of Amerigo, as it were—or America, after its discoverer, Americus, a man of perceptive character.” End quote.

This fourth part, they said was “surrounded on all sides by the ocean”. And indeed, in the left lower corner we find a fourth continent, a thin, stretched thing, with few place names and a western shore that hints at the Peruvian bulge, unmistakably, South America and then to north of it a very indistinguishable blob of land.

This map, proudly displayed as America’s Birth Certificate, is full of the most intriguing mysteries. How did Waldseemüller and Ringmann know that the Americas had a western shore, when it was only in 1513, 6 years later, that a European first glanced the Pacific?

How did the name America stick though Amerigo Vespucci had never led an expedition, not even commanded a ship? But most of all, why was this first map of America drawn not by a Spanish or Portuguese navigator, but by two Germans in the employ of the duke of Lorraine, working in St. Die, which is as far away from the sea as one can get in Western Europe.

And then, more generally, what did the Germans have to do with the discoveries, the maps and globes that told the world about them? That is what we will explore in this episode.

History of the Germans

HotGPod is now entering its 9th season. So far we have covered:

Ottonian Emperors (# 1- 21)
– Henry the Fowler (#1)
– Otto I (#2-8)
– Otto II (#9-11)
– Otto II (#11-14)
– Henry II (#15-17)
– Germany in 1000 (#18-21)

Salian Emperors(#22-42)
– Konrad II (#22- 25)
– Henry III (#26-29)
– Henry IV/Canossa (#30-39)
– Henry V (#40-42)
– Concordat of Worms (#42)

Early Hohenstaufen (#43-69)
– Lothar III (#43-46)
– Konrad III (#47-49)
– Frederick Barbarossa (#50-69)

Late Hohenstaufen (#70-94)
– Henry VI (#70-72)
– Philipp of Swabia (#73-74)
– Otto IV (#74-75)
– Frederick II (#75-90)
– Epilogue (#91-94)

Eastern Expansion (#95-108)

The Hanseatic League (#109-127)

The Teutonic Knights (#128-137)

And this map, printed in 1507 claimed to be:

A DESCRIPTION OF THE WHOLE WORLD ON BOTH

A GLOBE AND A FLAT SURFACE WITH THE INSERTION

OF THOSE LANDS UNKNOWN TO PTOLEMY

DISCOVERED BY RECENT MEN

How did the name America stick though Amerigo Vespucci had neverled an expedition, not even commanded a ship? But most of all, why was this first map of America drawn not by a Spanish or Portuguese navigator, but by two Germans in the employ of the duke of Lorraine, working in St. Die, which is as far away from the sea as one can get in Western Europe.

And then, more generally, what did the Germans have to do with the discoveries, the maps and globes that told the world about them? That is what we will explore in this episode.

As always:

Homepage with maps, photos, transcripts and blog: www.historyofthegermans.com

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Ep. 201 – Mapping the World, or how Germans invented America

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Transcript

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 201 – Mapping the World, or how two Germans invented America, which is also episode 16 of season 10 “The Empire in the 15^th century”.

A DESCRIPTION OF THE WHOLE WORLD ON BOTH
A GLOBE AND A FLAT SURFACE WITH THE INSERTION
OF THOSE LANDS UNKNOWN TO PTOLEMY
DISCOVERED BY RECENT MEN

And then, more generally, what did the Germans have to do with the discoveries, the maps and globes that told the world about them? That is what we will explore in this episode.

But before we start another big, big thank you to all of you supporting the show. Not only financially, but also with your emails and messages of encouragement. As you can imagine, solo podcasting can be a bit of a lonely pursuit and feedback, in particular your incredibly nice feedback, makes this so much more enjoyable.

And today we should appreciate Gijs C., Gary W., James M., Vincent V., Fabian S., Mike K., Joseph C., Duncan Hardy, whose upcoming book you can find in the book recommendations, and Eamon M., whose generous help at historyofthegermans.com/support keeps the enjoyment coming.

And with that, back to the show

Maps have always exerted a huge influence on the human mind. I know that if I publish a post on social media with a map in it, it attracts two or three times the audience of my usual posts.

Mapmaking might go as far back as 7000 BC when the neolithic inhabitants of Chatalhoyuk in Turkey painted a plan of their town and two distant volcanos onto the walls of a house. The British museum holds the oldest known world map, the Babylonian world, a map that dates back to 600 BC. The story on how that had been identified as a map is one of the BM’s best tales by the way.

Maps are not created equal. They do differ by accuracy, depth of information and most importantly, purpose. Political maps emphasise the borders of countries, states, counties, constituencies etc, geographical maps may look at features like mountain ranges and rivers, the distribution of mineral deposits or fertility of the soil. Sailor’s charts care about depth and maritime hazards and give no heed to what is on the land, unless it is a church tower or a lighthouse, whilst the Michelin guide divides the world up into places to eat, and those where better not to.

I guess after 200 episodes observing our protagonists, not just the kings and emperors, but also the monks, merchants and mercenaries criss-crossing the known world, I do not have to tell you that medieval people were anything but static.

Hence it is not surprising that they made maps. How many is hard to say, but there are several that have come down to us. Amongst Anglo-Saxons the mappamundi of Hereford cathedral is probably the best known, whilst the German equivalent, the Ebstorf map is the more famous here.

Being the History of the Germans, we obviously focus on the Ebstorf map. First up, it is huge, a circular image of the known world, 3.5m by 3.5m. Created around 1240, the original was lost in an air raid on Hannover in 1943, but we have several very detailed facsimiles.

For modern observers it is extremely difficult to get one’s bearings on this map. For one it is oriented towards the east, not the north. Then at the centre of the map sits Jerusalem. Asia makes up the top half, europe the bottom left and Africa the bottom right. The mediterranean is a giant Tin the centre with Sicily in the shape of a heart. The three continents are surrounded by a thin band of one continuous ocean.

Where it gets even more confusing is when you look closer. The map is extraordinarily detailed. It comprises 2,345 entries, 845 pictures, 500 of which are buildings, the rest rivers, waterways, islands, but also 45 persons and 60 animals. And these are on the one hand comparatively modern cities and features like Antwerp, Riga and the Brunswick Lion. But then it also depicts buildings and cities that are known to be long gone, like the tower of babel, the lighthouse of Alexandria and Carthage. And then there are missing elements, like Cairo, the largest city Europeans regularly travelled to at the time, and instead it features entirely mythical locations, like the place where Alexander had imprisoned Gog and Magog and the earthly paradise, complete with serpent and apple.

So, what was this map for?

The map reflected the sum total of the historical, scientific and theological knowledge of the time, which meant whatever knowledge of the ancients had made it through. Pliny the elder was a particular favourite whose odd notions about the impact of the phases of the moon on the mental state of Monkeys and the like were perennial favourites. Biblical stories were of such great importance to the pious, they were considered contemporaneous, even if they had happened thousands of years earlier.

There was a major devotional element here. The map shows that the world is a confined space, held together by Jesus Christ, who sees and hears everything from his vantage point at the top of the map.

What this kind of maps, the mappamundi, were utterly useless at was to guide a sailor from Venice to Constantinople and further on to the Holy Land. But we know that at the same time these were made, Venetian, Genoese, Pisan and Amalfitani sea captains carried crusaders and trading goods to the east and back. To achieve that they had what we have today, compass, maritime charts and pilot books. No, seriously. There are three maritime charts still in existence that were most likely produced around the same time as the Ebstorf and the Hereford Mappamundi, in the 13^th century.

These maritime charts have no pictures of saints or exotic animals on them, nor do they share the wisdom of Pliny the Elder. These are utilitarian charts that tell you what course to steer and how far you have to sail to get from Palma de Mallorca to Palermo or from Ancona to Alexandria. It tells you where the submerged reefs and rocks are and where dangerous currents run. And they are pretty accurate, which is truly astounding as they did not use latitude or longitude to pinpoint locations.

And then there is the scale of the effort. The so-called Pisan map covers the whole Mediterranean and the Black Sea plus bits of the Atlantic. There are roughly 1,000 topographic sites named in the mediterranean part alone, and all of these are on the coast or in the water, making this an incredibly dense map.

Which begs the question how this information could have been gathered.

One option is that it was a compilation of regional charts, but given every region had different measurements for miles and feet, it would have required a standardisation down to the map’s reference mile, which was 1.25km. Not an easy task.

Some have argued that these charts were originally developed by Greek or Roman sailors and then copied and adjusted as trade routes changed and cities rose and fell. But there is no mention of maritime charts in Roman or Greek sources at all.

So, in all likelihood the makers of these maritime charts gathered the information from the ship’s captains who came in and out of their hometowns. Most cartographers were themselves retired seafarers which must have helped.

What bewildered me is that according to the almost unanimous opinion in the literature, the medieval navigators did not use a logbook or other form of noting down the position, course and speed throughout a voyage. This only came in during the 15^th century when explorers ventured out to find the route to India. I find that incredibly hard to believe. The maritime charts did not feature latitude and longitude, meaning to determine a position the skipper would have to constantly check the angle and distance to at least two landmarks, which changed all the time. And once on the open sea, he would have to remember exactly for how long he had stayed on which course at which speed. Not impossible but just hard to believe. If there had been logbooks, they would have been a huge help to cartographers confirming the accuracy of their charts. But apparently, they could keep all of that in their heads.

Accompanying these charts were Portolans, something we would call today a pilot book. These are books guiding sailors through the entrance to ports, tell them what they will find there in terms of fresh water, provisions, facilities to make repairs etc.

They even new about compass variation, i.e., the fact that magnetic north and geographic north are not identical, and that this variation was not the same everywhere, and that it changed over time.

It is just mindboggling to think that they knew that but believed that bears cups would have to be licked into shape by the mothers.

As one can imagine, these two traditions of mapping the world started to coalesce in the great maritime republics, in Venice, Genoa and Pisa and the seafaring Iberian kingdoms. One of the most famous of these hybrid maps that combine the historic and theological content of a mappamundi with the accuracy of the maritime charts is the so-called Catalan Atlas, produced in Barcelona as a present for king Charles VI of France.

This map, created in 1375 not only incorporated the maritime charts of the mediterranean, but also new information about places, the ancients knew little about. Marco Polo had travelled to China in the late 13^th century and a trade in Chinese silks developed rapidly thereafter that brought Genoese traders to the courts of the Mongol rulers and further into Mainland China. Their reports are included in the Catalan Atlas. The Canary Islands had been discovered in 1339 and its original population wiped out by disease and slaughter. So, they, i.e., the islands, not their inhabitants, too make it onto the map.

So far we have two mapping traditions that fused into one in the 14^th century, the medieval Mappamundi that tries to educate about the way the world is or should be and the maritime charting tradition that cares about where exactly places are and how to get there.

And in 1397 a third technique for mapmaking appeared, or more precisely, re-appeared. In 1397 the emperor of Constantinople, Manuel II Palaiologos sent an ambassador to Venice, asking the western Christians for help in the defence against Ottoman attack. This ambassador, Manuel Chrysoloras would become one of the catalysts of the Renaissance. Chrysoloras was not just a diplomat, but a classical scholar, philosopher and teacher as well. Whilst his ambassadorship was a failure, and no soldiers came to Manuel’s aid, his cultural mission was a huge success.

He had brought with him copies of classical Greek works that had been lost to the west for centuries which he translated into Latin. He taught the intellectuals of Florence and Bologna to read Greek and published textbooks that were enthusiastically received. Within less than 100 years Greek, which had largely been forgotten, returned to the curriculum of the educated classes all across the continent.

Chrysoloras never returned to Constantinople but established a constant flow of Greek books going west. He died in 1413 en route to see the emperor Sigismund to discuss a suitable location for the Great Church council, that would ultimately be held in Constance (episodes 171-174).

Amongst the treasures he carried in his luggage was a work by Ptolemy, the 2^nd century Greek mathematician. This work, the Geography would revolutionise the way maps were drawn.

If you put Ptolemy’s Geography into a search engine, it will inevitably show you a map. But there are no maps by Ptolemy that survived from antiquity. What was found in 13^th century was a book with instructions on how to create a map of the world and 26 regional maps. And so in around 1295 Byzantine scholars created a world map from the instructions Ptolemy had left a 1000 years earlier.

The reason this worked was down to Ptolemy’s great invention, longitude and latitude. The medieval maritime charts did not show a long-lat grid that almost every modern map now features. What they showed were rump lines, connecting lines between points on the map that showed the course to steer if you wanted to get from A to B. These rump lines criss-crossed the map as commerce, not geography demanded.

Ptolemy’s genius lay in his realisation that to convey a three-dimensional object, aka Planet Earth on to a two-dimensional surface, aka a map, it required some form of projection. This was a minor problem when designing regional charts but became a huge one trying to depict the entirety of the known world.

And in this context, we need to clear up one constant misunderstanding. Very few people in the Middle Ages believe the earth was flat. From the days of the ancient Greeks, people knew that the Earth was spherical. The first globe was produced by Cratos of Mallos in the 2^nd century BC and Erotosthenes had accurately calculated the circumference of the earth based on the difference in the angle of the sun between Aswan and Alexandria.

Fun fact, the term Antarctica goes back to the ancient Greeks. It means literally, land of no bears, being the opposite of the Arctic, which translates as “land of the bears”. Sadly, that had less to do with intrepid travellers checking out the fauna on the North Pole, but with the star sign of Ursus Major that hovers over the north.

Going back to medieval understanding of the spherical structure of the earth; emperors from Charlemagne onwards received an orb as a sign of their power over the entire earth, not a flat plate but. Medieval maps were circular, and for instance the one Al Idrisi produced for king Roger of Sicily in 1154 mentioned that the earth was a sphere as something that was common knowledge.

So, when Columbus set off to seek a route to India by going west, the concern was less that his ships would fall off the edge of the world, but that the journey would simply be too long to be survivable. Given the circumference of the earth was known, as was the eastward extent of Asia thanks to Marco Polo and other Italian travellers, one could estimate the distance from Seville to the Philippines or Japan at ~20,000 km or ~13,000 miles. Given Columbus ships were averaging 90 to 100 miles a day, the whole journey would be 150 days, well beyond the capacity to carry water and food of contemporary ships. Columbus got around that problem by mixing up Roman and Italian miles hence pretending the world was 25% smaller and by stretching China and Japan out further east than the reports warranted. In his pitch to Ferdinand and Isabella he claimed the distance was just 2-3000 miles. Some historians believe he did that deliberately. How he thought he would survive is then unclear. He may have hoped there would be islands along the way where he could find food, water and timber.

Ok, back to Ptolemy. Thanks to the curvature of the earth, two-dimensional maps will always get some dimension wrong, be it the surface area, the shapes, distances or direction. Which is why Ptolemy suggested to create globes, rather than maps. But he also recognised that Globes are difficult to produce and awkward to handle. So, he offered three types of projections, each with advantages and disadvantages. That question of projections is the content of Book I of Ptolemy’s geography.

The next 6 books contain 8,000 place names with their longitude and latitude, covering the whole known world from China to the mythical island of Thule, in the far, far north.

Ptolemy’s maps were a revolution, and copies were produced at a rapid pace. In 1409 the Geography was translated into Latin and as we heard in episode 172, was one of the central intellectual debates at the Council of Constance.

What is interesting is how little the early copyist and publishers changed on these ancient maps. They showed the world, its roads and cities as it was in around 200 AD. Little heed was given to fact that in the intervening 1200 years many lands have been discovered or at least better understood, cities had vanished and new ones had emerged. Germany, an empty forested swamp in the 2^nd century AD was now a thriving place full of cities and roads, as was Poland, the Baltic and Scandinavia.

In 1427 the Cardinal Fillastre, an important protagonist at the Council asked the Danish traveller Conradus Clavus to create and then add a map of Scandinavia using the Ptolemy’s system of longitudes and latitudes, which he did, adding Greenland and Iceland as a bonus. But that was the exception. Mostly people just copied the ancient maps and left them as they were.

So we end up with the scenario where we have on the one hand maps based on the medieval mappamundi concept but containing some very accurate maritime charts , the information gathered from the intensifying trade with the East, the Canaries, the Azores the Cape Verde Islands and the coast of Africa, whilst at the same time the leading intellectual lights used a hugely advanced mapping methodology to present even more massively outdated information.

It was a German, Donnus Nicolaus Germanus who was the first to fundamentally revise and improve Ptolemy in 1466. He translated or replaced the antique place names in Italy and Spain with modern names and a more accurate view of northern Europe. We know little about him apart from the fact that he was likely German given his name and that he worked in Florence and Rome.

In 1477 pope Sixtus IV ordered two globes to be produced by Nicolaus Germanus, one a celestial globe and one a terrestrial globe. We know that these globes were produced because there are bills preserved in the Vatican library and the marquise of Mantua asked for a copy to be produced in 1507. They were probably destroyed in the 1527 sack of Rome.

That made Donnus Nicolaus Germanus the first person we know for certain to have produced a globe since antiquity.

By now Gutenberg’s printing press had radically changed the way information was distributed. Maps became an important product for printers. Several Ptolemy-based maps were published in Italy and Germany in the 1480s. But as people compared them to the information contained in the maritime charts it became clear that Ptolemy, for all his innovative mathematics, was full of inaccuracies.

In 1489 Henricus Martellus, another German, produced a world map that applied the longitude and latitude system of Ptolemy on the latest geographic information available. And latest really means latest. Barthomeu Diaz had rounded the Cape of Good Hope in March 1488 and returned to Lisbon in December 1488. Less than 2 years later Martellus map shows Africa as being circumnavigable and even some shapes in the Indian ocean that were previously unknown.

Before we go further down the route of German mapmakers, we have to mention someone else, Johannes Müller from Königsberg, not Konigsberg in Prussia but Konigsberg in Franconia. Since Müller was already extremely common, he called himself Regiomontanus, the latinised form of his hometown. He was probably the most influential astrologer and mathematician in the generation before Copernicus. As you know I dabble in all sorts of topics, literature, art, architecture, theology, philosophy etc., but I draw the line at mathematics and linguistics. That is not something I know anything about, nor do I feel capable of talking about it. So, if you want to know about the Regiomontanus Paradox and his contribution to the development of calculus you will need to find another podcast.

But what I can talk about and what matters for our subject here is that Regiomontanus, alongside his mathematical works, produced a practical guide, the Ephemerides. These are tables showing the trajectory of astronomical objects, in particular the planets, their position, speed and direction of movement at specific time intervals. These tables are naturally useful to Astronomers, even more to astrologers, but absolutely crucial to navigators sailing into the Southern Hemisphere.

One of the features of the Southern hemisphere is that you cannot see the polestar anymore. The Southern Cross and Sigma Octantis are reasonable replacements, indicating South, but the Portuguese sailors following the African coast did not know that. What they could do instead is use the angles of the planets from their current location and time to determine where they were. And for that, they needed a reliable table telling them where the planets should be on that specific day and time. And that is where Regiomontanus came in. His tables, called the Ephimerides were more accurate and more detailed than anything else contemporaries had access to.

Regiomontanus developed and compiled these tables when he lived in Nurnberg in 1474. Nurnberg may not have a university that funded this kind of research, but what it had was a large number of rich merchants who combined commercial acumen with scientific curiosity. These men were happy to finance Regiomontanus’ efforts and the publication of his tables in 1474. These tables were a huge success and were still reprinted 300 years later. At least one copy made it to the university of Krakow, where a certain N. Copernicus drew some literally earthshattering conclusions using this data.

In the last third of the 15^th century astronomy and geography were considered two sides of the same medal. They called it Cosmology. Regiomontanus did consider making maps and as we have seen some of the terrestrial mapmakers worked on celestial globes.

Add to that scientific endeavour the rise of the printing press and we can see why the great free imperial cities of the Holy Roman empire became a key node in the distribution of knowledge about the planet. Nicolaus Germannus modified atlas was printed in a luxury edition in Ulm in 1482, in 1486 Johannes Reger published a set of maps together with what he called a Registrum, which allowed to cross-reference all of Ptolemy’s placenames with the modern notations.

Over in Nurnberg, Hartmann Schedel compiled his famous Nürnberg chronicle which included two maps. One was a world map, a combination of Ptolemy’s geography and the weird and wonderful elements of the medieval mappamundi. The second map was something completely different. This was a map of Germany and central Europe, the very first ever printed. It used the longitude and latitude now familiar to cartographers, but where Ptolemy had shown just empty space and swampy forest, it presented the magnificent Hanseatic cities, the trading centres of southern Germany, Krakow, Warsaw and Gdansk, the capitals of the Baltic states and even Moscow and Lviv, but strangely not Kiev.

The man who produced that, Hieronymus Münzer, was another one of that circle of intellectuals that emerged in Nürnberg. He undertook a journey to Spain and Portugal on behalf of the emperor Maximilian to find out more about these new discoveries. This produced one of the most detailed descriptions of the Iberian Peninsula in the 15^th century.

Because of the quaint half-timbered houses and the lack of an overseas empire, the idea has taken hold that 15^th, 16^th and 17^th century Germans spent most of their time at home whilst Spaniards, Portuguese, Dutch and English set out to conquer the world. But nothing could be further from the truth. As we heard in the season about the Hanseatic league and about the Fuggers, German merchants were going almost everywhere. They connected east and west and north and south. They had representatives in Lisbon, Antwerp, London, Bergen, Riga, Novgorod, Cracow, Budapest and Venice. Much of the timber the Portuguese caravels were made of came from the forests of Prussia, their design a development based on the cog. The copper and silver they traded into India and China came from the mines and smelters of the Fuggers, Welsers, Hirschvogels etc. In fact, these metals were pretty much the only European exports the much more advanced societies of India, China and Japan were interested in.

Amongst the crews of the Portugues explorers who set out into the unknown in the 15^th century were almost always Germans. They were hired to operate the artillery. Germany had become highly regarded for the guns they produced and the gunners who had trained to operate them. The Portuguese called them Bombardeiros Alemaes and hired them for most expeditions. In 1489 the Portuguese crown standardised its naval artillery to German-made bronze guns and their experienced gun teams. Of the 18 men who survived Magellan’s circumnavigation, one was a German, Hans de Plank or Juan Aleman.

Which gets us to the most controversial figure in the history of German cartography, Martin Behaim. So, before we go into who he was and what he did, there is one undeniable thing that is associated with him, the Erdapfel, the oldest terrestrial globe in existence today. As we know it is not the oldest globe ever made, that was the one created in the 2^nd century BC by Cratos of Mallos. And it was not even the first one made after antiquity, that was the globe of Nicolaus Germanus in Rome.

All that being said, it is still the oldest Globe in existence. And it is intriguing in as much as it was produced in 1492, in other words just as Columbus was stepping ashore in the Bahamas.

Given timing this globe does not show the Americas and obviously neither does it show Australia or Antarctica. So, what did Behaim put in the space where America is? Islands, lots of them, some known, others invented. The Canaries and the Cape Verde islands, today the jumping off points for an Atlantic crossing west and the Azores, the staging post 2/3rds on the way back east were already known. But then he put dozens, even very large blobs all over the surface and gave them names like the Antilles and the island of St. Brandan. Japan ends up being more or less where Florida is.

The Germanische Nationalmuseum in Nurnberg that holds the globe says in its description; the continents are too big. But it would be more accurate to say the planet is too small. Which may be down to Behaim subscribing to Columbus’ view that the planet was a lot smaller than it actually is and hence sailing to China or Japan was feasible in one go.

Which also ties in with the purpose of the globe. It was obviously not something one was supposed to take on a voyage. It was certainly meant as a piece of decoration, ordered by the city council of Nurnberg to adorn their city hall. It conveyed the message that Nurnberg was at the forefront of intellectual developments, was plugged into the worldwide flow of information and had extraordinary artistic and mechanical skills. None of which was actually an exaggeration.

But its main purpose was commercial. Like the Mapppamundis the globe is covered in text, but this text does not contain biblical events or spurious facts about exotic animals, it is about business opportunities. Where best to acquire rare materials, like pearls, precious stones, spices and luxury woods. It is here to entice the Nurnberg bankers and merchants to get involved in the financing of these journeys. It is first and foremost a spherical pitchbook.

So far, so good. A fascinating object from literally the year that changed history, and maybe a depiction of what Columbus expected to find when he sailed west, but why does it get almost everyone who writes about it so hot under the collar.

David Blackbourn in his excellent book “Germany in the World” describes the maker of the globe, Martin Behaim, as a “slightly raffish man of affairs” whose exploits are almost “grotesquely exaggerated”.

On the other end of the spectrum sits the polish historian Wojciech Iwanczak, who entertains the idea that Behaim held an important role at court and in the commercial world of Lisbon during the time of the discoveries. According to him, Behaim introduced Regiomontanus’ Ephimerides to the Portuguese and was appointed to the Royal council of navigational experts. Behaim might have participated in at least 2 journeys down south, one leading to the discovery of the Congo. Iwanczak even suggests Behaim may have known Columbus and might have shared his views on a journey west.

I initially wanted to design this whole episode around Martin Behaim, the great explorer, scientist and cartographer, a bit like I did with Johannes Gutenberg. But in the end, the evidence was all a bit too flimsy. It is a typical German story in as much that Behaim was pumped up relentlessly in the 19^th century, streets and schools named after him, statues erected and even one of the oldest locomotives was named after him. The Nazis then went stratospheric, claiming Behaim had been the one convincing Columbus to sail west, then he had discovered Brazil before Cabral and had sailed around cap Hoorn before Magallan.

Which created the typical post-war backlash, where any claim to fame was dismissed on the basis of a lack of explicit contemporary sources until nothing was left than the story of a conman who died a pauper in Lisbon in 1507. And now everything is so convoluted and vague that even the Germanische Nationalmuseum, treads a careful balance not dismissing the previous storylines but being sufficiently vague not to get caught out. So here you go, Martin Beheim, explorer of far-flung lands and master cartographer, or exploiter of gullible city fathers, God only knows….

Which gets us now to the final piece, the map in the Library of Congress they call the Waldseemüller map and America’s Birth Certificate. At first glance it is just another world map, a larger one at 2.3m by 1,3m where Europe is based on the Ptolemy maps and the rest is based on maritime charts, Portugues and Spanish discoverer’s logs and reports of travellers to the east.

Where it differs is in the long stretchy landmass in the bottom left-hand corner that is surrounded by water and that bears a name that became familiar to all of us, America. In the copious notes the authors explain that they named America after Amerigo Vespucci, an Italian navigator who went along on four or maybe only two voyages along the South American Coast, and wrote two letters home about it, letters that had been massively bigged up by publishers and had become early bestsellers.

What has confused scholars for centuries is how Martin Waldseemüller and Matthias Ringmann, the two makers of the map, could have known or could have guessed that America was a continent when most authorities, including Columbus himself, believed the lands re-discovered in the west were part of Asia. And to rule one thing out, Amerigo Vespucci had never claimed that America was a continent. He might have called it Novo Mundus, New World, but that is not the same thing.

And then comes the even more bewildering part. Not only is the positioning of South America fairly accurate, the map also shows the Pacific coast of South America with its characteristic bulge north of Chile. All that 6 years before Vasco Núñez de Balboa crossed the isthmus of Panama and became the first European to officially report the existence of the Pacific Ocean.

How this was possible is the kind of question that sells books by the wagonload and got the Library of Congress to pay $10million for a map.

So let’s take a look at some of the theories – I cannot do all of them because at some point I want to go to bed today, and so might you.

The simplest idea is that Waldseemüller and Ringmann had made it all up. They had Vespucci’s exaggerated reports of the discoveries along the Atlantic coast of South America and spiced it up by showing the continent surrounded by water. The key witness for this theory is Waldseemüller himself. In 1513 he produced another map that did not show a new continent in the West and did not call it America. In the explanatory note he said quote: “As we have lately come to understand, our previous representation pleased very few people. Therefore, since true seekers of knowledge rarely colour their words in confusing rhetoric, and do not embellish facts with charm but instead with a venerable abundance of simplicity, we must say that we cover our heads with a humble hood.” end quote.

But this admission does not mean they had just willy-nilly made up an ocean that nobody had even thought of. That would be very much out of character. Waldseemüller and Ringmann provide references for much of what they show, quoting sources, ancient and modern for the better-known regions and the records of travellers for the parts of Africa, eastern europe and Asia not well known to the ancients.

And there is a further aspect. The two mapmakers had been hired by duke Rene II of Lorraine to create these maps as a prestige project. The duke wanted to impress his peers by setting up a humanist school in his duchy, and that humanist school had to produce something that would be widely respected as a great piece of scholarship. If Waldseemüller and Ringmann had consciously been making things up, they would have made their duke the laughingstock of europe, which could get very uncomfortable.

There is a variation of that theory which has to do with the size of the world they show. Waldseemüller and Ringmann’s map is in the main based on Ptolemy’s geography. In fact, both authors had initially been hired to produce a revised version of the book, rather than to draw up maps. It was only when the fake letters by Vespucci circulated in Europe that they decided to create a map instead.

But where their map differs dramatically from other maps based on Ptolemy is in scale. This is one of the earliest maps that assumes 360 degrees for the circumference of the earth, rather than the 270 degrees for instance Behaim showed. In other words, Waldseemüller and Ringmann believed or knew that the Earth had a circumference of 40,000km. And they knew the distance from Europe to the Caribbean and South America. At which point the cartographers had to make a choice. Either they assume that Asia stretches all of the way to the Caribbean and east coast of South America. That would make it a landmass that covers 50% of the Planet. A continent of that size did not match up with what Marco Polo and other travellers had reported. So, the only logical conclusion was that there must be an ocean between Asia and the newly discovered lands; admittedly a very bold assumption, but a justifiable one.

Dr. Martin Lehmann from the University of Freiburg took a closer look at the political environment in which the map was created.

As I mentioned, Waldseemüller and Ringmann worked for duke Rene II of Lorraine, a prince on the western edge of the Holy Roman empire at a place called St. Die. St. Die is roughly 100km from Strasburg and 80km from Nancy, in other words, in the middle of absolutely nowhere, hundreds of miles from the Sea and even further away from Lisbon, Cadiz and Seville.

Since the map is correct in many respects, there is at least a theoretical option that it was based on information from voyages that had been kept secret. Which leads straight to the question how such incredibly valuable secrets could end up in the hands of two guys hired by a mid-level prince in a dark forest? Makes no sense, or does it?

Spain and Portugal were in a fierce competition, not over who could find America, that was not interesting at the time, but over the route to India and even more important, the route to the Spice islands of Indonesia and the Philippines. Being able to obtain these spices at source would cut out the middlemen, aka, India, the Silk Road and Venice, and the enormous margins that paid for the palazzi on the Canale Grande. In this race to get to the Malaka islands, the Portuguese travelled eastwards, whilst the Spaniards, who were a lot later to the game, travelled westwards. In 1494 the two sides agreed the treaty of Tordesillas that is often described as Spain and Portugal dividing the world between themselves. But that is not quite true. What Tordesillas said is that Portugal had the exclusive right to sail eastwards and Spain was free to seek their fortune in the west. May the best man win.

So, both sides were racing to the same spot, roughly 1200km north of Australia. Which means neither side wanted the other side to know what they were up to. That is why very few maps were published in Seville, Lisbon or Cadiz where the explorers made landfall and the best information about the new discoveries could be obtained. Both the Spanish and the Portugues surely produced maps, but they were only made accessible to the select few. And they kept voyages secret. For instance, it is widely believed the Portuguese knew about Brazil before the official discovery in 1500.

But all that secrecy had its drawbacks. This was a winner takes all race. Both sides wanted to send as many fleets as possible in the hope that at least one of them makes it through. It was a venture capital approach which needed venture capitalists willing to share some of the costs and risks of the voyages. This was the 15^th century equivalent of the streaming wars, the race for AI leadership or the rush to dominate the ride sharing industry.

And where were these financiers? With the Italian banking houses in decline, it was the Southern German mercantile firms, the Fuggers, Welsers, Imhoffs, Tuchers etc., that were the obvious business partners for the Iberian kings. But if you wanted to get them on board, you needed to lift up the skirt a bit. That is the reason Martin Behaim was allowed to put a fairly detailed map of West Africa on to his globe, information that almost certainly came from Portugal.

And that could also explain the astounding accuracy of the Waldseemüller Map. If the Portugues had information about the West coast of South America and would have wanted to share it, they would probably have used someone in the German lands. But I personally find it hard to believe they had managed to sail up the whole of the west coast of South America to Panama and then made it back, all before 1507. And what for, this was the route they had ceded to the Spanish. And the Spanish are unlikely to have furnished the information, since they would have insisted on naming the continent after Columbus, not Vespucci.

Which gets to the next twist in the theory. Let’s put yourself into the shoes of a Portuguese strategist in 1505/6. You cannot know whether or not the Spaniards are in with a chance to make the race. But if you could find a way to slow them down, that would certainly be worth something. What if you could convince the Spaniards that there was an enormous landmass and another Ocean between them and the spice islands. Maybe that could discourage them from sending lots of ships, and more importantly it could hold their investors up from funding these efforts.

And who could be a better vehicle to convey this message than a group of humanists locked up in a village in the Vosges mountains trying to impress their ducal sponsor. Like journalists at a minor newspaper, they were looking for the great scoop that would put them on the national news. So it may be that the Portuguese suggested to Waldseemüller and Ringmann that South America was surrounded by water, even though they did not know that for a fact. That may also explain why the letters published in 1503 and 1504 and attributed to Vespucci are unlikely to be by his own hand and are full of exaggerations and inaccuracies. It could be part of a larger sting operation.

But, as my father-in-law used to say, if it is a choice between cockup and conspiracy, 9 out of 10 times, it is just cockup.

Irrespective of whether Waldseemüller and Ringmann were duped or dupers, the name America went around the world. The original print run of their map was for 1,000 copies. The name America then shows up on the so-called green globe in Paris from that same year. Then again on the Jagiellonian globe of 1510 produced in Krakow. Johanns Schöner who was the owner of the only surviving copy of Waldseemüller’s 1507 map, includes America in his two globes. From there it meanders across Europe; between 1520 and 1540 reprints and slightly revised versions of Waldseemüller’s map are published in Vienna, Paris, Strasburg, Basel and Zurich. Finally in 1538 Gerard Mercator, he of the Mercator projection, published a world map where he was the first to declare the existence of two continents, South America and North America. Once the term had been embraced by the foremost geographer of the time, despite vigorous objections from the Spanish side, the naming had become irrevocable.

There you have it; the name America came about because a bunch of German humanists stuck in the back of beyond either made up or were made to make up a continent that then actually turned out to be real. And people say that Bielefeld does not exist….

Thanks for listening. This was a bit of a long one and I apologize. I was carried away by far too many fascinating facts. But if you have listened all the way I guess you liked it too.

Next week will be the last of our deviations around the Holy Roman empire in the 15^th century. What we will be talking about is Arms and Armor, the greatest of the German exports in the 15^th and 16^th century and beyond. Shah Jahan, the great Mughal emperor and the man who commissioned the Taj Mahal, counted 200 Firangi swords amongst his most valuable possessions. Firangi means foreigner, but originally Franks, meaning Franconians -not Frenchmen – since most of his steel blades came from Solingen. How Germany gained its reputation as the source of the finest weapons and amour around is what we will discuss next week.

Episode 195– Engraving the German Renaissance

by History of the Germans Podcast on 22nd May 202525th February 2026

Dürer, Burgkmair, Holbein, Schongauer

Last year I went to an exhibition at the Städel museum in Frankfurt that was entitled Holbein and the Renaissance in the North. That is the elder Holbein, the father of the Holbein who came to England. This exhibition has now ended, but there is still a great summary available on the Städel website.

I wanted to kick off this episode with this chapel and then move on to Holbein, Burgkmair etc. But as I dug deeper and deeper into the late 15^th and early 16^th century art in Southern Germany, the more connections and links emerged that I hope you will find as fascinating as I did.

History of the Germans

HotGPod is now entering its 9th season. So far we have covered:

Ottonian Emperors (# 1- 21)
– Henry the Fowler (#1)
– Otto I (#2-8)
– Otto II (#9-11)
– Otto II (#11-14)
– Henry II (#15-17)
– Germany in 1000 (#18-21)

Salian Emperors(#22-42)
– Konrad II (#22- 25)
– Henry III (#26-29)
– Henry IV/Canossa (#30-39)
– Henry V (#40-42)
– Concordat of Worms (#42)

Early Hohenstaufen (#43-69)
– Lothar III (#43-46)
– Konrad III (#47-49)
– Frederick Barbarossa (#50-69)

Late Hohenstaufen (#70-94)
– Henry VI (#70-72)
– Philipp of Swabia (#73-74)
– Otto IV (#74-75)
– Frederick II (#75-90)
– Epilogue (#91-94)

Eastern Expansion (#95-108)

The Hanseatic League (#109-127)

The Teutonic Knights (#128-137)

Though obviously not present at the exhibition, one key focus was the Fugger chapel in the church of St. Anne in Augsburg, one of the earliest and most significant Renaissance building north of the Alps. I wanted to kick off this episode with this chapel and then move on to Holbein, Burgkmair etc. But as I dug deeper and deeper into the late 15th and early 16th century art in Southern Germany, the more connections and links emerged that I hope you will find as fascinating as I did.

Links to artworks:

Fugger chapel: Die Fuggerkapelle | St. Anna Augsburg

Riemenschneider Heilig Blut Altar: The Altar of the Holy Blood | Reliquarian

The Hare: Young Hare, 1502 – Albrecht Durer – WikiArt.org

Schongauer St. Anthony: Martin Schongauer | Saint Anthony Tormented by Demons | The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Rhinocerus: Albrecht Dürer | The Rhinoceros | The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Ritter, Tod und Teufel and other works: Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) – The Metropolitan Museum of Art

As always:

Homepage with maps, photos, transcripts and blog: www.historyofthegermans.com

If you wish to support the show go to: Support • History of the Germans Podcast

Facebook: @HOTGPod

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So far I have:

Ep. 195 – Engraving the German Renaissance

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Transcript

Hello and welcome to the history of the Germans: Episode 195 – Engraving the German Renaissance, also episode 11 of Season 10: The Empire in the 15^th Century.

But before we start another call to contribute to the show on historyofthegermans.com/support. In this episode we will encounter my pre, pre, pred, predecessor, Conrad Celtis who tried, but failed to complete a history of the Germans. Still he was crowned Poet Laureate and was given a generous pension by the emperor. So, just in case you wish to have your own poet laureate and want to see the History of the Germans to go all the way to its conclusion – probably in the 2030s – do not hesitate to follow Linda D., Lorenzo C., Jonathan. Lincoln B. and the seriously generous Ed H. Sean P. B and Palle H.

And with that, back to the show

As we heard last week, by 1500 the house of Fugger had risen to the top of the mining, banking and trading world of the 15^th century. Jakob and his brothers Ulrich and Georg were indeed so rich and powerful they decided to build their own chapel, a burial place for the family. Having your own burial chapel was not something unique for a successful merchant in a free city, but the chapel that the Fugger built exceeded all that had gone before in scale and decoration. This was a chapel that rivalled those of their clients, the princes and the bishops and was designed to show off their wealth and sophistication.

And they found the perfect place, the church of the Carmelite nuns of St. Anne in Augsburg. The nuns urgently needed help to bring their church up to the standard of the city that has rapidly become one of the commercial, cultural and political centers of the Holy Roman empire.

In 1506 the Fuggers signed an agreement with the nuns that they would quote “build and construct a very beautiful chapel in our church — by means of which the church is significantly enlarged — with great and notable expense, and to adorn and erect it in the most precious manner in which it is customary” And that they would “have in the aforementioned chapel a burial place for themselves, their heirs, and successors, in whatever part they find fitting and suitable” end quote. This agreement was another example of the deal making skills of the Fuggers, making it an entirely one-sided document. Though the nuns remained the mistresses of the church, they had to give Jakob and his brothers entirely free reign as to the style and use of the chapel, even committing not to change anything at a later stage and to maintain it essentially forever.

This chapel in St. Anne is one of Germany’s most significant Renaissance buildings. And if you enter the chapel you are struck by the light and airy space, its white walls, round arches, columns and pilasters that recall the Italian renaissance churches of Venice or Rome. For someone who visited the chapel in the year of its completion in 1518, emerging from then central nave of St. Anne, likely covered in frescoes and dimly lit through stained glass windows, this was step into a new, modern world of clarity, of rationality, of the spirit of an early modernity. A place befitting a family who had branches from Antwerp to Rome, who lent to popes and emperors and whose silver was shipped as far as Calicut in India and beyond the Great Wall of China.

At the far end of the chapel you can see the epitaphs of the Fugger family, Ulrich and Georg, the elder brothers who had died in 1506 and 1510, their younger brother Jakob and his nephews Raymond and Hieronymus. All these made of shining white marble, arranged in a half circle, framed by Italianate round arches and featuring roman columns.

But then there is something else here, something that one would not find in a renaissance church in Venice of Florence. If you look up, the ceiling is not the rounded vault adding to the geometric forms that abound everywhere else, this is a rib-vaulted ceiling, something you are more likely to see in Ghent, Bruges or Antwerp.

And then, above the alter and the epitaphs rises a pipe organ, one of the largest, of its time. Pipe organs are northern European, one of the oldest accounts come from the cathedral of Winchester and from the Renaissance period onwards German organ builders took a lead. The organ wings are painted with stories about music, using perfect perspective from the point of the viewer below the picture.

And then there is the central sculptural group of the lamentation of Christ. And, though it is made of marble, it has the highly expressive, dramatic gestures you find in the wooden sculptures of a Tilman Riemenschneider or the Alsatian masters working in Strasbourg or Colmar at the same time.

What is going on here?

Well, most of what is going on here has to do with geography and trade. Augsburg looked as much to Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp as it did to Venice and Florence. And it is up there in Flanders that another, a Northern Renaissance is taking shape.

The great Italian contributions of geometry, perspective and the return to the ancient Roman and Greek past was only one component of this artistic movement. The great painters of Flanders, Hans Memling, Jan van Eyck and Rogier van er Weyden brought new techniques and ideas to the European renaissance art. The first of these inventions was oil painting. Up until the 1450s the Italian artists worked mainly in tempura and fresco, which produces this gorgeous slightly fainted look of blocks of colour set against each other. Oil paint can be applied in multiple layers giving the colour more depth and sometimes that jewel-like lustre you can see for instance in the Ghent altarpiece or Hans Memling’s Last Judgement.

In 1483 Tommaso Portinari, the branch manager of the Medici bank in Bruges whose reckless lending drove a nail in the coffin of the family’s wealth, sent a Flemish altarpiece to Florence. The picture, the Adoration of the Shepherds by Hugo van der Goes, caused a stir. Not so much because it was painted in oil, that technique had already come to Italy a few decades earlier, but because of the depiction of the shepherds. Rather than showing them as clean and clean shaven, saint-like figures, Hugo van der Goes, had painted them as real people, calloused hands, bad teeth, torn clothes and all. And not just that, their expressive faces and gestures went against the measured, controlled movements of the likes of a Piero della Francesca.

These two innovations, oil painting and the depiction of the lower classes percolated through Italian art, until they broke through in the calloused feet of Caravaggio’s Madonna of Loreto.

So, when the man who sat in the centre of the trade between North and South and east and west commissioned a chapel, it was only natural that it would reflect both influences. And the artist who worked on it, some, like Burgkmair had apprenticed to painters in Italy, whilst other, like Hans Holbein the elder had gone to the Netherlands. And the greatest of them all, Albrecht Dürer had gone to both.

But when you look closer, there is a third influence, beyond Italian and Flemish here. The statues of the lamentation of Christ, that is neither Italian, nor is it Flemish. If it reminds me of anything, it reminds me of the works of Tilman Riemenschneider, a sculptor from Wurzburg who produced works in stone and wood that were highly expressive and usually left in their natural colour, rather than being painted. Though they are often called Gothic in style, and their exaggerated movements do pay homage to what came before, they aren’t really. They depict genuine individuals, people who look like men and women you can see in the streets outside the church, wearing the clothes of the time. They are not avatars of saints and kings as gothic art tended to do. And, being deprived of colour, they have some of the austere greatness of Greek and Roman statues.

Hans Daucher, the artist of the lamentation in Fugger chapel has no direct link to Riemenschneider, but both go back to a sculptural tradition based around Ulm and Strasburg that developed into these unique expressions of late medieval sentiment and renaissance technique.

If you like, the mixture of Flemish and Italian influences, plus the home-grown sculptural tradition meant that at the time it was completed, in 1518, there was nothing like it in the world.

Which begs one question, was it intentional? Did the Fuggers not know how to build a renaissance chapel in the fashionable Italian style? Or were they dependent on local artists who simply weren’t a Raphael or Michelangelo. Or was it something the Fuggers really wanted?

Jakob Fugger had lived in Venice for several years and had seen the great renaissance palaces going up along the grand canal, churches being rebuilt in the new style, and he had funded the rebuilding of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi in 1505. So, Jakob Fugger knew exactly what an Italian renaissance church was supposed to look like.

So, he must have been constrained by the availability of local talent? Seriously? The richest man in Europe would not have been able to hire any of the dozens of talented Italian architects to come to Augsburg? No, seriously, the Fuggers had the money. More money than the Sforza of Milan, the Este of Ferrara, the Gonzaga of Mantua or any of the great Venetian families. Enough money and enough influence over the papacy to hire a Raphael, Michelangelo even a Leonardo.

So, Jakob Fugger and his brothers did want it to look like this, to be something that was neither Flemish, nor Italian, nor traditional Swabian, something new, but also something that was uniquely German. They were after all not Italians or Flemings, they were citizens of Augsburg in the German lands. And whilst they wanted to show how cosmopolitan they were with all the Italian and Flemish renaissance elements, they also want to convey the message that they are rooted here, in the city of Augsburg, in the Holy Roman Empire of their major client.

And all that fits very much into the spirit of the times. You know that I have been reluctant to talk about national sentiment for neigh on 200 episodes, but it had begun building up in the 14^th century. We have heard that since the reign of Rudolf of Habsburg charters and legal proceedings had regularly been written up in the vernacular rather than Latin. We heard about the importance of Low German as the glue that held the Hanse system together. The advent of printing turbocharged this development. Sure, the bibles and theological writings, the indulgences and schoolbooks, were still printed in Latin, but the material that normal people wanted to read for fun, things like the ship of fools and the pamphlets, bawdy rhymes and public announcements, all these were in German, High or Low. And the exact same thing, the rise of the vernacular happened in Italy, in France, in Bohemia and to some degree in Poland and Hungary at the same time.

And with a language that differs quite fundamentally from the French, Italian, Polish and Hungarian of its neighbours, the Germans sensed themselves more and more a people apart.

And into this dropped a surprise find in the monastery of Hersfeld, the only surviving copy of Tacitus’ Germania.

And if you remember all the way back to the prologue, you may remember three things, first, that Tacitus had never been to Germany, second, that he wrote it as a critique of Roman society and, thirdly, that he described the Germans as noble savages who valued simplicity, freedom and virtue. But he also ascribed to them “drunkenness, cruelty, savagery and other vice bordering on bestiality and excess”.

The first to use Tacitus to define Germany and the Germans was our old friend Silvio Aeneas Piccolomini, the future pope Pius II who had spent over 20 years in Germany. We have gone almost 3 episodes without mentioning him, so his appearance is more than overdue. Piccolomini wrote up his experiences in the land north of the Alps. He used Tacitus as a foil to highlight how far the Germans had come, their well-ordered cities, successful trade and industry, and thriving universities. What he also did was ascribe all this progress to the civilising effects of Christianity and the ceaseless work of the curia. And then he praised the warlike nature of the Germans they had preserved since the days of ancient Rome, as a way to convince them to join the war against the Ottomans. It all sounds a bit too self-serving, but it appears that Piccolinin did genuinely enjoy his time in Germany.

But Piccolomini was the exception. Another Italian churchman, Gianantonio Campano made also gave lots of flattering speeches whilst in Regensburg on an imperial diet. But at the same time, he was writing letters home where he described the Germans as dirty barbarians without any style and culture, smelly and always drunk. After his death these letters were then published to predictable reaction in the German lands.

That is where Conrad Celtis comes in. Despite his Latin sounding name, he was the son of a vintner from near Würzburg. He was one of these people who could take advantage of the proliferation of universities. He studied and then taught in Cologne, Buda, Heidelberg, Padua, Bologna, Florence, Rome, Erfurt, Rostock, Leipzig and Krakow. He became best known as a poet and in 1487 was crowned poet laureate by the emperor Friedrich III, the first person ever to be honoured in that way. His fame as a writer and scientist was such, he became known as the Archhumanist.

But what got him really passionate was not the theology and science that he saw at the universities or the poetry, it was the way the world saw the Germans, and in particular the Italians writing nasty letters, holding up their Tacitus looking down on him. He did a famous speech when he took up a post at the university of Ingolstadt. He urged the students quote: “Consider it a great disgrace to be ignorant of the histories of the Greeks and Latins, and the height of shame to know nothing about the topography, the climate, the rivers, the mountains, the antiquities and the peoples of our region and our own country, in short all those facts which foreigners have so cleverly collected concerning us.” And then “To them our characters are always suspect and dangerous. Let us be ashamed, noble gentleman, that certain modern historians [..] should speak of our most famous leaders merely as “the barbarians” and suppress their proper native title, in order to belabour and bitterly disparage the reputation of us Germans.”

And then he goes all out: “Assume, O men of Germany, that ancient spirit of yours, with which you so often confounded and terrified the Romans and turn your eyes to the frontiers of Germany; collect together her torn and broken territories. Let us be ashamed, ashamed, I say, to have placed upon our nation the yoke of slavery, and to be paying tributes and taxes to foreign and barbarian kings. O free and powerful people, O noble and valiant race, plainly worthy of the Roman empire, our famous harbour is held by the Pole and the gateway of our ocean by the Dane!” end quote.

You get the drift. I cannot say for a fact that this is the first expression of that national stereotype of complaining that our neighbours see us as barbaric, boorish and uneducated, followed by a call to arms, that proves all three accusations.

Celtis himself sticks to fiery rhetoric and intellectual arguments. He gathers other humanists to write the Germania Illustra, a comprehensive history of the Germans. He highlights the empire’s achievements in the days of the Ottonians, Salians and Hohenstaufen to justify the elevated status of Germany’s rulers. On the plus side, he rediscovers Hrotsvita of Gandersheim, the first female German writer who had produced a life of Otto the Great.

This rising national sentiment is then picked up by the emperor Maximilian for his own political purposes, something we will no doubt discuss in quite some detail when we get there.

But again, for Jakob Fugger, banker to Maximilian, the design of his chapel had to reflect an element of Germanness, and in all likelihood, he did share the sentiment that Celtis was articulating.

As I said before, Germany was not the only place that developed a stronger and stronger notion of its national identity in that period. England is likely to have got there earlier, if simply for the fact that it was an island and in constant war with France. France in turn had found its rallying point in Joan of Ark and its recovering monarchy. Italy was coming closer together, at least intellectually as the invasions by foreigners battered them. Bohemia had struggled free during the Hussite war and was just nominally still part of the empire. We will discuss Hungarian and Polish developments again during the next season.

And all that manifests in art and architecture. Hampton Court could only ever be built in England, Chambord is unmistakeably French and the Palazzo del Te in Mantua is quintessentially Italian. And hence the Fugger chapel is profoundly German, as is the Schloss in Heidelberg, the archepiscopal palace in Aschaffenburg and the city hall of Bremen.

But neither these castles, churches and city halls, nor even Timan Riemenschneider’s delightful altars are the German Renaissance’ greatest achievements. Its foremost contribution we have already discussed, and that is without any doubt, the printing press. But a close second is the art of engraving.

If I were to show you 20 of the most famous works of the German Renaissance, chances are the one you would recognise immediately is not a bright oil painting or a dramatic sculpture, but it would be a simple sheet of paper, black and white, showing a young hare, Albrecht Dürer’s young hare to be precise, followed right behind by the woodcut of a Rhinocerus, an animal Dürer had never seen. And the third might be Ritter, Tod und Teufel, the Knight, the Death and the Devil engraving.

As the Flemish brough oil painting and the Italians the perspective to the great European endeavour we call renaissance art, it is the humble works on paper, the drawings, woodcuts and above all engraving that are the great contributions of the German artists.

Just a quick word about the difference between woodblock printing and engraving. Woodblock printing is in relief, meaning the artists cuts out the white bits of the image and the ink is applied to the parts that stick out. That is obviously a lot easier to do in wood than in metal, which is why relief printing in metal is quite rare. Engraving is the opposite. The engraver creates a line by cutting into a plate of metal. That line is then filled with ink, the remaining paint is wiped off the plate and the press then transfers the ink from the line in the plate to the paper. Sounds easy, is anything but.

Woodcut was already widespread before engraving started, used in particular in putting patterns on clothing. Woodcut is also what printers mainly used when they wanted images to accompany their text. Woodcuts and moveable type were both in relief, i.e., the black bits were sticking out. Putting an engraving and moveable type on the same page would not normally work because engraving needs much more pressure from the press to transfer the image, than type. If you find engravings in books, they tend to have their own page and be printed in a separate process after the text, sometimes even requiring different types of paper.

Engraving as a technique to mass produce artworks on paper only really kicked off in 15^th century Germany and Alsace. When exactly is hard to say, probably around 1430 and most likely on the upper Rhine, Strasburg probably. Engraving predates the printing press by 30 years.

So, why is it that engraving really kicked off in Germany rather than anywhere else?

There are a few things that changed in the 15^th century. One was the availability of paper in significant quantities. As we have heard in the Gutenberg episode paper had been introduced in the 12^th and 13^th century, but it took until the 15^th century that it was produced in large enough quantities and to a sufficiently high standard. Gutenberg insisted on Italian paper, but we already know that the Ravensburgers maintained a highly regarded paper mill, as did Nürnberg.

The next component was engraving skills. Woodcutters came usually from the guild of carpenters. They had the knowledge and tools to manipulate wood proficiently. Engravers tended to be metalworker, and most often gold or silversmiths. They had been engraving cups and rings and armour for a long time. So, drawing lines on a copper plate was right up their street. The free imperial cities, in particular Strasburg, Augsburg and Nürnberg were full of goldsmiths.

Copper was the preferred material for engravings. Copper was expensive and strategically important, but thanks to the efforts of first the Nürnbergers and then the Fuggers, Southern Germany was literally swimming in it. Jakob Fugger even covered the roof of his townhouse with the material, a truly extravagant move.

And finally, one needed a bit of an innovative streak. Engraving as a way to create prints had not been done before, at least not at scale. So, the early engravers had to deal with some of the issues that Gutenberg wrestled with, namely which metal to use for the plate, the kinds of tools to manipulate it most effectively, the type of ink most suitable to the process, the preparation of the paper, the correct calibration of the press etc., etc., etc.,

But all that, paper, goldsmiths and innovative streak were available in Italy or France as well. So why the German lands?

The earliest engravings were playing cards, where it mattered to see clearly which card one was holding. So, it may well be the propensity to gambling, the love of Skat and Doppelhkopf and the accompanying excessive alcohol consumption that gave the Germans an edge here. But there is something else as well.

If you look at Renaissance art in Italy, its purpose and consumption was determined by the state, or more precisely by the rulers of the state. Milan, Ferrara, Mantua, Urbino, Florence and all the others were ruled by tyrants, i.e., men who had acquired their position not through the line of succession but by brute force or skilful manipulation of city politics. None of them could claim an ancient lineage that legitimised their existence as rulers.

And therefore, art became one of the ways to justify their rule. If you were a Medici you could point to the cupola of the Duomo or the statues in the Loggia dei Lanzi and say, look, this is what I have done for this city, be grateful. The same could be said for the decorations of the churches or the great displays during weddings and visits of great dignitaries.

Some artwork was kept inside the palaces of the rulers, but there they would be shown to guests, both local and foreign, leaving them in awe of the wealth and sophistication of the master of the state. That effect was probably exacerbated by letting rumours run round the city that exaggerated the wonders of these pieces, which again made clear how superior the ruler was.

That also affected the content of the art. By referring back to ancient Rome where emperors were chosen more often on merit than on lineage was an ideal vehicle to explain why Frederico Sforza was a suitable heir to the Visconti.

In the German lands, the rulers, the princes and bishops all had ancient lineages coming out of their ears. That was often pretty much the only thing they had. Sure, they did want to project wealth and power, in particular those who had neither, but they did not need the reference to ancient Rome. Hence the inherent conservativism of much of the art made for princely rulers.

Where there was a lot of interest in the ancient world was in the cities and universities. The audience for art in these places did not look for legitimacy, but for information and above all, the sheer joy that comes from seeing something beautiful. Like the picture of a hare whose fur one can feel.

The problem for the artists was that these kinds of people, the burghers, the university doctors had no way to pay for marble statues or frescoes of Galatea riding across the loggias of their villas.

Engraving was the answer to this conundrum. A skilfully executed engraving could produce a few hundred good, early impressions and if reused, a lot more less clear versions. And then the design could be redone to make even more. And that made these very, very affordable. Dürer records that he sold his engravings for 2 to 4 stuivers a piece in the Netherlands, which comes to about half a day’s wages for a labourer. These were in other words extremely affordable works. And given there was no such thing as copyright, clever entrepreneurs copied the most popular engravings from artists like Schongauer and Dürer and sold them even cheaper.

The topics of these images varied across the board. The very first engravings as I said were playing cards but were soon overtaken by religious images. Monks and cannons had been selling woodcuts of saints and miracles to pilgrims at the shrines for decades already. Now the engravers wanted to get in on that trade.

Martin Schingauer: Altar of the Dominicans

Artists like Martin Schongauer specialised on these small devotional pictures. What set them apart from the woodcuts was their sophistication, not just in printing quality, drawing and composition, but also in their meaning. Engravers were goldsmiths and hence ranked at the top of the hierarchy of guilds. They often had a middle-class background, and some had been to university. The greatest of the early engravers, Martin Schongauer was the son of a well to do goldsmith who had moved from Augsburg to Colmar in Alsace. In 1465, aged maybe 12-15 he went to study in Leipzig, though he did not graduate. On his return he settled down in Colmar as an engraver and painter. He produced some wonderful works in oil, including the altar of the Dominicans that is one of my family’s perennial favourites.

But where he came to prominence well beyond the walls of Colmar was as a printmaker. A.M. Hind argues that quote “little by little Schongauer rises above the Gothic limitations both of setting and of type. Ornament and Architecture are simplified and everything is concentrated on the expression of the central idea.“ end quote. Schongauer’s masterpiece is an image of the temptation of St. Antony where the saint seems to serenely float in space, attacked by a menagerie of monsters that would give Hieronymous Bosch some inspiration. Vasari records that Michelangelo had his first breakthrough with “the portrait he did from an engraving by Martin the German”. And then continues: “Since a scene by this same Martin, which was engraved in copper and showed Saint Anthony being beaten by devils, had reached Florence, Michelangelo drew it with his pen in such a way that it was not recognized as his, and he painted it with colours; in order to copy the strange forms of some of the devils, he went to buy fish that had scales of unusual colours and showed so much talent in this work that he acquired from it both credit and renown.” End quote.

No faint praise for an artist who spent all his life in the mid-sized city of Colmar.

Schongauer died in 1491, very much to Albrecht Dürer’s chagrin who had travelled to Colmar to meet the famous engraver and learn from him. But even without Schongauer’s instruction, Albrecht Dürer brought renaissance engraving to its highest achievement. Many of his prints are instantly recognisable, like Saint Eustace, Nemesis or Good Fortune, Adam and Eve, Melencolia, Knight, Death and the Devil, St. Jerome in his Study and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

These are works that go well beyond the mere depiction of saints as aids for prayer. They convey messages about theology, philosophy and humanist learning. They are made not as ways to retell bible stories to the masses as altarpieces and stained-glass windows do, but as images for intellectuals and interested laymen to contemplate. Some are religious, but others go into platonic ideas and esoteric symbolism.

What they bring is a shift in the way art is experienced by most people. Before engravings flooded Europe, art was a collective experience. You saw the altarpieces and sculptures on the grand cathedrals in a public space; you shared the experience with other people. The engravings were designed to be appreciated individually or with a small group of family and friends at home. That not only widened the potential subjects beyond the common denominator acceptable in a public space. It also played into the Renaissance ideal of the individual with its individual thoughts, beliefs, aspirations and tastes. If printing was one of the tools that triggered the intellectual desire to find one’s own way to God or any other belief system, the engravings created the emotional pathways to the self.

Ok, apologies, I think I went a little bit off the reservation here. But even if engravings did not create the individual, they were and are fabulous works of art. Though often neglected in the darker corners of museums outshone by the bright colours of the altarpieces and the smoothness of the marble sculptures, they are worth more than a cursory look.

As for looks, next week we will gaze upon the stunning looks of a certain Agnes Bernauer whose story of love and murder caused much of a ruckus amongst the already fractious Bavarian Wittelsbachs. I hope you will join us again.

And in the meantime, if you liked this and have not yet listened to the two episodes on the printing press, i.e., 187 and 188, go there. Or, if you want to look into a much earlier period where German artists achieved world class standards of works on paper, check out episode 16 where we talk – amongst other things – about the art of 10^th century illuminations. And finally, do not forget that you can support the show by going to historyofthegermans.com/support where for an admittedly very generous contribution you can be elevated all the way to Prince Elector or you can make a one-time contribution that keeps this show advertising free.