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Diplomat and Grand Master of the Teutonic Order

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

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

TRANSCRIPT

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

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

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

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The Early Years

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

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

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

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

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

The new grandmaster urgently needed a new sponsor.

The Financing of the Chivalric Orders

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Teutonic Knights in Transylvania

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The friendship between Hermann von Salza and emperor Frederick II

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

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

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

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

The Fifth Crusade

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

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

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

The crusade of Frederick II

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Konrad of Masovia invites the Teutonic Knights to Prussia

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Elisabeth of Hungary and Hermann’s last years

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The beginnings of the Teutonic Knights

Hello and welcome to a new season of the History of the Germans, the Teutonic Knights or to give them their full title, the knights of the hospital of St. Mary of the House of the Germans in Jerusalem. Even though the state they had created in Prussia has been wiped off the map with all its cultural markers, the Teutonic Knights are not forgotten. Less shrouded in nonsense than the Templars, less devoted to social causes than the Knights of St. John  they still loom large not just in German history but even more so in Polish and Russian history. Both of these nations have placed victories over the Teutonic Knights at key junctions of their national narrative.

But were the Teutonic knights these near invincible, cruel faceless war machines that Sergei Eisenstein had charging over the ice to the sound of Prokofiev brilliant score? That is what we will try to find out over the next few episodes. Expect your fair share of heroic battles, chivalric entertainment all intermingled with twisted theology and astute commercial activity. I hope you will enjoy it.

TRANSCRIPT

Hello and welcome to a new season of the History of the Germans, the Teutonic Knights or to give them their full title, the knights of the hospital of St. Mary of the House of the Germans in Jerusalem. Even though the state they had created in Prussia has been wiped off the map with all its cultural markers, the Teutonic Knights are not forgotten. Less shrouded in nonsense than the Templars, less devoted to social causes than the Knights of St. John  they still loom large not just in German history but even more so in Polish and Russian history. Both of these nations have placed victories over the Teutonic Knights at key junctions of their national narrative.

But were the Teutonic knights these near invincible, cruel faceless war machines that Sergei Eisenstein had charging over the ice to the sound of Prokofiev brilliant score? That is what we will try to find out over the next few episodes. Expect your fair share of heroic battles, chivalric entertainment all intermingled with twisted theology and astute commercial activity. I hope you will enjoy it.

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Back to the show.

And we start at the beginning: 

Quote: “In the year of His incarnation 1190 at a time when the city of Acre was besieged by Christians and was recovered from the hands of the infidels by favor of divine grace, there were in the army of the Christians certain devoted men from the cities of Bremen and Lübeck, who, as men of mercy who looked with eyes of compassion upon the diverse and intolerable shortages and discomforts of the sick staying in the said army, founded a hospital in a tent of theirs made from the sail of a certain ship, which in German is called a “cog”. Gathering the infirm there, they served them humbly and devotedly and, looking after them lovingly out of the goods conferred upon them by God, they treated them mercifully, attending to the fact that in the person of any sick or poor man they received Christ himself.” End quote. This is how Peter von Duisburg a priest-brother of the Teutonic Knight described the foundation of the order in the chronicle he put together in 1326-1330.

It is a long way from Bremen and Lubeck merchants rigging a shelter for the sick and wounded to armed men clad in white robes embroidered with black crosses charging their enormous warhorses at lightly armed peasants across a frozen Baltic landscape.

To understand why in the medieval mind these two activities were just two sides of the same medal, we need to go back a few more centuries further and talk about the values and behaviours of the medieval ruling elite that goes by the term of chivalry.

The Teutonic Knights were a chivalric military order and the reason they and the other chivalric orders like the Templar and the Knights Hospitallers came to into existence is down to this rather convoluted and contradictory worldview.

Chivalry traces back to three sources. One were older Germanic and Scandinavian ideas about what it meant to be a warrior. Then there are the core teachings of the church and we have the concepts of courtly love and behaviour that emerge out of nothing during the 12th and 13th century.

In Germanic tribal culture, being a warrior was seen as the pinnacle of human achievement that required lifelong training that started in early childhood. But fighting skills wasn’t all. They differentiated between honourable warriors and well-trained thugs. And the key difference between the two was loyalty, meaning loyalty to the tribe, to the leader and to the warriors under ones command. So loyalty went both ways. The warrior would defend the king, earl or chieftain with his life. In return the leader would ensure the warrior gets an opportunity to become rich. Plunder had to be divided justly between the leader and his men and sometimes women. And if the leader was either unable or unwilling to provide the opportunities for enrichment, that leader could and would be replaced.

This warrior culture relished fighting almost as fighting for fighting’s sake. They embraced not just the physical challenge, but also the inevitable consequence, i.e., lots of fighting means lots of death. But falling in battle held little threat for Norsemen, Goths, Franks, Lombards and Burgundians since an honourable death led straight to a seat at the feasts in Valhalla, where one could continue straight away with the fighting and drinking, presumably now without the risk of actual death.

If one had the misfortune of being defeated and not dying in the battle, there were two potential outcomes. If one had fought valiantly and the lack of dying was down to simply being unlucky, the warrior would be executed in a way that was considered a honourable death that got him safely into Valhalla. If he had behaved cowardly, for instance had surrendered, the warrior was refused such honour and was sold into slavery instead.

That changed around the 9th century. Warriors that were captured were now neither executed nor sold but ransomed back to their families. Why that happened isn’t quite clear.

It may be that the emergence of a Carolingian empire fostered some notion of unity amongst the Frankish aristocrats. Even when fighting over a plot of land, a girl or an insult, both sides in the conflict were members of the same elite, the Frankish nobility. And this elite mingled across ever larger distances, made friends and married each other’s sisters.

Another component was that the church had banned Christians from keeping or enslaving fellow Christians. Enslaving pagans was perfectly fine, just not Christians. And that meant any enemy who was captured could not be turned into profit any other way than by sending him back for ransom.

And lastly, that dying business had become a lot less fun now that the gates of Valhalla had been shut for good. A ruthless warrior was now going straight to hell unless he had done penance before it was all over. Seeing the pearly gates vanishing in the distance a defeated knight was better off to yield, pay ransom and have another go at either the same enemy or eternal salvation. And in turn the victor was now expected to accept the submission of his fellow knight and treat him with respect whilst they were waiting for the cash to arrive.

This practice of capturing and ransoming enemies sounds like a material improvement to the violent nature of the early medieval world. But unfortunately it had unintended consequences that led to more, rather than less violence.

As we get into the 10th and 11th century feuding became more and more common in particular in France. The reason for that was that the risk involved in feuding had reduced dramatically. Advances in armour had reduced the risk of getting killed in fighting, and that would only be a risk where the feuding lords did indeed meet in open battle rather than just burning down each other’s villages. The higher survival rate and the practice of releasing fellow aristocrats for ransom meant they would be back in their castle a few months later once a cash had been exchanged.

At that point the downside of armed conflict with your neighbour became solely financial. And proud knights were trained not to look after the pennies, so that feuds proliferated. In particular in areas where the central authority was weak or even non-existent like France from the 10th century and the empire after the death of Henry III in the 11th century. More feuds meant more dead peasants, more burned down villages, churches and even monasteries.

The latter is where the strain of chivalry comes in, the Christian religion. The way this is usually told is that the church was seeking ways to restrain the amount of violence by making the chevaliers swear an oath not to fight from Thursday to Sunday, to spare women, children, unarmed prelates, and even merchants etc., etc. And, yes, it is true that many bishops and abbots called large gatherings where the knights present were made to swear solemn oaths before holy relics to keep the peace sanctioned by eternal damnation.

But to claim there was a huge standoff between the bellicose warrior aristocrats and the peace-loving churchmen is just plain wrong. The bishops and abbots were the brothers and cousins of the knights and counts. They had grown up together and often shared the same upbringing, education and training.

And not just that. These thuggish plunderers were as devoted Christians as everybody else in medieval western Europe. These men cared deeply about their souls and struggled quite profoundly with the chasm that existed between their profession and lifestyle on one side and the teachings of the bible, not only the new testament’s turning the other cheek, but even the Old Testament’s, though shalt not kill and though shalt not covet your neighbours house, wife, servants, ox, donkey or anything.

We hear of knights wholeheartedly repenting their sins. That usually meant donating land or rights to monasteries. In some cases knights would end their years as monks relentlessly praying for forgiveness. 

One of these repentant sinners was an early grand masters of the Teutonic Knights, Konrad, the Landgrave of Thuringia. Konrad had captured and completely destroyed the city of Fritzlar in some feud or war. After that he was so wrecked by guilt for what he had done, he went to Fritzlar to do penance. Here is what happened according to the chronicle by Nicolaus of Jeroschin, quote: “Bareheaded and barefoot he walked around the churchyard at the head of a procession and then he lay down at the door of the churchyard in that town and offered to allow himself to be beaten by the people there with a rod which he was carrying as recompense for the humiliation and the crimes he had inflicted on them. When no-one hit him he did not give up: he went from house to house through the town falling on his knees at every door. He pleaded with the occupants to come out and beat him as much as they wished for his sins. He shed many tears begging them to forgive him for the guilt he had incurred and that is what happened. Many people wept with him out of sympathy for the violent emotions called forth by his penitence. The prince went right through the city and was not beaten at all except by an old woman who struck him so hard on the body with the sharp rod that she drew blood, taking revenge for his sin. The lord suffered this patiently.”

We do not know whether or not that was indeed what happened and whether he did this voluntarily may be debated. But this was a story the Teutonic Knights told each other about their venerable forebearers as an example of knightly behaviour.  We can assume that a high aristocrat, cousin of the emperor humiliating himself in such a fashion shows that penance for acts of violence was something the knights had to and were willing to accept.

And it also shows the fundamental contradiction at the centre of chivalry.

On the one hand knights have been trained and conditioned to be warriors. That was the way to gain the respect of your fellow men, to defend your family and to become wealthy. It wasn’t just a skill, but a way of life, a way of life every male in their family had lived since time immemorial and that chivalric literature celebrated.

But on the other hand the knights realised that all this violence was in total contravention of their religious beliefs. Jesus had preached about peace, about turning the other cheek, had steadied Paul’s sword and let’s not forget accepted the state’s violence against the son of god. And even the more warlike old testament is full of suggestions to turn swords into ploughshares.

This is an unsustainable situation. The elites of western europe are told every Sunday at mass that their main raison d’etre will land them in hell. And the people who told the warriors that they should cut the fighting were the bishops and abbots, who in turn were their own brothers, sons and cousins.

In light of that these Truces of God take on a very different meaning. If the rule is that one isn’t allowed to kill peasants  from Thursday to Sunday, it implies it is perfectly ok to kill them on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. If the murder and rape of women, children and prelates is banned, it implies that slaughtering adult males must be acceptable, provided it is a Tuesday.

This inverse interpretation of the Truce of God provided relief from spiritual torment for many, but the more thoughtful souls realised that this was a mere fig leaf.

And by the 11th century the third pillar of chivalry was erected. This one does not trace back to an ancient cultural notion but is a genuine invention of the Middle Ages, the idea of courtly love. Courtly love is the concept that a good knight would become an even better knight through the devotion to a woman, ideally a lady of much higher social standing who was completely unobtainable.

This concept of male devotion is a very European cultural ideal that you will not find to the same degree in other cultures and that has also largely disappeared in the modern world. Imagine a first  class footballer like Ronaldo, Messi, Tony Kroos or Sergio Agüero would declare on television that his unrequited love for Kate Middleton is what had made him so great.

The place where all these different strains of chivalry come together is the tournament. A tournament provided the opportunity to display one’s skill as a warrior by competing with fellow aristocrats who all had willingly accepted the risk of getting maimed or killed in the process. No women, orphans and prelates anywhere in sight. A victor could display knightly magnanimity towards his defeated opponent by letting him live and gain riches by accepting the other’s weapons and horse as ransom for his release. And finally a knight could dedicate his performance to a lady of his choosing, thereby declaring his devotion. Ut despite all its advantages in bridging the inherent contradictions in chivalry, the church still banned them as frivolous wastes of blood and money.

This is the situation on the verge of the crusades. The social elite, the warrior class of Europe had developed a code of conduct that was sending them to hell and all attempts at finding a compromise with the church had failed.

That may explain the tremendous and unforeseen success of Urban II’s call for the first crusade in 1095. Crusades offered the opportunity to apply all the skills a knight had learned over the years and apply it to a purpose that was pleasing to God. Instead of being condemned to eternal domination for killing people, in the crusade he would gain heaven for doing the same thing, just to non-Christians. Knights from all over Europe joined the crusades, many truly seeking salvation, others looking to find a way through the maze of conflicting expectations.

The first crusade had been a truly unbelievable success. Sending out an army for thousands of miles without functioning supply lines to take on an enemy that was economically and militarily far superior would normally be called a suicide mission. And for many that is what it turned out to be. But some made it to Jerusalem and even conquered the city. And that is where the problems began.

The kingdom of Jerusalem had a serious security problem. Once the city was taken and the pilgrims had prayed at all the holy sites, most of the crusaders returned home. After all they had not come to settle in the Holy Land, just to free the sites.

At the same time as the military leaders and their retinue shipped in for France and England, the arriving ships brought new, mostly unarmed pilgrims keen to pray not just at the Holy Sepulchre but in Bethlehem, Nazareth, the Sea of Galilee and Jericho to name a few. Travelling there was extremely dangerous. The Muslim neighbours of the crusader state had remained unsurprisingly hostile, but more importantly, the kingdom of Jerusalem lacked the resources to clear the roads of thieves and brigands. Pilgrims tell of bodies of murdered travellers lining the roads as it was too dangerous to stop and bury them.

It is in that situation that a French knight from Champagne, Hugh de Paynes vowed in 1119 to set up a pilgrim protection service. Together with some of his friends he undertook to accompany pilgrims on their journeys. The king of Jerusalem, Baldwin II was delighted and gave them quarters in a wing of the royal place that stood near the Al Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount, which is why this band of knights became known as the Templars. They initially set up convoys protected by knights but later set up permanently manned castles that controlled and secured key pilgrim routes.

This new religious confraternity were a huge success. Whilst a crusade was by definition a temporary endeavour, the Templars were a permanent outlet for young men seeking to combine their training as efficient killing machines with piety. More and more of these joined. At the same time, the pilgrims who had enjoyed the protection of the Templars, their friends and family back home and after a while anyone who wanted to make a contribution to the crusading effort donated whatever they could. That could range from ones best cloak, to a horse, a small plot of land to the king of Aragon who wanted to grant the Templars a third of his kingdom.

There was however one major problem with all this. The Templars had quite early on decided they wanted to be a religious community. A broadly sensible thing to do as the idea was to create a lasting organisation and nothing in the medieval world was more built for eternity than monasteries. The issue was that there had been a longstanding rule that clerics were not allowed to yield swords. And this rule had generally been observed. Even though there were many a warlike bishop, they would go to some lengths to remain at least within the letter of the law, if not the spirit. Some bishops would just act as generals directing operations without taking up a sword themselves, others would get into the melee with axes, clubs and maces, as long as these weren’t swords.

That is where our least favourite saint, St. Bernhard of Clairvaux comes in. He is well aware of the sound theological basis for the ban on violence (you know stuff like turn the other cheek, thou shalt not kill, love thy enemy, swords to ploughshare). But that cannot hold back this fervent warrior of Christ. He fully embraces this new Knighthood exclaiming (quote):

“What a glory to return in victory from such a battle! How blessed to die there as a martyr! Rejoice, brave athlete, if you live and conquer in the Lord; but glory and exult even more if you die and join your Lord. Life indeed is a fruitful thing and victory is glorious, but a holy death is more important than either. If they are blessed who die in the Lord, how much more are they who die for the Lord!”(end quote)

I am pretty sure I have heard something similar not too long ago.

As we know, Saint Bernhard of Clairvaux is the most powerful man in europe, more powerful than either pope or emperor. Two years after Bernhard publishes his praise of the Templars, pope Innocent II recognises them as a military religious order, a religious community that is allowed to kill heathens, pagans and all other sorts of misguided souls. Moreover he allowed them to build their own oratories, relieved them from paying the tithe and freed from the authority of any bishop, being subject to the pope alone.

That was in 1139. In the meantime the Templars had grown dramatically, both in number and in wealth. Their activity had expanded from the protection of pilgrims to the manning of outlying castles to being defenders of the crusader states. Templars take on significant military roles in particular during and following the second crusade.

But as you probably know, the Templars weren’t the only early military order. There were also the Knights of St. John or Knights Hospitaller as they are known too.

Their origin is too driven by the practicalities of medieval Palestine. It wasn’t only the roads that were dangerous in the Holy Land. There was also the heat and diseases the pilgrims bodies weren’t used to. Many travellers set out for the Holy Lands were already elderly, doing penance for a long life of contraventions against the rules of the church. A lot of them died there.

Hence there was a need for hospitals. There had been Christian hospitals in Jerusalem since the 7th century and all throughout the time of Muslim rule. In 1023, 75 years before the First crusade, merchants from Amalfi obtained the right to rebuild the hospital and Benedictine monastery of St. John next to the church of the Holy Sepulchre to care for Christian pilgrims. Once Jerusalem had fallen to the Latins, the kings gave land to the hospital and they opened daughter hospitals across the Holy Land.  In 1113 the hospital congregation was given a new rule by pope Paschalis II. That rule was designed for a congregation of monks who intended to care for the sick and wounded. Their order stood very much in the established ecclesiastical tradition of St. Benedict and the Augustin friars.  

And they would have remained just another pious order had it not been for the leadership of a French knight, Raymon de Puy. It is during his tenure as Grand master that the Hospitallers gradually transformed into a military order, offering support to the pilgrims en route, manning castles and ultimately sending 500 knights and retinue into a campaign in Egypt. Knights were admitted as brothers since 1150 but it took until 1204 before the statutes were formally turning the Knights Hospitallers into a military order.

By 1190 the Templars and the Hospitallers are the only important military orders in the Holy Land. Their founders, leaders and members were mainly French, Spanish and English. The reason so few Germans got involved had nothing to do with nationalism, but mostly with the fact that very few Germans made it to the Holy Land in the first and second crusade.

The first crusade took place in 1195 to 1199, a period which is still dominated by the Investiture Controversy. Henry IV is still emperor and he is not inclined to help the hateful pope Urban II. Many of the great imperial princes fear that if they leave on crusade, the emperor or his enemies will seize their lands.

That being said, there are many people of the lower classes who catch the crusading fever and set off barefoot to walk to Jerusalem, the vast majority of them perishing en route or sre finally routed by the Turks in Anatolia.

Of the few nobles who set out for Jerusalem, most see their endeavour descending into an orgy of blood and horror when they brutally ransacked the Jewish communities in the Rhineland. They find their route blocked at the Hungarian border and made to return home. If you want to hear that again, it was in episode 38 – The First Crusade.

The first time an emperor tried his hand at crusading was the Second crusade. The county of Edessa had fallen and the crusader states were feeling the heat from the recovering Muslim states in the region. Konrad III – encouraged by the inevitable Bernhard of Clairvaux – set off in 1147 with a huge army to recapture Edessa. That was another epic failure. Konrad had refused to coordinate with the other Western monarchs, trying to get to Edessa first and win all the glory. On the way there he alienated the Byzantine emperor mainly by burning and plundering his lands. Once he had got into Anatolia, things went from bad to worse. Refusing advice from the Byzantines about the route, he retraced the way the first crusade had taken. That journey ended in Dorylaeum. Worn down by the lack of supplies, the heat and the constant attacks the imperial army stood no chance against the Sultan of Konya and his vast army of swift horsemen. Konrad III barely escaped alive and had to seek refuge with Louis VII, the king of France who had travelled a few days behind him. He and some of the imperial princes made it to Jerusalem in the end, never even attempted to retake Edessa, instead made the stupid decision to attack Damascus and then returned home, leaving the kingdom of Jerusalem in an even more precarious situation than before. Episode 49 – Conrad’s Catastrophe if you want to go through that shocking sequence of errors and arrogance again.

One young prince who had been with Konrad during the Second Crusade, will make his own go at it some 40 years later. Frederick I, Barbarossa led an army much larger than his uncle Konrad’s through Hungary, Bulgaria, the Byzantine empire and through Anatolia without severe losses. He even conquered the city of Konya the place Konrad III had so desperately hoped he could get to before his supplies ran out. But just as the army was descending the Cilician gates heading into the safety of Armenia the aged emperor took a dip in the river Saleph, a dip from which he did not resurface. This was a clear sign of God’s displeasure with the whole enterprise and the enormous army rapidly dissolved. Only a rump entity led by Barbarossa’s son, duke Frederick of Swabia pressed on further to Acre. If you want to hear that story again, it was in Episode 65 – The Third Crusade

Acre is where the armies of the Third Crusade, those of king Philipp Augustus Of France, Richard the Lionheart of England and the remainder of the great imperial host had gathered. Jerusalem and the rest of the crusader state had fallen to Saladin a few years earlier. The Latins were clinging on to a small stretch of land along the coast. Acre was a great fortress that once taken would make a suitable temporary capital of the kingdom.

This is the year 1190, the first time we see a material involvement of imperial forces in the crusades and it is also the year the Teutonic Order is founded, as a field hospital during that famous siege of Acre.

According to the chronicler Peter of Duisburg this modest hospital under a sail from a cog was a hit with all the great princes assembled before Acre. He lists them all, from Lord Eymar of Caesaria to Bishop Conrad of Wurzburg, all praising the good work being done here. And urging duke Frederic of Swabia to write to his brother, the emperor Henry VI to endorse this new order and compel the pope to grant them a charter that puts them on par with the Templars and Hospitallers.

If that had been true, it would have been truly remarkable. Just remember who founded the field hospital of the Germans before Acre? It wasn’t some great prince, not even a lord, a knight, an aristocrat as well connected as Hugh de Paynes of the Templars or Raymond de Puy of the Hospitallers. No none of the above. At least some other kind of important crusader, a bishop, abbot, the patriarch maybe. All the sources are unanimous, it was some unnamed merchants from Bremen and Lubeck who set up the hospital, cared for the sick and thereby  founded the Teutonic Knights. And they had come here, not on the hard route through the Balkans and Turkey, no, these guys had come by ship. They had taken their cogs and sailed them through the Channel, across the bay of Biscay, down the Spanish coast, through the straits of Gibraltar via Sicily and Cyprus to Palestine. And now their old worn-out sail protects exhausted and delirious wounded men from the unrelenting sun.

This is a modest start. These guys may well get some sponsorship from Frederick of Swabia who was an able commander and surely recognised how important it was to have a hospital staffed with personnel who spoke his soldiers native tongue. So he may well have given them support and advised his brother of their existence and that it would be worth to give them imperial endorsement.

But that suddenly the crème de la crème of Europe would have gathered around a field hospital to give them a leg up into the big league, that sounds a bit far-fetched.

Still, Pope Celestin takes the new hospital under its protection in 1191. Once the city of Acre had fallen in Latin hands, the hospital receives land and income from King Guy so that the field hospital can become a permanent institution. In 1196 they receive another set of privileges from pope Celestine III like the right to burial, which opened new sources of income. When and how the transformation from a hospital congregation to a military order took place is a bit unclear. That was probably around 1198 when another contingent of German crusaders arrived in Acre. Barbarossa’s son, emperor Henry VI had taken the cross in 1195 but died before he could set sail. These German guys arriving in 1198 were the advance guard of a crusade that never happened.

It seems as if the Hospital of St. Mary of the Germans as it was called had played a role in Henry VI. plans for his crusade. At least the hospital received generous donations from the emperor. He may have also suggested to those men who set out for Acre to join this new order.

This sponsorship by the Hohenstaufen family was crucial for the rise of the Teutonic Knights from relative obscurity. But it cannot explain what would make a German knight in search of redemption for his sins and looking for a chance of guilt-free killing choose to join a humble hospital rather than the glamorous Templars or Hospitallers.

Was it the language issue. Sure that matters when you are lying in agony on a blood splattered mattress and want to hear some reassuring words, but does it matter what language they speak when you are feasting, hunting and fighting with the finest knights in Christendom.

Was there a major rift between the French and English crusaders on one side and the Imperial Germans on the other? Well, it was the siege of Acre where Richard the Lionheart insulted the duke of Austria which led to his imprisonment and final ransom by emperor Henry VI. That story had surely made its way to Palestine. But it is unlikely to have led to resentment. Richard the Lionheart may be an English hero in the eyes of 19th century British historians, his contemporaries disliked him profoundly. The reason he was captured in Austria was purely down to the fact that he travelled via Vienna. He would have been apprehended pretty much anywhere he would have tried to get home. He chose this detour via the Alps to avoid the kingdom of France where his arch-enemy Philipp Augustus would have never released him.

To understand the appeal of the Teutonic Knights, we have to get back to the whole theme of chivalry. The code of conduct of chivalry applied only to noble knights, noble ladies and presumably noble orphans and prelates. Non-aristocrats were neither protected by it nor invited to participate. Only warriors who had been born free and had received the elevation to true knight could join the club.

Now in Germany there were many men who looked like knights, who lived in castles and had armour and warhorses. But what they weren’t knights. They were the Ministeriales, these serf knights who were at least originally not fee men. Even though many of them had been living an aristocratic lifestyle for several generations had married into true aristocratic families, they could not quite shake their servile origins.

It is likely that true aristocratic orders like the Templars and the Hospitallers were reluctant to take on the great- grandson of a slave. The Teutonic knights were free of such snobbish behaviour. After all their founders were some merchants who may well have been from ministeriale families tehmselves. Becoming a Teutonic knight elevated someone from serf knight to true knight. We will see that throughout its history the Teutonic Knights – with few exceptions – recruited mainly from the lower nobility and even their masters, including their greatest master, Hermann von Salza, had been Ministeriales.

And that is who we are going to talk about next week, Hermann von Salza, the man who put the Teutonic Knights on the map. Thanks to Hermann von Salza, the difference between the Teutonic Knights and the other orders is not limited to their recruitment policy. Expect us zipping across the map from Palestine to Egypt, Sicily, Rome, Greece, Armenia, Transylvania and finally Prussia. I hope you will join us again.

Before I go, there are two last items on the agenda. First, I want to again thank those amongst you who have signed up on Patreon at patreon.com/historyofthegermans or who have made a generous one-time donation at historyofthegermans.com. I really, really appreciate your generosity.

And lastly you can find a bibliography in the show notes and in historyofthegermans/resources/bookrecommendations. Check it out. There are a few more English language ones available.