Luscombe D., Riley-Smith J. The New Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. 4: c. 1024-c. 1198, Part 2

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The western empire, 1125–1197 411

the restoration of imperial glory in

the twelfth century

From the Salian past the rulers of the twelfth-century western empire inherited

a set of institutions, methods and resources which sustained their governance

and authority: the services of the church and the wealth of the ﬁsc, the prestigeof

God-guarded law and an itinerant court with its multiple functions as chancery,

source of justice, military command centre and meeting place of princes and

bishops. In spite of the damage inﬂicted by the War of Investitures, these

institutions remained in good working order. Henry I of England did suggest

to Henry V that regular royal taxation in the Anglo-Norman mode might

proﬁtably be introduced into Germany, but sources from within the western

empire do not complain that the relative paucity of governing institutions as

a consequence of itinerant kingship was a disadvantage. Instead, it was held

that the virtues of the rulers themselves ought to be adequate for solving the

perceived problem of the twelfth century: to restore the honour and glory

of the empire after the disordered years of enmity with the papacy, and the

concomitant ‘reformation’ of peace, justice and religion. A letter from Conrad

III to Pope Eugenius III in 1150 looks forward to ‘the people of Christ living

in peace and in the fear of God, and the Roman empire being restored to the

vigour of its pristine dignity’,

ideas emphasized again and again in the royal

diplomas.

Although he disliked Saxons and said so, Bishop Otto of Freising thought

that Lothar III was a ruler with the requisite virtues: ‘Had he not been fore-

stalled by death he might have been the man to restore, by his ability and energy,

the imperial crown to its ancient dignity.’

The Saxon sources obviously gave

him good obituaries, the Hildesheim annals calling him pater patriae, father

of the country, for his services in peace and war. The chanceries of Frederick

Barbarossa and Henry VI perfected the technique of presenting royal acts as

necessary for the programme of imperial renewal, but this had been of gen-

uine concern to Conrad III’s court as well. Conrad III was not the subject of

panegyric resources such as Gunther devoted to Barbarossa in his Ligurinus

or Peter of Eboli to Henry VI in the Liber ad honorem Augusti.Inhis History

of the Two Cities, Conrad III’s half-brother Otto of Freising gave a decidedly

pessimistic account of the reign down to 1146, largely because Conrad’s be-

stowal of the Bavarian ducal title upon his other half-brothers, the margraves

of Austria, had caused war and destruction in the bishopric of Freising and

elsewhere in Bavaria. On the other hand, Godfrey of Viterbo, who was taken on

as a royal chaplain towards the end of the reign, ascribed the conventions and

MGH Diplomata, Conrad III, no. 222,p.395, 1150, has ‘et populus christianus in pace et timore dei

vivere et imperium Romanum in pristine dignitatis robur reformari’.

Otto of Freising, Chronica sive Historia vii, 20. The translation is by Mierow (1966), p. 428.

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412 benjamin arnold

attributes of kingliness to Conrad III: wisdom, a ﬁne appearance and martial

prowess; and what is more, so did sources from Saxony, a province hostile to the

king.

Writing to the pope just after Frederick Barbarossa’s election in 1152,Wibald

of Stablo, abbot of Corvey, inaugurated the encomiast tradition about this

ruler which has gone on ever since: ‘of penetrating ability, ready understanding,

fortunate in war, eager to embark on difﬁcult and glorious tasks, altogether

intolerant of insults, affable and generous, and shiningly eloquent in the native

idiom of his language. The Lord increases the nourishment of all the virtues

in him so that he may carry out judgement and justice in the land.’

All

this may be a reconstruction from the abbot’s biblical and classical learning,

but the bishop of Freising was also enthusiastic about his nephew’s abilities.

Abandoning his customary sobriety, he applied to Barbarossa a verse lifted

from the infancy story of Christ: ‘What manner of child shall this be?’ (Luke

1:66). Helmold of Bosau who disliked the Swabians was nevertheless struck

by Barbarossa and also adapted biblical phrases in praise of him: ‘His throne

was raised above the throne of the kings that had been before him many

days; and he grew in wisdom and in fortitude above all the inhabitants of the

land.’

Apart from his German panegyrists such as Gunther and Rahewin, the

emperor also impressed Italians other than Godfrey of Viterbo. Otto Morena

of Lodi and his continuators wrote laudatory history of Barbarossa’s warlike

deeds in Lombardy, and an anonymous north Italian got as far as 3,343 lines

of a heroic Carmen on the theme. No doubt such persons were motivated by

their own hatred for Milan, the emperor’s principal enemy in Lombardy. The

Third Crusade inspired new eulogistic literature about Frederick Barbarossa.

Henry VI’s principal panegyrists were Italians, Godfrey of Viterbo and Peter

of Eboli, although some of the German chroniclers were also impressed by his

energy in attempting to fulﬁl the ruler’s duty of providing peace and justice in

his realms.

lothar iii, conrad iii and the problems

of regional rivalry

The political language of the twelfth century adopted classical terminology in

regarding the empire as a body in which the emperor was head and the princes

the obedient members. The arenga of a diploma for Archbishop Rainald of

MGH Constitutiones i,no.138,p.193, has ‘fuit antehac ingenio acer, consilio promptus, bello felix,

rerumarduarum et gloriae appetens, iniuriae omnino impatiens, affabilis et liberalis, et splendide

disertus iuxta gentile idioma linguae suae. Augeat in eo Devs omnium virtutum nutrimenta, ut

faciat iudicium et iusticiam in terra’.

Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum cap. lxxii. The translation is by Tschan (1935), p. 197.

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The western empire, 1125–1197 413

Cologne in 1166 proclaimed that nothing could be more ﬁtting and glorious

than the emperor assembling and cherishing his ﬁdeles like members under

a head from which the merits of the members would be properly rewarded.

In reality it was a difﬁcult task to keep unruly members submissive to the

court. Much of Lothar III’s reign was taken up with armed confrontations

against Frederick II of Swabia and his brother, who found widespread support

in the Rhineland, Franconia and Bavaria as well as in their Swabian homeland.

Having lost the election of 1125,Duke Frederick did homage to Lothar III but

felt unable to accept a ruling made at Regensburg late in the year denying

him the lion’s share of Henry V’s possessions. The Staufen brothers regarded

the lands of the Salian dynasty as theirs by hereditary right, but the annals of

Disibodenberg reveal that at the Regensburg court, royal property was declared

to pertain to regimes rather than to persons, and must therefore pass under

Lothar III’s regiminis ditio or authority of government, not in itself a new

principle. But when the Swabian duke refused to accept this, he was declared

an outlaw and an excommunicate, and war began. At this time the duke’s

brother Conrad was absent upon the Venetian crusade of the 1120s. When

he returned in 1127,hewas proclaimed anti-king at Nuremberg by a small

gathering of Staufen supporters. Why Frederick of Swabia as the elder brother

did not himself claim the crown is not known. It is possible that his rejection

at the election of 1125, his oath to Lothar III and his excommunicate status

rendered him less eligible than his brother. At some time in his adventurous

career, the duke is known to have lost an eye, and if this happened in 1126 or

1127, then his lack of bodily perfection as future rexetsacerdos in the image of

Christ may also have stood in the way of his accepting kingly ofﬁce.

The Staufen brothers had a case strong enough to give them realistic sup-

port in southern Germany. In 1128 Conrad III left for Italy to secure coro-

nation from the archbishop of Milan and to attempt to gain possession of

the Matildine lands which had passed to Henry V’s use in 1115.InGermany

Archbishop Adalbert of Mainz and Bishop Embrico of W

urzburg were able to

hold their cathedral towns for Lothar III, but the Salian strongholds of Speyer

and Nuremberg had opted for the Staufen. In order to gain a more secure

position in southern Germany, Lothar III married his daughter and heiress

Gertrude to Duke Henry the Proud of Bavaria in 1127. The duke’s chief resi-

dence was Regensburg, and therefore outﬂanked Nuremberg in the rear. But

the main motive may simply have been to ﬁnd the most suitable match for the

greatest heiress in Germany. As head of the Welf dynasty and son of Wulfhild

Billung, the duke of Bavaria was exceedingly rich in Swabian and Saxon lands,

as well as holding on to much of Bavaria for the king. However, Henry the

Proud’s sister was married to Frederick II of Swabia, so it is legitimate to infer

that Lothar III would have been aware of a possible mode of reconciliation

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414 benjamin arnold

with the Staufen through Gertrude’s marriage. Otto of Freising reports that

such a rapprochement was proposed in 1129, but the actual meeting of Dukes

Henry and Frederick at Zwiefalten Abbey misﬁred. In 1142 Gertrude’s sec-

ond marriage, to Conrad III’s half-brother Margrave Henry II Jasomirgott of

Austria, was openly motivated by just such hopes of reconciliation, as we shall

see.

The Saxon court of Lothar III thus looked to traditional methods to extend

its inﬂuence: by arranging marriages, through the services of bishops, and in

the cultivation of good relations with other duchies. Duke Simon I of Up-

per Lotharingia was Lothar III’s half-brother, and in Burgundy Duke Conrad

of Z

ahringen was appointed imperial rector in 1127.Relations between Arch-

bishop Adalbert I of Mainz and the king suffered when Louis I of Thuringia

was created a landgrave in 1131, because the archbishop perceived this appoint-

ment as a threat to his possessions in Hesse and Thuringia. But Lothar III was

shrewd in judging which magnates best served his rule. As we have seen, he

chose capable margraves to undertake the consolidation of Saxony’s renewed

expansion into Slav lands. Under the inﬂuence of Norbert of Xanten, arch-

bishop of Magdeburg, the king accepted Innocent II as pope in the schism

of 1130 and received him at a court held at Li

ege in 1131. The pope gratefully

conﬁrmed the ambitious claims of the Saxon archbishoprics of Magdeburg

and Bremen to authority over the churches of Poland and Scandinavia respec-

tively, claims going back to the tenth century. Nothing was to come of this, but

nostalgia for the dignity of the Ottonian and Salian past, much of it mythical,

continued to colour the political outlook of the court, the bishops and the

secular aristocracy throughout the twelfth century in Germany.

Although the anti-king Conrad’s challenge to his very title seemed no nearer

to a solution, Lothar III was able to leave for Italy upon the prescribed expeditio

Romana in 1132 and was crowned emperor in Rome in 1133.Nevertheless, the

Staufen brothers did eventually submit to the emperor, although there is no

entirely satisfactory explanation given their commitment to their legitimacy

as heirs not only to the crown but also to the estates of the Salian house.

When agreement was reached, it was complete. Frederick of Swabia, by then

a widower, married Agnes of Saarbr

ucken, the niece of his greatest enemy,

Archbishop Adalbert I of Mainz. Conrad gave up his royal claims in 1135 and

submitted to Lothar III. In 1136 the emperor was able to take him as a com-

mander upon his second Italian campaign, intended to crush the new Sicilian

kingdom. Late in 1137 Lothar III died on his way back from this expedition.

Given that as duke of Saxony from 1106 to 1125 he had done everything in

his power to preserve Saxony from almost any form of authority exercised by

the royal court, it is remarkable how he had imposed recognition of himself

as king throughout Germany by 1135.But this was not enough to secure his

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The western empire, 1125–1197 415

son-in-law’s succession. A neutral source, Sigebert of Gembloux’s continua-

tor, claimed that ‘after the death of King Lothar the princes of the German

kingdom, not bearing to be ruled over by anyone not of the royal line, set up

Conrad as a man from the family of kings’.

Not that this consideration had

prevented them from electing Lothar in 1125.However, Conrad III’s legitimacy

as Salian heir did strengthen his hand, particularly since the remarks of another

commentator, Abbot Berthold of Zwiefalten, can be given credence. Of Henry

the Proud he wrote that as ‘the most powerful amongst all the princes of the

realm at that time, he inconsiderately counted upon the succession, but he was

truly abominated by everyone for his pride’.

Although Henry the Proud recognized Conrad III’s title, the new king

considered that the duke represented a threat to his rule. A credible explanation

is provided by a source hostile to Conrad III, Helmold of Bosau: ‘When King

Conrad was raised to the throne of the realm, he tried to establish Albert [the

Bear] in the duchy [Saxony], asserting that it was not right that any prince

should hold two duchies. Henry [the Proud] claimed for himself the two

duchies, Bavaria and Saxony. Therefore these two princes, the sons of two

sisters, carried on their civil war, and all Saxony was in turmoil.’

Like Henry

the Proud, Margrave Albert the Bear was a grandson of the last Billung duke

of Saxony, and once Lothar III was gone, the parity of Albert’s own claims to

the ducal title of Saxony gained effect. Helmold did not ﬁnd Conrad III’s fear

of Henry the Proud’s double title unreasonable, and repeated the explanation

without comment when Henry the Lion as Henry the Proud’s heir claimed

both duchies early in the 1140s and was refused Bavaria. There were, of course,

precedents for princes holding two duchies, but Conrad III and Helmold of

Bosau may not have been aware of them. Where the king overshot the mark

was in endeavouring to conﬁscate two duchies from Henry the Proud at the

same time. Possibly he desired vengeance upon the man who had burned Ulm,

one of the principal residences of the Staufen, to the ground in 1134.In1139

the king appointed his half-brother Margrave Leopold IV of Austria to the

duchy of Bavaria, and after Leopold’s death the next brother, Margrave Henry

II Jasomirgott, in 1143.

Fortunately for Conrad III, Henry the Proud died late in 1139 but the Saxon

aristocracy supported his son Henry the Lion’s claim to the Saxon ducal title as

better than Albert the Bear’s. In May 1142 the king came to terms. Henry the

Lion was conﬁrmed duke of Saxony and the boy’s mother dutifully married

Henry Jasomirgott who could thus be accepted as next duke of Bavaria by the

Saxon party early in 1143.Just as Lothar III had been able to settle personal

Sigebert of Gembloux, ‘Continuatio’ for 1138.

Berthold of Zwiefalten, ‘Chronicon’ cap. 35.

Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum cap. liv. The translation is by Tschan (1935), p. 163.

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416 benjamin arnold

rivalries by 1135,sothe compacts of 1142 and 1143 might have held up had

not Gertrude of Saxony died in childbirth in April 1143.Henry the Lion,

assisted by his Swabian uncle Welf VI, then decided to repudiate recognition

of his step-father’s Bavarian title, and the war dragged on until the Second

Crusade provided the opportunity for another solution. Conrad III, Duke

Henry Jasomirgott, and Welf VI agreed to leave Germany for Jerusalem; Henry

the Lion would place his claim to Bavaria in abeyance and launch the Wendish

Crusade on the Saxon frontier; and the king’s son Henry Berengar was elected as

next king of the Romans. Although the Second Crusade was a failure, it raised

the status of the empire which had been unable, under an excommunicate

ruler, to participate in the First. But it did not solve the problem of Germany’s

internal rivalries because Conrad III, upon his return from crusade, still would

not accept the combination of Saxony and Bavaria upon which Henry the

Lion insisted as his right, and the question was no nearer to a resolution when

Conrad died in 1152.

frederick i barbarossa and the fortunes of the empire

Although Henry the Lion’s claim to Bavaria took some time for the new ruler

to settle, Frederick Barbarossa’s previous tenure of the Swabian ducal title

(1147–1152/3)provides the clue to the solution he negotiated. Ever since 1098,

when three ducal authorities had been recognized in Swabia by the crown,

it was potentially possible to subdivide duchies to accommodate competing

claims. Probably Conrad III was not willing to apply this to Bavaria because

he did not appreciate the stubbornness of Henry the Lion’s character, but in

1156 Barbarossa adopted the Swabian solution of 1098 for Bavaria. Henry the

Lion was conﬁrmed duke, Henry Jasomirgott was created duke of Austria and

another Bavarian magnate, Count Conrad of Dachau, was recognized as duke

of Merania on the Adriatic. Considering the intensity and destructiveness of

regional rivalries in Germany stretching back to the War of Investitures, it is

not surprising that Otto of Freising, who witnessed the agreement, reported

of Barbarossa that ‘the prince prized this more highly than the successes of all

his other undertakings: the fact that, without the shedding of blood, he was

able to bring to friendly relations princes of the realm so mighty and so closely

related to himself’.

Since the integrity of the large German duchies had crumbled during the

WarofInvestitures, the creation of more dukes, margraves and landgraves was

thus perceived by the crown as a successful method for managing the princes.

Otto of Freising and Rahewin, Gesta Friderici ii, 49. The translation is by Mierow and Emery (1953),

p. 164.

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The western empire, 1125–1197 417

Lothar III had already appointed new landgraves and margraves, and endorsed

Bishop Embrico of W

urzburg’s claims to be duke of eastern Franconia. Then

in 1151 Conrad III had granted the archbishop of Cologne ducal status over the

country between the Rhine and the Meuse. Apart from the division of Bavaria

in 1156,Barbarossa created his half-brother Conrad count palatine of the Rhine

in the same year, and commissioned Bishop Herold of W

urzburg as duke of

Franconia in 1168. The creation of more duchies followed the fall of Henry

the Lion in 1180,bywhich time the court regarded the bishops and the senior

secular magnates as an order of principes imperii, princes of the empire standing

in immediate vassal relation to the crown (Reichsf

urstenstand). As the emperor

wrote to the church of Salzburg in 1177 on the subject, he desired to collect

these princes around him and to beneﬁt from their counsel, just as the pope

was served by the college of cardinals. But it must be said that the emergence of

the Reichsf

urstenstand is a controversial question in modern scholarship. The

label princeps imperii,‘prince of the empire’, was in regular use long before

1177, and the pax of Worms in 1122 had already implied that the German

episcopate constituted something like an ecclesiastical Reichsf

urstenstand of

vassals immediate to the crown.

Frederick Barbarossa thought highly of Henry the Lion, and already in 1154

had conﬁrmed his rights of investiture in the three bishoprics recently restored

in Saxony’s colonial territory, as we have seen. Thereafter the Saxon duke,

however much he was hated for his arrogant methods by the bishops and no-

bility of Saxony and the Rhineland, proved a reliable supporter of court policy

down to 1176. This policy was primarily concerned with furthering the crown’s

rights, that honor imperii adumbrated in the convention agreed with the

papacy at Constance in 1153.Between 1154 and 1178 Barbarossa conducted ﬁve

expeditions to Italy in pursuit of such honor, but although so many German

princes devoted their time and resources to these campaigns, the emperor’s

achievements in renewing his control of Italy were limited. The prominence

of Italian affairs in Frederick Barbarossa’s reign is in part to be explained by the

success of the measures taken in Germany in the 1150s. This was called into

question after the council of Pavia in 1160, for when Pope Alexander III excom-

municated the emperor, the archdiocese of Salzburg repudiated the council’s

pope, Victor IV; Archbishop Conrad of Mainz had to be driven from his see

for supporting the Alexandrine cause; and Duke Berthold IV of Z

ahringen

wrote to the king of France to complain of the emperor as the destruction of

the church and the law. Archbishop Rainald of Cologne as the principal adviser

at court was nevertheless conﬁdent that Alexander III could be outfaced and

negotiated an alliance with Henry II of England for the purpose. In Germany

the imperial cause was sanctiﬁed by the canonization of Charlemagne in 1165

and reinforced by oaths taken from the church and aristocracy.

418 benjamin arnold

In spite of the failure of the siege of Rome in 1167, the late 1160swere still a

time of success for the emperor. In 1168 he was able to enforce a reconciliation

between Henry the Lion and the other Saxon princes, and in 1169 he secured

the future of his dynasty by the election and coronation of Henry VI, the ﬁfth

of the eleven or twelve children born to him by Beatrice of Burgundy. The

catastrophe before Rome turned out to be of beneﬁt to the imperial house

because the emperor was able to secure the rich inheritances of many princely

families which had lost their heirs in the malarial infection: the reversion

of the vast lands in Swabia from his uncle Welf VI; the titles and lands of

Duke Frederick IV of Swabia, the emperor’s cousin; the advocacy of the see

of Augsburg; the huge ﬁefs held by the counts of Sulzbach from the bishop of

Bamberg; and the possessions of Count Rudolf of Pfullendorf and Bregenz,

to list only the most notable. In 1174 the emperor marched south once more

against the Lombard cities and Alexander III but this Italian expedition, his

ﬁfth, also proved a failure upon his defeat at the battle of Legnano in 1176.

However, Barbarossa’s subsequent negotiations and his reconciliation with the

pope at Venice in 1177 were prompt and successful, suggesting that the emperor

was prepared for compromises even before losing the day at Legnano. Escorted

by German forces, Alexander III returned to Rome to organize the Third

Lateran Council and the emperor returned to Germany to cope with Henry

the Lion, who was on the verge of repudiation by the majority of the north

German bishops and lay princes for his cruel bellicosity.

Fortyyears before, in 1138 and 1139,itwas the royal court which had planned

the expulsion of Henry the Proud from Saxony and Bavaria, but now the

Saxons themselves initiated the removal of his son. Although Gislebert of

Mons described Henry the Lion as ‘the mightiest of all dukes and almost the

proudest and cruellest man ever’,

the duke represented no threat to Frederick

Barbarossa’s rule, and previously the emperor had supported him against his

enemies. Later sources did suggest that Frederick Barbarossa conceived a grudge

against the duke for refusing further assistance to the imperial army in Italy in

1176, and that the duke resented Welf VI’s preference for the emperor rather

than himself as heir to the Welf lands in Swabia. Such ideas appear to be

rationalizations, inﬂuenced by the conﬂict of the Welf and Staufen dynasties

between 1198 and 1214, and then read back by chroniclers to explain Barbarossa’s

actions against the duke. However, it is also clear that by 1179 the emperor was

obliged to change his attitude to Henry the Lion, and was forced to accept the

argument that Henry the Lion was a peace-breaker. The duke was outlawed,

and since he refused to answer the charges, he was deprived of all his ﬁefs early

in 1180. The charter issued at Gelnhausen which reapportioned the Saxon ﬁefs

Gislebert of Mons, Chronicon Hanoniense cap. xlviii.

The western empire, 1125–1197 419

is the only source to set out the legal foundation for Henry the Lion’s deposition

in any detail. His oppression of the church and nobility broke the law of the

land or Landrecht, and this, coupled with his contempt of repeated citations

before the imperial court, raised the spectre of a treason accusation against

him. However, the main proceedings were taken against him sub feodali iure,

under feudal law, leading to the conﬁscation of his duchies which he held as

ﬁefs from the empire.

After his submission in 1181 the duke legally retained the Saxon allodial pos-

sessions inherited from his grandparents, so that upon his return to Brunswick

in 1184 he still ﬁgured as a formidable prince. For itself the crown acquired

nothing from Henry the Lion’s losses, for as the emperor explained to the

bishop of L

ubeck in 1181,hedid not accept personal responsibility for Henry

the Lion’s humiliation and had saved what he could for his cousin. Frederick

Barbarossa was, however, enabled to extend his conciliatory policy of the 1150s

by granting more ducal titles upon the ruins of Henry the Lion’s authority:

Count Bernhard of Anhalt, Albert the Bear’s son, became duke of Saxony; Arch-

bishop Philip of Cologne became duke of Westphalia; Count Palatine Otto of

Wittelsbach became duke of Bavaria; Margrave Otakar of Styria was promoted

to duke, and Bogislav I of Stettin became duke of Pomerania. Apart from the

archbishop, all these princes had been Henry the Lion’s vassals. The duke’s fall

originated in his armed confrontation with the Saxon and Rhenish princes late

in the 1170s and was not motivated by the court. Not until Otto IV, Henry the

Lion’s second surviving son, was elected king by a minority of princes in 1198

is it possible to demonstrate that the Welf family, however rich and powerful

it may have been, presented a distinct institutional challenge to Staufen rule.

In spite of the peace between church and empire sworn at Venice in 1177, the

last years of Barbarossa’s reign as well as the reign of Henry VI were punctuated

by quarrels with the papacy over their respective rights and resources in Italy.

Nevertheless, that quest for the honour and glory of the empire which had so

preoccupied the court throughout the twelfth century seemed to have been

vindicated. In Germany Barbarossa issued new peace-keeping legislation in

1179 and in 1186 or 1188,aswehave seen, and at Constance in 1183 he and

Henry VI successfully concluded the negotiations opened in 1177 with the

cities of Lombardy, which again accepted imperial sovereignty and paid tribute,

although their affairs were to be administered by their own councils. In 1184 a

magniﬁcent assembly at Mainz celebrated the knighting of Henry VI and his

brother Duke Frederick V of Swabia, and in 1186 the former was married, as

we have seen, to Constance of Sicily as part of a diplomatic plan to conﬁrm

peace for good between the Normans, the papacy and the empire.

Upon the fall of Jerusalem to Saladin in 1187 the papacy preached a new

crusade. At Mainz in 1188 the emperor therefore convened the German princes

420 benjamin arnold

to what was designated the curia Ihesu Christi, the court of Jesus Christ, took

the cross and proclaimed himself secular commander of the Third Crusade.

Princes at odds with the imperial court dutifully submitted. Henry VI was

appointed regent of the empire and since Henry the Lion was not prepared

to join the expedition, he agreed once more to go into exile. In spite of its

hazardous nature, this crusade raised Barbarossa to the height of his prestige,

inspiring new literary memorials to his glory and piety. He never reached the

Holy Land which he had last seen upon the Second Crusade as a young duke.

While conducting his army through Asia Minor, he was drowned in the River

Saleph in June 1190.

imperial destinies under henry vi

In some quarters the talented new ruler enjoyed an unenviable reputation for

cruelty. Several hostile sources credit Henry VI with arranging the assassination

in 1192 of Albert of Louvain, bishop-elect of Li

ege, the candidate conﬁrmed by

the papacy, in order to secure the installation of his own nominee, Lothar of

Hochstaden. However, a careful examination of the material has shown that

there is no substance to the story of the emperor’s involvement, although he did

very little to prosecute the assassins. There is not much doubt that Henry VI

was a capable guardian of imperial prerogatives and of the interest of his own

house. He held the papal curia in low esteem and his agents occupied the best

part of the Patrimony of St Peter and the Matildine lands, which the papacy

claimed as its own. So great was Henry VI’s authority that he could incarcerate

the king of England, extract homage from him and glean a huge ransom which

paid for the conquest of Sicily in spite of the fact that, as a crusader, Richard

I stood under the personal protection of the pope. When William II of Sicily

died unexpectedly in 1189 the barons elected Tancred of Lecce as their king, but

Henry VI claimed the Sicilian crown in right of his wife, as we have seen. The

German invasion of 1191 was a failure, but in 1194 the kingdom was conquered

and Henry VI was crowned king of Sicily at Palermo.

After initial regional opposition to his rule in Germany inspired largely by

the disputed election of Li

ege, he was well served by churchmen, lay princes

and his own brothers with their commands in Swabia, Tuscany and Burgundy,

although his most capable generals were two of the imperial ministeriales,

Marshal Henry of Kalden and Seneschal Markward of Anweiler, who was

rewarded with an Italian dukedom. The emperor brought to a conclusion his

father’s efforts to expand the royal ﬁsc by taking possession of the march of

Meissen in 1195, although this acquisition was to prove temporary. The crown

had not possessed such extensive holdings since the tenth century, and the rise