Frederick Barbarossa and the ‘Holy Empire

PETER MUNZ

OUR contemporary, positive appreciation of the civilization of the Middle Ages is almost entirely due to Romanticism. There is a long line of thought from the macabre fascination of the Gothic novel to Ruskin’s preoccupation with rural values and the simple life, all of which went to set aside the early stern judgment of Petrarch and his fellow humanists on the Middle Ages. We have ceased to agree with them that the mediaeval emperors were coarse barbarians who had broken in upon the civilized world and established their long and dark inrerregnurn-Gothic, dark, bearded, uneducated and feudal.’ In English, the most widely read and influential presentation of mediaeval civilization from this anti-humanist standpoint is Dawson’s The Making of Europe. Dawson concentrated upon the diffusion of barbarized Latin culture and the Christian liturgy, and was thus able to depict the earlier Middle Ages as the period in which the foundations for the common culture of Europe had been laid.

The experience of Nazi totalitarianism in central Europe made the Viennese historian F. Heer sensitive to a very different aspect of mediaeval history. In 1949 and 1952 respectively he produced two major books on the 12th century, in which he tried to show that during the 12th century there emerged in Italy and in France, i.e. outside the traditional regions of the centre of gravity of the empire, entirely new forms of religious piety and of thought-the result of individualism and critical rationalism as well as of mystical yearning.2 Against these new developments the empire of the Staufen fought a desperate rearguard action, trying to salvage the idea of the Holy Empire not only in German lands but deploying its senseless brutality in order to prevent new developments elsewhere, especially in Italy,

The idea as such was not entirely new. Historians had long been accustomed to consider the Investiture struggle as some kind of break. But they had seen it mainly from a constitutional and administrative point of view. Heer, sensitive to the propaganda of totalitarianism, began to see the empire which was destroyed or fatally weakened by the struggle in a new light. He discerned its totalitarian claims and pointed out that if the Saxon and Salian emperors had succeeded, they would have erected something like a Christian Sultanate in Europe-at any rate in central Europe. Where earlier historians had always been impressed by the positive aspects of the empire and valued its con-

20

FREDERICK BARBAROSSA AND THE 'HOLY EMPIRE' 21

tribution to the common culture of Europe, its work for the consolida- tion and expansion of the Church, its efforts to transmit Latin culture and so forth, Heer suddenly began to see the negative aspects of an empire headed by an anointed emperor, king and priest (or quasi- priest) and responsible to God. Under him, the Church would be at his beck and call; the bishops would be feudal lords cherishing the aristo- cratic ideals of the Germanic warrior rather than the ethos of the new religion. Heer elaborated the totalitarian features of this 'sacred' empire with a wealth of examples. He drew, for instance, a picture of the Romanesque church as a sacred fortress-the good Christian people inside, the hosts of the devil outside. The liturgy had become some kind of battle ritual in which the Christian people rallied the magic that would help them to prevail against the external foe. Heer has a grand time making the most of the famous interpretation of the Mass by Honorius Augustodunensis as a symbol of the victory of the emperor and of Christ:

missa quoque imitatur pugnae conflicturn . . . Lector, qui epistolam recitat, est praeco, qui dicta imperatoris per castra praedicat. . . . Quod tunc oblationes offeruntur, significat, quod spolia victores laudando datur . . . Cantus offertorii est taus, quam offerunt imperatori. . . .j

The whole conception of the Christian Church-Empire was static and monolithic and was given a strictly spatial and geographical meaning.4 Salvation was not considered the result of grace or works but came from the physical participation in the monolithic structure-a sort of feudal service to God as represented by the emperor or any of his spiritual or lay underlings. Even Dawson and many others had remarked on the similarities, no matter how rudimentary, between the western empire and the Byzantine monolith.5 But it was left to Heer to explore fully the disastrous consequences that would have resulted if that monolith in the west had not been prevented from reaching its full stature by the Investiture contest. Heer gave very penetrating descriptions of the intellectual, artistic and religious culture of this incipient western monolith. The intellectual life was concerned with collections of sacred and authoritative texts-nobody minded how in- consistent one text was with another for the value of the text resided in its being a text, i.e. a piece of magic that would add to the power and aura of God's Empire on earth. Nobody thought of it as an invitation to a critical discussion. If this monolith had been allowed to develop, the history of Europe would have become more like the history of Byzantium.

As it was, the Investiture struggle, crystallized in the Gregorian challenge to the monolithic empire, inflicted a fatal blow on the mediaeval empire. The blow was conceived in the regions geographically surrounding the empire, and its outcome was the scholarly and religious individualism of the Gregorian age and of the 12th century. It was no accident, Heer points out, that the final breach between the eastern and the western churches was provoked by the very same people who issued

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the final challenge to the monolithic western empire. The monolith challenged. room was made for the development of separate institutions and individualistic forms of thought and religion. Once the claims of the empire to be the one representative of the divine order had been undermined and the implied identification of church and empire challenged, it was possible for separate states, separate churches, separate forms of art and thought to develop. They ceased to minister to the one great edifice and began instead-and this is the most striking point-to war against one another. Unity was replaced by disunity; and disunity spelt more freedom and provided more stimulus and made life in Europe almost indefinitely elastic. The destruction of the monolith made an open societj, or, at any rate, a more open society, possible. Hence Heer’s insistence that the 12th century was the great age of mediaeval history-but in a very much more subtle sense of ‘greatness’ than the one we have become accustomed to by the work of Ch. H. Haskins in his The Renaissance of the 12th Century.

Heer obviously invites comparison with Southern in The Making of the Middle Ages. Indeed, Southern’s argument in his last chapter about the transition from epic to romance dovetails minutely with Heer’s argument. The only point is that Southern, by confining his study to one single theme, remains on much safer ground. At the same time one cannot help feeling that Southern’s self-imposed limits shorten his perspective. In Southern, St. Bernard appears very much as the man of the new age because of his personal conception of piety. But in Heer, St. Bernard appears a much more problematical figure-a man who attacked Cluny because of its non-personal piety and because of its liturgical practices which were part of the imperial monolith; and at the same time, a man who opposed Abelard, the very embodiment of the critical rationalism and personalism of the new age. Heer, by casting his net so much more widely, sees Bernard as a problem, where Southern \ees him merely as an example.

Heer’s really dramatic edge comes out in his second volume. For Heer sees the empire of Frederick Barbarossa as a last desperate attempt to destroy the 12th century and to reassert the monolithic conception of religion and empire. Sociologically, this attempt was due to a last bid of the aristocratic-feudal episcopate of Germany to resist the Gregorian reform and to maintain its own empire-centred church. Politically it degenerated into an act of sheer tyranny. For if in earlier centuries people had cooperated willingly in the monolithic structure because they had not known any other, during the second half of the 12th century, Barbarossa’s efforts were to meet decided resistance from almost every quarter. Where Otto I and Henry IV, for example, had merely been children of their time governing and protecting the populus c.lir.i.rrianus, Frederick Barbarossa appears as a fiendish tyrant, bluntly and brutally trampling upon new growth and, with Machiavellian duplicity and determination, trying to set the clock back.

FREDERICK BARBAROSSA AND THE ‘HOLY EMPIRE’ 23

The things Heer has to say on the transformation of theology from thought in the old symbolic style to thought in the new style belong to the most penetrating analyses of his work.* Old-style theological thinking was based upon man’s attempt, in fear and respect, to decipher God‘s signs on earth, in the macrocosm as well as in the microcosm. These signs had to be grasped and interpreted as symbols. The new theology insisted that faith was an existimatio rerum absentium, id esr corporis non subiucentiurn. It lost its symbolical orientation and became a matter of intellectual discussion of propositions. But it was not only in theology that the transformation took place. In the old style, the kingdom of God was identified with the sacred empire (even though the word ‘sacred’ was not officially used). Empire and Church and Christianity were identified. In the new style, the kingdom of God was something supernatural-a transcendental realm. The empire not only ceased to be identified with the Church, but humanitas came to be seen on one side and the kingdom of God on the other. Hence the events and objects of this world lost their symbolic character as ciphers, as well as their importance as magical things. They were desacralized; and the new form of non-symbolic, dialectical theology was initiated.

Heer has fascinating pages on the political consequences of these conceptions. In the old style of thought, the emperor represents God on earth, he is the rex regum and his majestic appearance is the key to an understanding of the majesty of God. Under the emperor the whole of the world is supposed to be ordered like an image of heaven. And hence the all-important and ultimately fateful equivocation : what- ever increases the honor imperii is also for the honor Dei.

The transformation itself, Heer considers, was brought about in the schools of Chartres and by the bourgeois lawyers of Italy. He under- stands it sociologically in terms of the growth of the middle-class mind. The old-style religiosity was the expression of the feudal-aristocratic style of life; and the new style of religiosity corresponded to the bourgeois intellect.

Historians must forever remain indebted to Heer for his general revision of the estimate of the mediaeval empire: for pointing out its negative qualities, in general for allowing us once more to understand the justice of Petrarch’s conception of mediaeval history. With this revalua- tion, Heer has begun to free historical thought from the spell of those historians who, in the wake of Giesebrecht’s monumental work, had considered the mediaeval empire as a fixed and established institution, served ably and purposefully by a long line of successive emperors, even as a modern state might be served by a series of Prime Ministers. Giesebrecht had indeed seen Frederick Barbarossa as a sort of mediaeval Bismarck and the general consensus of opinion is that the empire was particularly well served by him. It is true that there had been an endlessly heated debate as to whether the emperors’ Italian entangle- ments had been in the interest of German national development; and

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according to one school of thought, Frederick’s Lombard plans had been a disaster.7 But the whole debate was concerned merely with ‘foreign policy’; it never stopped to consider whether it was not entirely questionable to regard the mediaeval empire as an established adminis- trative system. It is Heer’s great merit to have reminded us that the empire was not just a political institution for the organization of a certain nation, but that it was essentially an ideology, a politico- theological version of mediaeval Christianity; and that, in its monolithic and totalitarian pretensions, its value for the spiritual and intellectual development of Europe was highly questionable.

But while one is ready to grant the validity of Heer’s overall reassessment, one need not necessarily remain convinced that his analysis of the ‘tragedy’ of the Holy Empire in the 12th century is a correct one. In fact, he sees Frederick Barbarossa far too simply as a mediaeval Hitler and significantly enough has very little to say about him after the terrible triumphs of the 60’s. Like many a pioneer, Heer was carried away by his own general conception and tried to understand the drama of Staufen politics entirely in terms of his initial opposition between, say, Cluny and St. Francis, between the feudal episcopate of Germany and the Gregorian reform movement, and so forth. In this way his presentation ceases eventually to be an historical study and assumes the guise of a philosophy of history. The amazing point, however, is that Heer’s original conception is quite fertile enough to lead on to real historical study.

Heer’s main preoccupation is the history of religion. His whole revaluation, or rather his whole devaluation of the mediaeval empire, is based upon his argument that its religiosity was unspiritual, magical, military and informed by Germanic tribal ethics. As against this, he can look upon Bernard and Abelard, Arnold of Brescia and St. Francis, the 12th century heretics and the bourgeois Pope Alexander I11 as the harbingers of a new spirituality, of a new inward form of piety and of the beginnings of personal freedom and individualism, all combining to reject the totalitarian claims of the imperial monolith, according to which true religiosity was assessed entirely in terms of integration into the imperial-ecclesiastical structure.

But if one gives up these simple and general antitheses and introduces instead a number of subtler distinctions, one would be able to do greater justice to what actually happened in the second half of the 12th century. All one need do is to break up Heer’s conceptions of ‘individualism’ and ‘religious spirituality’ into their constituent parts and study their development.

What in fact happened at the time of the lnvestiture contest was this. The monolithic conception of a unified church presided over by an emperor who was the anointed of God gave way to a number of dis- tinctions. People were learning to distinguish the several elements that

FREDERICK BARBAROSSA AND T H E ‘HOLY E M P I R E ‘ 25

had been fused into this one monolith. They learnt to distinguish the spiritual from the secular when Gregory insisted that a pope, in virtue of his spiritual power, may depose an emperor who is nothing but a secular magistrate. Sacerdotalism began to emerge as a separate and independent force when the conception that the Church consisted of the clergy. juristically defined, gained ground. The clergy, thus defined, ceased to be a part of the Holy Empire and the populus christiunus. They were set up, instead, as an order opposite to the laity and their duty was to mediate between nature and supernature. By contrast naturalism began to assert itself as an independent force seeking to organize secular life entirely in terms of rational and economic utility. Moreover, in so far as the pope insisted on his sacerdotal power as a new substitute for the older authority of the emperor, they also learnt to distinguish between spirituality and sacerdotalism; for it became clear that the spiritual basis on which the popes had challenged and de- spiritualized the empire was not easily compatible with the possession of political and economic power of the popes. In short, the monolithic church of the earlier centuries broke up into three separate forces: naturalism or secularism; sacerdotalism or papalism; and spirituality- personal, heretical, monastic or any other kind.8 We find, therefore, that it was not simply a matter of a contest between the old and the new when Frederick Barbarossa, for instance, confronted Alexander 111. There was really a three-cornered conflict instead. Fur naturalism and sacerdotalism and spirituality could not accommodate themselves with one another. And this three-cornered conflict became incredibly com- plicated when it turned out that, though naturalism and sacerdotalism were completely opposed to one another, spiritualism might rally to a secular king or emperor against a feudal or territorial papacy: or, conversely, might support sacerdotal authority in its fight against the ascendancy of feudal-aristocratic elements in the Church. Gregory V1T had enlisted the help of the Milanese P a t a ~ i a ; ~ and the followers of Arnold of Brescia had high hopes that either Conrad 111 or Frederick Barbarossa would come to their aid in Rome against the pope.10 The pattern of conflict, therefore, was anything but simple. And Heer’s straightforward dichotomy between ‘old style’ and ‘new style’ proves, therefore, completely inadequate.

Between 1 162 and 1 165 Frederick’s anti-papal policies reached their climax. The destruction of Milan, the transfer of the relics of the Three Wise Kings to Cologne, the Wiirzburg oaths and the canonization of Charlemagne all belong to the same period. And in Heer’s view this period represents the climax to Frederick’s reactionary, feudal policies- the climax of his policy of pitting the Holy Roman Empire against the growing individualistic, spiritual and bourgeois forces of France and Italy. In Heer’s view, it was a frantic and desperate attempt to make the world secure for the Christian Sultanate. There is no doubt that all these things did happen in the middle sixties; and there is also no doubt that during these very years Frederick’s chancellor, Rainald von Dassel,

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was supreme in the imperial counsels. And Heer proceeded, therefore, to a very simple and complete identification of Frederick with Rainald- it is indeed to the latter that he devotes his most trenchant chapter in the second volume, And one cannot but admire Heer’s acumen, sharpened, no doubt, by his own experiences of totalitarianism and C;/cich.ct~hultiing. Rainald von Dassel was a man of a completely feudal- aristocratic stamp. The Church and Christianity meant to him a feudal, military institution, with the bishops on horseback. He was acclaimed by the populace of his diocese not for providing the odd priest to say Mass or hear a confession, i.e. not for organizing pastoral care and spiritual edification, but for bringing the famous relics from Milan to Cologne. i.c. for adding the magic power which would make Cologne into a truly impregnable fortress in which the Christian people could seek shelter against the devil’s men, the heathen.

Unfortunately, very little is known about Rainald. Over a hundred years ago, Ficker compiled the relevant documents into a biography1’- but since then no further attempts have been made. There are valuable contributions to odd points in his career and character by K . Schambach.12 J . Spi5rl,13 W. F6hl,l4 and E. Otto.I5 But nothing has come to light to make it possible to turn Ficker’s original recital of facts into a work of history. And yet, one cannot accept a simple identification of Frederick and Rainald-not even for the years of Rainald’s undoubted triumph and ascendancy.

To begin with, one ought to weigh the evidence which has been accumulated during the last few decades and which shows beyond shadow of doubt to what extent Frederick was devoting himself to policies of secularism and naturalism. Once he had fully gauged the complete fiasco of his attempts to continue his predecessor’s pro-papal policies,16 he had begun to fashion plans for government that were based entirely upon secular and naturalistic considerations. In that he proved himself the equal of Suger” and Henry 11; and if he did not succeed as they did. it was entirely due to the fact that he could not get the trained personnel, and that he had cast his net over too wide a geographical region, encompassing contiguous territories as diverse as Burgundy, Siiabia and Lombardy.ls

Nothing was further from Frederick’s mind than the re-establishment of the monolithic Holy Roman Empire with its totalitarian and non- personal religiosity. Like every other intelligent ruler of his century, Frederick wanted to create a compact territory, well organized by men who were personally dependent on him and not feudal tenants. It appears very clearly from Bod’s Reichsministerialitiit der Salier rtnd Stuirfer’u that Frederick was building up such a territory, with its centre naturally in Suabia; and with one wedge driven down the upper mine - land and another reaching eastwards towards Bohemia. And as far as Lombardy is concerned, the last doubts as to Frederick’s highly rational intentions have been dispelled by the researches of G . Deibel.20

FREDERICK RARBAROSSA A N D THE ‘HOI Y EMPIRI-.’ 27

In this connection it is equally important to recall those recent works which show that his great adversaries, Hadrian IV and Alexander 111 as well as, in later years, Henry the Lion, proved his adversaries, not because they were so different from him, but because they were so much like him. For the popes, the evidence is unfortunately very meagre for the second half of the 12th century-but such as it is, especially for Hadrian, it is well presented and interpreted by D. Waley.zl Hadrian’s preoccupations were indeed very much more territorial than historians have suspected in view of his grandiloquent policies and arguments.z2 When in the wake of the Gregorian reform movement the Roman nobility lost control of the papacy, the new type of pope, in turn, found it increasingly difficult to rule the city.z3 And after many years of enforced exile and attempted bargaining, Hadrian finally began to understand that the pope’s position in Rome would depend on his success as a territorial ruler, i.e. on his ability to subdue the surrounding countryside and establish a papal state according to the most advanced conceptions of state-building available at the time. The full adminis- trative machinery was not to be established and organized until the pontificate of Innocent 111; but Alexander 111’s dogged determination to maintain himself against Frederick laid the foundations for the wccess of future work in this direction. One need only consult an old and too neglected paper by P. Kehr on the anti-Pope Victorz4 in order to gain an impression of the kind of feudal aristocracy whom Frederick was planning to promote in opposition to Alexander on the papal throne. For Victor was a member of that Roman nobility whose power was based upon the country estates to the north of Rome and whose influence the papal reform party had been trying to diminish and oust ever since the middle of the previous century. It is no wonder that Alexander had his hands full and was not able to contribute much to the minutiae of administration. For purposes of propaganda, he made the most of his position as a poor exile, persecuted and humiliated, a truly Christian pope, in contrast to the proud, well-connected aristocrat Victor IV.25 Even so, his contribution to the introduction of Roman Law into the Church has long been fully recognized. But we owe to G. le Bras a precise definition of the extraordinary extent to which M Y ecclesiristicu was becoming assimilated to res sacru : ‘Le privilegium, jadis “concession genereuse de 1’Etat” devient, par un renversement total des maximes antiques, la “reconnaissance d’un droit divin” dkfini par les canons aprks les 1ois’.26 Alexander, however, was not only a determined lawyer; he was an equally subtle diplomat and politician. And it is not the least merit of Pacaut’s book on him to have given for the first time a fully convincing account of his masterly handling of the so-called Sicilian Conspiracy and of the manner in which he himself was responsible for provoking the BesanGon incident about the b e n e f i c i ~ r n . ~ ~ Pacaut points out that it is completely implausible that Roland should not have known of the feudal meaning of the word. He wanted an incident in order to demonstrate to those of his fellow

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cardinals who were still unconvinced of the wisdom of the new Sicilian policy of Hadrian, that the emperor was indeed not to be trusted. As it was, Rainald allowed himself to be provoked to the full. He fell into the trap and his anger provided Roland with the demonstration that the vofte face of Benevento had been more than justified. But of this, more later.

If the popes were prevented by political circumstances from laying the foundations of a rational administrative system in and around Rome, Henry the Lion found no such obstacles in Saxony. The develop- ment of trade and the growth of towns to which he made no mean personal contribution afforded one opportunity.28 The other was furnished by his missionary zeal which enabled him to conquer new lands in the east and to establish new ecclesiastical institutions which were completely under his sway.29 Not that he had a large number of educated men to draw upon for administration. But at least he had ample opportunity for extending his personal power and for welding his as well as other people’s possessions into something like a territorial state. This theme was explored fully by R. Hildebrand30 in a book which had taken its general inspiration from the studies of Bra~kman.~’ A very large number of the detailed analyses of Hildebrand have been criticized and even rejected. But something of the total picture has remained: Henry the Lion as a state-builder-a man with a rational and limited purpose, neither fired by national ideals nor dominated by Christian devotion. For that matter, the mundane and economic rationalism that informed Henry’s policies had already been explicitly recognized by H e l r n ~ l d . ~ ~

While Frederick’s naturalistic and rational ambition to create a compact territorial state in that central European area which consisted of Burgundy, Suabia and Lombardy was quite in keeping with the naturalism and secularism in vogue with the popes and Henry the Lion, Frederick’s success was jeopardized by his total lack of suitable per- sonnel. The ministerides whom he employed were, socially, country squires, not bureaucrats and administrators.33 Their tenures might remain servile; but tenures they were and the feudalization of this class of people was inevitable. Moreover, in Lombardy, by necessity, he had to employ ministerides of German origin. And this foreign character of the oppressive domination added to Frederick’s unpopularity. Justi- fiably so: uprooted and far from home, they felt none of the moral and social restraints to which they might have been subject in their homeland. But it was not only that he did not have the necessary personnel. Unlike Henry the Lion, Frederick had no opportunity. Saxony was, socially and politically, very much in a state of transition from tribalism to a looser, purely politically orientated organi~a t ion .~~ But there was no corresponding process in Suabia.s5 Frederick’s ‘state-building’ policies were widely resented-or at least sufficiently so to enable Henry the Lion to cause real trouble for Frederick in the late seventies. And it is

FREDERICK BARBAROSSA A N D THE ‘HOLY EMPIRE‘ 29

not the least merit of C. Erdman’s penetrating study of the trial of Henry the Lion to have placed this matter in full relief.38 Henry the Lion, like Frederick, was a Suabian and the proceedings against him were, naturally enough, begun under Suabian tribal custom. But a sufficient number of Suabians refused to sit in judgment on Henry to frustrate Frederick’s designs. And thus Frederick was forced to initiate proceedings against Henry under feudal, rather than tribal, custom. This was a momentous decision and helped to consolidate constitutionally the rapid development of feudalism in Germany during the 12th century.

If Suabia was too retarded socially to afford Frederick’s naturalism much of an opportunity, Lombardy was far too advanced. The Lombards represented their own naturalism and had advanced along the road of communal self-government, which they were totally unwilling to surrender to Frederick or even to share with him. And if later emperors were able to exploit civic strife and class struggles, Frederick had to confine himself to making capital out of the rivalries between the towns themselves. But such rivalries were shifting sands, and did not afford a stable rock for imperial policy to lean upon. The degree of social cohesion in every town in the 12th century was indeed remarkable. And so was the harmony of clerical and lay interest^.^' It is probably this factor more than any other which explains the completeness of Frederick’s failure to assume the control of civic affairs in Lombardy. Historians used to be divided into two classes. There were those who believed that Frederick was intent upon a re-feudalization and re- ruralization of Lombardy; and those who believed that Frederick wanted to take his stand on Roman Law. Whatever grounds there are for the first belief, they are afforded only by the incidental events after 1162, when Frederick‘s wrath had been provoked and when he recognized his impotence. They were not part of the original, sober and rational design enunciated at Roncaglia. As far as Roman Law is concerned, there is naturally the temptation to make the most of Frederick’s friendliness towards the Bologna But when all things are con- sidered, the Roman Law elements in Frederick‘s naturalism were minimal. And they were certainly negligible by comparison with the power and influence of Roman Law in the elaboration of 12th century sacerdotali~rn.~~

But the frustration and the defeat of Frederick’s naturalism are one thing. It does not follow that he was a superstitious reactionary intent upon making the idea of a Holy Roman Empire prevail against the tide of the century and to assure the triumph of the aristocratic-feudal episcopate with its traditional, magical conception of the Christian religion over the personalism and rationalism of the rising new climate of thought in France and Italy.

If he was carried away by the fervour of Rainald during the period 1162-7, it was not due to design but to impotence. When he stood on the ruins of Milan in 1162, it began to dawn on him that his triumph

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was a hollow one since Alexander had escaped him. Naturally, he directed his first diplomatic steps towards an effort to lay Alexander's influence in France. It was only when his diplomacy had proved a complete fiasco and he recognized the degree of his impotence vis d vis Alexander's dogged determination, that Rainald's great days of obsessive anti-papalism began. They stretch precisely from his insulting attack on the King of France as a regulus to the desperate attempt to capture Alexander in Rome in 1167. Rome was conquered but, in the confusion of the final assault, Alexander managed to escape disguised as a pilgrim; and Rainald died of the epidemic.

We can indeed form an estimate of Rainald's character and the kind of influence he was likely to have exercised from a number of isolated incidents. They all seem to point in the direction of an obsessive anti- papalism and of the desire to combine in his own person the aristocratic grandeur of a rich land-owner and the religious aura of a bishop serving Christ not through the exercise of charisma in the cure of souls, but through the splendour of military allegiance-vassal of the divine Majesty, not a servant of Jesus. If Rainald represented a not uncommon type of German bishop, he stood out amongst his episcopal brethren by the lavishness and indefatigability of his energy and the extravagance with which he displayed his ambitions. To begin with, in 1156, Frederick had employed him as a servant. But Rainald's great days came after 1 162, when Frederick, the victor, began to face his impotence and frustration. It was then that Rainald's extravagance reached an influence in Frederick's counsels, which it could never have reached if Frederick had been able to pursue any sober and tangible plans of his own. But since Frederick was rather at a loss as to what to do next after the diplomatic fiasco at St. Jean-de-Losne, he was an all too willing victim of Rainalds extravagant anti-papal enthusiasm. He allowed himself to be dragged because he was furious and impotent. And the direction which Rainald indicated was, emotionally at any rate, a genuine expression of his own fury.

The first time we hear of Rainald in history is in connection with the Council of Rheims in 1146, where he stubbornly defended his right to sport over-ornate, worldly decorations of clerical vestments. This indicates clearly his dislike of the clerical reform party. Everything else we explicitly know of him points in the same or in a similar direction. Hadrian IV certainly spotted Rainald's obsessions quite early and made no bones about them. If we examine Rainald's account of the famous battle of Tusculum, we gain the impression that he considered himself invested with special divine magic to win the Lord's battles-a megalo- mania not unreminiscent of Constantine at the Milvian Bridge.'" When it comes to the expression of his own opinions, we have good evidence for the way in which he employed the Archipoeta to put up the most unrealistic claims on behalf of the emperor as the lord of the world-a claim which is completely incompatible with Frederick's sober and

FREDERICK BARBAROSSA A N D THE ‘HOLY EMPIRE‘ 31

naturalistic administrative designs.41 It seems extraordinary now how many historians, generation after generation, have taken this kind of talk as serious evidence of Frederick‘s own intentions and plans, without examining the Sitz im Leben of the poetical effusions of a 12th century beatnik, bribed by Rainald.42 And nobody had bothered to attribute full weight to the Archipoeta’s final refusal to continue in this vein. He pleaded incompetence. But if one is mindful of the Archipoeta’s incredible literary versatility, there can be no question of genuine incom- petence. He simply considered Rainald’s demands ridiculous and not even money would buy his further services. Similarly it has turned out that the theory that the kings of Christendom were mere regufi and no rivals to Frederick, was mainly of Rainald‘s own making, flung abusively at Louis of France at a moment when all diplomacy had proved abortive.43 There is further evidence of Rainald’s high-sounding and unrealistic political conceptions in Frederick’s letter to the bishops of germ an^.'^ E. Otto has made a valiant attempt to disentangle Frederick’s own phrases from those due to R a i ~ ~ a l d . ~ ~ Since Otto based his analysis entirely on textual criteria, some critics have expressed doubts. But Otto’s conclusions are all too plausible when related to what we know of Rainald’s opinions and policies. Otto concludes indeed that the sober and factual and moderate announcements in the letter are due to Frederick; and that the extravagant bits are due to Rainald.

But it is not only Rainald’s views that were intemperate. Of his ostentatious religious display in regard to the transfer of the Milanese relics to Cologne we have already spoken. But it is instructive to consider this matter in detail. Both Milan and Cologne were major cities by twelfth century standards, with teeming populations, a very large proportion of which were artisans and craftsmen, totally un- educated but thirsting for some kind of religious instruction. As the population of Cologne had grown, there had been no corresponding development of pastoral care-in fact by the middle of the century the whole of the city formed one single parish. On one side the total neglect of religious education assured the continued survival of pagan Germanic beliefs and practices. On the other hand, it presented in the 12th century a wide invitation to those countless wandering preachers who disseminated according to their own lights purely spiritualistic ideas or outspokenly heretical ones. When Galdinus, the archbishop of Milan, managed to return to his city from exile in September, 1167, he found that, for lack of leadership, the Church had been despoiled, the people left without pastoral care, and heresy in progress. He devoted the next ten years of his life to the rebuilding of churches and to preaching and collapsed on the pulpit on April 18th, 1176, on the tenth anniversary of his consecration, as he was delivering a sermon against the Cathars. Not so Rainald. There was an equally crying need for pastoral care in Cologne and the city abounded with heretics. To fight the latter, Ekbert von Schonau was called to the city. Early in August, 1163, he had a debate with the leading Cathars and, as a result, eight of them were

32 P. MUNZ

burnt. As far as the absence of pastoral care was concerned, Rainald endeavoured to make up for it by the festive transfer of the relics of the Three Wise Kings to Cologne. If he had no interest in promoting knowledge and the cure of souls, he at least increased the magic of salvation inherent in the city. The transfer was supposed to desacralize Milan. But owing to the efforts of Archbishop Galdinus, the religious life of Milan managed to survive the loss of the sacred relics.

Next we ought to consider Rainald’s part in the Besanqon incident and the alacrity with which he fell into the trap shrewdly prepared by Alexander to demonstrate to the still wavering cardinals that imperial policy was aggressive and incompatible with the principles of a reformed papacy. Roland had calculated well; Rainald was only too ready to oblige, and between them these two men staged an incident that was to cloud the relations between empire and papacy right down to the time when, with the proclamation of the Roncaglia Decrees, they were broken off altogether. But there can be no better proof of the manner in which Rainald’s impetuousness prevented any plans Frederick might have had for a reconciliation with Alexander. When Victor died in Lucca in 1164 Frederick sensed immediately a practical opportunity for an end to the schism without loss of face. He wrote to Rainald who had been with Victor (the physical proximity itself is indicative) to hold his hand as far as the election of a new anti-pope was concerned. But Rainald had lost no time and had caused a new pope to be elected before Frederick‘s instructions could have reached him. And thus he had committed his master.

And finally, of course, there is the great show mounted by Frederick and Rainald for the canonization of Charlemagne in Aix-la-Chapelle in 1 165.4G N o wonder that this performance was seized upon by Heer as the final proof of the reactionary tendencies of the Staufen empire. The canonization of an emperor, partly in response to popular demand and popular practice-for Charlemagne was indeed accorded canonical honours in all sorts of pla~es~~-looks in fact like the h a 1 apotheosis of the ideals of the Holy Empire, of an outdated religiosity; of an attempt to assert once more that there was no distinction between the spiritual and the secular, that an emperor was under God charged with the lordship of Christianity; that the mark of true religiosity lay in the allegiance to that emperor and not in the purity of one’s soul or any other kind of relationship with the Christ on the Cross or the Holy Virgin.

There is no denying that Frederick had a hand in this show. But Rainald was more deeply committed,4R and the whole scene shows him at the height of his influence and career. Frederick was being dragged along. The force of circumstances had obliged him to proclaim openly his undying hostility to Alexander and to determine upon the fateful campaign to capture Alexander in Rome. What else could he do than

FREDERICK BAKBAROSSA AND THE 'HOLY EMPIRE' 33

allow his faithful minister to stage that impressive celebration in Aix-la-Chapelle in order to provide the necessary enthusiasm and ideology?

When all is said and done, however, it would be wrong to regard Frederick as a sober-minded secular politician intent upon realizing certain limited administrative aims but obliged to allow himself to be led astray and seduced by the intoxicating and reactionary extravagances of Rainald von Dassel. Such a view would, in its own way, force Frederick into a preconceived scheme and reduce him to a simple instance of a general pattern which we can discern in 12th century politics. The truth is less simple and less sober.

Years after Rainald's death, when Frederick had long abandoned any kind of high-sounding anti-papalism, he was finally obliged to admit that his limited administrative schemes for Suabia, Burgundy and Lombardy could not be worked out in practice. He then decided on a complete revision of his ideas and came to the conclusion that the only possible course of action was to resign himself to the growing feudalism4e in Germany and actively to promote the growth of a feudal m ~ n a r c h y . ~ ~ I t was then that he clashed with Henry the Lion whose state-building activities in northern and eastern Germany were the greatest single and most formidable obstacle to a feudalization of political and public relationships in Germany. Historians are quite agreed that the destruc- tion of 'Henry the Lion resulted in a rapid and complete development of political feudalism in Germany. But for the most part they see this development as an incidental result of the destruction of Henry; whereas it makes more sense to regard the destruction as the result of Frederick's determination to go along with the general tide of f e ~ d a l i s m . ~ ~ The reason why he wanted to settle things one way or another and why he did not ultimately mind whether his secularistic and naturalistic plans or the prevailing feudal developments would triumph was that he wanted to go on a crusade. He had come to the throne in the wake of the widespread depression caused by the failure of the Second Crusade. And it is reasonable to assume that he was sufficiently a child of his age52 to consider it a Christian ruler's foremost task to organize a new crusades3 to make up for the failure of his predece~sor.~' Had he been king of England or France, he might have been too cynical for this kind of piety. But in Germany there were really no powerful opportunities for the deployment of rational statecraft to tempt him into this kind of worldly cynicism. Germany, socially and economically, was backward.s5 As a result, his na'ive religiosity was never corroded by the kind of ruison d'e'tut which, by the end of the 12th century, had got the better of the rulers of France and England. Frederick remained nai've; he was therefore able to scrap his plans because he had never considered them as ends in themselves. They had been a means to the ultimate end, a means to a crusade. When he found that they caused too much trouble, he made peace with both the Lombards and Alexander,66 resigned

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himself to the prevailing forces of feudalism in Germany and, true to his over-all design, departed on the Third Crusade. His reign, indeed, not only spans the period between the end of St. Bernard and the rise of St. Francis; it is also literally coextensive with the interval between the Second and the Third Crusade.

1.

1.

3. 4. 5 .

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11. 12.

13 , 14.

15. 16.

17.

18.

19. 20,

21. 22.

FOOTNOTES

Cf. my introduction to my forthcoming translation of E. Garin, Italian Humanism. Oxford. Aufgang Europas, Wien, 1949; Die Tragodie des heiligen Reiches, Stuttgart, 1952. As was to be expected, Heer’s books proved extremely controversial. Their recep- tion ranged from Th. Mayer’s pre~udiced condemnation in the Hisr. Zeirschrifr, 171, 1953, and 178, 1954, to the sensitive and sympathetic appreciation by A. Mayer-Pfannholz, Hochhnd, 45, 1953. In his The Medieval World, London, 1962, Heer has shifted his perspective and contrasts the ‘open society’ of the 12111 century with the ‘closed socie of the 13th century. This viewpoint, though still fruitful, is far less original a n 1 almost completely obscures the earlier theory that the 12th century was an ‘open’ one exactly because different forces fighting againat the preservation of the earlier Christian Empire were also fighting against each other. Cf. especially Aufgatig Eiiropas, pp. 124-5. Cf. Mum, P., The Origin o f the Carolingian Empire, Dunedin, 1960, pp. 7-8. Cf. my introduction to Fichtenau, H., The Carolingian Empire, Oxford, 1951, pp. xx-I. For the history of 12th century symbolic theology see now Chenu, M. D., Lo Thdologie au 12e srdcle, Paris, 1957. It is not the least merit of D. Knowles’s The Evolurion of Medieval Thought, London, 1962, to contain a brief chapter on this subject. The debate was begun in the middle of the 19th century by Sybel and Ficker and revived again in the twenties of this century by G. v. Below. The classic work on the spiritual movement, heretical and orthodox, is Grundmann, H., Religiose Bewegungen im Mitrelalter, new and enlarged edition, Hildesheim, 1961. Cf. also the systematic surve of the heretics, Borst, A., Die Kathurer, Schriften d.M.G.H., 1953. In Englid there is the brief but instructive book by Runciman, S., The Medieval Manichee, Cambridge, 1947. Cf. Violante, C., LA Pataria milanese e la riforma ecclesiasticu, Rome, 19.55: La socierd milanese nell’ erd precommunale, Bari, 1953. On Arnold, the most readable narrative is still Greenaway, G. H., Arnold of Brescia, Cambridge, 1931. The more recent work by Frugoni, Arnaldo da Bresciu nelle fonri del secolo X l I , Rome, 1954, is a useful survey of the sources but does not aspire to historical understanding. On Frederick‘s reputed regrets cf. Hampe, K., ’Zur Geschichte Arnolds von Brescia’. Hisr. Zeirschrift, 130, 1924. Koln. 1850. ‘Das VerMtnis Rainalds v. Dassel zum Empfang der hochsten Weihen’, Zeirsdrr. d. hisr. Ver. J. Niedersachsen, 80. 1915. Rainald v. Dassel auf dem Konzil von Rheims’. Hist. Jahrbuch, 60, 1940. ‘Srudien zu Kainald von Dassel’, Juhrb. d . Kolner Gesch. Vereins. 17, 1935; 20, 1938. ‘Friedrich Barbarossa in seinen Briefen’, Deursch. Archiv, 1942. Rassow, P., Honor imperii, 1940, new ed., Koln, 1961, used much scholarship and acumen to prove that Frederick began to react against the pro-papal policy of hls predecessor at the very beginning of his reign. I cannot consider these arguments to be convincing or even plausible. Cf. the critical reviews by Holtzmann, Deursches Archiv, 1941, p. 594, and by Grundmann, Hist. Zeirschr., 164, 1941. On Suger see the very rewarding Chapter 3 in Simson, 0. v., The Gothic Cathedral. London, 1956. Cf. Hirsch, H.. Urkundenfalschung aus dem Regnitm Arelarense. Wien, 1937, and the critical remarks by Font-Ready, J. de, Annales du Midi, 1939. Cf. also Buttner, H . , Staufer und Ziihringer im politischen Kraftespiel zwischen Bodensee und Genfersee wahrend des 12. Jahrhunderts. Zurich, 1961. Stuttgart, 1950. Die italienischen Einkiinfte Friedrichs I’, Neue Heidelberger Jahrbiicher, 1932:

‘Die finanzielle Fkdeutung Reichsitaliens fur die staufischen Herrscher des 12. Jahrhunderts’, Zeitschrift d . Suvigny Stiftung f . Rechtsgeschichte, Ger. Abt., LIV. 1934. The Papal State in the 13th Century, London, 1961. The most recent solid survey of the conflict between Hadrian 1V and Frederick is Maccarone, M., Papato e impero dalla elezione di Federico I alla morte di Adriano, Rome, 1959. Unfortunately it is entirely confined to a treatment of the traditional topics. Maccarone is especially rewarding on the famous and notorious Lateran paintings. On the sfrutor problem see especially Holtzmann. R., ‘Zuni

FREDERICK BARBAROSSA A N D THE ‘HOLY EMPIRE‘ 35

Strator- und Marschalldienst’, Hisr. Zeitschrift, 145, 193$ which seems a very satisfactory reply to the earlier work by Eichmann, E., Das officium stratoris’, Hist. Zeitschrift, 142, 1930.

23. Cf. Haller, J., Das Papstturn, Stuttgart, 1952, Vol. 111, pp. 62ff. 24. ‘Zur Geschichte Victor IV’, Neues Archiv, 46, 1926. 25. This line stood him in good stead with men like John of Salisbury. But Gerhoch

von Reichersberg had very grave doubts as to whether Alexander was really less simoniacal than his opponent. Cf. Classen, P., Gerhoch von Reichersberg. Wiesbaden, 1960.

26. ‘Le droit romain au service de la domination pontificale’, hrocri!. R e w e hisf. dt. droir f r . er Ar.. 1949. D . 389.

27. Alexandre ! l I , . p e a , ’1956. 28. Rorig, F., Hemnch der Lowe und die Grundung Lubecks’, Deutsches Archir. I.

1937; and Barmann, J., Die Stadtegriindung Heinrichs des Lowen, Koln-Graz, 1960. 29. Jordan, K., Die Bistumsgrundungen Heinrichs des Lowen, Stuttgart, 1939. 30. Der sachsische ‘Staat’ Heinrichs des Lowen, Berlin. 1937. This work has aroused

31.

32. 33.

34. 35.

36.

31.

38.

39. 40.

a lively controvers not so much because of i& general thesis as because of individual points wbch do, however, not necessarily d e c t the general argument. Beck, M., Hist. Zeitschrift, 159. 1939, pp. 343-6, and Jordan, K., Deursches Archit., I , 1937, p. 572, and Hampe-Baethgen, Deutschr Kaiserzeit, new ed., Heidelberg. 1949, are mainly in agreement. Cf. the criticism by Hiittebrauker, Zeitschr. d. Savigny Stijtung f . Rechrsgeschichre Germ. Abt., 1937, pp. 574f.; Klewitz, H,. W.. Deursche Literaturzeirung, 1938, 6p. 110lff.; Bauermann, J., Niedersachsrsche., lahrbuch, 15, 1938; Beumann, H., Hisr. lahrbuch, 59, 1939; Klebel, E., Mitt. d. Institurs f . oesterr. Geschichtsforsch., 46, 1938, pp. 238ff. For. another equally telling. if less notorious, example of ‘naturalism’ see Mayer, Th., The State of the Dukes of ahringen’, in Barraclough, G. (Ed.), Medieval Germany, Oxford, 1938, yo1. 11, pp. 175ff. Die Wandlung der Staatsanschauungen in Zeitalter Kaiser Friedrichs I . , Hist.

Zeitschr., 145, 1932; ‘Die Ursachen der geistigen und politischen Wandlung Europas in 11. and 12. Jahrhundert’, Hist. Zeitsehrijr, 149; ‘Der Mittelalterliche Ursprung der Nationalstaaten’, Sitzungsberichte der Preuss. Ak., hist-Phil. Kl., 1936. Chronicle of the Slavs, I, 68. There has been a controversy on the quality and availability of trained adminis- trators. Bosl’s optimistic views were criticised by Kirchner, G., Staatsplannung und Reichsministeriaiitt’, Deutsches Archiv, 10, 1954. Cf. Bosl’s reply, ibid., p. 475. Kienast, dogmatically, is of the opinion that Frederick’s administrative apparatus was as good as that of Philip Augustus: Hisr. Zeitschr., 167, 1943, pp. 404-5. It is very difficult, at the moment, to form a clear picture of ‘the administrators available to Frederick. For isolated studies see Giiterbock, F., Markward von Grumbach, ;Vater und SOW, Mitreilungen des Inst. f . oesterr. Geschichtsforsch., 48, 1934: and Le lettere del notaio Bucardo’, Bull. dell‘ istituto slorico italiano per il medio evo.

61, 1949. For Wo& v. Hagenau as a type see Bod, K., Reichsministerialitar. pp. 194f. There is no doubt that capable and tough-minded administrators existed. But, given the absence of an administrative centre, there was no opportunity for turning their services to systematic and constructive purposes. Germany differed from France in this respect not through the absence of suitable men bur through the absence of a suitably centralized institution in which the services of these men could reach a powerful purpose. Vogt, H. W., Das Herzogtum Lothars von Supplingenburg, Hildesheim, 1959. Heuermann, H., Die Hausmachtpolitik der Staujer von Herzog Friedrich I hi.\ Konig Konrad 111, Diss., Berlin, 1939. ‘Der Prozess Heinrichs des Liiwen’, in Mayer, Th. (Ed.), Kaiserrum and Herzogs- gewalt, Leipzig, 1944, pp. 317ff. Goetz, W., Die Entsrehung der italienischen Kommunen, Munchen, 1944. Cf. also Ennen, E., Friihgeschichte der europaischen Stadt, 1953. Generally, cf. Goetz, W., ‘Das Wiederaulleben des romiyhen Rechtes im 12. Jahrhundert’, Arch. f . Kultunvissenschafr, 10, 1912. Vergottmi, G. de, ‘Lo studio di Bologna, l’impero. il papato’, Studi 4 memorie per la storia dell’ universita di Bologna, N.S., I 1954; Koeppler, H., Frederick Barbarossa and the Schools of Bologna’, EHR, 54, 1939. Cf. le Bras, G., op. cit.; and Pacaut, M., La Thiocratie, Paris, 1951, pp. 121-5. The account of the battle in the Chron. Reg. Col. is based upon a letter written by Rainald himself, similar to the one printed in Sudendorf, RegiTtrum. 11, 146. Rainald claimed to have beaten an army of 30,000 (40,000 accordlng, to another version) Romans with no more than 140 German kmghts and approximately 500 sarganri, led by Chrishan of Maim. The victory, he said, was a divine not B human, victory. Rainald seems to have infected other authors with the behef that there was something special about this battle. Morena reports that the Germans attacked singing Chrism qui natus. And the Annals of the Monaster of Egmond report that the Germans attacked with furor TeutoniKus. Otto or St. Blasien stressed that the victory was due to the two ecclesiashcal leaders, Rainald and Christian; that the lay princes, when they had heard of Rainald’s plight. had refused

36 P. MUNZ

to come to his aid; and that the soldiers of the two bishops thereupon attacked animositate Teutonica and made a desperate, violent effort against overwhelming odds. Hence the victory. Rainald’s propaganda appears to have been very effective! Boso, though he could not deny that the Romans were defeated badly (he compared the battle to that of Cannae), was proof against Rainald’s propa- ganda and repeats none of the extravagant features of the victor’s report.

41. Langosch, K., Polirrsche Dichtung um Friedrich prbarossa, 1943. 42. E. R. Curtius’ commonsense is a lone voice: Der Archipoeta und der Stil

rnittellateinische Dichtung’. Roman. Forschungen, 54, 1940. 43. Kirfel, H. J., Welrherrschafrsidee und Biindnispolitik der Staufer, Bonn, 19.59, 44. Otto of Freising, Gesta, 111, XVII. 45. ‘Friedrich Barbarossa in seinen Briefen’, Deutsches Archiw, 1942. 46. On this whole complex question see now the important work by Folz, It., Lr

souvenir el la IPgende de Charlemagne dans I‘empire germanique inediivale, Paris, 1950.

47. Fob, R., Etudes sur le culte lirurgiqite de Charlemagne dam les Cglises e l I’empire. Paris, 1951.

48. Although the attempts to see him even as the instigator of Pseudo-Turpin (Buchner, M., ‘Pseudo-Turpin, Rainald von Dassel und der Archipoet in ihren Beziehungen zur Kanonisation Karls des Grossen’, Zeirschr. f. franz. Sprache u. Lireratur, 51, 1928) must be and have been rejected. But there is no doubt as to Rainald’s initiative in these proceedings in other directions: Buchner, ‘Das fingierte Privileg Karl d. Grossen f. Aachen’. Zeitschr. d . Aachner Gesch. Ver., 47, 1925.

49. Cf. Dungern, 0. v., Adelsherrschafr im Mitrelalrer, Miinchen, 1927; and the same author’s ‘Constitutional Reorganization and Reform under the Hohenstaufen‘, 11)

Barraclough. G. (Ed.), Medieval Germany, Oxford, 1938, Vol. 11, pp. 208E. 50. Cf. Heimpel, K., Kaiser Friedrich Burbarossa und die Wende der staufischen Zeit,

Strassburg, 1942. For a systematic exposition consult Mitteis, H., Lehtirecht und Stuatsgewalr, 1933, pp. 427tf., and the same author’s Der Siaat drs hohen Mirtelalters, 3rd ed., Weimar, 1948. p. 302. There is considerable doubt whether the legal Spiegel of the 13th century in which the principle that the King is compelled to grant fiefs (Leihezwang) is stated really mirrored prevailjng custom; cf. Gunia, H., Der Leihezwang, 1938. But the problem for Frederick in the early 80’s was not whether he was under a ‘legal’ obligation to invest other princes with Henry the Lion’s fiefs or not. Nor was he concerned with the question whether he could or could not have these fiefs administered by non-feudal officials. His real and immediate concern was to gain adherents and the simplest way of gaining them was to gain them as feudal vassals. Cf. Goetz, W., Der Leihezwang, Tubingen, 1962.

51 . A careful re-reading of the relevant evidence shows quite conclusively that Frederick‘s growing antagonism to Henry the Lion had nothing to do with t h e latter’s refusal to support the last campaign in Lombardy. On the contrary, it appears that Henry would most probably have helped the emperor had he not had conclusive evidence that the Lombard plans were to be given up and that Frederick was preparing a completely new course of action which was to make him the feudal monarch of Germany, It was Frederick, not Henry, who first disturbed the agreement on which the cooperation between the two men had been based. I propose to publish a detailed re-examination of this important episode in the near future.

52. There is next to no information on Frederick’s personal feelings and convictions. One can only attempt to form an estimate by considering the kind of literature he must have been acquainted with. If one follows this method, one must dismiss the image of Frederick as a great chivalrous, courtly knight. Indeed, one cannot bring him into relation with the development of refined and courtly literature at all as some historians have done, seeing him as the active promoter of knightly and courtly culture. (Nauman, H., Hiifische Kulrur, 1929; ‘Kurzer Versuch uber welfische und staufische Dichtung’, Elsass-Lorhring. lahrbuch, 8, 1929.) When courtly literature spread to Germany in the 1180’s. Frederick was in his sixties and in all probability looked upon these authors the wa Colonel Blimp would have looked upon the ‘angry young men’ of the 1950’s. Jor the growth of these ideas at the end of the 12th century see such standard histories of German literature as those by de Boor and Ehrismann as well as Ranke, F., Gotr, Welr rind Humani/dr in der deittschen Dichtung des Mitrelalrers, Basel, 1952; and Schroder, W. J., Drr Rirrer zwischen Welt und Gort, Weimar, 1952. The historian is compelled to dissociate Frederick from these refined and sophisticated new ideas and link him with the more naive and symbolic frame of mind of the earlier generation. Frederick was more likely at home in the eschatologically orientated world of Gerhoch of Reichersber and Anselm of Havelberg than with the literary imagina- tion of Heinrich von 3eIdeke.

53. More specifically, Frederick must have been acquainted with the Anti-Christ specu- lations, according to many of which an emperor’s successful crusade was the necessary prelude to the end of time. On the Anti-Christ speculations and their bearing on the Crusades in the 12th century, see Heer, F., Die Trugijdie des heiligen Reiches, Zurich, 1952, p. 173, and Dempf, A,, Sacrum Imperirtnr.

FREDERICK BARBAROSSA A N D THE ‘HOl Y EMPIRE’ 37

Darrnstadt, 1954, Ch. 6. In general, also cf. Wentzlaff-Eggebert, F. W., Kjeuzzrrgs- dichrung des Mirtelahrs, Berlin, 1960. and the same author’s Der H o f r a ~ J E . ~ Chrisri 1188 in Maim, Wmbaden, 1962.

54. For a thorough survey see Constable, G.. ‘The Second Crusade as seen by Contemporaries’, Tradirio, 9, 1953.

55. Cf. especially Perrin, E., La Seigneurie rctrale en France er en Allemagne du de‘brrt du I X e ri la fin du XIZe si2cle. Les Cours de la Sorbonne, Centre de documentation. 1951.

56. Heer is particularly unconvincing in his account of Frederick’s sudden change of heart and acceptance of his position as a mere magistrate among many others. Aufgang Europas, Wien-Zurich, 1949, pp. 653ff. While Heer argued that Frederick suddenly became humane and recognized the justice of Lombard and papal claims, Otto, E., Friedrich Barbarossa, Potsdam, 1943, has argued equally unconvincingly that Frederick at this moment suddenly abandoned his insistence on his legal rights and began to pursue a policy, based exclusively on dynastic and selfish con- siderations.