The Crusader Emperor: Frederick Barbarossa

How did Frederick Barbarossa reshape medieval Europe into the romantic legends that endure today? Dr. Eleanor Janega finds out with help from Professor Graham Loud. They explore Barbarossa's dramatic reign, his conflicts with the Lombard League and the Italian city-states, as well as his pivotal role in two Crusades. Hear about the extraordinary lengths Barbarossa went to secure safe passage for his army, his clash with the Byzantine Empire, and his fateful end during the Third Crusade. MORE Holy Roman Empire https://open.spotify.com/episode/4eqNlsXu44G54sFUS68C13 Teutonic Knights https://open.spotify.com/episode/0gUpGPLW74wnhDm7MI5h6V Gone Medieval is presented by Dr. Eleanor Janega. It was edited by Amy Haddow, the producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff. All music used is courtesy of Epidemic Sounds. Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/6FFT7MK: https://uk.surveymonkey.com/r/6FFT7MK Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• 0:01Matt Lewis?

  From long-lost Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places, to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr Eleanor Janiger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on History Hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand-new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.

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• 1:26Eleanor Janega?

  Hello, I'm Dr Eleanor Janiger, and welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We uncover the greatest mysteries, the gob-smacking details, and the latest groundbreaking research, from the Vikings to the Normans, from kings to popes, to the Crusades. We delve into the rebellions, plots, and murders that tell us who we really were, and how we got here.

• 2:05Eleanor Janega?

  It is said that in a cave under the Chieftain Hauser Mountains in Thuringia, there sits a king. From his face grows a massive red beard, so long it has grown through the table at which he sits. He is surrounded by an army of sleeping knights, while he himself waits with half-opened eyes. Whether contemplating or sleeping, it's impossible to say. From time to time, he lifts his hand and sends out a boy from the cave and into the light. The boy must report whether or not ravens are still circling the mountain.

• 2:46Eleanor Janega?

  Thus far, the boy has always reported that the ravens remain, meaning that there's no need for this great king, Frederick Barbarossa, to ride out with his army and restore the German lands to the greatness they experienced under his rule as Holy Roman Emperor and King of the Germans. It's a great story. In fact, it's so good that versions of it apply to the Emperor Frederick II in Sicily, Saint Venceslas in the Czech Republic, and of course, King Arthur here in England. But why Barbarossa? What is it about this emperor in particular that has inspired such romantic legends and

• 3:28Eleanor Janega?

  made him into one of the few medieval household names? To sort fact from fiction and legacy from legend, today I'm joined by Professor Graham Loud, author of the new biography Frederick Barbarossa. Graham, welcome to Gone Medieval.

• 3:49Speaker 03

  Thank you for inviting me.

• 3:51Eleanor Janega?

  I am delighted to speak to you because I always love an opportunity to talk about the Holy Roman Empire and Holy Roman Emperors. And I think today we're talking about one of the real household names of the Middle Ages, who is the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. But that, I suppose, leads me to a fairly large question right at the beginning, which is exactly who is Emperor Frederick Barbarossa? And why is he one of these particularly large and well-known names?

• 4:22Speaker 03

  Well, Frederick Barbarossa was King of Germany from eleven fifty-two to eleven ninety, and he was crowned emperor in eleven fifty-five. So he had a very long reign, and it is historically a very significant reign, particularly with regard to the German Emperor's relationship with Italy. And he became, in retrospect, perhaps, well, I say more significant than he was. He was, his reign was significant, but not perhaps in the sense that later centuries thought it was. But of course, it was. Fairly soon after his death, the German kingdom started to fragment,

• 5:07Speaker 03

  and Germany eventually fragmented down to a very large number of principalities and city-states and so on, and only reunited in the nineteenth century under Bismarck. And particularly to German patriots of the nineteenth century, Barbarossa was significant as almost the last great medieval emperor, the last man who really ruled over Germany and not just reigned. So he became a fairly potent myth figure, and that's shown by some of the public monuments of the nineteenth century, like the decorations of the rebuilt Imperial Palace at Goßlar,

• 5:50Speaker 03

  the Kieferhause monument, which is a monument to the Emperor William the First, but underneath the Great Equestrian statue of William the First, there's a statue of Barbarossa, the foot of the monument. And of course, it was signified in nineteen forty-one, when the invasion of Russia was codenamed Operation Barbarossa, named after the Great Emperor. And by all accounts, that name was the personal choice of Adolf Hitler, which of course is, to our minds, this is a slightly unfortunate part of his legacy.

• 6:24Speaker 03

  But he was seen as the great German patriot of the Middle Ages. You know, the great hero figure, rightly or wrongly.

• 6:32Eleanor Janega?

  I think this is an incredibly important point because the 19th century is so incredibly responsible for a lot of the medieval myth-making that we sort of live with now. And I think there is rather a lot of attempting to go to the past and find individuals such as this to justify coalescing ideas of nationalism. So, you know, the argument for a united and cohesive German state really rests on finding figures like Barbarossa, who can be said to be ruling a contiguous area such as this, when in the Middle Ages, as you say, oftentimes, things are much more fragmented than we think of them now.

• 7:14Speaker 03

  Well, the interesting thing is that today, in the sort of, you know, 2020s, we can come to terms much more easily with local devolution, federal states, whereas in the 19th century, the emphasis was so much on the nation-state, although one might argue that medieval Germany barely was a nation. And indeed, for quite a long time, up to certainly the 12th century, there was no real concept of what to be German was. It was much more important that you were a Saxon or a Bavarian or a Swabian. Arguably, that was the case in Barbarossa's day, although they did use the term, you know, the Kingdom of the Germans.

• 8:00Speaker 03

  But I suspect to most Germans, it was still more important to be a Bavarian or a Saxon rather than, inverted commas, a German.

• 8:09Eleanor Janega?

  So I suppose I have a fairly basic question for you, simply about naming conventions. We have this nickname Barbarossa. And where does that come from? Does this man actually have a red beard? And is it that? Notable.

• 8:22Speaker 03

  Yes, he did. It's the name given him by the Italians. Contemporary descriptions, although we've obviously got to be a bit careful with them because they often draw on models. But we have a couple of contemporary descriptions of him, and certainly he was blondish, you know, blondy red.

• 8:39Eleanor Janega?

  I love these things from the Middle Ages that survive where you have particular physical descriptions that come down to us because we often lack these. It's interesting that we, for example, you know, people will talk about how beautiful Eleanor of Aquitaine is, but we have no idea what she looked like. So I'm really thankful when things like Barbarossa takes off as a name because then it gives us some, some little hint about him.

• 9:03Speaker 03

  I mean, we obviously, we don't know exactly what he looked like, but we do have a quite good physical description, particularly by an Italian chronicler who did know him. He was blonde, tending to red. Apparently he had very good teeth. He's quite eloquent, though he speaks German, but he's eloquent in German. Unlike his half-brother, who was notoriously taciturn. We can't believe everything about the description. I mean, we're told that he was always sort of good-tempered and very slow to get angry, which some other sources suggest is not quite true. He obviously had quite a quick temper. But when he was on his best behaviour, no doubt, he gave this real affable air off.

• 9:46Speaker 03

  So, you know, we know a bit more about him than we do about some people, but with rulers, there's always the issue that there is a rather formal, this is the way a ruler ought to look in these descriptions.

• 9:58Eleanor Janega?

  This brings me to my next question, which is, what are the sources that we're using to reconstruct ideas about his reign or his personality?

• 10:07Speaker 03

  Well, we have a number of contemporary chronicles. I mean, the major difficulty with Barbarossa is that a lot of people rely on so-called deeds of Frederick Barbarossa by Bishopbot of Friesen and his continuator. But that only covers the first nine years of the reign. But we have a number of other chronicles. The ones I've particularly used and familiar with are the Saxon Chronicle by a man called Arnold of Lübeck.

• 10:36Speaker 03

  And an anonymous description of Barbarossa's crusade, written right at the end of his life. And I'm familiar with those two because I translated both of them into English and published them.

• 10:47Eleanor Janega?

  And I suppose this is as good an entry as any into a fair description of what the Holy Roman Empire really looks like in the 12th century. You know, this is a really important time in terms of coalescing imperial power. So what lands are kind of under the nominal control?

• 11:10Speaker 03

  Well, it hasn't quite collapsed yet. The first thing we've got to remember is the term Holy Roman Empire is essentially an acronym. It was only really used from 13th century onwards. Barbarossa certainly calls himself Emperor of the Romans. But essentially what you've got is an empire which comprises Germany and northern Italy. But you must remember that Germany was considerably bigger at this period than the modern day Republic. It takes in Switzerland, it takes in modern day Belgium and the Netherlands, part of eastern France and the sort of Jura, Alsace region, Austria and parts of, you know, Croatia, Istria. So it's pretty big.

• 11:53Speaker 03

  And the emperor also claimed to be King of Italy, though the Kingdom of Italy in the 12th century really meant only northern and central Italy. Because where was the new kingdom of Sicily in the south? So he's undoubtedly the major territorial ruler within Europe. And he still does rule over this area. Remember, there's relatively little administrative infrastructure. He mainly rules where he goes himself. And given the size of his empire, there are parts of it he spent a lot of time in and parts of it he hardly ever visited. And Barbarossa, unlike his immediate predecessors, spent a lot of time in Italy.

• 12:35Speaker 03

  And for the first two thirds of his reign, he's to considerable extent an absentee ruler in Germany.

• 12:40Eleanor Janega?

  This is a very important point. You know, this kind of peripatetic imperial ruling can oftentimes give us an idea of where real issues are because you couldn't perhaps leave the German lands if you feel as though you have a strong enough grip on them. Whereas I suppose it kind of makes sense to be within the Italian lands if things are a bit more fractious. But you know, if you've got parts of Istria, for example, that you are worried about, you might need to make it down there. There are all sorts of tensions that can exist within this large a contiguous state to rule.

• 13:22Eleanor Janega?

  So is there a lot of troubles that he inherits in particular? Or is there tension that happens as a result of his own desire to control this much land rather directly?

• 13:36Speaker 03

  Well, he controls some areas more directly than others. I don't think he ever went to Istria. For example, Barbarossa was undoubtedly focused on Italy. But that was precisely because his immediate predecessors have not been. I mean, the emperors from sort of half a century before Barbarossa had only been to Italy four times total. And three of those had been largely going down to Rome for the imperial coronation. They hardly ever been in Lombardia, which is the most populous, most advanced bit of Italy, the most they've just passed through.

• 14:15Speaker 03

  And if you're going to your imperial coronation in Rome, the last thing you want to do is get fouled up by disputes with cities along the way. So to some extent, I think in Italy, there's a case of either use it or lose it.

• 14:32Speaker 03

  You know, if he's going to reassert imperial control in Italy, he couldn't leave it too long. And his immediate predecessor, his uncle, Connor of the Third, had never actually got to Italy. He'd never been crowned emperor. So there'd been a long hiatus. And during that period, the Italian cities of the north largely ruled themselves. So they developed institutions of government, town councils, magistracies.

• 14:59Eleanor Janega?

  They were used to getting by without the emperor fundamentally, right? And Italy was the most advanced area economically in Western Europe at this time. So if the emperor can reinsert direct control, he can enjoy an income and, you know, a cash income from that, which would be hugely helpful as a lot of Barbarossa's income from his other German states was still in kind and not cash, right?

• 15:26Speaker 03

  So it's worth being in control of northern Italy. And I think he feels, well, if I don't reassert my control now, we really will lose it forever. So that explains perhaps why he's in Italy. But the corollary of that is he needed to keep good relations with the German princes. You know, what he couldn't afford was to have a dispute with one of the major princes or almost as bad if you have two princes in dispute with each other. And a sort of local civil war going on in one part of Germany, because that would both prevent people sending reinforcements to Italy to help the emperor and would demand his presence to stop it.

• 16:09Speaker 03

  And when he was in Germany, he spent a lot of time damping down dispute among the princes. And particularly with regard to the most powerful among the princes, Henry of the Lion, Duke of Saxony, Bavaria.

• 16:25Speaker 03

  Who seems to have had a remarkable knack of annoying his neighbours. And on at least two occasions, Barbarossa calms down a potential sub-war in North Germany. Very much so, this won't interfere with his next campaign in Italy.

• 16:43Eleanor Janega?

  He's got a really great reputation as this rather canny statesman. And I think it's just as well for all of us that he got to the throne in the end. But I suppose we here is a good time to talk about how it is that he got there in the first place. Because he's from the Stauffen dynasty and he's got this real pedigree. And can you tell us a little bit about his family lineage? And how it is that he managed to get into a position where he could become one of the most important men in Europe?

• 17:15Speaker 03

  Well, of course, it's the issue about how do you create a pedigree? Because actually, the Stauffer were relatively newly arrived. I mean, the first figure who's significant is Barbarossa's grandfather. We know very little about him, though he was a Swabian nobleman, but who married the daughter of the Emperor Henry IV and was made Duke of Swabia. But in a sense, Barbarossa's, you know, the Stauffen family's role as one of the great families in Germany only goes back two generations, but that's enough.

• 17:47Eleanor Janega?

  Yes, and then his uncle Konrad III was the king of the Germans. And in many ways, he's Barbarossa's predecessor, right?

• 17:56Speaker 03

  Konrad had two sons, one of them pre-deceased his father, having already been nominated as king of Germany, you know, the successor. The other son was very young. Konrad may well have intended to nominate him as king and successor just before his death, but he died before he could do that. And Barbarossa knew very fast to secure his own election as ruler. Though it looks as though the quid pro quo was he promised that he would look after Konrad's son. And he made him ducasuebia, ensured that he got a share of the family lands.

• 18:39Speaker 03

  And so, you know, up to a point, he played fair. And obviously, from the point of view of Germany, having a new king who was twenty nine, as opposed to one who was about eight, had certain advantages. But it does look like a coup d'etat, albeit a peaceful one. And it's interesting that having been elected king, Barbarossa moved like lightning from Frankfurt, where the election took place, to Aachen, which is the traditional site of coronation, and was crowned less than a week later. And yet, when he gets to Italy, he's dealing with the Italian towns, he's often clunkingly careless and insensitive.

• 19:23Eleanor Janega?

  What do you think accounts for that? Is it just a greater understanding of German life, you know, being someone who's this important? And is it just a misunderstanding of how Italian politics works with a statesman at this level?

• 19:39Speaker 03

  I think it's a problem of dealing with a different sort of social structure. He clearly gets on well enough with Italian aristocrats. Now, these town councils were hardly democratic. I mean, we're talking about cities which are run by the richest burghers, wealthy merchants, some nobles, but he clearly found it more difficult dealing with people who weren't on his sort of social level and social radar. I suspect, in modern terms, he's probably a considerable snob. But he's also, you know, he has a feeling that the emperor has rights in Italy, which belonged to his predecessors.

• 20:21Speaker 03

  And I think he felt that the Italian cities were trying to take over his prerogatives in a way they'd no right to do.

• 20:32Eleanor Janega?

  So there's a great deal of resistance within Italy to these campaigns, is there not? I mean, there's your classic papal disputes with the emperor, which I've always come to expect. But we also have, for example, the Lombard League who crops up against him.

• 20:48Speaker 03

  The development of the Lombard League was one of the really decisive moments of the reign. Barbarossa's major problem in the first ten years or so of his reign is Milan.

• 21:03Speaker 03

  Milan was the largest of the north Italian cities, it was the most powerful, most populous, and Milan was particularly resistant to any exercise of imperial rights within the city or within its territory.

• 21:20Speaker 03

  Now, by 1162, it looked as though Barbarossa had won. He'd besieged Milan, he'd forced the city to surrender, and they insisted the city was evacuated, the walls were destroyed, quite a lot of the city was destroyed, it's left deserted. Which, among other things, was an object lesson to other Italian cities, that it's not a good idea to oppose the emperor. At that point, though clearly the dispute with Alexander III is causing problems, it's not really any more than a contributory issue to his problems in Italy.

• 22:01Speaker 03

  But, over the next few years, Barbarossa rather overplays his hand, and more to the point, the officials he appoints in Italy seem to have been pretty active in feathering their own nests, abusing their powers, and putting people's backs up. So when he next came to Italy in 1166/7, there's quite a lot of resistance, and as he marched south towards Rome, the Lombard cities combined together in a formal alliance called the Lombard League. And that Lombard League worked. Cities said that we'll put aside our disputes one with another, the Milanese promised they

• 22:44Speaker 03

  wouldn't attack their neighbours. Even some of the cities which hitherto supported Barbarossa joined the Lombard League, more or less willingly, some more than others. His control over Italy had more or less vanished within the space of that six months. And when he next came to Italy in 1174, he was faced with an alliance against him, which had had time to solidify, and also, his army in 1174 was considerably smaller than five, six, seven years earlier.

• 23:22Speaker 03

  And it looks as though the strain of continuous campaigns in Italy was beginning to tell in Germany.

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• 25:07Matt Lewis?

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• 25:17Matt Lewis?

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• 26:17Eleanor Janega?

  It's interesting because, as you say, the Lombard League was this alliance of northern Italian cities, formed purely to resist Emperor Frederick Barbarossa's control, right? So Barbarossa made some terrible mistakes, as emperors are wont to do. He destroyed Milan to intimidate others, which also didn't work. In fact, this super harsh rule and the corrupt officials angered a lot of people to the extent that when he returns to Italy, the cities are all united to oppose him, and even his former rivals, which is, that's a real feat, you know? Then there's this deadly epidemic that weakens Barbarossa's army, and that sparks a major rebellion.

• 27:02Eleanor Janega?

  And the League's unity led to Barbarossa's defeat and escape. So, you know, it wasn't that the German princes were necessarily opposed to campaigns in Italy, but by this point, they had lost so many family members or lost men and had spent a lot of their resources on this. So they really were finding it difficult to stay on board with Barbarossa. They don't have the sunk cost fallacy working.

• 27:31Eleanor Janega?

  So what happened next?

• 27:33Speaker 03

  Ultimately, he was defeated in the pitch battle, the only one of all these campaigns at a place called Legnano in 1176. And it was after the defeat at Legnano that he clearly decided to cut his losses.

• 27:50Speaker 03

  And the only issue was on what terms the peace was made. And this eventually took place at this great conference in Venice, 1177, where he concluded a long truce with the Lombard League and concluded an even longer truce with King William II of Sicily.

• 28:08Eleanor Janega?

  So this is an incredibly simplistic question, given how many moving parts there are at this. You know, we have bishops to consider. We have Lombardy as opposed to Tuscany. We have the Kingdom of Sicily. But would you characterize Barbarossa's interventions on the Italian peninsula as successful? You know, overall, is this a story where we have another emperor in over his head? Or is this? Did we see any inroads at all, I suppose?

• 28:43Speaker 03

  On balance, no, he wasn't successful. He may have come quite, seemed to have come quite close to it at times. But the 1177 conference is an admission of defeat. He wasn't totally unsuccessful in the sense that in the last years of his reign, he was still very much in control of Tuscany and Umbra and the Emilia Romagna. I mean, effectively, he conceded self-government. But at the same time, the Lombard cities agreed to pay him an annual subsidy in return for the royal rights they were exercising. So he doesn't lose out completely. So, yeah, there is a peace, but you'd have to say on balance,

• 29:25Speaker 03

  the Italian policy didn't work or not to the extent that he wanted it to work. And that in the end, it all went pretty well wrong.

• 29:36Speaker 03

  And his attempts to impose his own pope didn't work. And his relations with the popes in the 1180s are tense. Never outrightly hostile, but they're pretty tense and there's a lot of issues to dispute.

• 29:51Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, I would I would qualify that as tense, certainly. I think that's that's a fair enough way.

• 29:55Speaker 03

  It's sort of Cold War, but it's probably Cold War 1962 vintage, perhaps. You know, there could be an explosion.

• 30:05Eleanor Janega?

  This, I think, is an interesting point, though, because this is a man who is in a really interesting position politically and as all emperors are with the papacy. Because this is also a man of some particularly sensitive religious sentiment. Because, I mean, quite famously, he's involved in not one but two crusades as well. Could you tell us a little bit about his involvement in the Second Crusade before any of this kicks off?

• 30:35Speaker 03

  Well, this was Barbarossa was still quite a young man. He had just succeeded his father as Duke of Swabia. His father died a few months before the Crusades set off. And he was effectively second in command of the German contingent, remembering that the king of Germany was his uncle. And he plays quite a significant role insofar as we can see, though we must remember the sources for the German involvement in the Second Crusade are pretty limited. Otto Freising took part in the Crusade as well, but in his history, he says almost nothing about it.

• 31:18Speaker 03

  He simply says, you know, it didn't work, so I won't talk about it. But it did mean that when Barbarossa went on crusade right at the end of his reign, he did know what he was getting himself into. And given that the Second Crusade had been pretty unsuccessful. And some of that at least was was due to the problems with the leadership. He had a pretty good idea of what not to do. One of the problems Second Crusade had, it had a huge number of noncombatants trailing along in the army's wake. Now, medieval armies tended to do, but there's a lot of comment by contemporaries about the Second Crusade, about

• 32:01Speaker 03

  the noncombatants and what a drag they were on the army and how they tend to get massacred. When Barbarossa was setting out on the Third Crusade, he takes a long time organising it. He makes some quite serious regulations. He tries to discourage people who don't have the financial resources or the weaponry to go on crusade. He sends some people home. He tries to avoid this great train of useless male that's accompanying the army. And he also conducts a very intelligent diplomatic campaign to try and ensure

• 32:44Speaker 03

  that he can march through along this long route through the Balkans, through the Byzantine Empire, through Asia Minor, down to Syria, without too much trouble. And the aim of all this is to ensure free passage for his army and the provision of markets where they can buy food. When he actually went on crusade in 1189, the contemporary comment is clear that his army is well the supplant. He keeps it in hand.

• 33:29Matt Lewis?

  Land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt and avoid the poisoner's cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our Special series Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed: Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week.

• 34:27Eleanor Janega?

  I think that this is such an incredibly important point, and it's so interesting because it is just intensely clever. Because all of the issues that other crusades end up having in terms of provisioning or simply panicking people on their way through, I mean, the First Crusade is an absolute shambles in terms of what they're doing to the Kingdom of Hungary, or, you know, the absolute shock that Byzantine Empire has when you have all these people show up on their doorstep. I mean, I just think that Barbarossa is such a clever leader for attempting to make these particular inroads before he ever sets off.

• 35:09Eleanor Janega?

  And we very rarely see planning on this level when it comes to crusade.

• 35:15Speaker 03

  Well, it helps that there was a degree of diplomatic contact in him. I mean, the interesting thing is he even sends an embassy to Saladin. Basically, the embassy says, get out of Jerusalem, hand back the True Cross. But I think the point is that he and Saladin had actually been in diplomatic contact earlier. So what effectively he's doing is sending a formal declaration of war, but saying, you know, you had your chance not to have a war. It's your choice to have one. But it wasn't that the crusade was trouble free.

• 35:49Speaker 03

  And his major problem is really with the Byzantine Emperor. And when Barbarossa's army turns up, the Byzantine Emperor sends a legation saying, well, you didn't tell me you were coming. Although Barbarossa said with some justice, well, I've sent you two embassies. So how could you not know I'm coming? Uh, but clearly there there was a worry about a large, this was a very large army. Going through Byzantine territory. And of course, there is the problem of the two emperors. Because both the Byzantine Emperor and the German Emperor claimed that they are the one and only Roman Emperor.

• 36:28Speaker 03

  And the Byzantine Emperor did not get the diplomacy off to a good start by sending a letter addressed to the King of the Germans. And naturally he got one back addressed to the King of the Greeks.

• 36:40Eleanor Janega?

  I love it. I love it.

• 36:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, once Barbarossa's army got into Byzantine territory, there started to be attacks on it. Some of them may be the standard stuff for the local inhabitants, not liking all these foreigners coming through their territory. But the suspicion among the leadership of the crusade was that it was all being orchestrated by the Emperor Isaac. And then Barbarossa needed ships to take his army across the Bosphorus. And obviously, the best source of those ships was the Byzantine navy, which Isaac wasn't willing to do, although he might have been more sensible, saying, of course, I'll help you, and getting them out of his territory as fast as he could. I do get the impression the Emperor Isaac wasn't very bright.

• 37:27Speaker 03

  But that may be just my prejudice. Uh, I mean, in the end, he does get the ships, but only after he's devastated Thrace. And there's been a long delay. And then anyway, they got across the Bosphorus. They moved from Byzantine into Turkish territory. And then the army starts getting attacked again. So by the time they've got through to the later stages of, you know, Southeast Asia Minor, there's been a lot of fighting and the army is very short of food. But it's still an army in being and whatever attacks the Turks made on it, they didn't stop it. It got to the Christian Kingdom of Armenia, it's in friendly territory, it's censured there,

• 38:11Speaker 03

  but then Barbarossa drowns crossing a river.

• 38:15Eleanor Janega?

  It's so undignified. You have this great story, it's very romantic, kind of heading out to the Middle East and then, you know, drowns in a river. It's anticlimactic, I suppose.

• 38:27Speaker 03

  Occupational problem of campaigning, but depending on which account you read, either he was crossing a river and was swept off his horse. Remember Barbarossa was in his late 60s by then. He's not, you know, he's by contemporary standards, quite an old man. The other account, which I rather like, is he got across the river, he had lunch, but it was a really hot day, so went for a swim and drowned. We don't know which is true, but you pay some money, it's a choice. But even then, there was still an army in being. His second son, also Frederick, took over as commander of the army. I mean, I think Frederick had been doing a lot of the tactical command anyway. He seems to have led most of the attacks

• 39:11Speaker 03

  on the Turks, for example. And the army got to Antioch, Christian territory, still an army in being. What really did for Barbarossa's army was the epidemic which broke out at Antioch.

• 39:25Eleanor Janega?

  And I mean, it's again, one of these things where it's the in occupational hazard of any real military campaign and certainly the ones that head to the Middle East. You know, you've got particular challenges that you're going to have with huge numbers of people passing through large amounts of territory and you just do pick up germs here and there, don't you?

• 39:46Speaker 03

  Well, yes, and particularly ones to do with inadequate sanitation, for example.

• 39:53Eleanor Janega?

  And imagine how much more difficult all of this is in the 12th century. It's just, it boggles my mind that anyone did anything other than die of dysentery, really, sometimes in the Middle Ages.

• 40:04Speaker 03

  Well, yeah, it is a problem. It's always a problem for German campaigns in Italy.

• 40:11Speaker 03

  And indeed, for anyone in the Middle East, where they're not used to the heat, you can pick up exotic diseases. But I think most of the time, the problem is inadequate sanitation, possibly poisoned water supplies, food that's gone off, so gastro problems.

• 40:28Eleanor Janega?

  Well, it's a rather ignominious end.

• 40:31Speaker 03

  Yes, it's the unromantic bit of the Middle Ages.

• 40:34Eleanor Janega?

  It is rather, you know, and we lose all sorts to this, you know, there are any number of princes and kings, you know, this is the thing that takes them down, is poor sanitation on a military crusade. But regardless, you know, we have this kind of, oh, it's a bit of a deflation, isn't it? Barbarossa's end. But that's not what we tend to talk about. Well, you know, it's not why he is this big romantic name that people come back to over and over again. But huge question here. Do you think that his policies, you know, his desire to go on crusade, his desire to really control more directly the northern Italian city-states?

• 41:16Eleanor Janega?

  Are these long-term issues for the Holy Roman Empire, once he is no longer in the picture? Or would this have happened anyway?

• 41:27Speaker 03

  Not so much the crusade, because in a sense, the crusade is seen as an entirely admirable enterprise. It's unfortunate the emperor died in the circumstances that he did. But in some respect, dying on a holy enterprise was no bad end. And he had taken very careful steps to ensure his son's succession after his death. His son's already crowned King of Germany. His son has married in Milan. He schmoozed the Milanese. Whatever problems have been with the papacy have been solved by crusade. The pokes want a crusade to succeed. So that in the short term, the crusade isn't a problem.

• 42:09Speaker 03

  In the long term, I think Barbarossa's reign was catastrophic for the effective power of the Roman emperor, both in Italy, but also in Germany. Because the German rulers never really developed an administrative infrastructure. They were in control of those areas where they had a lot of land themselves, a lot of, you know, regalian rights which they exercised, control of towns and so on, which in Barbarossa's case meant largely Swabia and Franconia. But other German princes were developing their own local authority in the same way that the Staufer were.

• 42:54Speaker 03

  Staufer were doing it on a bigger scale than anybody else and in more areas. But the Velfs, the Babenberger, the Zeringen, the other German princely families were doing the same thing. And to some extent Barbarossa must encourage this, providing they don't cause trouble, providing they contribute contingents to his Italian campaigns. He's quite happy to rubber stamp what's going on in localities. But what this ultimately meant was that imperial authority within Germany rested on three things: the emperor's own lands, and the fact that he was so wealthy, control of the German

• 43:36Speaker 03

  church, which is why relations with the papacy is a really big issue, and the prestige of the imperial office. But arguably Barbarossa's reign was the tipping point where princely authority develops, with the emperor most of the time just benevolently rubber stamping this, and often making concessions to individual princes, saying to Henry the Lion, "Yes, you can control the appointment of the Saxon bishoprics."

• 44:06Eleanor Janega?

  I think that this is such an important point because... There is an actual mythology surrounding Barbarossa. You know, he's one of these figures, much like King Arthur here in England. Or in the Czech lands, we have Saint Ventressas doing the same thing. He's asleep in a mountain, isn't he? You know, there's mythology that here is going to be some kind of great national savior. You know, he crops up in the Brothers Grimm play about him. You know, he's this sort of saintly individual that is going to have some kind of appeasing role for Germans and Germanness. How do you get to that?

• 44:43Speaker 03

  Well, you have a great dose of 19th century romanticism. In, yes, the Brothers Grimm, Petr Friedrich Ruckert, for example, and he has a poem called "Alte Barbarossa", Old Barbarossa, which apparently when the motherland is in danger, Barbarossa will awake from his sleep and come and rescue it. I mean, everybody recognizes this as a legend, but somehow or another, it's sort of a legend which sticks. And as far as I know, he was sleeping under the Kifhoiser mountain.

• 45:13Eleanor Janega?

  It's always a mountain.

• 45:14Speaker 03

  When I went down into the Barbarossa hole, he seemed to have popped out for a while because he wasn't there.

• 45:19Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, I'm still, I'm still waiting, you know, I can't wait to meet them all someday. The dark is our.

• 45:26Speaker 03

  It's far more to do with 19th century German romantic nationalism. He's seen as the great heroic figure, the medieval empire, who always fought his corner, fought for the empire, the great patriot. Now, whether Barbarossa would have seen himself as a patriot, I very much doubt, but it's seen through the terms of late 19th century Germany in the age of Bismarck. It's essentially anachronistic, but it does tell you quite a lot about intellectual life in the age of Bismarck.

• 46:01Eleanor Janega?

  Absolutely. I mean, we see this across Europe, don't we? You know, the 19th century is that time for this romanticization, this attempting to find some ideal ruler that is going to typify your theoretical nation. I mean, it's, the Germans aren't alone in this one. The Italians do it, the Czechs do it, the French are doing it. Everyone, everyone is rather on that at the time.

• 46:25Speaker 03

  The 19th century in particular had some wonderfully anachronistic views of the Middle Ages. I think it's none other than Bishop Stubbs who described it with the first, "A buccaneering old Gladstone."

• 46:37Eleanor Janega?

  I love that oath.

• 46:40Speaker 03

  Which I can't think of a worse misjudgment. But then Edward the First, to my view, was an extremely nasty piece of work.

• 46:47Eleanor Janega?

  I couldn't agree more. Ugh. I suppose, just to attempt to wrap up a fairly huge subject, how would you think we should understand Barbarossa's legacy? You know, we have these romanticized ideas, we have his misuse and abuse by the actual Nazis at one point in time. But how are we as medievalists to encounter this legacy, do you think?

• 47:14Speaker 03

  Well, I do think Barbarossa's reign was a very, very important one. But I think it was important less because of his short-term games, but more by the way that the, in the long run, it sowed the seeds for the state of Europe in the late Middle Ages and indeed into up to the 19th century. The fragmentation of power in both Italy and Germany. You know, it said by the time of the Reformation, Germany has about 300 different political authorities. Well, Barbarossa's reign didn't create that by itself, but it certainly gave

• 47:55Speaker 03

  a pretty hefty step along the way to creating that state of confusion. Although the German practice of partable inheritance didn't help either. So I see it as a very, very important stage in setting the political scene for late medieval and early modern Europe.

• 48:18Eleanor Janega?

  I couldn't agree more. I'm afraid I'm a bit of a Barbarossa apologist, just because I'd like the Holy Roman Empire. So I think that you should be meddling in Italy personally. I'm incorrigible in that respect. But Graham, this has been an absolute delight. It's given me rather a lot to think about, although I don't think I'm going to stop defending this at any time soon. But thank you ever so much for coming on to speak to us today about it.

• 48:42Speaker 03

  My pleasure.

• 48:47Eleanor Janega?

  Thanks to Graham Loud and to you for listening to Gone Medieval from History Hit. If you want to know more about the Holy Roman Empire and imperial intrigue, and frankly, who could blame you, there's lots in our back catalogue, including my deep dive explaining the Holy Roman Empire, or my conversation about the investiture controversy. Do go back and find them. Remember, you can enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original TV documentaries, including my recent film Medieval Apocalypse, and ad-free podcasts by signing up at historyhit.com/subscription. You can follow Gone Medieval on Spotify, where you can leave us comments and suggestions, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 49:30Eleanor Janega?

  And tell all your friends and family that you've gone medieval. Until next time.