Barbarossa - The Crusader Emperor Documentary

Delve into the fascinating world of Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, one of the most influential figures of the 12th century, in this compelling podcast episode. Discover the story of Frederick's rise from his noble Hohenstaufen lineage to his commanding presence as the Holy Roman Emperor. This episode takes you on a historical journey, exploring his role in the Second Crusade, his strategic marriages, and his complex relationship with the papacy.

Learn about Barbarossa's ambitious campaigns to consolidate power in Italy, his influence on the 12th-century Renaissance, and his efforts to rejuvenate the Holy Roman Empire. As we navigate through his diplomatic maneuvers and military exploits, we also reflect on his enduring legacy. Was Frederick Barbarossa's reign a monumental achievement or a fleeting illusion in history? Join us to explore the political chessboard of a medieval powerhouse and engage in a thought-provoking analysis of his impact on European politics.

Episode Transcript

(00:05):
The man known to history as Emperor Frederick Barbarossa was
born in mid-december in the year1122 in Argonaut, in what is now
the region of Alsace in eastern France.
He was christened simply as Frederick and the name
Barbarossa was a nickname he would acquire later in his life
on account of his facial hair. Barbarossa literally means red

(00:30):
beard in Italian. His father was Frederick, the
second Duke of Swabia. This was a large Dutchie which
covered the region approximatingto southwestern Germany today
and straddled the borders of France, Switzerland and Austria.
The Duke was one of the heads ofthe Hohenstaufen family in
Germany, a dynasty which was just beginning to play a major

(00:51):
role in the politics of Europe in the High Middle Ages.
His mother was Judith of Bavaria, a daughter of Henry the
9th, the Duke of Bavaria. She and Frederick Senior had
only recently married, and Frederick Junior was their first
child. At some unknown time in the
years that followed, possibly in1123 or 1124, she gave birth to

(01:14):
a second child, a daughter namedBerta, also known as Judith.
However, the union produced no more children, and Judith died
prematurely in 11:30. As a result.
Young Frederick had only vague memories of his birth mother and
would have grown up more familiar with his stepmother,
Agnes of Sabrokin, whom Frederick Senior married soon

(01:37):
after. Judith's death.
In order to understand the course of events which would
catapult young Frederick to the forefront of European politics
in the second-half of the 12th century, we need to look back at
the often rather confusing political landscape of Europe as
it evolved during the course of the Middle Ages.
After the centuries of instability following the

(01:58):
collapse of the Roman Empire in Western Europe in the 5th
century AD, the king of the Franks, Charlemagne or Charles
the Great succeeded during the second-half of the 8th century
in. Building up a very substantial
empire which extended throughoutmost of modern day France,
Switzerland, the Low Countries, much of Germany and parts of

(02:19):
Austria and Italy. As a result, on Christmas Day in
the year. 800 He was crowned in Rome by Pope Leo the 3rd as the
Holy Roman Emperor, and his lands were designated as being
the Holy Roman Empire, a successor state to the earlier
Roman Empire, a move which was given formal sanction by the
Church. This Holy Roman Roman Empire, or

(02:40):
Carolingian Empire continue to be ruled by Charlemagne for some
years, and although it passed intact to his son and successor
Louis the Pious, when Louis diedin 840, the empire was soon
divided between his sons and then in turn, those sons divided
up their lands, meaning that by the 10th century the Holy Roman

(03:01):
Empire and the Carolingian Empire were heavily fragmented.
The Holy Roman Empire did not survive in the West of
Charlemagne's empire, where the Kingdom of France emerged as a
separate entity during the course of the 10th century.
However, it did survive in Germany and Italy, where the
title of holy Roman emperor passed to several families after

(03:22):
the direct carolingian line diedout in Germany in 888.
But because of the rapid division and fragmentation of
the Carolingian lands throughoutGermany and Italy in the 9th and
10th centuries, there were dozens of competing Dutchies and
landlordships throughout Germany.
By the time of Frederick's birthin the 12th century, many of the
rulers of these Dutchies had a claim to the title of Holy Roman

(03:45):
Emperor should the male line of the Salian or Salic dynasty,
which had served as Holy Roman Emperors since 10/27, die out.
At the time that Frederick was born, the emperor was Henry the
Fifth, who had been King of Germany since 1099 and Holy
Roman Emperor since 11/11. His power varied across the
course of his reign, as many of the more powerful Dukes of

(04:08):
Germany would often ignore his commands, while the only other
major area of the former Carolingian Empire over which
the Holy Roman Emperors still exercised and nominal control
was Italy. But here the many cities and
towns of the north were de factoindependent by the early 12th
century. It was with these two regions of
the former empire of Charlemagnethat Frederick's political life

(04:31):
would be concerned. When Frederick was just three
years old in 1125, the Holy Roman Empire was cast into
turmoil when Henry the Fifth died without an heir.
When this occurred, Frederick's father, the Duke of Swabia, was
considered as a leading candidate to succeed as King of
Germany and to seek election as Holy Roman Emperor.

(04:52):
The Hohenstaufens were indirectly descended from the
Carolingians through several centuries, and the Dutchie of
Swabia was a stem Dutchie which had emerged in the 10th century
following the complicated fragmentation of the Carolingian
Empire. Moreover, when Henry the Fifth
had been forced to head South toItaly in one of his many clashes
with the papacy in Rome for control over affairs in Italy,

(05:15):
Frederick senior had often been appointed by the emperor to
oversee affairs in Germany during his absence.
Indeed, it is believed that Henry wished for Frederick to
succeed him, but Frederick proved his own worst enemy in
this regard. When the German.
Lords and bishops met at the City of Mines shortly after
Henry's death to decide on a newemperor.

(05:36):
Frederick alienated many with his overconfidence and
unwillingness to accept free princely elections.
As a result, a compromise candidate in the shape of Lutte.
Of Supplenburg was elected to succeed as Holy Roman Emperor.
It was not an arrangement that would go unchallenged for long.
While all of this was occurring,young Frederick was being

(05:58):
groomed to become a Lord one day.
The education of those of noble blood in the 12th century
focused on preparing sons to be commanders on the battlefield.
He would have learned to ride onhorseback from a very young age
and how to fight with a sword and other weapons.
Armor would have been drafted into this training after a
certain point, as the manner in which medieval Knights of the

(06:19):
12th century Fort involved wearing heavy plate and
chainmail armor. All of this came at the expense
of what we would view as a normal education nowadays.
Many rulers had been illiterate in the early Middle Ages, and
while this situation was improving by the 12th century,
literacy was still not prioritized.
There has been some considerabledebate as to how well Frederick

(06:43):
could read and write, and while we can probably dismiss earlier
claims that he was illiterate, he was no scholar king either,
and he had very little grasp of Latin, the language of
scholarship, the law, and the Church in the High Middle Ages.
Thus. Frederick was raised to rule on
the battlefield rather than frombehind a desk.

(07:03):
In 1137, when Frederick was heading into his late teenage
years, the stability of the HolyRoman Empire was once again
called into question. That December later, the third
died. He had only 1 surviving child, a
daughter named Gertrude, and thesuccession was consequently cast
into fresh chaos as a result. Frederick's uncle Conrad.

(07:25):
The Duke of Franconia now moved to make himself King of Germany
and Holy Roman Emperor Conrad had a long history of seeking
the imperial crown. He had challenged Latae's
position back in 1127 and had been declared as a rival
emperor. And now the opportunity
presented by the imperial thronelying vacant made him the
obvious candidate at a meeting of the German Princess and

(07:48):
bishops at Koblenz in March 1138.
He was elected emperor, however he faced opposition himself from
Henry the Proud, Duke of Bavariaand Saxony.
This was the origin of a split within the Holy Roman Empiry
Empire between the supporters ofthe House of Welth, of which
Henry the Proud was the head, and the House of Hohenstaufen,

(08:10):
from which Conrad and Frederick hailed.
Eventually these two camps wouldbecome known as the Guelphs and
the Gibbelines. The Guelphs is an Italian
rendering of wealth, while Gibbelines is an Italianized
form of Weiblingen, the name of the ancestral seat or stronghold
of the House of Hohenstaufen in Wertenberg in Germany.
The split between the Guelphs and the Gibbelines would shape

(08:33):
much of Frederick's later life. Conrad would rule as Holy Roman
Emperor, or be it with some opposition from the House of
Welf or Guelphs, throughout the 1140s.
Frederick's path, though in these years lay elsewhere.
By the early 1140s, Frederick was emerging as a substantial
character within Germany. As he entered his adult years,

(08:55):
he sat at several Hof targets orimperial assemblies under his
uncle's rule at various German cities between 11:41 at 11:45.
By this time, the distinctive red beard which he came to be
known for was visible. However, Frederick's destiny in
the second-half of the 1140s wasnot shaped by events in Germany

(09:16):
or Italy, but by a currencies. Much further away, all the way
back in 1095, Pope Urban the Second had preached of the need
for a crusade or holy war to theHoly Land to reclaim Jerusalem
for Christianity from the Muslims who had conquered the
region. The First Crusade between 1096
and 1099 had been extremely successful, resulting in the

(09:40):
establishment of several crusadeestates around Jerusalem,
Antioch, and other cities, including a newly established
Kingdom of Jerusalem. However, in 1144, a Muslim ruler
of the Middle East called Imad al Dinzingi reconquered the city
of Edessa from the Christians. This LED a leading churchman,
Bernard of Clairvaux, to preach on the need for a second crusade

(10:03):
to be undertaken while he was visiting the city of Spare in
1146. Frederick would soon be
involved. Unlike the First Crusade, which
was led by several leading nobles but did not involve any
of Europe's major monarchs, the Second Crusade was soon joined
by the Holy Roman Emperor Conradthe 3rd and the King of France,

(10:23):
Louis the 7th. Frederick took the cross
himself, a symbolic gesture which indicated the intention to
go on Crusade early in 1147, andcommitted himself to travelling
with his uncle to the Holy Land.This was despite the objections
of his father, the Duke of Swabia, who was died and wanted
his son and heir to remain in Germany to cement his control

(10:46):
over the Dutchie when he passed away.
In the event, Frederick senior died early in April 1147 and
Frederick succeeded him before he ever left for the Holy Land.
Thus, when Frederick LED Swabia's contingent from the
city of Regensburg in late May 1147 off towards the Holy Land,
he did so as Duke of Swabia. And they did so along with

(11:08):
contingents of 10s of thousands of other Crusaders who set off
from various places around Europe, some headed by sea from
England, and won a notable victory before they ever left
Europe by landing on the IberianPeninsula and conquering Lisbon
from the Muslims there. For Portugal, most though headed
by land and by the late summer of 1147 were crossing through

(11:31):
the Byzantine Empire, ready to make their descent on the Holy
Land. The journey through the
Byzantine Empire and then Turkeyproved A pivotal episode in the
Second Crusade. As they were passing through the
Empire's lands in the southeast of the Balkans towards the city
of Constantinople, flash floods ravaged the Crusader camps in

(11:51):
early September. Significant damage had been
inflicted on Conrad and Frederick's forces as a result
of this, and this was compoundedin the weeks that followed as
they passed over the Bosphorus and into Anatolia in what is now
western Turkey. For weeks in the the autumn of
1147, the German armies were confronted by raids and ambushes

(12:11):
on their forces by the Turks of the region.
Eventually, frustrated in their efforts, they sent messages
ahead to the French under Louis the 7th to request his aid.
The French subsequently joined up with the German Crusaders,
but when Conrad himself fell sick, the combined forces
retreated back to Constantinople.
Consequently, it was a demoralized crusader force which

(12:34):
left Constantinople in ships acquired from Emperor Manuel the
First Comnenus, the Byzantine Emperor having abandoned their
plans to March over land. Thus, Frederick Conrad and their
German Crusaders finally arrivedto the Holy Land, where they
sailed into the port town of Acre on the 11th of April, 1148.

(12:55):
This trip to the Holy Land had been an inauspicious beginning
to the Second Crusade. It was compounded when they
learned that King Louis's Frenchforces, which had stubbornly
maintained their overland March through Turkey, had been all but
wiped out along the way. Louis had arrived in Antioch a
few weeks earlier with the remains of his army, but they
could now offer little to the military capabilities of the

(13:17):
Second Crusade. Having learned this news, Conrad
and Frederick proceeded from Acre to Jerusalem to visit the
Holy places and consult with theKing of Jerusalem, King Baldwin
the Third. A decision was taken at this
juncture to hold a major councilof the European kings and their
Lords with the Lords and rulers of the Crusade estate at Acre in

(13:39):
Midsummer 1148. At the resulting council of
Acre, held at Palmeria, just outside the city, on the 24th of
June 1148, a decision was taken to effectively change the goals
of the Second Crusade. The Crusade had been called for
the purpose of reclaiming the city of Edessa from the Muslims,
but now the loftier target of seizing Damascus, the capital of

(14:02):
the buried emirate which ruled much of Syria at the time, was
decided upon. This was a dangerous decision
given that their forces were already much depleted from the
losses they had suffered on their journey.
To the Holy Land. In the weeks that followed, the
European monarchs and Lords and the heads of the Crusader states
gathered their forces in preparation for the siege.

(14:24):
Modern estimates of the combinedforces which they advanced from
Tiberius against Damascus in mid-july have suggested a
possible army of 50,000 men, forthe likely number was probably
considerably smaller, and it is important to note.
That the bulk of the troops werecomprised of recruits from the
Crusader states themselves, rather than the European.

(14:47):
Crusader armies which had been so depleted by the attempt to
travel through Turkey, they arrived outside Damascus on the
23rd of July. What followed was a fiasco.
Damascus was surrounded in the 12th century by vast orchards
which limited visibility on the approach to the city and as they
tried to near the walls, the Crusader forces faced constant

(15:08):
hit and run attacks by the more mobile buried cavalry.
Over the next several days, tactical errors mounted on the
part of The Crusaders and the dispute broke out between rival
contenders over who would rule Damascus if by some miracle they
captured it. As a result, on the 28th of
July, just five days after initiating the siege, Conrad and

(15:29):
Frederick took their forces backtowards Jerusalem and the siege
was abandoned. The disaster at Damascus did not
immediately bring the Second Crusade to an end.
Back at Jerusalem, plans were initiated to launch an attack on
the smaller city of Ascalon, andConrad and Frederick started off
with their troops to head there,but quit the enterprise when it

(15:50):
became clear that no coordinatedresponse would come from the
other crusaders. And with this, the Second
Crusade was over. A costly and complete failure in
terms of achieving its goals in the Holy Land.
Although King Louis the 7th of France remained behind in
Jerusalem until 1149, Conrad andFrederick made for

(16:10):
Constantinople with what remained of their forces in late
1148. On the way, at Thessaloniki in
Greece, they reconfirmed an agreement which Conrad had
reached with Emperor Manuel of Byzantium while in
Constantinople the previous year.
This was a deal whereby both sides would ally together to
attack the Norman Kingdom of Sicily, which ruled the island

(16:32):
itself and much of the southern mainland of Italy.
This was a part of Europe which would feature significantly in
Frederick's own rule in the years to come.
And with this agreement made, Frederick left Conrad and headed
off in haste through the Balkansto Swabia, where he needed to
shore up his own rule, having left so soon after he succeeded

(16:53):
to the Dutchie in 1147. But back in Germany, Frederick
set about consolidating his ruleover Swabia.
He might have remained a simple Duke here for the next several
decades had it not been for events in the months that
followed. In 1150, Henry Behringer,
Conrad's eldest son, died. He had another child, also

(17:13):
called Frederick, but this boy was just five years old at the
time. Thus, Henry's death in 1150
opened the possibility of the succession descending elsewhere
should Conrad die in the near future.
And that that is exactly what happened in early 1152.
Conrad, who was nearly 60, a ripe old age by the standards of

(17:34):
the 12th century, fell ill and when he died on the 15th of
February 1152 at Bamberg in Bavaria, there were just two
individuals by his deathbed, thePrince, Bishop of Bamberg,
Aberhart the Second and Frederick Barbarossa.
We will never know if the tale Frederick and Aberhart emerged
from the scene of Conrad's deathwith was true or not, but it

(17:58):
would come to have enormous significance.
Conrad, Frederick claimed, had chosen him to be his successor
on his deathbed rather than his six year old son.
Whether it was true or not, the Lords and electors of Germany
wanted to believe it in order toavoid the chaos that would ensue
from a long minority reign. Accordingly, Frederick was

(18:18):
quickly designated as the next King of Germany and crowned as
King of the Romans at Aachen on the 9th of March 11th 1152.
This effectively made him the Holy Roman Emperor.
However, he would have to wait some time for the formal
coronation. Frederick quickly made clear his
intention to revitalize the HolyRoman Empire and the position of

(18:41):
the Emperor's. For decades the imperial title
had been weakening in Germany. There were over 1000 separate
political entities, all of whichwere nominally under the overall
rule of the Emperor, but which in reality generally paid little
more than token recognition to the emperors.
Some amongst the Guelphs were openly hostile to the gibbling
Empress, such as Conrad had been, and Frederick now was in

(19:05):
Italy, the other major area where the Holy Roman Empire
still held some sway. Frederick would face opposition
from Roger the Second of Sicily,whose powerful Norman Kingdom in
the South of Italy would conductraids further north with
impunity. More significantly, the emperors
had been weakened in their authority as a result of what
was known as the Investiture Controversy in the late 11th and

(19:29):
early 12th centuries. This was a dispute which had
arisen between the papacy and the emperors over whether Rome
or the current emperor had the right to appoint bishops and
archbishops in Germany and Italy.
The papacy had won the argument,but it had created a rift
between Rome and the emperors. As a result, Conrad had never
actually been crowned in Rome asHoly Roman Emperor, and the many

(19:52):
cities and towns of northern andcentral Italy had begun to
exercise increasing independence, so that by the
time Frederick became emperor in1152, imperial control over the
Kingdom of Italy had diminished almost entirely.
All of these issues confronted Frederick when he became emperor
in 1152, but he quickly took steps to strengthen his

(20:15):
position. Just months later, in 1153, he
reached an agreement with Pope Eugenius the Third, known as the
Treaty of Constance. Under the terms of this,
Frederick promised to help prevent any efforts by the
Byzantine Empire to reestablish itself in Italy, and also to
help Eugenius to gain control ofRome again.

(20:35):
The Pope had spent much of his pontificate since 11:45 at Farfa
Abbey, north of the Eternal City, as Rome itself had been
taken over by a body of citizensled by Arnold Abrezia, a
religious radical who established the Commune of Rome
as a patrician government. In return, Frederick affirmed
his claim to become the emperor and was attempting to indicate

(20:57):
that he did not need papal approval in order to become the
legitimate Holy Roman Emperor. Moreover, he was further
facilitated in the months that followed by the death of Roger
the Second of Sicily. He was succeeded by his son
William, who was not necessarilyan ineffective ruler, but was
not the equal of his father, whohad been one of the most dynamic
and energetic rulers of 12th century Europe.

(21:21):
Once the Treaty of Constance hadbeen agreed, Frederick began
preparing his forces for a campaign into Italy.
His actions in the peninsula andhow they related to his control
over Germany and relationships with successive popes would come
to dominate Barbarossa's reign. The country at this time was a
patchwork of different politicalentities, which was almost as

(21:41):
confusing as 12th century Germany's political landscape.
In the South, the Kingdom of Sicily, which covered the island
itself and much of the peninsulaSouth of Rome, was the dominant
power elsewhere. A number of states, such as the
Republic of Venice in the northeast of the country, were
also independent, but much of central Italy and the north in

(22:01):
the plain of Lombardy was nominally part of the Kingdom of
Italy. This was another constituent
part of what had been the Carolingian Empire hundreds of
years earlier, but which had also fragmented, as Germany had.
Thus it included cities such as Rome, Milan, Mantua, Bologna,
Florence, Genoa and which you'rein, which theoretically owed

(22:23):
some allegiance to the Holy Roman Emperor, but which, as we
have seen, were independent in all but name by the mid 12th
century and were governed as city states by their own
communes of wealthier citizens. Now, shortly after ascending as
Emperor, Frederick's mission wasto re establish imperial
authority across the peninsula. Frederick began reasserting

(22:45):
himself in Italy with an intended campaign against the
Normans in the South. In the autumn of 1154, with
Roger the Second just having died and the country adjusting
to a new ruler, Barbarossa believed this was the time to
strike the powerful Kingdom of Sicily.
However, no sooner had he arrived into the Plain of
Lombardy with a field army of about 7000 men, including 1800

(23:10):
Knights, but he realized exactlyhow unwilling to obey his
commands the cities of the Kingdom of Italy were.
Consequently, he immediately changed tactic and instead began
a military campaign against the northern cities, forcing Milan
to submit to him that winter andcompletely destroying the town
of Tortona in the Piedmont in northwestern Italy.

(23:31):
Then he proceeded towards the city of Pavia, from where the
Holy Roman Emperors had long based their rule in the Kingdom
of Italy to avoid jurisdictionaloverlaps with the Papacy in.
Rome here Frederick was. Formerly crowned as King of
Italy on the 24th of April 1155.With this done, he campaigned
further South through Florence and Bologna, all the time making

(23:54):
it clear that he intended to exercise greater control of the
Italian cities than they had seen from a Holy Roman Emperor
in some time. With his control over the north
of Italy reimposed, Frederick continued on South to fulfill
his promises to Pope Adrian as part of the Treaty of Constance.
Thus, in early June he arrived in Rome, where he had Arnold

(24:17):
Abrezia, the religious radical leader there executed.
Then Pope Adrian entered the city and formerly crowned
Barbarossa as the Holy Roman Emperor on the 18th of June
1155, even as riots were occurring across the city in
opposition to the for the reimposition of imperial and
papal rule. In the hours that followed,

(24:38):
Frederick's troops restored order to the city, but by that
time, there were. Over 1000.
Romans dead on the streets as a result of the unrest, and
thereafter Frederick proceeded Swith the goal of finally
campaigning against the Normans.Yet reinforcements which he had
been promised by the German Lords never arrived.
Consequently, he returned to Germany late in 1155, bringing

(25:01):
his first Italian campaign to anend.
His goal was now to strengthen his position in Germany before
attempting a second campaign in Italy.
This he duly achieved by placating the leading Lord of
the Wells or Guelphs in Germany,Henry the Lion, by granting him
the Dutchie of Bavaria in 1156. This made Henry the second most

(25:23):
powerful Lord in Germany, next to Barbarossa himself, but in
doing so Frederick galvanized the support of the German Lords
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3 bags. It was also in 1156 that
Frederick entered into his 2nd and more substantial marriage.
Barbarossa had married much earlier, in 1147, prior to his

(27:08):
departure from Germany on the Second Crusade, to Adelaide of
Volberg, a daughter of the Bavarian margrave Diopol, the
third of Volberg. But the union proved
unsatisfactory. It did not lead to children and
Adelaide was suspected of adultery during Frederick's
absence in the Holy Life. Accordingly, an annulment was
secured in 1153. Then three years later,

(27:31):
Frederick married Beatrice of Burgundy, the only surviving
child of Renault, the third, theCount of Burgundy as his second
wife. As a result, Frederick became Co
ruler of the County of Burgundy,an acquisition which provided
him with land strategically located north of the Plain of
Lombardy in northern Italy. These could now be used as a way

(27:52):
to campaign into Italy without having to rely exclusively on
bringing his forces over the Alps through the Brenner Pass.
The marriage proved happy by thestandards of the time and after
several years it also resulted in 11 children between 1162 and
1179. Eight of these were boys, so
there would be no question of Frederick not having a surviving

(28:15):
heir when he died. With his position in Germany at
least temporarily strengthened, and having acquired the further
boon of control of a Burgundy through his marriage, Frederick
undertook his second Italian campaign in the summer of 1158
with the goal of further consolidating his hold on the
Kingdom of Italy and then invading the Kingdom of Sicily.

(28:37):
This time he was accompanied by Henry the Lion and enjoyed much
greater support from the German Lords as a consequence.
As a result. When they descended into the
plain of Lombardy that summer, Barbarossa's forces quickly
crushed a fresh bout of unrest in the city of Milan, the
leading city in the north of Italy.
Following this, an Imperial dietor parliament was convened at

(29:00):
Roncalia near Picenza. Here Frederick made it clear
that he intended to re establishimperial authority across Italy
and further efforts to acquire independence by cities such as
Milan would only result in freshmilitary campaigns by him.
The warning was not heeded, however, and rebellions sprung
up across the north of Italy in the months that followed,

(29:22):
notably at the city of Crema, where Frederick spent much of
the rest of his second Italian campaign engaged in a siege in
1159. It was while Frederick was
engaged in the siege of Kramer in 1159 that Pope Adrian the 4th
died. This would have major
consequences for the next 20 years of Italian politics, as at

(29:44):
a papal conclave which followed,the favored candidate amongst
the Cardinals was unquestionablyRoland of Siena, a cardinal and
the papal chancellor. But there was a problem with
this proposed candidate. Roland was an avowed opponent of
Frederick's who had consistentlyargued throughout the 1150s that
the Holy Roman Emperor was a vassal of the Papacy and took

(30:07):
his commands from Rome, not the other way around as Barbarossa
wanted it. Therefore, when the papal
conclave elected Roland and he became Pope Alexander the Third,
Frederick moved to have his closest rival, A Ghibbeline
candidate, Octavian of Monticelli, elected.
Octavian was duly elected by a minority of the Cardinals and
became Pope Victor the 4th. Victor was the first of three

(30:32):
so-called anti popes, the othersbeing Pascal the 3rd from 1164
and Calixtus the 3rd from 1168. These were popes who were not
legally elected by a majority ofCardinals, but who were set up
by Frederick as rivals to Alexander the Third during his
long pontificate down to 1181. Thus, Frederick effectively

(30:54):
shattered the harmony of the Church in Italy for 22 years
following Alexander's election as Pope, as a means of keeping
this opponent of imperial authority.
From having full. Control of the Papacy The
immediate consequences were thatPope Alexander now moved to ally
the papacy with the Kingdom of Sicily against any further

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incursions by Frederick against Rome or the South of the Italian
peninsula. They also began fermenting
further unrest in the north, andthis was at least partially
responsible for a new revolt by Milan in the early 1160s.
A lengthy siege followed in 1161and early 1162, following which

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the Milanese finally surrenderedon the 6th of March 1162.
Unhappy at having become bogged down in northern Italy for
nearly four years, when his goalall along had been to strike
against the Kingdom of Sicily, Frederick exerted a heavy
revenge on Milan for having revolted 3 times under his rule
already. When the city was entered in

(31:57):
early March, his army set about destroying much of it in the
hours. That followed the example.
This set LED several other cities across the North, such as
Bresquier. And Placentia, which had also
revolted to surrender actions which brought to an end
Barbarossa's second Italian campaign.
Thereafter he briefly returned to Germany, but it would not be

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long before fresh unrest arose to the South.
It was not. All war For Frederick, his reign
was also central to what is known as the 12th century
Renaissance. This was an early period of
political, social, cultural and intellectual revival throughout
Europe following the Dark Ages which had followed the fall of

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the Roman Empire. This early Renaissance saw many
marked advancements in these fields which are now seen as
being necessary precursors to the later, more well known
Italian Renaissance which spreadthroughout Europe throughout the
16th century. One of the foremost elements of
this earlier 12th century renaissance was the emergence of
Europe's first universities. These typically emerged where

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groups of students pool their financial resources together to
hire scholars to teach them. The first such university to
emerge anywhere in Europe was inthe Italian city of Bologna.
Some studies placed the foundation date to 1088, but
what is generally agreed is thatthe university here was.
Given a formal foundation in 1158, when at the beginning of

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his second Italian campaign, Frederick issued what is known
as the Altentica Arbiter. A document which set out for the
first time what the rights and responsibilities of both the
students and teachers at the University of Bologna were.
This was a highly important formalization of the university
here, and in the early 13th century the model provided by

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Bologna was imitated by the universities of Oxford.
And Cambridge in England, Paris in France, Salamanca in Spain
and Padua in Italy. Another element of this 12th
century renaissance which was characteristic of Frederick's
reign was the revival in interest in different forms of
legal systems. During the medieval period, the

(34:08):
legal systems of kingdoms such as England and France and other
entities such as the Holy Roman Empire had come to increasingly
be a combination of Canon law orchurch law and the common law,
which was effectively a distillation of earlier Germanic
laws and the Roman civil law. However, during Frederick's
reign there was renewed interestin different legal systems, with

(34:31):
an increasing number of lawyers being hired by governments such
as Frederick's. Thus, there was a revival of
interest in the Roman civil law at Frederick's court and also
alternative legal systems such as the Justinian Code, a legal
code which had been developed bythe early 6th century Byzantine
Emperor Justinian. Much of this revival was purely

(34:51):
motivated by self-interest on Frederick's part, as he sought
to use legal arguments to justify his attempts to have
greater jurisdiction than the papacy in Rome over parts of
Italy. But it is significant that it
was revived as a result of Frederick's reign, and the Roman
civil law went on to fundamentally influence the
legal systems of modern Europe in due course.

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It is interesting to speculate, given these administrative and
educational reforms, how Barbarossa's reign might have
developed had he not engaged in determined efforts throughout it
to re establish imperial controlover Italy.
But ultimately his attentions were focused on the southern
peninsula. No sooner had he returned to

(35:35):
Germany in 1162 after his secondItalian campaign.
But he was. Planning 1/3 for 1163, this one
again aimed at finally campaigning against William, the
first of Sicily in the South. However, the third Italian
campaign would yet again be diverted following the emergence
of a new independence movement in the urban communes at Verona

(35:57):
and neighboring cities in the northeast.
And this time? Frederick was unable to suppress
these in the same way that he had the revolt of the early
1060s by making an. Example of Milan.
This is because the insurrectionwas more coordinated with the
cities of Verona, Padua and Vicenza allying themselves into
what was known as the Veronesa League, which also acquired the

(36:21):
aid of the independent and powerful Republic of Venice.
As a result, Frederick was unable to tame them immediately
following his entry into Italy in 1163, and instead cut the
third Italian campaign short. He returned to Germany and began
preparing a fourth larger expedition.

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The 4th Italian Campaign, which Frederick LED S through the
Brenna Pass and into Italy in 1166, was a more formidable
affair than the third campaign afew years earlier, and this time
Barbarossa had a different approach.
Rather than striking at the cities of the Berronese League
and other recalcitrant elements amongst the cities of the Plain

(37:03):
of Lombardy, he would pass through the north entirely and
move against Rome and Pope Alexander the Third, whom he
believed was the major prop. Holding together the rebellious
cities in the north, Frederick was also doubtlessly perturbed
by rumors that the Byzantine Emperor Manuel the First had
sent emissaries to Alexander offering to end the Great

(37:25):
Schism. Which had developed between the
Roman Catholic Church in the West and the Greek Orthodox
Church in the East over several significant doctrinal and
procedural differences between the two churches.
If the Pope would recognize Manuel's rights to land which
had previously belonged to the Roman Empire, fire in Italy and
elsewhere, if Alexander was so inclined, then Manuel would send

(37:47):
aid to Italy to help the Pope inhis struggle with Frederick.
Thus Barbarossa had more reasonsthan one to strike against the
papacy in 1166. The 4th Italian Campaign, like
the third campaign a few years earlier, ran into stalemate.
Frederick proceeded South and captured Rome after victory

(38:08):
outside the city at the Battle of Monteportzio on the 29th of
May 1167. Alexander now fled S to the
Kingdom of Sicily and found refuge at the city of Benevento
while Frederick imposed the antiPope Pascal the Third in Rome.
However, this victory soon turned to despair.
Disease struck Frederick's forces in Rome, most likely an

(38:30):
outbreak of malaria, severely reducing his military capacity.
Then news arrived from the north.
But while he was capturing Rome,the Veronese.
League there had expanded to include nearly every city and
town in the plain of Lombardy, including Milan, Genoa, Bologna,
Crema, Cremona, Mantua, Piacenza, Brescia, Modena, Parma

(38:52):
and Ferrara. Leading members of the communes
of these cities and towns had sworn an oath of the Abbey of
Pond Antida near Bergamo by the Italian Alps on the 7th of April
1167, creating this new Lombard League.
As new members joined every week, and with his own forces
ravaged by the outbreak of malaria in Rome, Frederick now

(39:13):
decided to postpone his showdownwith the Italian cities and
return to Germany in 1168. It would be 6.
Years before he returned for thefinal showdown, Frederick spent
the late 1160s and the early 1170s undertaking reforms
elsewhere to strengthen his position in advance of a new
campaign into Italy. For instance, economic changes

(39:37):
of a kind were made, particularly in the
proliferation of mints throughout Central Europe to
produce imperial coins. There were just two dozen of
these in all of Germany at the start of his reign in the early
1150s, but by the 1180s well over 100 could be found in the
same region. He also made efforts.
To strengthen imperial authorityto the east of the Holy Roman

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Empire around Bohemia and Hungary, 2 regions which had
been expanding in the 12th century into the Balkans and
Western Poland, for instance, when a dispute arose in the
Kingdom of Bohemia over the succession there in the early
1170s. Barbarossa convened a diet at
the Germantown of Helmsdorf in September 1173, where he

(40:20):
championed the cause of Aldrich,a son of the former king
Sobislaw the First. Admittedly, Aldrich did not want
the crown and immediately abdicated in favor of his
brother Soboslav, who then became Soboslav the Second, a
decision which temporarily seemed to stabilize the
situation in Bohemia, although fresh unrest arose in the mid

(40:41):
1170s. By the time that the latter
unrest arose in Bohemia, Frederick had already turned his
attentions back southwards towards Italy.
In 1174 he undertook his fifth Italian campaign, the last major
military foray into the peninsula of his reign.
For this he brought an army of over 10,000 troops S from

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Germany. However, he faced an
unprecedented alliance of the Lombard League, the Papacy and
the Kingdom of Sicily, with someminor support provided by the.
Byzantine Empire At first it seemed possible that direct
conflict could be avoided as negotiations were opened between
Barbarossa and the Lombard league at the city of Pavia, but

(41:25):
these. Broke down in the summer of
1175. Months of movements across the
plain of Lombardy followed as the League was able to gather an
army of in excess of 20,000 men,while Frederick sent N to
Burgundy and various parts of Germany requesting further
detachments to be sent South. The reinforcements he received
did not meet his expectations and when the Imperial and League

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forces finally clashed at the Battle of Leniano on the 29th of
May 1176 to the northwest of Milan, Frederick suffered the
worst military defeat of his life.
The Emperor was struck from his horse himself during the
conflict and wounded to the extent that it was briefly
believed he was dead. Frederick's defeat of the Battle

(42:09):
of Lignano was the turning pointin the Italian Wars he had
engaged in for 20 years. He now accepted that he would
have to reach an agreement with the communes and nobles of the
northern cities. He had realized that he could
not overwhelm them and force them into complete submission,
as he had set out to do 20 yearsearlier.
But at the same time, the Italian communes of the North

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knew that they would have to acknowledge some imperial
oversight of northern Italy, andthey could not go back to the de
facto independence they had heldfor much of the first half of
the 12th century. Accordingly, negotiations were
entered into between Frederick and the League, with Alexander
the Third sending emissaries from Rome.
The result was the Treaty of Venice.

(42:53):
Which was agreed. To at the trading Republic city
on the 22nd of July 1177. The treaty did not bring about a
full resolution to the showdown between the Italian.
Cities and Frederick but largelyconcluded that a six year.
Truce would hold between the Emperor and the League.
In the meantime, negotiations for a fuller, more long lasting

(43:15):
understanding would continue. The Treaty of Venice brought to
an end Frederick's military campaigning in Italy, but while
he had technically lost the war with the defeat of Leniano, in
the end he gained A partial victory in the peace.
When the six year truce concluded, it was replaced by a
new diplomatic arrangement whichwas signed at Lake Constance on

(43:37):
the 25th. June 1183 the peace of Constance
was a major compromise the cities and towns of the Kingdom
of Italy would henceforth be allowed to manage much of their
internal affairs themselves, butthey.
Agreed to acknowledge Frederick's imperial claims on
northern and much of central Italy.
They would owe fealty to Frederick, who would have the

(43:57):
right of appointment of some of the senior officials in each
city. Office holders throughout the
communes would also have to swear an oath of fealty to the
Emperor. And while the courts.
Systems would operate independently in each city or
town. Citizens there could appeal to
the imperial court in Germany ifthey so wished.
Thus the peace of Constance guaranteed the Italian cities a

(44:20):
substantial degree of internal independence.
But Frederick, after nearly 30 years of conflict in Italy, had
succeeded in re establishing a much greater degree of control
over the region than many of hisnear predecessors as Emperor had
enjoyed. With the wars over in Italy,
Frederick was able to turn his attention yet again to Germany,

(44:42):
where he sought revenge against those who had failed to
adequately reinforce him in 1175at 1176, before the defeat of
Leniano. In particular, he was determined
to move against Henry the Lion, the wealth for Guelph leader to
whom he had granted the Dutchie of Bavaria back in 1156 in order
to quell unrest amongst the wealth faction at that time.

(45:06):
Henry had failed held to supporthis fifth Italian campaign
adequately and had also aroused some enmity within Germany at
his accumulation of huge tracts of land.
As a result, Frederick was able to place Henry on trial in 1180
on the grounds that imperial lawheld sway over traditional
German law and that Henry could be tried on charges brought by

(45:29):
an emperor. Henry refused to appear at the
trial and was quickly found guilty in absentia.
Frederick then invaded his its lands in Saxony and Henry was
eventually forced to submit in November 1181.
Shortly afterwards he was driveninto exile for three years,
which he spent in northern France.
Thereafter he returned to Germany and tried to re

(45:52):
establish himself, but he never regained the authority he had
held prior to 1180. Moreover, with the death of Pope
Alexander the Third in August 1181, Frederick found another
adversary gone from the scene. If an indication of Frederick's
position as the strongest Holy Roman Emperor which Europe had

(46:12):
seen for some time when needed, then one was provided in May
1184, when Barbarossa summoned an Imperial Diet to assemble at
the City of Mines in western Germany on Pentecost.
The Diet of Pentecost, as it hasbecome known, saw the great
Lords of the Empire assembled bythe River Mind.
There from the 20th of May onwards several banquets and

(46:34):
ceremonies were held and there was talk of developing an anti
French alliance with England by the German Lords to re extend
Imperial control over Eastern France.
The Diet was widely written about at the time and celebrated
for its indication of how Barbarossa had rejuvenated the
Empire and a further victory soon followed.
In 1186, Frederick managed, despite Papal objections, to

(46:58):
engineer the marriage of his sonHenry to Constance of Sicily, a
posthumously born daughter of King Roger the Second of Sicily.
This opened the possibility of the Hornstafens one day having a
claim to the throne of the Kingdom of Sicily, a possibility
which, if realized, would see the family and Ghibbeline
influence extend from Sicily N to the Baltic Sea.

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And so the victories which had so often escaped Frederick on
the battlefield were accumulating through diplomacy
in the 1180s. It was, though, the call of the
battlefield which still appealedto Frederick.
In 1187, just after he had organized the Sicilian marriage,
that call came yet again from the east.

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The Crusader states were in fresh trouble there.
A dynastic crisis had broken outin the Kingdom of Jerusalem
following the death of King Baldwin the 4th in 1185.
The problem was compounded by the fact that the disparate
Muslim kingdoms of Syria and Egypt, which were often divided
amongst themselves, had been united under a new Muslim leader

(48:02):
from Kurdistan. His name was Yusuf Ibn Ayyub,
but he is better known as Saladin, meaning the goodness or
righteousness of the faith. In July 1187, his forces won a
great victory at the Battle of Hatin near the city of Tiberias
against the Crusader army, whereover 10,000 Christian soldiers

(48:22):
are believed to have lost their lives or been captured.
With the fighting forces decimated, The Crusaders were
unable to prevent Saladin from continuing onwards to Jerusalem
and recapturing the city. After nearly a century in
Christian hands, the call now went out from the remaining
Crusade estates. Help was needed from Europe if
they were to survive and retake Jerusalem, and when word reached

(48:46):
67 year old Frederick Barossa, he determined to take the cross
again and return to the Holy Land, 40 years after his last
foray there. Preparations commenced in April
1188 and would continue throughout the Empire for the
next year. Frederick would be joined by
several senior Lords, the most notable being Richard the

(49:08):
Lionheart, a Prince of England who would soon become its king.
Following King Henry the Second of England's death in the summer
of 1189, King Philip the Second of France also took the cross,
as did several of Frederick's senior Lords, such as his son
the Duke of Swabia, Frederick the 6th and Leopold the 5th of
Austria. With Europe's three most

(49:30):
powerful states, England, Franceand the Holy Roman Empire in
support of it, the Third Crusadewas formidable.
Barbarossa's contingent alone would constitute upwards of
15,000 soldiers, at least three thousand of which were Knights.
Beyond these military preparations, diplomatic envoys
were also sent out to the various powers in the Balkans

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and even the Seljou Turks of theregion around modern day Turkey,
with the goal of securing safe route ways to the Holy Land from
Europe. There could be no repeat of the
arduous journey from Constantinople to Jerusalem
during the Second Crusade, whereThe Crusaders had been massively
depleted before they ever arrived to Acre and Antioch.

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With all this in place, Frederick took the staff of a
Pilgrim at his birthplace of Argonaut on the 15th of April
1189 and met out for the Holy Land.
Despite The Crusaders best efforts to ensure a safer
passage this time Frederick would never make it to the Holy
Land. The journey through the Balkans

(50:32):
and the Byzantine Empire into Anatolia was relatively smooth,
though slow. By the summer of 1190 they were
in southern Turkey, making theirway along the coast towards
Mersin, after which they would soon turn S towards Jerusalem.
When a shortcut was proposed to Frederick along the Salif River.
He took the advice offered to him, but it was a fatal mistake.

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There are varying accounts of exactly what happened, but all
are clear that Frederick drownedin the Salif River near Sillifke
Castle on the 10th of June 1190.Some suggest that he was weighed
down by his armor after falling from his horse, others that he
tried to traverse the river. What is clear is that he died,

(51:14):
and once he did, much of the German contingent melted away
and returned to Europe. Thus it was a much reduced force
which his son Frederick led on to the Holy Land, where they
variously buried his bones and flesh in Antioch and Tyre.
There they joined up with the other crusaders who had arrived
by sea. Over the next two years, they

(51:36):
would fight Saladin to a stalemate, never recovering
Jerusalem but forcing the MuslimLord to allow safe passage of
Christians to the city. The Holy Roman Empire was
weakened in the long run by Frederick's death.
He had rejuvenated it and made it strong again after decades of
internal strife and political decline during the first half of

(51:58):
the 12th century. His eldest surviving son, Henry,
succeeded him as Holy Roman Emperor in 1191, following the
receipt of news that Barbarossa had died on the way to the Holy
Land. Henry the 6th, as he became, was
an effective emperor who built on his father's successes.
In 1194 he claimed the throne ofthe Kingdom of Sicily by right

(52:21):
of his marriage to Constance in 1186, and thereafter he even
went to war against the Byzantine Empire and extracted A
vassalage tax from Constantinople.
But Henry died prematurely, possibly malaria, in September
1197, and this development opened up a period of renewed
conflict within the empire. Philip of Swabia, another of

(52:43):
Barbarossa's sons, was elected as Holy Roman Emperor in 1198,
but a rival contender emerged from the wealth faction in the
shape of Otto of Brunswick. Accordingly, for the next 11
years there were two rival emperors, before Philip's death
saw Otto become the only unchallenged wealth or Guelph,
Emperor of the High Middle Ages.Henry, the sixth son, named

(53:06):
Frederick after his grandfather,managed to reacquire the
imperial title in 12/15 and created a strong centralized
state much like Barbarossa had 40 years earlier.
But his death in 1250 ushered ina renewed period of decline.
Thereafter, the Kingdom of Sicily passed to the French
House of Andrew in 1266, and imperial authority in Italy

(53:30):
slowly collapsed in the late 13th century as fully
independent republics began to emerge in Milan, Florence,
Genoa, and other cities. Frederick Barbarossa, of course,
has had a modern day afterlife. When the forces of Nazi Germany
invaded the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941, they did so
following the plans laid down inwhat was known as Operation

(53:53):
Barbarossa. This blueprint for the conquest
of Eastern Europe was variously named Operation Otto and
Operation Fritz during the planning stage.
However, in the months before the invasion was undertaken, it
was renamed Operation Barbarossaat the directive of Adolf
Hitler. Hitler seems to have wished to
use the name for two reasons. Firstly, he believed that it was

(54:16):
fitting because Barbarossa had sought to establish a militarily
and administratively strong German Empire during the 12th
century after the Holy Roman Empire had been weakened for
several decades, similar to how Germany had been weakened
through its defeat in the First World War.
Secondly, the Nazis belief believed Barbarossa had an acute

(54:36):
interest in expanding Germany eastwards.
But while Christine Europe was certainly expanding into the
Baltic Sea region and further E during the 12th century, it was
a complete misconception to believe that Frederick
Barbarossa had been at the forefront of this eastwards
March. Rather, as the foregoing has
demonstrated, his primary concern was always with Germany

(54:59):
and Italy and the rejuvenation of imperial power there.
Frederick Barbarossa is a paradoxical figure, and one
whose career can be difficult toassess.
Given the sheer complexity of the Holy Roman Empire in Germany
and Italy during the 12th century, a casual observer could
conclude that his reign was not very successful at all.

(55:20):
For instance, his near 40 year term as Emperor was bookended on
either side by the 2nd Crusade in the late 1140s and the Third
Crusade in the late 1180s. The first of these was a failure
when judged by any criteria and achieved nothing in the Holy
Land other than a failed siege of Damascus which lasted less
than a week. The Third Crusade was much more

(55:42):
successful overall, but Frederick never made it to the
Holy Land himself. At home he was often even less
successful. The paramount concern of his
reign was to re establish imperial control over the
Kingdom of Italy and he launched5 campaigns into the plain of
Lombardy between the mid 11:50 and the mid 1170s to try to

(56:03):
achieve that. Eventually at the end of these
he was effectively defeated by the Lombard League at the Battle
of Leniano in 1176. His loftier earlier ambition to
conquer the Kingdom of Sicily was never even really attempted
because his intentions were always on the north of Italy.
However, to assess Frederick Barbarossa's career in this way

(56:26):
would be to overlook his accomplishments when he
effectively became Holy Roman Emperor in 1152 following his
election as King of Germany, theempire had been weakened by
decades of decline. Germany was divided between the.
Wealths and Hohenstaufen factions.
Or Guelphs and Ghibbelines, as they have more popularly become

(56:46):
known. And imperial control of the
Kingdom of Italy had all but vanished in the wake of the
Investiture Controversy and the clash with the Pope.
As a result, the many cities andtowns of northern and central
Italy were all but independent city states ruled by their own
communes. Frederick changed all of that.
By reaching an accommodation with many of the wealth Lords in

(57:08):
Germany, he galvanized imperial control over the country, and by
engaging in a relentless campaign to wear the Italian
cities down between the 1150s and the 1170s, he re established
a degree of imperial rule over the Kingdom of Italy under the
terms of the Peace of Constance in 1183.

(57:28):
Near the end of his life, he also ensured that his son would
become the King of Sicily by marrying Henry to Constance.
However, there was one major flaw in all of this.
While Frederick was able to revive imperial power in Germany
and Italy during his reign, the settlement he reached in both
countries relied on strong imperial rule for it to be

(57:50):
maintained when weaker rulers came along after himself and his
grandson Frederick the Second. Ultimately, the process of
political fragmentation in Germany and Italy and the
decline of imperial rule recommenced.
What do you think of Frederick Barossa?
Was he a? Great medieval monarch, or were
his accomplishments somewhat illusory?

(58:11):
Please let us know in the comments section and in the
meantime, thank you very much for watching.