How Did Barbarossa Influence The Relationship Between Germany And Italy
During his thirty-eight year reign, which was characterised by his attempts to develop, maintain and restore imperial traditions, Frederick I Barbarossa adopted a number of different approaches. His methods in both Germany and Italy were founded on feudal ideology. In Germany, he was pragmatic and realistic, following a policy of collaboration in order to establish peace and revive the imperial authority that had been lost during the Investiture Struggle. This differed from his approach in Italy, where he sought to restore the old imperial rights, and had the methodology and mind-set of an idealistic reactionary. Furthermore, his actions in both of these countries were influenced and at times determined by his relations with the Papacy and foreign powers such as the Normans in southern Italy. Frederick’s practical approach to the problems of government in Germany is evident in his initial actions following his designation by his dying uncle Conrad III. During the Investiture Contest, a new nobility had emerged, consisting of nobles who had usurped the royal rights and lands that the king could not attend to. Unlike other contemporary monarchs, Frederick did not pursue an anti-feudal policy as this was not tenable in Germany. He acknowledged
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that he would not be able to eliminate the feudal lordships of the new nobility and thus made formal grants of land to princes and nobles on feudal terms. Frederick, though he sacrificed only the lands which had already been usurped, benefitted from the guarantee of feudal services.
He first set about placating the Welfs – namely his uncle Welf VI and his cousin Henry the Lion. In autumn 1152 Fredrick granted his uncle the duchy of Spoleto, the margraviate of Tuscany, the duchy of Sardinia and the Matildine lands. This guaranteed the support of the Welf who was now dependant on him to realise his legal claims in Italy. Before his election Frederick had promised the duchy of Bavaria to his cousin. He also gained a promise of support from the Zahringer Berthodl IV for his coronation expedition in exchange for his recognition of the Zahringer’s claims in Burgundy. These early actions reflected his policy of finding a ‘mutual self-interest’ with the German princes. When he was crowned in 1152, Frederick wrote a letter to the Pope Eugenius III, informing him of his election but declining to seek papal confirmation. From the offset he asserted his reluctance to submit to the pope as his two predecessors had done. Nevertheless, there existed an inextricable link between his relations with the Roman Curia and his policies in both Germany and Italy. In 1153, the treaty of Constance was signed between Frederick and Pope Eugenius III. This constituted a promise by the king to defend the papacy and not to make any truce with the Romans or Roger II of Normandy without his consent, in return for the Pope’s promise of his imperial coronation. Both parties also agreed not to grant any land to the ‘king’ of the Greeks and to expel him should he invade the country. Following the death of Eugenius in July 1153 and that of his successor in 1154, Pope Adrian IV was elected. He was a capable and decisive man, whose similar character to Barbarossa would lead to clashes between the two.
Frederick began to march south in October 1154 with the intention achieving his coronation as Holy Roman Emperor and defeating the Normans in Sicily. When he encountered resistance in Milan, he reduced the city to submission and destroyed Tortona. On the journey, he apprehended Arnold of Brescia, who had been provoking unrest in Rome. An inevitable altercation occurred when Frederick refused to hold the pope’s stirrup as he dismounted his horse. Following negotiations, the king acquiesced himself to preforming the dignifying act. He was crowned on 18 June and spent this day subduing a revolt in the city of Rome. On his journey home, Frederick had to abandon his Norman plan as the princes refused to undertake the task in the summer heat and it was imperative that he return to Germany to resolve the issue concerning the duchy of Bavaria.
When Frederick was elected in 1152, it was partly owing to his familial connection to both the Guelfs (through his mother) and the Staufens, and the hope that he could reconcile the two warring families. In 1154 the duchy of Bavaria was given to Henry the Lion by the emperor, who in 1156, raised the East Mark (Austria) to the status of an independent duchy which was handed over to Henry II Jasomirgott and his wife on very favourable terms in the Privilegium Minus. Though it seems excessively generous, the agreement formed a part of Frederick’s greater policy of collaboration in Germany. It resolved the threatening issue of disunity in the empire and ensured the protection of the south eastern frontier from the Hungarians. Concomitantly, he had resolved to restore the monarchical rights in Burgundy and when he married Beatrice of Burgudy in 1156, he acquired extensive lands and direct control in the kingdom. In northern and eastern Germany where he had no direct territorial control, he left the princes in a position of power but ensured a balance through the competing powers of Albrecht the Bear, Adolf of Holstein and Henry the Lion. He accommodated Henry the Lion by giving him such liberty that he could act as if he were the king’s partner. These measures were representative of his method of leaving the feudal princes in Germany almost to self-government in return for their co-operation.
Following Frederick’s retreat in 1155, the Sicilian king defeated the troops at Brindisi and the pope signed the treaty of Benevento with William I in June 1156. He granted William, who did homage to him and agreed to pay an annual tribute, the kingdom of Sicily and Apulia. This angered Frederick as the Pope had invested William with territories that he regarded as being within his own dominion. This festering disaccord between Frederick and the papacy came to a head at the imperial diet at Besancon in 1157 when he received a letter in which the pope implied that Frederick was his vassal and that he had conferred the empire on him as a beneficium (fief). This caused uproar, but when the pope attempted to explain away the phrases, the two were temporarily reconciled.
Frederick was anxious to establish imperial power in Italy where the communes had exploited the simultaneous occurrence of an economic expansion through trade and the disarray of the Investiture Struggle in order to gain independence. They had usurped the regalia (the rights and privileges of the sovereign) and had forced the feudal nobility to accept their dominance. While in Germany he was realistic and willing to adapt his policy to the new order, Frederick was more idealistic and reactionary in Italy and, due to his feudal instincts and his belief that the disorder of their political life could be attributed to their lack of nobility, he wad disinclined to compromise with them.
On his second Italian expedition he imposed the ban of the empire on Milan, and reduced it to submission within a month. He then continued to Roncaglia where he held a diet in November. He summoned experts of Roman Law from Bologna to assist him in constructing a centralised rule in Italy and restoring the authority of the empire at the expense of the communes. He was traditional and feudal in his outlook and, unlike in Germany where he was adept to change and compromise in the aim of reconciliation and peace, he failed to discern the problems he would incur in trying to impose a clearly outdated system in Italy. He restored the regalian rights which had been lost, and in an attempt to establish stability and order within the cities appointed to each a chief magistrate or podesta. His conviction of his imperial entitlement and the reasonable nature of his claims was such that he sent a large proportion of his army home before the diet. However, Milan resisted his claims and revolted in 1160-62, but was eventually forced to surrender and destroyed. In the meantime Frederick had encountered a much greater problem concerning his relations with the papacy.
When Hadrian IV died in 1159, two rival popes were elected, Alexander III and the anti-pope Victor IV. Frederick, showing little regard for the developments of the previous century and the Hildebrandine reforms which espoused that the emperor could not sit in judgement of a pope, called a council at Pavia to settle the issue (1160). This ended in disaster for Frederick when Alexander III, who had declined to acknowledge his authority, was accepted as pope and formed an alliance with the Normans against him. A month after the fall of Milan, finding his situation untenable, Alexander set sail for France where he remained, his position intact, for three years.
In 1164 Frederick planned for the abolition of Norman kingdom of Sicily.
While he succeeded in capturing Rome in 1167, his army was decimated by a malaria epidemic and he was unable to undertake the planned conquest of Sicily. A significant development occurred in 1167, when the ‘league of Verona’ which had been formed in 1164, expanded into an alliance of sixteen cities. This was the Lombard League (Societas Lombardie), which was founded on the basis of military and diplomatic co-operation in pursuance of the recovery of the independence of the communes. The league, beginning in April 1167, reconstructed Milan when the emperor was absent in Germany - where he remained for the next six
years.
The city of Alessandria was founded in 1168 with the help of the league and when Frederick returned to Italy he was unable to take the city in a six month siege. In the past he had exploited the tensions between the Italian cities in order to gain allies during his expeditions, but owing to the alliance of the cities, he was unable to avail of this on is fifth expedition and had only the city of Pavia and the Marquis of Montferrat on his side. When he sought reinforcements in Germany a number of his vassals responded, but Henry the Lion refused his services even when Frederick met him personally at Chiavenna. The emperor attributed his subsequent defeat at the battle of Legnano on 29 May 1176 to his cousin’s lack of support.
While he followed a generally unrelenting and ambitious policy in Italy, Frederick now brought the pragmatism and perspicuity that had been vital to his successes in Germany to the fore. He recognized not only that he was defeated, but that expeditious action would guarantee the best possible terms. He secured peace with the pope in the treaty of Anagi five months after his defeat and this was formalised in the Treaty of Venice in July 1177. He agreed to recognize Alexander III instead of his antipope and to restore any church property he had taken. He also agreed a truce with the Lombard League for six years and the Norman king for fifteen years. This move towards reconciliation was influenced by his desire to turn his attention to Germany.
In Germany he asserted his power by expanding his demesne through methods such as becoming an advocate to monasteries, founding new towns, and building castles. In 1178-9, when Henry the Lion and the Bishop of Halberstat engaged in a dispute, Frederick exploited the hostility of the German princes to his cousin and summoned him to court. However, when he failed to obey the summons, the contumacious duke was deprived of all his fiefs, which were divided among his enemies. In June 1183 Frederick agreed the Treaty of Constance which marked the start of a new policy in Italy. The cities attained self-government, complete with the regalia and the right to appoint their own magistrates in return for recognition of the Emperor’s sovereignty in a semi-feudal regime. In Germany too he was attempting to strengthen his authority through co-operation and diplomacy. Seemingly victorious in Germany, Frederick secured the marriage of his son Henry to the heiress of the Sicilian throne, which his family inherited the death of William II in 1189.
In Germany, he appears to have achieved some success in his later years, his authority was gradually undermined by the princes who were the only real benefactors from the splitting of Henry the Lion’s great territories and he failed to establish a hereditary right of succession. In Italy, his successive policies of oppressive reaction and diplomacy culminated in a failure to consolidate the northern cities and he achieved only nominal power. Though he adopted different approaches in Germany and Italy he failed to make significant any progress in either country.
Bibliography
Davis, R.H.C., A History of Medieval Europe (London, 1957; latest edn; London, 2006)
Barraclough, Geoffrey, The Origins of Modern Germany (Oxford, 1946; latest edn; Oxford, 1947)
Brooke, Z.N., A History of Europe, 911- 1198 (Great Britain, 1938)
Waley, Daniel, The Italian City-Republics (New York, 1969; latest edn; New York, 1988)
Haverkamp, Alfred, Medieval Germany, 1056-1253 (New York, 1988)
Hyde, J.K., Society and Politics in Medieval Italy: The evolution of the civil life, 1000-1350 (London, 1973)
Tabacco, Giovanni, The Struggle for Power in Medieval Italy (Cambridge, 1989)
Fuhrmann, Horst, Germany in the High Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1986)
Jones, Philip, The Italian City State (New York, 1977)
that he would not be able to eliminate the feudal lordships of the new nobility and thus made formal grants of land to princes and nobles on feudal terms. Frederick, though he sacrificed only the lands which had already been usurped, benefitted from the guarantee of feudal services.
He first set about placating the Welfs – namely his uncle Welf VI and his cousin Henry the Lion. In autumn 1152 Fredrick granted his uncle the duchy of Spoleto, the margraviate of Tuscany, the duchy of Sardinia and the Matildine lands. This guaranteed the support of the Welf who was now dependant on him to realise his legal claims in Italy. Before his election Frederick had promised the duchy of Bavaria to his cousin. He also gained a promise of support from the Zahringer Berthodl IV for his coronation expedition in exchange for his recognition of the Zahringer’s claims in Burgundy. These early actions reflected his policy of finding a ‘mutual self-interest’ with the German princes. When he was crowned in 1152, Frederick wrote a letter to the Pope Eugenius III, informing him of his election but declining to seek papal confirmation. From the offset he asserted his reluctance to submit to the pope as his two predecessors had done. Nevertheless, there existed an inextricable link between his relations with the Roman Curia and his policies in both Germany and Italy. In 1153, the treaty of Constance was signed between Frederick and Pope Eugenius III. This constituted a promise by the king to defend the papacy and not to make any truce with the Romans or Roger II of Normandy without his consent, in return for the Pope’s promise of his imperial coronation. Both parties also agreed not to grant any land to the ‘king’ of the Greeks and to expel him should he invade the country. Following the death of Eugenius in July 1153 and that of his successor in 1154, Pope Adrian IV was elected. He was a capable and decisive man, whose similar character to Barbarossa would lead to clashes between the two.
Frederick began to march south in October 1154 with the intention achieving his coronation as Holy Roman Emperor and defeating the Normans in Sicily. When he encountered resistance in Milan, he reduced the city to submission and destroyed Tortona. On the journey, he apprehended Arnold of Brescia, who had been provoking unrest in Rome. An inevitable altercation occurred when Frederick refused to hold the pope’s stirrup as he dismounted his horse. Following negotiations, the king acquiesced himself to preforming the dignifying act. He was crowned on 18 June and spent this day subduing a revolt in the city of Rome. On his journey home, Frederick had to abandon his Norman plan as the princes refused to undertake the task in the summer heat and it was imperative that he return to Germany to resolve the issue concerning the duchy of Bavaria.
When Frederick was elected in 1152, it was partly owing to his familial connection to both the Guelfs (through his mother) and the Staufens, and the hope that he could reconcile the two warring families. In 1154 the duchy of Bavaria was given to Henry the Lion by the emperor, who in 1156, raised the East Mark (Austria) to the status of an independent duchy which was handed over to Henry II Jasomirgott and his wife on very favourable terms in the Privilegium Minus. Though it seems excessively generous, the agreement formed a part of Frederick’s greater policy of collaboration in Germany. It resolved the threatening issue of disunity in the empire and ensured the protection of the south eastern frontier from the Hungarians. Concomitantly, he had resolved to restore the monarchical rights in Burgundy and when he married Beatrice of Burgudy in 1156, he acquired extensive lands and direct control in the kingdom. In northern and eastern Germany where he had no direct territorial control, he left the princes in a position of power but ensured a balance through the competing powers of Albrecht the Bear, Adolf of Holstein and Henry the Lion. He accommodated Henry the Lion by giving him such liberty that he could act as if he were the king’s partner. These measures were representative of his method of leaving the feudal princes in Germany almost to self-government in return for their co-operation.
Following Frederick’s retreat in 1155, the Sicilian king defeated the troops at Brindisi and the pope signed the treaty of Benevento with William I in June 1156. He granted William, who did homage to him and agreed to pay an annual tribute, the kingdom of Sicily and Apulia. This angered Frederick as the Pope had invested William with territories that he regarded as being within his own dominion. This festering disaccord between Frederick and the papacy came to a head at the imperial diet at Besancon in 1157 when he received a letter in which the pope implied that Frederick was his vassal and that he had conferred the empire on him as a beneficium (fief). This caused uproar, but when the pope attempted to explain away the phrases, the two were temporarily reconciled.
Frederick was anxious to establish imperial power in Italy where the communes had exploited the simultaneous occurrence of an economic expansion through trade and the disarray of the Investiture Struggle in order to gain independence. They had usurped the regalia (the rights and privileges of the sovereign) and had forced the feudal nobility to accept their dominance. While in Germany he was realistic and willing to adapt his policy to the new order, Frederick was more idealistic and reactionary in Italy and, due to his feudal instincts and his belief that the disorder of their political life could be attributed to their lack of nobility, he wad disinclined to compromise with them.
On his second Italian expedition he imposed the ban of the empire on Milan, and reduced it to submission within a month. He then continued to Roncaglia where he held a diet in November. He summoned experts of Roman Law from Bologna to assist him in constructing a centralised rule in Italy and restoring the authority of the empire at the expense of the communes. He was traditional and feudal in his outlook and, unlike in Germany where he was adept to change and compromise in the aim of reconciliation and peace, he failed to discern the problems he would incur in trying to impose a clearly outdated system in Italy. He restored the regalian rights which had been lost, and in an attempt to establish stability and order within the cities appointed to each a chief magistrate or podesta. His conviction of his imperial entitlement and the reasonable nature of his claims was such that he sent a large proportion of his army home before the diet. However, Milan resisted his claims and revolted in 1160-62, but was eventually forced to surrender and destroyed. In the meantime Frederick had encountered a much greater problem concerning his relations with the papacy.
When Hadrian IV died in 1159, two rival popes were elected, Alexander III and the anti-pope Victor IV. Frederick, showing little regard for the developments of the previous century and the Hildebrandine reforms which espoused that the emperor could not sit in judgement of a pope, called a council at Pavia to settle the issue (1160). This ended in disaster for Frederick when Alexander III, who had declined to acknowledge his authority, was accepted as pope and formed an alliance with the Normans against him. A month after the fall of Milan, finding his situation untenable, Alexander set sail for France where he remained, his position intact, for three years.
In 1164 Frederick planned for the abolition of Norman kingdom of Sicily.
While he succeeded in capturing Rome in 1167, his army was decimated by a malaria epidemic and he was unable to undertake the planned conquest of Sicily. A significant development occurred in 1167, when the ‘league of Verona’ which had been formed in 1164, expanded into an alliance of sixteen cities. This was the Lombard League (Societas Lombardie), which was founded on the basis of military and diplomatic co-operation in pursuance of the recovery of the independence of the communes. The league, beginning in April 1167, reconstructed Milan when the emperor was absent in Germany - where he remained for the next six
years.
The city of Alessandria was founded in 1168 with the help of the league and when Frederick returned to Italy he was unable to take the city in a six month siege. In the past he had exploited the tensions between the Italian cities in order to gain allies during his expeditions, but owing to the alliance of the cities, he was unable to avail of this on is fifth expedition and had only the city of Pavia and the Marquis of Montferrat on his side. When he sought reinforcements in Germany a number of his vassals responded, but Henry the Lion refused his services even when Frederick met him personally at Chiavenna. The emperor attributed his subsequent defeat at the battle of Legnano on 29 May 1176 to his cousin’s lack of support.
While he followed a generally unrelenting and ambitious policy in Italy, Frederick now brought the pragmatism and perspicuity that had been vital to his successes in Germany to the fore. He recognized not only that he was defeated, but that expeditious action would guarantee the best possible terms. He secured peace with the pope in the treaty of Anagi five months after his defeat and this was formalised in the Treaty of Venice in July 1177. He agreed to recognize Alexander III instead of his antipope and to restore any church property he had taken. He also agreed a truce with the Lombard League for six years and the Norman king for fifteen years. This move towards reconciliation was influenced by his desire to turn his attention to Germany.
In Germany he asserted his power by expanding his demesne through methods such as becoming an advocate to monasteries, founding new towns, and building castles. In 1178-9, when Henry the Lion and the Bishop of Halberstat engaged in a dispute, Frederick exploited the hostility of the German princes to his cousin and summoned him to court. However, when he failed to obey the summons, the contumacious duke was deprived of all his fiefs, which were divided among his enemies. In June 1183 Frederick agreed the Treaty of Constance which marked the start of a new policy in Italy. The cities attained self-government, complete with the regalia and the right to appoint their own magistrates in return for recognition of the Emperor’s sovereignty in a semi-feudal regime. In Germany too he was attempting to strengthen his authority through co-operation and diplomacy. Seemingly victorious in Germany, Frederick secured the marriage of his son Henry to the heiress of the Sicilian throne, which his family inherited the death of William II in 1189.
In Germany, he appears to have achieved some success in his later years, his authority was gradually undermined by the princes who were the only real benefactors from the splitting of Henry the Lion’s great territories and he failed to establish a hereditary right of succession. In Italy, his successive policies of oppressive reaction and diplomacy culminated in a failure to consolidate the northern cities and he achieved only nominal power. Though he adopted different approaches in Germany and Italy he failed to make significant any progress in either country.
Bibliography
Davis, R.H.C., A History of Medieval Europe (London, 1957; latest edn; London, 2006)
Barraclough, Geoffrey, The Origins of Modern Germany (Oxford, 1946; latest edn; Oxford, 1947)
Brooke, Z.N., A History of Europe, 911- 1198 (Great Britain, 1938)
Waley, Daniel, The Italian City-Republics (New York, 1969; latest edn; New York, 1988)
Haverkamp, Alfred, Medieval Germany, 1056-1253 (New York, 1988)
Hyde, J.K., Society and Politics in Medieval Italy: The evolution of the civil life, 1000-1350 (London, 1973)
Tabacco, Giovanni, The Struggle for Power in Medieval Italy (Cambridge, 1989)
Fuhrmann, Horst, Germany in the High Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1986)
Jones, Philip, The Italian City State (New York, 1977)