Thread by @germanshistory

German history has its share of difficult father-son relationships, but few are as sad as the rift between emperor Frederick II (1194-1250) and his son Henry (VIII). It is the inevitability with which events are hurtling to their conclusion that makes it almost Greek. (1/

Frederick II had been elected and properly crowned king of the Romans in 1215. The following five years were spent organising his new kingdom so that he could leave it safely in the hands of a regent for his 6-year-old son Henry, who stayed behind. (2/

Henry was born in 1211 to Frederick’s first wife, Constance of Aragon who died in 1222. We know little about his childhood. After his father left Germany, he was brought up by one of the most eminent German prelates, Archbishop Engelbert of Cologne. (3/

In the preceding 20+ years the dukes, counts, margraves but also the bishops and abbots had taken advantage of the long absence of effective central power in the German lands. By constantly swapping sides, they had extracted huge concessions from the crown. (4/

These so-called imperial princes had separated from the general aristocracy and began to extend their territory whist simultaneously deepening their control. They assumed formerly royal privileges like dispensing justice, imposing tariffs, minting coins and building castles. (5/

The expansion of princely power impacted smaller aristocrats, monasteries smaller bishoprics who found themselves in direct vassalage to a prince and no longer to the king. This affected both their and their rights as they were now subject to princely justice and taxes. (6/

Such periods of inner turmoil and rising princely power had previously been followed by periods of recovery of royal power. Henry the Fowler, Henry II, Henry V and Barbarossa had each found novel ways to reshape their position – role models Henry (VII) could draw on (7/

Henry had some natural allies, i.e., all those who feared to be sucked into one of these emerging princely territorial states; the lower nobility, the Ministeriales and the cities. The problem was that these were individually not very powerful and hard to coordinate (8/

For a successful policy Henry needed at least some of the princes to support him. But the princes had zero incentive to support a policy intended to reverse their gains of the last decades. The only way to bring them on board was money. (9/

Being a territorial ruler in the HRE was expensive business. The princes competed for the most splendid court at their residences in Marburg, Cologne or Vienna where an endless string of tournaments, feasts and festivals offered the opportunity to display their status. (10/

And there was the cost of gaining new territory, either by force or by purchase. Money was made readily available by Italian bankers at horrendous interest rates and against pledge of their possessions, adding to the annual expenditure. (11/

Hence the second plank of Henry’s plan was to use the huge wealth of the Kingdom of Sicily to bribe at least some of the princes into submission. It was a decent idea. Any of Henry’s predecessors would have pursued a similar plan. It made sense from where they came from. (12/

But that was the problem. The actual emperor, Frederick II did not come from where he and his predecessors had come from. Frederick had come from Sicily. If you look at the world from Palermo, it looks very different to the perspective Henry get from Gelnhausen and Haguenau (13/

Frederick II saw the main conflict not with the imperial princes, but with the papacy. He wanted to bring back the concept of the world be ruled by two swords, the spiritual sword wielded by the pope and the temporal sword made of iron brandished by the emperor. (15/

The papacy under Innocent III (1161-1216) and his successors was no longer willing to recognise the emperor as their equal. If Frederick wanted to be recognised as the temporal ruler of Christendom, he had to force the pope, if need be militarily. (16/

That made Lombardy the lynchpin of his strategy. If he can gain control of Northern Italy he would be encircling the papal states putting Rome and the pope at his mercy. For that he needed the knights the imperial princes could provide. (17/

Frederick and Henry’s strategies were incompatible. But they never met in the 15 years between 1220 and 1235. Nor did they seemingly find a way to agree on a joint way forward by letter. One being immersed in German culture and the other raised in Norman Sicily. (18/

The princes quickly realised there was a rift between their two monarchs that they could exploit. Every time Henry tried to assert his rights as king, they appealed to Frederick who reversed his son’s decisions, thereby undermining and humiliating him. (19/

Henry’s position became so weak the princes coerced him into confirming the transfer of most royal rights on tariffs, tolls, mints, castles etc. to the imperial princes. When Henry tried to reverse this grant, Frederick cited him to an assembly at Aquilea (20/

Frederick sided with the princes and made Henry promise total obedience. Henry even authorised the pope to excommunicate him upon any act of disrespect towards his father or the princes, the “apples in the emperor’s eye”. (21/

As soon as Henry had returned home to Germany, he rebelled. Rebellion and feud were common forms of conflict resolution in Germany since time immemorial. Henry did not want to depose his father; he simply wanted to assert his position and regain respect. (22/

Frederick came up to Germany in 1235 not with an army but with chariots of gold and silver, camels, leopards, dromedaries, and exotic attendants. The princes, sided with him and Henry’s rebellion collapsed. (23/

Henry expected to be reprimanded and probably temporarily removed from his position, as was German custom. But for Frederick II his son’s rebellion was high treason which had only one sanction, death, irrespective of rank or relationship (24/

All he felt able to do was to commute his son’s sentence to life imprisonment. After 7 years of incarceration, Henry drove his horse over a cliff. He was just 30-years old thought he had done nothing wrong.

Frederick’s struggle with the papacy ended with the complete wipe-out of his dynasty and was another step towards the Holy Roman Empire as a mixed monarchy with limited central authorities. open.spotify.com/episode/4PIvXz…