Holy, Roman, Frankish: a Sketch of the Political
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Vedran Sulovsky HOLY, ROMAN, FRANKISH: A SKETCH OF THE POLITICAL ICONOGRAPHY OF FREDERICK BARBAROSSA MA Thesis in Comparative History, with a specialization in Interdisciplinary Medieval Studies. Central European University CEU eTD Collection Budapest May 2015 HOLY, ROMAN, FRANKISH: A SKETCH OF THE POLITICAL ICONOGRAPHY OF FREDERICK BARBAROSSA by Vedran Sulovsky (Croatia) Thesis submitted to the Department of Medieval Studies, Central European University, Budapest, in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Master of Arts degree in Comparative History, with a specialization in Interdisciplinary Medieval Studies. Accepted in conformance with the standards of the CEU. ____________________________________________ Chair, Examination Committee ____________________________________________ Thesis Supervisor ____________________________________________ CEU eTD Collection Examiner ____________________________________________ Examiner Budapest Month YYYY i HOLY, ROMAN, FRANKISH: A SKETCH OF THE POLITICAL ICONOGRAPHY OF FREDERICK BARBAROSSA by Vedran Sulovsky (Croatia) Thesis submitted to the Department of Medieval Studies, CentralEuropeanUniversity, Budapest, in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Master of Arts degree in Comparative History, with a specialization in Interdisciplinary Medieval Studies. Accepted in conformance with the standards of the CEU. ____________________________________________ External Reader CEU eTD Collection Budapest May 2015 ii HOLY, ROMAN, FRANKISH: A SKETCH OF THE POLITICAL ICONOGRAPHY OF FREDERICK BARBAROSSA by Vedran Sulovsky (Croatia) Thesis submitted to the Department of Medieval Studies, CentralEuropeanUniversity, Budapest, in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Master of Arts degree in Comparative History, with a specialization in Interdisciplinary Medieval Studies. Accepted in conformance with the standards of the CEU. ____________________________________________ External Supervisor CEU eTD Collection Budapest May 2015 iii I, the undersigned, Vedran Sulovsky, candidate for the MA degree in Comparative History, with a specialization in Interdisciplinary Medieval Studies declare herewith that the present thesis is exclusively my own work, based on my research and only such external information as properly credited in notes and bibliography. I declare that no unidentified and illegitimate use was made of the work of others, and no part of the thesis infringes on any person‘s or institution‘s copyright. I also declare that no part of the thesis has been submitted in this form to any other institution of higher education for an academic degree. Budapest, 20 May 2015 __________________________ Signature CEU eTD Collection iv Abstract The political iconography of Frederick Barbarossa has been the subject of innumerable debates since the rise of German romantic nationalism in the wake of the French revolution. I will examine the elements Barbarossa uses in a political context, thereby determining their purpose and their models. In the study of material sources, special focus will be placed on the growth of the cult of Saint Charlemagne in Aachen, which will be interpreted as an imitation of the cult of Constantine the Great in Byzantium. The motifs used in the Aachen objects will be compared to the motifs of courtly poetry and histories of the period, thereby attempting to demonstrate that the cult came into being slowly, its pinnacle being the reliquary shrine of Saint Charlemagne, where a dynastic principle replaced the elective one for the first time since 1125. Frederick took part in the second crusade, where he came to know Manuel Komnenos‘ ideology of renovation as well as the traditional Byzantine ideology of a holy empire. He also learned of Louis VII‘s support of the cult of St. Denis and the imitation of an earlier Frankish expedition to Jerusalem, whereby Louis became renowned as a saintly ruler. It is these two ideologies that Frederick was emulating from the beginning of his reign. The turning points of Frederick‘s programme were his royal coronation in 1152, the plague in Rome in 1167 and the fall of Jerusalem in 1187. During the first period, Frederick was presenting himself as the elected king who would unite the Hohenstaufen and the Welf parties. After 1167, when his cousin CEU eTD Collection Frederick of Rothenburg died, the importance of a dynastic principle grew as Frederick‘s son Henry became his father‘s only possible heir. When Jerusalem fell in 1187, Frederick‘s self- representation was slightly remodelled as he was now stepping into the role of God‘s banner bearer while retaining the former elements of his ideology. v Acknowledgements First of all, I would like to thank my supervisor, professor Daniel Ziemann, for all the trust he put in me almost two years ago. It has never been lacking since. It is mainly through his suggestions and support that I could study my chosen topic on an extended Erasmus leave in Heidelberg. I am grateful to my second reader, professor Béla Zsolt Szakács, for enthusiastically following my work and for advising and correcting me all along the way. Acknowledgements must also go to professor Zsuzsanna Reed, for her huge help in the final moments of the writing process. I am also grateful to professor Janos Bák, whose critical stance strongly influenced my work about a year ago. Special thanks goes to professor Kosana Jovanović, who told me about the CEU and on whose initiative I came here, and to professor Marina Vicelja-Matijašić, who supervised the early stages of my work on Barbarossa. I owe a big thank you to Annabella Pal, whose constant help during these two years cannot be forgotten. I would like to thank all of my friends, both old and new, for their constant support during these two years. I am especially thankful to Bojana Vasiljević for all the coffee and the discussions we had, and to Ivan Grabar and Alen Milosavljević for their unflinching critiques, logic and, most of all, patience. Finally, I would like to thank my whole family for supporting me during these two years, CEU eTD Collection but especially my mother, who did so much so that I could follow my dreams. Last but not least, I would like to thank my brother Bojan for all his help. vi Table of contents Thesis Goals and Historiography .................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1 – Historical Introduction: The Empire and Aachen (800 - 1145) ................................ 11 Chapter 2 – The Second Crusade and Its Aftermath: Frederick Becomes King (1145 - 1152) ... 15 Chapter 3 – Sacrum imperium: The Shadow of Rome (1152 - 1162) .......................................... 24 Chapter 4 – O rex mundi triumphator: Frederick Barbarossa and Aachen (1162 - 1169) ........... 47 Chapter 5 – A deo coronatus triumphator inclitus: Frederick‘s Apogee (1169 - 1187) ............... 67 Chapter 6 – Signifer dei: The Third Crusade and an Epilogue (1187 - 1190) .............................. 86 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................... 94 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................... 106 1. Primary Sources .................................................................................................................. 106 1.1. Collections of Various Document Types ..................................................................... 106 1.2. Diplomata ..................................................................................................................... 106 1.3. Narrative Primary Sources ........................................................................................... 106 1.4. Translations of Primary Sources .................................................................................. 109 CEU eTD Collection 2. Secondary Literature ........................................................................................................... 110 2.1. Regesta ......................................................................................................................... 110 2.2. Other ............................................................................................................................ 110 vii Figures......................................................................................................................................... 129 CEU eTD Collection viii List of Figures, Tables or Illustrations Figure 1. Aachen cathedral as seen from the North (image by author). ..................................... 129 Figure 2. Frederick Barbarossa‘s royal seal (1152 - 1155, Percy Ernst Schramm, Die deutschen Kaiser und Könige in Bildern ihrer Zeit: 751 - 1190, ed. Florentine Mütherich (Munich: Prestel, 1983), image 206. ....................................................................................................................... 130 Figure 3. The royal seal of Conrad III (1138 - 1152) , Wieczorek, Alfried, Bernd Schneidmüller and Stefan Weinfurter, eds., Die Staufer und Italien: Drei Innovationsregionen im mittelalterlichen Europa, vol 2 (Stuttgart: Konrad Theiss, 2010), image II.A.1. ....................... 130 Figure 4. Frederick Barbarossa‘s royal golden bull (1152 - 1155), Schramm, Die deutschen Kaiser und Könige in Bildern ihrer Zeit, images 208a-208b...................................................... 131 Figure 5. Frederick Barbarossa‘s imperial