Henry, the new king of the Romans, just 30 years of age, tall and blond, every inch his forebearer the great Charlemagne had a one track mind. There was one thing he wanted and that was the imperial crown.

It is now 60 years since there last had been a crowned emperor. We had such an interregnum before, in the 10th century between the death of emperor Berengar of Friuli, yes, me neither, and the coronation of Otto the Great in 962. This, even shorter gap, had resulted in the transfers of the imperial honour from the Carolingians to the rulers of the German Lands.

It was high time to go to Rome and be crowned emperor. Otherwise more people will ask as John of Salisbury had:  Who appointed the Germans to be judges over the peoples of the earth? Who gave these brutish, unruly people the arbitrary authority to elect a ruler over the heads of the people?

But to get to Rome for a medieval imperial coronation requires more than just picking up a plane ticket. First our new Barbarossa needs to assert his position in the empire, gather followers for the journey and establish peace and justice. He needs to convince the pope to send an invitation and the king of France not to send an army to stop him. Most of all he needs to calm down the Empire sufficiently so that it does not fall into anarchy whilst he is away.

And whilst he is busy making peace between the warring factions, convincing them that all he cares about is being semper Augustus, always augmenting the empire and reassuring everyone that he is not just enriching his family as his predecessors had done, that is when he walks away with the most valuable prize of them all, the kingdom of Bohemia.

The music for the show is Flute Sonata in E-flat major, H.545 by Carl Phillip Emmanuel Bach (or some claim it as BWV 1031 Johann Sebastian Bach) performed and arranged by Michel Rondeau under Common Creative Licence 3.0.

As always:

Homepage with maps, photos, transcripts and blog: www.historyofthegermans.com

Facebook: @HOTGPod 

Twitter: @germanshistory

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To make it easier for you to share the podcast, I have created separate playlists for some of the seasons that are set up as individual podcasts. they have the exact same episodes as in the History of the Germans, but they may be a helpful device for those who want to concentrate on only one season.

So far I have:

The Ottonians

Salian Emperors and Investiture Controversy

Frederick Barbarossa and the early Hohenstaufen

Frederick II Stupor Mundi

Saxony and Eastward Expansion

The Hanseatic League

The Teutonic Knights

The Holy Roman Empire 1250-1356