Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 209 – The First Habsburg Emperor, which is also episode 7 of season 11: The Fall and Rise of the House of Habsburg.

Today we – and the Habsburgs – stride back on to the grand stage of European politics. Not with a titan of history or monarch whose long and fruitful reign resonates across the centuries, but with Friedrich III, better known as the Reichserzschlafmütze - the imperial arch sleepy head, Or perhaps more fittingly the imperial arch dawdler.

He ruled from 1440 to 1493, a total of 53 years - the longest reign of any Holy (or unholy) Roman Emperors (bar Constantine VIII). And yet, is also the most derided of reigns. In 1878 the Historian Georg Voigt sneered: “He was not remotely capable of handling such far-reaching politics, leaving Bohemia to its own devices, the Hungarian throne dispute to the helpless queen dowager, Austria to the arrogant dynasts, and the mercenary and robber bands.” “His light, simple hair, his long face with little movement, and his sedate gait betrayed a sluggish, deliberate nature, to which any enthusiasm, indeed any excitement, was alien. His love of peace has been endlessly mocked, but it was based on a completely dull sense of manhood and honour. No prince was so easily consoled by such insolent and repeated insults.” End quote.

Modern historians are kinder, praising his thorough education and dogged determination to preserve what was left of the majesty of the Holy Roman Emperors. But even they can’t avoid calling him flabby, underhand and happy to sell out his friends and allies.

Not exactly the kind of guy one wants to spend three or four episodes with. But this is history, not Hollywood. The nice guys do not usually win by yanking hard on the levers of destiny. More often than not tenacious men of low cunning, who weasel their way through, are the ones who are bringing the results.

And results he did get. At the end of his reign, the empire had changed profoundly. The open constitution of the Middle Ages had given way to a denser and more structured organization.

Why and how Friedrich III – despite all his many shortcomings - got to move the needle of German history is what we will look at over the next few weeks.

But before we start let me just mention the historyofthegermans.com website. That is where you find episode transcripts complete with images of objects or artworks I mention on the show, maps and portraits as well as links to related episodes. There are season overviews, playlists by ruler, book recommendations, blogposts and lots more. If you subscribe, you get an email with the full transcript every time I release a new episode. Plus if you go there, even if you do not come to support the show, it raises the profile of the website, which means it ranks higher in Google searches, which then means more people find the show. A win-win for all of us.

And today we want to thank Lynne E., Kris S., Jacob, Simon T., Seb B. and Geert Jan K. whose generosity makes all this possible.

And with that, back to the show

It is October 1439 and Albrecht, King of the Romans, king of Bohemia and king of Hungary is dead. This energetic and warlike prince was felled not by enemy action, but by dysentry he picked up on a campaign against the Turks. He was on his way to Vienna believing that if only he could once more see the walls of his hometown, he would survive. But he didn’t. His wife, the formidable Eliabeth, daughter of emperor Sigismund prevented the body of the dead king to get to Austria where he had wanted to be buried. Instead, she diverted the funeral cortege to Fehérvár (Stuhlweissenburg), the ancient burial place of Hungarian kings since Stephen I.

Albrecht II did not have a son when he died. But his wife Elisabeth was pregnant. Her doctors assured her the child would be a boy, a boy who was to become the heir to the crowns of Hungary and Bohemia, and the duchy of Austria.

The magnates of Hungary faced a dilemma. They were loyal to Elisabeth, the daughter of Sigismund who had ruled Hungary for half a century, and hence her son was the legitimate heir.

But then the Turkish offensive of 1439 had only stopped because of the disease. Sooner or later the Ottomans were going to be back. And probably sooner if they found out that the kingdom was ruled by a newborn. In other words, they needed a fully functional ruler.

To square the circle they suggested to Elisabeth that she should marry the king of Poland, Wladyslaw III. That would unite the forces of Poland and Hungary under a competent military leader, a leader who might even rally the feared Hussite fighters into a crusade against the Turks.

However, Elisabeth would not hear these more than reasonable arguments. She was convinced she was carrying a son and she did not want to squander the boy’s chances to become king - nor her chances of ruling Hungary as regent. As I said, she was a formidable lady.

Still needs must, and the Hungarians elected Wladislaw as king of Hungary and were preparing his coronation.

Elisabeth had to stop them. How? By using – drumroll - the crown of St. Stephen. This was one of Europe’s oldest crowns—by tradition a papal gift from pope Sylvester II to King Stephen in the year 1000, though more likely made in Constantinople around 1070. Either way, it was sacred, ancient, and indispensable for a viable coronation. So Elisabeth had it stolen.

We know all about this heist, because the lady who snuck into the vaults of Visegrad castle, Helene Kottanerin, wrote it all down , how she placed some decoy ladies in waiting in the castle who let her in, how she filed through locks, removed and then replaced the seals and sewed the invaluable crown into a cushion. Now though lady Helene is adamant she brought the crown to her mistress, queen Elisabeth, safe and sound, today the cross at the top of the crown is bent. So maybe, maybe someone sat down on that cushion when he or she shouldn’t have … who knows.

The result was that Elisabeth had the crown and shortly afterwards a boy, on whose head she then placed said crown. Wladislaw III had to make do with a fake crown. But his army and his support was not fake. Elisabeth and her son, who she named Ladislaus after the saint king Ladislaus I of Hungary, came under siege in Bratislava. Very reluctantly the queen had to seek support from her husband’s distant cousin Albrecht VI, the younger son of Ernst the Iron. With his help she pushed Wladislaw III out of Western Hungary, but most of the Kingdom was lost. As for Wladislaw III, we will hear more about him in a moment.

In Bohemia, the situation was marginally better. The Bohemian estates were prepared to accept Ladislaus on condition that he would grow up in Bohemia. Plus that effective control of the kingdom was to sit with a regency council of Bohemian barons, not with Elisabeth.

Elisabeth and Ladislaus decamped to his third realm, the duchy of Austria.

Given a weak and feeble woman could not be entrusted with the affairs of the heir of so many crowns and lands, Elisabeth was forced to accept her Habsburg cousins by marriage as guardians of Young Ladislaus, best known to posterity as Ladislaus Postumus. Two years later, Elizabeth was dead and the cousins, namely the elder, Friedrich took charge of the boy.

This Friedrich, the Vth archduke of this name, will soon call himself Friedrich III, King of the Romans. He was born in 1415 in Innsbruck just when his father, Ernst Iron had come to Tyrol to protect it against emperor Sigismund. He was tall, blond and broad shouldered, no surprise given he was the son of Cymburga of Masovia, a famous beauty who had lured his father to Krakow and into a serious disagreement with his family and whose party trick was to crack nuts with her bare hands and drive nails into walls with her fingers.

Friedrich had lost his father aged 9 and his mother when he was 14. As an orphan he grew up at the court of his uncle Frederick IV’s of the Tyrol. Having reached maturity in 1430 he took over Carinthia and Carniola, two of his father’s lands, but not the much richer Styria. His uncle Friedrich IV refused to relinquish the guardianship and hence the income.

It was Friedrich’s younger brother, the already mentioned Albrecht VI who forced their uncle to give up Styria. These two brothers could not be more different. Where Friedrich tended to avoid conflict and simply waited for nature to take its course, Albrecht was a belligerent man, always ready to use force to get what he thought was his. In other words, Albrecht VI was very much the son of Ernst the Iron, whilst Friedrich, if he resembled any previous Habsburgs, was in the mold of his Albertine great uncles, who had spent their lives being pushed around by the Leopoldine dukes.

In 1436 Friedrich goes on pilgrimage to the Holy Land. On the one hand, this was an act of genuine piety, but it carried as an added advantage a ban on any attacks on his property. And such attacks were ever more likely as his relationship with his brother soured and powerful families in the neighbourhood could smell the young duke’s weakness.

In Spring 1439, Friedrich’s uncle, Friedrich IV of the Tyrol had died, leaving behind a 12-year old son by the name of Sigismund. Sigismund and the Tyrol was placed under Friedrich’s guardianship. And as we mentioned already, in 1440 the heir to king Albrecht II, the baby boy Ladislaus Postumus, had also become his ward.

Which led to the most unusual situation that for the first time in 77 years all the Habsburg possessions were under the control of just one man, Friedrich, at this point still Friedrich V, archduke of Austria. He may not be the legal owner of Austria, the Tyrol and the ancestral lands that were now known as Further Austria, but he could use all its resources for his purposes. And he was acting on behalf of baby Ladislaus in the affairs of his kingdoms of Hungary and Bohemia.

All this made Friedrich the up to this point, most powerful Habsburg.

Which was one of the reasons that on February 2nd, 1440 the Prince Electors unanimously chose Friedrich V of Austria to be the king of the Romans and future emperor.

Friedrich let three months pass before he formally accepted the election. What took him so long?

One argument could have been that the title was more hassle than it was worth. Our ever present guide, Aeneas Silvio Piccolomini expressed it best when he harangued the Germans in a famous address: “you acknowledge the emperor for your king and master, nevertheless he possesses but a precarious sovereignty; he has no powers; you only obey him when you choose \ and you are seldom inclined to obey. You are all desirous to be free: neither the princes nor estates render to him what is due ; he has no revenues, no treasure. Hence you are involved in endless contests, and daily wars; hence you suffer rapine, murder and conflagrations, and a thousand evils which arise from divided authority.” End quote.

Yep, that is an accurate description.

In the last season we have gone through our fair share of rapine, murder and conflagrations, the Mainzer Stiftsfehde, the Princes war, the wars against Jakoba of Holland, the constant internecine warfare between brothers and cousins over ever smaller territories. It all reminds one of Sayre’s law that “Academic politics are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small”.

The absence of an effective central authority that could provide peace and justice had been a constant complaint since at least the passing of emperor Karl IV. His successors, Wenceslaus the Lazy, Ruprecht of the Palatinate and Sigismund barely ever set foot into the core regions of the empire. Wenceslaus and Sigismund were far too embroiled in peripheral matters, Bohemia, Hungary, the Teutonic Knights, the Schism. Ruprecht’s scope had shrunk to his homeland once his journey to Rome failed to get past Milan. None of them was able to impose an effective ban on feuding that was backed by an effective court system and consensus amongst the princes.

This vacuum was filled initially by the prince electors who in 1400 replaced Wenceslaus the Lazy with the less inebriated but equally ineffective Ruprecht of the Palatinate. In 1425 they tried to do the same to Sigismund but that time the emperor held out. Not that he was able to live up to expectations then, given the chaos in Bohemia and Venetian pressure on Hungary.

From around this time intellectuals, politicians, and writers of all stripes demanded change, the famous Reichsreform, reform of the empire. Things needed to be put on an even keel. A system of courts needed to be established that prevented the endless feuding that ruined the land and weakened the empire against his enemies.

On that everyone agreed. But, as Piccolomini had said”you are all desirous to be free and seldom inclined to obey”. The constituent members of the empire, its limbs as they were called, struggled to coordinate. The Electors believed they had been put in charge and they could point to the Golden Bull as proof. But their small club excluded princes who were richer and more powerful than them, like the Bavarian Wittelsbachs and the Habsburgs. And what about the Brunswicks, Mecklenburgs, Pomeranians, The Landgraves of Hesse, the house of Anhalt, the Württembergs? They were all NFI and they didn’t like it.

Then you had the free and imperial cities, as well as those cities that were technically subject to a prince, but de facto independent, like most of the Hanse cities. And within these princely states you had their estates, as we have seen in the Habsburg lands, in Württemberg, and almost everywhere.

All of these entities needed to be slotted into a system that everyone could agree on. So, when we judge old Friedrich and say, why didn’t he sort it out right away, just think about how we would go about changing a constitution that is 200 years old and deeply dysfunctional today.

Ok, that is one huge, messy, wriggly can of worms, but not the only item in the imperial in-tray.

We still have our old chestnut, church reform. The Council of Constance, as we have seen, resolved one major issue, the schism that had produced three competing popes. But beyond that? It had been the first ever gathering of the European political, religious and intellectual elite and a massive party. But in terms of tangible progress beyond the election of pope Martin V – not much. The fundamental issues of the quality of the clergy, the trading of benefices and the greed of the prelates had not been addressed. Instead they had burned Jan Hus who had pointed out these failings with the consequences we have discussed in some detail already.

The council of Constance had mandated a series of subsequent church councils to be held to address these shortfalls. There were some failed attempts at getting things going in the decade after Constance, but in 1431 the council of Basel got together. Basel was focused on church reform and – as it had become ever more obvious that the Hussites could not be defeated militarily – resolving this crisis.

And in 1436, the council of Basel achieved at least one of these objectives. The Compactata of Prague/Basel were agreed. Bohemia returned to the bosom of mother church. Some of the moderate Hussite demands, like the eucharist in the form of bread and wine and the expropriation of the church, were granted allowing for the suppression of the more radical forces.

As for item 2 on the Council’s agenda, the reform of the church, this spiralled rapidly into a bust-up with the papacy. Martin V’s successor, Pope Eugene IV, realised that a church council, in particular a sequence of church councils taking place far from Rome posed a material threat to papal authority. In particular since the intellectual leaders of the movement, the conciliarists held the view that the council as the community of all the faithful ranked above the pope.

Eugene IV first tried to simply dissolve the council, but could not cut through. Then in 1437, he ordered the council to move to Ferrara, ostensibly to facilitate an agreement with the orthodox church about ending that much older schism. Some of the prelates followed the order, others stayed behind in Basel.

This had now led to a stalemate. On one side we have the rump council in Basel, insisting it is the only true representation of the faithful, whilst the Ferrara council believed the same. So instead of two popes we now have two councils.

Basel suspended and then deposed pope Eugene IV, who in turn excommunicated the Basel council. And so to put the cherry on the cake, the Basel council elected a new pope, Felix V a former duke of Savoy who had entered a monastery and was by all accounts a most pious man. The Schism is back.

The imperial princes and estates who cannot agree on much did agree on one thing, that they did not want to get involved. There were lots of sympathies for the council, in particular because many conciliarists took the view that secular rulers should take charge of the management of the church. But few princes wanted to go the whole hog and firmly embed the schism as had happened when the French sided with the Avignon papacy in 1378.

So the Germans declared themselves neutral and required Albrecht II to sign a neutrality pledge as a condition of his election.

Excellent, so we have the empire in a structural bind and the church in a total mess. What else could be wrong?

Ah, yes. There are the external enemies. We already heard about the Ottomans, but there were also forces nibbling away at imperial power in the west and north. The French kings had already taken much of what used the kingdom of Burgundy and were eying Alsace. Meanwhile their cousins, the Valois dukes of Burgundy had gone from strength to strength. Holland, Seeland and Hennegau had now gone, as had Brabant. Luxemburg was close to go over and Geldern was next. As the weight of Burgundy’s possessions shifted eastwards, they wanted to shed their vassalage to the French king and become full time imperial princes, even kings.

Then in the north the Poles were taking the better half of Prussia from the Teutonic knights, whilst Scandinavian kingdoms gained footholds on the southern shore of the Baltic.

With three massive issues at hand, what the empire needed was the greatest emperor of all time, somebody who combined the qualities of Augustus, Charlemagne and Wu of Jin. And in their desperation the Prince electors harked back to that age-old prophecy of Joachim of Fiore that there would be a Last emperor who would go to Jerusalem and who would usher in a 1000 years of Bliss – a sort of rapture for everyone -. And through some odd iterations in 1440 it was common knowledge that that Last Emperor was called Friedrich.

And they had a Friedrich at hand, our Friedrich V of Austria. And Friedrich, blond, broad shouldered looked the part. They conveniently overlooked that he had already been to Jerusalem and nothing had happened, but maybe it will next time he goes wearing his crown.

He may have believed this prophecy himself, at least we will see later that he was prone to such tales. What he did though was take the name Friedrich III to appear closer to the legendary Hohenstaufen emperors Friedrich Barbarossa and Friedrich II, conveniently writing his ancestor Friedrich the Handsome out of history.

And did they get a new Augustus, Charlemagne and Wu of Jin? Well sort of. They got Augustus’ lack of military prowess, Charlemagne’s cunning and Wu’s problems with his own family.

But I am jumping ahead.

In truth, his reign starts quite well. He accepted the election with great pomp and circumstance. It is one of his things that despite an otherwise quite modest lifestyle, he saw the need to perform majesty and imperial power. He did not get quite as brilliant at it as his son Maximilian, but he put on some great mise-en-scene.

And one of those was his imperial progress to his coronation in Aachen. Given Sigismund’s preoccupation with Central Europe, very few people outside of Nürnberg and Regensburg had ever seen an imperial progress. These journeys carry huge importance in reaffirming imperial power and influence.

In 1442 he held court in Frankfurt. It was a brilliantly attended event where Friedrich issued the Reformatio Frederici, his first stab at imperial reform. And whilst many historians are dismissive of it and say it was just a reiteration of existing laws going back to Karl IV, Ruprecht of the Palatinate and Wenceslaus, fact is that these laws had fallen into disuse. Passing a general prohibition of feuding, safety guarantees for priests, women, merchants and even peasants as well as rules about maintaining quality of coinage must have been most welcome, even if they formally existed already. What mattered most though was whether these rules could be enforced.

Which is where his actual improvement comes in. Friedrich III established the Kammergericht as a replacement for the Hofgericht. Hof means court, as in the court of a ruler. The Hofgericht is the lawcourt of the king or emperor. It goes back to the early Middle Ages and is usually comprised of senior nobles present at the imperial court. It usually deals with conflicts arising between nobles who can only be judged by their peers.

The problem with the Hofgericht was that it required the imperial court to come around and do the judging, which was no longer happening since all the recent emperors were busy abroad. Moreover the judges were laymen, not lawyers and proceedings were rarely written up, meaning there were no precedents on which to build a robust legal framework.

The Kammergericht comes from Kammer, meaning chamber. These are courts who met inside, in a fixed location. They are staffed with lawyers, not laymen and their proceedings are entirely in writing. The parties exchange writs and the court passes a written judgement with its reasoning. The Kammergericht was crucial in the professionalisation of justice in the empire. It established a whole new profession, the lawyers who argue their cases, not on what appears right and proper, but based on precedent and the text of the law. And that law is increasingly Roman Law as opposed to the somewhat unstructured and oral traditions of Germanic law. The Kammergericht was a big step towards Rechtssicherheit, legal certainty, knowing where to sue and being able to assess the chances of success upfront.

Before you go, oh hurrah, Friedrich III is the guy who gets it all done, we have to touch some grass. Sure he established these courts, but the enforcement of their judgements required the cooperation of the princes and in case of the electors, wasn’t even applicable to them and their lands in the first place. What it came down to was the standing and reputation of the emperor and the quality of the judgements that determined their effectiveness.

But still, I would argue this is a tik in the well done box for the much maligned emperor Frederick III.

Sadly, it will be a while before the next tik appears.

Coming down from his coronation in Aachen and his promulgation of his imperial reforms, Friedrich went to tackle the second problem, the pending schism.

On his way to Basel he took a detour around Switzerland, where there were still some places with Habsburg sympathies. Even Zurich, formally member of the Old Confederation, opened its gates and received the emperor with great fanfare. When he got to Basel, his welcome was again enthusiastic. The council fathers may have hoped the emperor would after all side with them against the pope. But something most have gone wrong during the meetings. All we are told is that Friedrich left in haste, and shortly afterwards their pope Felix V packed his bags too and returned to Savoy. These two events seriously harmed the standing of the Council of Basel. And that of Friedrich himself who was supposed to be neutral, and instead had messed things up.

On the positive side, Friedrich picked up one of his most important advisers in Basel, and that is none other than friend of the show Silvio Aeneas Piccolomini. Piccolomini had been an avid defender of conciliary ideas and even served as private secretary to antipope Felix V. But by 1443 he was disillusioned and was seeking a way back into the papal grace.

Back home in Austria the emperor was confronted with news out of Hungary.

As we mentioned most of Hungary was now under the rule of Wladislaw III, who was also king of Poland. And he had been quite successful in repelling the Turks who had once again tried to take Belgrade and Transylvania.

In 1444 the pope Eugene IV believed it was time for a final push to drive the Turks out of the Balkans and relieve Constantinople, whose orthodox ruler had just agreed to submit to the Western church. And things looked promising as the Ottoman empire was ruled by a 12 year-old boy, Mehmed II, whose father had just resigned.

A crusade was called. An army assembled comprised of Hungarians, Poles, Bohemians as well as the Teutonic Knights, Venetians, Burgundians, Serbs and of course Vlad II Dracul, the voivode of Walachia. Friedrich and the empire stayed well clear of these events.

The battle that took place at Varna on the Black Sea was exceptionally bloody with huge casualties on both sides. Still the crusaders lost. The young king of Poland and Hungary fell, his body was never found. The Ottomans returned in 1448 and swiped up much of the remaining Balkans up to Belgrade. The defeats meant that when Constantinople was attacked in 1453, no European forces came down landside to relieve what was left of the Byzantine empire, bringing an end to a 1000 years of history and one of my favourite podcasts, the History of Byzantium.

Friedrich’s lack of support to the crusade was not yet such a big deal as the German lands west of Bohemia and Austria still felt covered by a wide buffer zone, but that would change.

It was another invasion that got the empire falling out of love with Friedrich, not only because it was closer to home, but also because he himself had triggered it.

Friedrich was after all not just king of the Romans but also a Habsburg. And as such he wanted his ancestral lands back from the Swiss confederation. That is what his trip to Zurich was about. Zurich had fallen out with the other members of the Swiss confederation over some land – as one would. Zurich then sought support from the Habsburgs, specifically Friedrich III. Friedrich was more than happy to oblige in exchange for the return of their ancient homeland.

The other Swiss saw that as a fundamental betrayal and a civil war broke out. The Confederates besieged Zurich. Zurich appealed to Friedrich for help. Friedrich was broke. Just in case you were wondering he was and will remain broke, as will most Habsburgs through the centuries. It is a bit of feature, like the lip.

Unable to muster an army he could send to relieve his allies in Zurich, he wrote or had his chancellor Piccolimini write a letter to all of europe. In this letter, formally addressed to king lark VII of France he described the Swiss Confederation as an abomination that threatened the very foundations of late Medieval society. Every Christian ruler had a duty to suppress them and return the world back to its god-given structure.

Whether King Charles VII of France was stirred by his Christian duty or more mundane matters is not for me to judge. He did answer the call and sent an army of allegedly 20,000 to Switzerland. This was a particularly rough lot that went by the name of Armagnacs, mercenaries from all across europe who had got their stripes during the Hundred Years war which was winding down.

The dauphin of France took these mercenaries to Switzerland. As it happened they did not get much beyond Basel where the Swiss were waiting for them. The battle ended in a draw, yes, dear Swiss listeners, it was a draw. Of the 2,000 Swiss, 1,500 lay dead, bt the losses for the mercenaries were maybe four times higher. The Armagnacs had enough and retreated into Alsace.

Money to pay them did not arrive, so these guys did what these sort of people always did, they took whatever they believed they were owed from the locals. Their French commanders did not mind as long as they did not do this sort of thing back home in France. The locals, many of whom were living on Habsburg land asked their lord and emperor for help. Friedrich froze, his plan to get free soldiers had backfired badly. He did not know what to do and busied himself with standard administration and the lawcourts, pretending it had nothing to do with him. Meanwhile his own lands and the empire in the west was ravaged by French soldiers. A year after the Armagnacs had appeared, and no imperial help appeared, the local lords took the initiative, led by the Count Palatine, mustered forces to get rid of them. And a few weeks later the Armagnacs returned to France and were reintegrated into the French armies.

These disasters wiped out whatever goodwill Friedrich had had in the empire. Nobody believed any more that he would bring about 1000 years of bliss. The number of cases brought before his brand new law courts dropped by 2/3rds. At the imperial diets he had enjoyed up until then, he was now on the back foot, having to defend his position.

Things were dire.

He needed to break out of this rut. And soon. His cousin Sigismund had now grown up and the Tyrol was no longer under his control. And even little Ladislaus wasn’t that little any more. The day wasn’t far when he might have to give up control of the duchy of Austria and whatever role he now played in Hungary and Bohemia.

He saw one road to get back. It was a road many of his predecessors had travelled, though very rarely with much success. And that road was the road to Rome. He wanted to be crowned emperor. That would rebuild his prestige and give him back the room to manoeuvre that the Armagnac war had cost him.

But there was an issue. The pope was not going to crown him unless the schism was resolved. Eugene was clear, dissolve the council of Basel and I crown you, but not before. The Council of Basel was rapidly losing ground and even its supporters were coming round to the idea that a compromise with pope Eugene IV needed to be found. The question was, on what terms.

Since the council of Constance several European monarchies had made arrangements with the papacy that regulated the influence of Rome in matters of what would rapidly become national churches. For instance France had issue the pragmatic sanction of Bourges in 1438 that removed almost any papal influence over the Gallican church, in particular cut Rome off from the income of the French church. England had passed the statute of provisors and the statute of Praemunire even earlier in 1351 and 1353, limiting papal influence in the election of bishops and abbots.

It was therefore rational for the Imperial church to expect a similar arrangement to be negotiated by their emperor, Friedrich III. The three main areas of contention were, a) who elected bishops and abbots, b) the payment of the so-called annates, the passing through of the first year income of a benefice to Rome and c) the practice of benefice holders to appoint someone else to perform the office they were appointed to.

The settlement that Friedrich and his aides negotiated said that

a) elections of bishops and abbots should be free, however, the pope can overrule them if he has a worthier candidate,

b) that with the exception of a listed set of bishoprics and abbeys, annates have to be paid to Rome, and on

c) that the ban on having stand-ins was lifted.

Basically, Friedrich III handed pope Eugene everything and the kitchen sink. The pope had much more influence on church appointments in the empire than he had elsewhere in europe. Moreover, his fiscal powers, in particular annates and indulgences were a significant burden. On some rough estimates the empire now covered 25-30% of papal income, far more than France and England. This agreement that went on to become known as the Konkordat of Vienna did resolve the conflict for now, but started another, more underground movement where broad sections of the clergy and the population complained bitterly about the overbearing influence of Rome, adding to the undercurrent that broke through in the Reformation. So, nobody can tell me that Friedrich III’s reign had been of no consequence.

So, what did he get in return. Two things he really cared about. The first was control of the church in the Habsburg lands, including the establishment of the much longed for bishopric of Vienna. 80 years ago his great uncle Rudolf the Founder had built the church of St. Stephen in Vienna as a cathedral, complete with cathedral canons, but no bishopric had been forthcoming. Friedrich III fulfilled this long held ambition.

And the other concession he received was his coronation as emperor. He travelled to Rome, bringing with him his whole family, his brother Albrecht VI, and his wards, Ladislaus Postumus and Sigismund of the Tyrol. And to complete the picture he got married there too, to Eleanor of Portugal. He was already 38 years old and this was the first time he got married. As with his general sluggishness, his libido was modest. Ther are no reports of any relationships before or after his marriage to Eleanor, something quite unusual at the time. His uncle and nephew of Tyrol were known for their extracurricular activities, as was his brother.

On March 19, 1452 he was crowned emperor in St. Peters in Rome, as was his wife. His family stood by him in a great display of Habsburg unity. The coronation was followed by splendid festivities hosted by the new pope Nicolas V. This must have been the most harmonious imperial coronation ever. It was also the last ever to take place in Rome and the last that was considered a true elevation in rank. Friedrichs successors will call themselves emperors from day one. No papal confirmation required.

And as the procession was trundling back home towards Austria, Friedrich may be contemplating whether his newfound status as emperor plus the elevation of Vienna as a bishopric was worth throwing the German church under the bus. Well, the answer to that will be in next week’s episode. I hope you will join us again.

And if you find all of this worth supporting, go to historyofthegermans.com/support, where you can find various options to keep this show on the road and advertising free.