Björn K. U. Weiler. Henry III of England and the Staufen Empire, 1216-1272. Woodbridge and Rochester: Boydell and Brewer, 2006. xi + 247 pp. $80.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-86193-280-1.
Reviewed by Shami Ghosh (Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto)
Published on H-German (January, 2009)
Commissioned by Susan R. Boettcher
Medieval Diplomacy: A Family Affair
Henry III of England had a long but rather stressful reign: succeeding to the throne in 1216 as an infant, he (or more accurately his regents) was faced with subduing civil war, recovering the lands on the continent lost by his father, keeping the barons under control, and avoiding excommunication. From Björn K.U. Weiler's illuminating (if extremely dense and often rather dry) narrative, it is clear that one of the principal means Henry used to deal with the problems that beset him was the cultivation of links with kings and aristocrats on the continent, as well as the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick II. This book provides an important narrative of the political history of England, France, and Germany in the thirteenth century, but perhaps an even more significant aspect of this study--especially for historians of Germany--is that it removes England from its insular fastness and places English politics firmly within a broader political context. In addition, Weiler also offers many insights on the nature of medieval foreign relations and the means by which they were conducted.
Weiler begins by pointing out that "foreign relations" or "diplomacy," if not further defined, are terms that are likely to be misunderstood when applied to this period. No medieval estate was even roughly comparable to the modern diplomatic corps; in addition, medieval "countries" were far more intimately connected with the person of the ruler than today's nation-states, and thus the relations between them hinged on personal ties between rulers. Furthermore, ecclesiastical and secular magnates in England, France, and the empire enjoyed a considerable degree of independence, and these aristocrats could, and often did, function not just as intermediaries who forged links between their overlords, but as independent parties who pursued foreign relations in their own right and made personal connections to their own advantage. Such ties were the norm, and medieval monarchs in this period commonly arranged marriages with the kin of other leading families all over Europe for themselves, their siblings, and their offspring. These marriages were, first and foremost, political and diplomatic arrangements, made to secure support both against what would hopefully become mutual external enemies, as well as internal rebels. The other factor of primary importance in medieval diplomacy was the mediation of the pope: lacking in military might, the pope could nevertheless influence the actions of rulers with the threat of excommunication and the concomitant danger of the king's loss of influence over the ecclesiastical magnates in his own kingdom as well as a potential loss of face and power among his lay aristocracy. How Henry III, the Hohenstaufen emperor Frederick II, and the Capetian Louis IX managed the delicate interplay between the personal, religious, and political is the subject of Weiler's book.
The narrative is arranged in three chronological sections: the first covers the period from Henry's accession to the marriage of his sister to Frederick II (1216-35); the second section takes us up to Frederick's death in 1250; and the last part analyzes how, with the decline of the Hohenstaufen, Henry attempted to place his own dynasty at the center of European politics by promoting his brother's installation as emperor in the last twenty years of his reign.
Henry's primary goal, at least in the early years, was to regain the Angevin territories lost to the king of France by his father John. He did not, however, possess adequate military might to begin a war outright; instead, he sought to obtain support from French aristocrats, the pope, and the leading nobility of Germany, in order that Louis of France might be pressured into allowing Henry overlordship over the lands he claimed. Weiler points out that in the relations with the empire, it was not just the emperor who was of importance; the position of the emperor depended to a large extent on the support he enjoyed from his--often quite independent--magnates, many of whom (most notably the archbishops of Cologne and the dukes of Brunswick and Brabant) were in frequent contact with the English court. For many years, Henry's approaches to the empire came to naught because the magnates were not in a position to pressure Louis enough to be of much use, and Frederick was more interested in shoring up his own position--threatened by antagonism from the Holy See--than in getting involved in other people's squabbles. Although it seemed that this balance of power might change when Frederick sought the hand of Isabella, Henry's sister, Weiler suggests that this marriage, arranged largely through the mediation of the pope, was an effort on the latter's part to bring about peace between the Plantagenets and the Capetians, since the Hohenstaufen would now be closely linked to both. For Frederick, the alliance would have been advantageous primarily because of the possibility of English financial and military support for his crusade, and also because he would now have a potential future ally should further conflict with the papacy erupt. As Weiler points out, being a successful crusader was crucial to Frederick's policies, not only because of his own claims to lordship over the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, but also because it was one way of ensuring support from a papal curia that was otherwise often hostile on account of the emperor's increased exercise of authority in Italy. To have a major European monarch's support for both crusade and as mediator with the curia would therefore certainly have appeared advantageous to Frederick.
As it turned out, neither party really gained much. Beyond the promised dowry, Henry did not have much in the way of money or men to offer, since his barons were restive and none too keen on embarking on or sponsoring foreign ventures of dubious advantage to them. Moreover, Frederick was too interested in maintaining good relations with the Capetians to want to be involved in helping Henry regain Anjou, Normandy, and Poitou. While Frederick had to balance carefully the pope, Louis of France, and Henry III (as well as making sure he kept his German barons in line), Henry had to maintain good relations with his brother-in-law without offending the pope, who soon enough excommunicated Frederick (again). He attempted to achieve this goal not only by allowing the pope to collect dues in England for his anti-imperial campaign, but also simultaneously intervening with the pope for peace with the emperor, and not allowing his own knights to fight in any wars against Frederick.
Like the first two parts of book, the third, covering the period after Frederick's death, is also colored by a narrative of apparent initial success followed by a long-term failure. When it became apparent to Henry that the Capetians would not easily give up the lands he claimed, and that he could not muster the military might he would need to wrest them away (and he knew full well that a large-scale war between two prominent Christian monarchs would bring down anathema from Rome on both), he began to look elsewhere for means of enhancing Plantagenet prestige. His first venture in this direction was to try and place Sicily under the rule of his son, something in which he was briefly successful; however, opposition from the barons because of the increasing military and financial costs of ruling Sicily, the difficulty of sending troops there without French support, competition with a variety of other European magnates over the Sicilian crown, and wavering papal confidence in the Plantagenets all contributed to the ultimate failure of this enterprise. Henry's next effort was to have his brother elected Roman emperor, but just as the alliance with Frederick did not bring about Henry's restored control over the French territories he claimed, the placement of his brother on the Roman throne did not fulfill its promise of a Plantagenet imperium. Richard was hampered by his English concerns, and he was to be the only Plantagenet Holy Roman Emperor. Weiler notes a shift in emphasis in Henry's politics from a focus on regaining the lost French lands to more genuinely foreign affairs, from Plantagenet rule of Sicily and the empire to his planned crusade.
Although the story he tells is a complex one, and his narrative is dense, Weiler nevertheless presents this rather old-fashioned political history (in a time when subaltern social history appears to be more the norm, and stories of kings and emperors the exception) with enthusiasm and skill. He clearly has a command of a wide range of primary sources, including those from Germany; my only niggling criticism is that I would have liked for the sources to be allowed to speak, occasionally at least, in their own words (though this is admittedly rare in most works of this nature). Specialists will doubtless find much to debate in Weiler's rehabilitation of Henry as a competent king whose policies were very much in keeping with what was normal for monarchs of his time. While his portrayal of Henry as a ruler with definite and not necessarily irrational policies is more than plausible, it does seem that at times Weiler makes too much of his case. For example, the Sicilian affair was only made possible by means of very extensive payments to the papacy, which exceeded Henry's annual revenue by a great deal, and although medieval economic policies should certainly not be judged by modern standards, surely this measure goes beyond what is reasonable. Nevertheless, Weiler's argument is generally well reasoned, and even if scholars differ in their ultimate judgment on Henry's rule, much will be learned from this study by specialists and non-specialists alike.
Apart from the insights he offers on medieval diplomacy in general, and Henry and the empire in particular, he is to be commended not only for restoring England (however reluctant England might be to yield to this restoration) to the realm of European history--which is where it certainly belongs, at least during the medieval period--but also for bringing to an English-speaking audience the results of a vast corpus of German-language scholarship, which the author has clearly mastered. This book is, by its very nature, not just about England and its relations with the empire; it also provides much that will be new--at least for audiences not very familiar with German scholarship--on the political history of the reign of Frederick II. He is one of a younger generation of scholars writing in English, but focusing on or including German history and scholarship in the compass of their work, which is greatly to be welcomed. (Warren Brown, Eric Goldberg, Hans Hummer, and Matthew Innes are other prominent examples, though for an earlier period.) For too long, the history of German-speaking Europe before the Reformation, and modern German scholarship on the Middle Ages, have receded from the horizon of English-speaking academia, whether for reasons of recent history and politics, or simply out of a lack of linguistic skills. Weiler is a more than worthy representative of what is (I hope) a new trend in English-language scholarship on pre-modern Europe.
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Citation:
Shami Ghosh. Review of Weiler, Björn K. U., Henry III of England and the Staufen Empire, 1216-1272.
H-German, H-Net Reviews.
January, 2009.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=23097
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