Creative Uses of the Future

• Index
• I.Primis
• II.Secundus
• III.Tertium
• IV.Quartus
• V.Quintus

Germany in the High Middle Ages,
1050-1200.

“Horst Fuhrmann gives us 150 stormy years in 180 pages. His narrative is economical and lucid... A deft sketch of the transformation of Western Europe into something recognizably ‘modern’ by the year 1200.”

—The Times Literary Supplement.

Text by Horst Fuhrmann

G ermany in the High Middle Ages opens with a wide-ranging and yet detailed description of the conditions under which men lived and their attitudes of mind during the period 1050-1200; against this background it proceeds to analyse the fundamental political, social, economic and cultural changes of the period in central Europe. Professor Fuhrmann considers the social transformation brought about by the emergence of new classes such as ministeriales and burghers, and examines the intellectual renewal reflected in the rise of scholasticism and the foundation of the universities. He also describes the gradual erosion of the power of the German rulers, which led to the Empire losing its position as the leading power in Europe, and yet was accompanied by a last flowering under the Staufen emperors and the chivalric culture with which they were closely associated. Throughout the book these changes are contracted with contemporary developments elsewhere in Europe, especially in France, England and Italy.

 

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Table of Contents

1. GERMAN HISTORY IN THE HIGH MIDDLE AGES - CONCEPTS, EXPLANATIONS, FACTS
   • The three essentials of history - space, time, and man
     1. The medieval view of space, time, and man
     2. Space, time, man: facts and findings
   • Germany in the Europe of the high Middle Ages
     1. Middle Ages and high Middle Ages - Europe and the West
     2. Germany, the Germans and their neighbours
     3. The economy of the Empire
     4. The period from 1050 to 1200 as a turning-point in European and German history
2. PROGRESS AND PROMISE: THE GERMAN EMPIRE IN THE MID ELEVENTH CENTURY
   • Social stratification and the structure of government in the Ottonian and Salian period
   • Rex et sacerdos - the priestly kingship of Henry III (1039-56)
   • Strengths and weaknesses of Salian kingship
   • Henry III as Roman patricius and the German popes
   • The beginnings and aims of church reform
   • The distance from the rest of Europe: France, England, and the North
3. FROM CHRISTUS DOMINI TO ANTICHRIST: THE KING OF GERMANY AND THE INVESTITURE CONTEST
   • The reign of Henry IV and its consequences
     1. The papacy and the regency government
     2. Canossa: the turning-point
     3. The Lihelli de lite and the beginnings of scholastic thought
     4. The expansion of the West and the First Crusade
     5. The town as an institution and a way of life
   • The rise of the secular state and the priestly church
     1. The Investiture Contest in France and England
     2. The beginnings of Henry Vs reign
     3. The road to the Concordat of Worms (1122)
4. POLITICAL REORIENTATION AND EMERGENT DIVERSITY: FROM SALIAN IMPERIAL CHURCH SYSTEM TO STAUFER KINGSHIP
   • The results of the Investiture Contest
     1. The kingdom of Germany
     2. The rest of Europe
   • The love of learning and the desire for God: church and spirituality in the age of Bernard of Clairvaux
   • Lothar III: kingship without a future
     1. Lothar as alegal anti-king
     2. Lothar III and the position on the eastern frontier
   • Conrad III: kingship without imperial glory
     1. Conrads election and the Welf opposition
     2. European alliances and the Second Crusade
5. THE CENTRE-POINT OF THE GERMAN MIDDLE AGES: FREDERICK BARBAROSSA AND HIS AGE
   • The election of Frederick 1 and the new policy of balance
   • Frederick and the Empire before the Alexandrine schism
     1. The revival of imperial rule in imperial Italy and the breach with the Curia
     2. Fredericks German policy
     3. The Staufer idea of empire
   • Empire and papacy in the struggle for supremacy
     1. Papal schism and diplomacy to the death of Alexander III (1181)
     2. Staufer government in Germany
   • New forms of government
     1. The fall of Henry the Lion and the so-called new estate of imperial princes
     2. Kingship and feudalism in France and England
     3. International alliances and the Third Crusade
     4. The chivalric ethos of the Staufer period
   • Henry VI and the shift in the Empires centre of gravity
     1. The German kingdom and the Sicilian inheritance
     2. Plans and beginnings

• Bibliography
• Index

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Historical Map

“It seems to me that the kingdom of the Germans — which today, as we see, has possession of Rome — is a part of the kingdom of the Franks. For, as is perfectly clear in what precedes, at the time of Charles, the boundaries of the kingdom of the Franks included the whole of Gaul and all Germany, from the Rhine to Illyricum. When the realm was divided between his son's sons, one part was called eastern, the other western, yet both together were called the Kingdom of the Franks.”

—Otto von Freising. (1114 – 1158) The Two Cities, p.376.

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