The End of Barbarossa

You are Frederick I, offspring of two of Germany's most powerful families. As a young man, you went on Crusade and distinguished yourself in battle. You become King of Germany and King of Italy. As Holy Roman Emperor, you attempt to re-establish the extent of the Roman Empire. Your help is requested for a Third Crusade, "the most meticulously planned and organized" of any Crusade up until then. The approach of your army so unnerves Saladin that he divides his forces, currently trying to lift the Siege of Acre imposed by Richard Lionheart of England.

Meanwhile, your forces proceed through the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia, reaching the Saleph River (now called the Göksu in Turkey on a plateau in the Taurus Mountains). The army is sent along a mountain path, while you decide on a shortcut advised by the locals: simply cross the river on your horse.

Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I, called Barbarossa, drowned in the Saleph on 10 June 1190.

Accounts vary. A biography written within a few years of Frederick's death says he chose to swim the river—possible, but he was 68 years old at the time—and was swept away. A churchman who was with the Crusade says it was a simple swim to refresh himself, but the old man encountered an unexpected current (illustrated in a manuscript of the Saxon Chronicle above). Another says he was thrown from his horse and weighed down by his armor. A contemporary chronicler claims God saved them from an evil man by drowning him in shallow water while the emperor was washing himself.

Whatever the case, the body was subjected to mos Teutonicus, thousands of German soldiers abandoned the Crusade and went home, and Philip of France took the rest to the Holy land where he shared command of the Crusade with Richard I of England, with whom he was not on friendly terms.

Frederick's reputation was such that he is one of those characters who passed into legend, specifically that he is not dead but lies sleeping (like Arthur, with attendants) until such time as his country needs him, either in the Kyffhäuser Mountains in Thuringia or Untersberg. The signal for his revival will be the disappearance of ravens flying around the mountain. His red beard continues to grow, his eyes are only half-shut, and occasionally his hand raises, signaling a boy to go outside and see if the ravens are still flying.

Germany never lost its interest in Barbarossa. The Kyffhäuser Monument (also called Barbarossa Monument) was erected on the anniversary of Frederick's coronation in 1896 to commemorate him and Kaiser Wilhelm I, who was declared the reincarnation of Barbarossa. Hitler named his invasion of the Soviet Union "Operation Barbarossa," although originally called "Operation Otto" after Otto the Great.

These recent posts have, of course, told barely one percent of the extensive accomplishments of Barbarossa. Tomorrow I want to dip into one of his other actions: the revival of the Roman Justinian Code.

To Cook a King

Yesterday we discussed the problem of decay when a corpse had to be transported over a long distance. A medieval historian named Boncompagno coined the term mos Teutonicus ("German custom") to describe how Germans dealt with death of an aristocrat on Crusade.

The ultimate goal was to have a complete skeleton to take home and bury. The first step was to remove the entrails. Internal organs were not going to be preserved, and not considered an important part of the ultimate result, so they would be buried. Often, however, the heart would be carefully saved.

Then the body hd to be "de-fleshed." The most efficient way to do this (with minimal handling of the corpse) was to boil it. As Boncompagno wrote:

The Germans remove the intestines from the corpses of high-ranking men when they die in foreign countries, and let the rest boil in cauldrons until all the meat, tendons and cartilage are separated from the bones. These bones, washed in fragrant wine and sprinkled with spices, are then taken back to their homeland.

The boiling process would take hours. Now, the likelihood of having a cauldron large enough for the body seems dubious. On the other hand, an enormous retinue of nobles and their households making a long journey would have equipment for feeding a lot of people. It is possible that there were copper tubs for heating water/cooking that could accommodate an adult corpse. In the case of Frederick I Barbarossa who drowned during the Third Crusade in 1190, however, the report is that he was cut up and cooked. In 1167, he had ordered the same for several bishops and princes who were with him during his conquest of Rome and died from dysentery, delivering their bones to their respective homes.

Modern science has taken an interest in this practice: the bones of Emperor Lothar III were said to be the end result of mos Teutonicus after he died crossing the Alps in 1137. Scientific analysis of the breakdown of amino acids suggests that they were boiled for six hours. Modern forensic analysis has likewise taken advantage of remains that were preserved by methods other than putting them in the ground where they could thoroughly decompose. Richard I Lionheart's heart was preserved and sent to Notre Dame. It has been confirmed to 1) be a heart, and 2) have been embalmed with myrtle, daisy, mint, and frankincense, giving clues to medieval embalming preservation techniques.

The Church looked down on mos Teutonicus, as did other nations. The French much preferred taking the time and effort to embalm the body. The English were fine with dividing body parts, such as sending the heart to a separate place for sentimental reasons. The Church wanted the entire body intact for resurrection at the final trump. Pope Boniface VIII issued a papal bull in 1299 (re-issued in 1300, in case they weren't listening the first time) condemning the practice of separating the body.

(Later years have ignored this bull. Keeping a memento—sometimes grisly—of a loved one is not uncommon. Napolean's heart was given to Josephine, Chopin's heart was put in a crystal jar, Thomas Hardy's heart—what was left after being cut out and partially eaten by a cat—was to be buried in Stanford, Dorset. Mary Shelley supposedly had Percy Shelley's heart in a box; I say "supposedly" because the lump saved from his cremation could have been anything; the eyewitness who grabbed it, burning his hand in the process, said it was the heart. It's more poetic that way.)

As often happens, I have discovered in relating all the above that I have mentioned Frederick I Barbarossa more than once in the history of this blog without every going into detail about who he was. Tomorrow I will correct that oversight. Until then...

Mos Teutonicus

Yesterday I raised the question of how a body was treated, such as that of  Louis IX of France dying on Crusade, when immediate burial was not an option. The answer is rather grisly.

Consider the situation: a person has died far from home and the family burial plot, what are the attendants to do? Raw flesh decays, and by the time the corpse is brought home it will be a mass of putrefaction, attracting swarms of flies and feeding masses of maggots. How is it possible to fulfill an obligation to deliver the deceased person's remains for proper burial?

One clue to the solution is the word "raw." Cooked meat does not decay immediately. What if we "cooked" the body? Well, not exactly. They did not deliver "roast king" to his final resting place. There was a strong belief, however, that for the Christian "resurrection of the body" in the end times the skeleton was the most crucial element, because it denoted an intact body. I posted ten years ago about "de-fleshing" a corpse, and a little later about other attitudes to treating corpses.

The practice was referred to as mos Teutonicus, Latin for "German custom." It was considered a proper way of handling the corpse of a high-ranking person under difficult circumstances. The Viking custom of a funeral pyre or any form of cremation was outlawed by Charlemagne, who thought the soul was destroyed along with the complete destruction of the bones.

When the Crusades started, it was deemed inappropriate for Christian nobles to be buried in Muslim territory. It was a Florentine professor and historian named Boncompagno da Signa (c.1165 - 1240) who coined the term mos Teutonicus, linking the practice to the German nobles on Crusade.

mos Teutonicus was more hygienic and cost effective than embalming, which still required a certain amount of "violation" of the body, since the entrails were removed and disposed of, and the heart removed. The heart, of course, was considered special, and often delivered for burial a a location important to the deceased or the family—the heart of Richard I, for instance.

Exactly how mos Teutonicus was carried out, the later backlash against it, and its usefulness in the present day are topics I'd like to save until next time. See you soon.