In 1147, as his father lay dying, Frederick decided to accompany his uncle, Conrad III (who was King of Germany) on the Second Crusade. Frederick's father was angry at his brother for taking Frederick away when soon the Duke's widow would need support. The Duke died in the first week of April, and (now Duke) Frederick departed on Crusade at the end of May.
A few months later, Frederick was "tested" by his uncle. A Crusader was robbed and killed in a monastery outside Adrianople in Turkey, and Conrad ordered Frederick to avenge the death. Frederick destroyed the monastery and killed the perpetrators. His military training served him well on Crusade, and he was noted for being victorious "before all others," even though the Crusade itself failed.
In 1152, Conrad died, and the only two people at his deathbed—Frederick and the bishop of Bamberg—agreed that he wished Frederick to be named king, rather than Conrad's own son (who was only six years old at the time). A few days after being crowned King of the Germans, Frederick was crowned "King of the Romans," a title used to by kings of Germany from 1002CE onward to denote they considered themselves Holy Roman Emperor.
He made it his goal to truly restore the wide-reaching boundaries enjoyed by Charlemagne, and the first step was to unite all the various princes of territories in German lands, and then to extend his authority to Italy. After making concessions in Germany to get everyone on his side, he began a total of six expeditions to Italy, beginning with Sicily, under Norman control by King William I of Sicily. From 1154 until the 1170s, he managed to conquer parts of Italy, but stirred up a great deal of anti-German sentiment and rebellion. An alliance with Constantinople helped the Italian city-states in northern Italy to defeat Frederick, a shock to Europe. It was his time in Italy that gave him the nickname Barbarossa, which means "red beard" in Italian. This nickname became so entwined with his career that it was carried back to Germany, where he was referred to some times as Kaiser Rotbart, "Emperor Red Beard."
In 1187, the aging emperor received letters from the European rulers in some Crusader states in the East to come to their aid. Frederick declined to join this Third Crusade, and urged Philip II of France to go, but later changed his mind and chose to "take up the cross."
This change of heart regarding the Third Crusade involved the Archbishop of Cologne and the Jews of Strasbourg, which I will explain next time.
