Ancestral Trails 2016 » FRIEDRICH III BARBAROSSA von SCHWABIA (1122-1190)

Personal data FRIEDRICH III BARBAROSSA von SCHWABIA 

• He was born in the year 1122 in Hohenstaufen, Goppingen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany.
• Title: Holy Roman Emperor, King of Germany, Italy, Burgundy, Duke of Schwabia
• (Known as) : Frederick Barbarossa.
• (Alternative Name) : Friedrich von Hohenstaufen.
• (Ancestry) : House of Hohenstaufen.
• He died on June 10, 1190 in Galeph, Cilicia, he was 68 years old.

  Drowned in the Calycadnus River, Cilicia, crossing to Holy Land

• He is buried in the year 1190 in Church of St Peter, Antioch, Byzantium, Turkey.
• A child of FRIEDRICH von SCHWABIA and JUDITH von BAVARIA

Household of FRIEDRICH III BARBAROSSA von SCHWABIA

(1) He is married to BEATRICE de BURGUNDY.

They got married on June 16, 1156 at Hohenstaufen, Goppingen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany, he was 34 years old.

Child(ren):

1. Friedrich von SCHWABIA  1164-1170
2. PHILIP von SCHWABIA  1176-1208 
3. Heinrich von SCHWABIA  1165-1197 
4. BEATRICE von SCHWABIA  1157-1181 
5. Conrad von SCHWABIA  1172-1196
6. Otto von SCHWABIA  ± 1167-1200

• The couple has common ancestors.



(2) He is married to Adelheid von VOHBURG.

They got married on March 2, 1146/47 at Eger, Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic, he was 24 years old.

• The couple has common ancestors.



Notes about FRIEDRICH III BARBAROSSA von SCHWABIA

Frederick I (1122 - 10 June 1190), also known as Frederick Barbarossa was the Holy Roman Emperor from 1155 until his death. He was elected King of Germany at Frankfurt on 4 March 1152 and crowned in Aachen on 9 March 1152. He became King of Italy in 1155 and was crowned Roman Emperor by Pope Adrian IV on 18 June 1155. Two years later, the term sacrum ("holy") first appeared in a document in connection with his Empire. He was later formally crowned King of Burgundy, at Arles on 30 June 1178. He was named Barbarossa by the northern Italian cities which he attempted to rule: Barbarossa means "red beard" in Italian; in German, he was known as Kaiser Rotbart, which has the same meaning.

Before his imperial election, Frederick was by inheritance Duke of Swabia (1147-1152, as Frederick III). He was the son of Duke Frederick II of the Hohenstaufen dynasty and Judith, daughter of Henry IX, Duke of Bavaria, from the rival House of Welf. Frederick therefore descended from the two leading families in Germany, making him an acceptable choice for the Empire's prince-electors.

Historians consider him among the Holy Roman Empire's greatest medieval emperors. He combined qualities that made him appear almost superhuman to his contemporaries: his longevity, his ambition, his extraordinary skills at organization, his battlefield acumen and his political perspicuity. Among his contributions to Central European society and culture include the reestablishment of the Corpus Juris Civilis, or the Roman rule of law, which counterbalanced the papal power that dominated the German states since the conclusion of the Investiture Controversy.

Frederick died in 1190 in Asia Minor while leading an army in the Third Crusade.

Third Crusade and death
Pope Urban III died shortly after, and was succeeded by Gregory VIII, who was more concerned with troubling reports from the Holy Land than with a power struggle with Barbarossa. After making his peace with the new pope, Frederick vowed to take up the cross at the Diet of Mainz in 1188. Frederick embarked on the Third Crusade (1189-92), a massive expedition in conjunction with the French, led by King Philip Augustus, and the English, under King Richard the Lionheart. Frederick organized a grand army of 100,000 men (including 20,000 knights) and set out on the overland route to the Holy Land; Some historians believe that this is an exaggeration, however, and that the true figure might be closer to 15,000 men, including 3,000 knights.

The Crusaders passed through Hungary, Serbia, and Bulgaria before entering Byzantine territory and arriving at Constantinople in the autumn of 1189. Matters were complicated by a secret alliance between the Emperor of Constantinople and Saladin, warning of which was supplied by a note from Sibylla, ex-Queen of Jerusalem. While in Hungary, Barbarossa personally asked the Hungarian Prince Géza, brother of King Béla III of Hungary, to join the Crusade. The king agreed, and a Hungarian army of 2,000 men led by Géza escorted the German emperor's forces. The armies coming from western Europe pushed on through Anatolia, where they were victorious in taking Aksehir and defeating the Turks in the Battle of Iconium, and entered Cilician Armenia. The approach of the immense German army greatly concerned Saladin and the other Muslim leaders, who began to rally troops of their own to confront Barbarossa's forces.

On 10 June 1190, Emperor Frederick Barbarossa drowned near Silifke Castle in the Saleph river. Accounts of the event are conflicting. Some historians believe he may have had a heart attack that complicated matters. Some of Frederick's men put him in a barrel of vinegar to preserve his body.

Frederick's death plunged his army into chaos. Leaderless, panicking, and attacked on all sides by Turks, many Germans deserted, were killed, or committed suicide. Only 5,000 soldiers, a small fraction of the original force, arrived in Acre. Barbarossa's son, Frederick VI of Swabia, carried on with the remnants of the German army, along with the Hungarian army under the command of Prince Géza, with the aim of burying the emperor in Jerusalem, but efforts to conserve his body in vinegar failed. Hence, his flesh was interred in the Church of St Peter in Antioch, his bones in the cathedral of Tyre, and his heart and inner organs in Tarsus.

The unexpected demise of Frederick left the Crusader army under the command of the rivals Philip II and Richard, who had traveled to Palestine separately by sea, and ultimately led to its dissolution. Richard continued to the East where he fought Saladin, winning territories along the shores of Palestine, but ultimately failed to win the war by conquering Jerusalem itself before he was forced to return to his own territories in north-western Europe, known as the Angevin Empire. He returned home after he signed the Treaty of Ramla agreeing that Jerusalem would remain under Muslim control while allowing unarmed Christian pilgrims and traders to visit the city. The treaty also reduced the Latin Kingdom to a geopolitical coastal strip extending from Tyre to Jaffa.

Legend
Frederick is the subject of many legends, including that of a sleeping hero, like the much older British Celtic legends of Arthur or Bran the Blessed. Legend says he is not dead, but asleep with his knights in a cave in the Kyffhäuser mountain in Thuringia or Mount Untersberg in Bavaria, Germany, and that when the ravens cease to fly around the mountain he will awake and restore Germany to its ancient greatness. According to the story, his red beard has grown through the table at which he sits. His eyes are half closed in sleep, but now and then he raises his hand and sends a boy out to see if the ravens have stopped flying. A similar story, set in Sicily, was earlier attested about his grandson, Frederick II. To garner political support the German Empire built atop the Kyffhäuser the Kyffhäuser Monument, which declared Kaiser Wilhelm I the reincarnation of Frederick; the 1896 dedication occurred on 18 June, the day of Frederick's coronation.

In medieval Europe, the Golden Legend became refined by Jacopo da Voragine. This was a popularized interpretation of the Biblical end of the world. It consisted of three things: (1) terrible natural disasters; (2) the arrival of the Antichrist; (3) the establishment of a good king to combat the anti-Christ. German propaganda played into the exaggerated fables believed by the common people by characterizing Frederick Barbarossa and Frederick II as personification of the "good king".

Frederick's uncle, Otto, bishop of Freising wrote a biography entitled The Deeds of Frederick Barbarosa, which is considered to be an accurate history of the king. Otto's other major work, The Two Cities was an exposition of the work of St. Augustine of Hippo of a similar title. The latter work was full of Augustinian negativity concerning the nature of the world and history. His work on Frederick is of opposite tone, being an optimistic portrayal of the glorious potentials of imperial authority.

Another legend states that when Barbarossa was in the process of seizing Milan in 1158, his wife, the Empress Beatrice, was taken captive by the enraged Milanese and forced to ride through the city on a donkey in a humiliating manner. Some sources of this legend indicate that Barbarossa implemented his revenge for this insult by forcing the magistrates of the city to remove a fig from the anus of a donkey using only their teeth. Another source states that Barbarossa took his wrath upon every able-bodied man in the city, and that it was not a fig they were forced to hold in their mouth, but excrement from the donkey. To add to this debasement, they were made to announce, "Ecco la fica", (meaning "behold the fig"), with the feces still in their mouths. It used to be said that the insulting gesture, (called fico), of holding one's fist with the thumb in between the middle and forefinger came by its origin from this event.

Issue
Frederick's first marriage, to Adelheid of Vohburg, did not produce any issue and was annulled.

From his second marriage, to Beatrice of Burgundy, he had the following children:

Beatrice (1162-1174). She was betrothed to King William II of Sicily but died before they could be married.
Frederick V, Duke of Swabia (Pavia, 16 July 1164 - 28 November 1170).
Henry VI, Holy Roman Emperor (Nijmegen, November 1165 - Messina, 28 September 1197).
Conrad (Modigliana, February 1167 - Acre, 20 January 1191), later renamed Frederick VI, Duke of Swabia after the death of his older brother.
Gisela (October/November 1168 - 1184).
Otto I, Count of Burgundy (June/July 1170 - killed, Besançon, 13 January 1200).
Conrad II, Duke of Swabia and Rothenburg (February/March 1172 - killed, Durlach, 15 August 1196).
Renaud (October/November 1173 - in infancy).
William (June/July 1176 - in infancy).
Philip of Swabia (August 1177 - killed, Bamberg, 21 June 1208) King of Germany in 1198.
Agnes (1181 - 8 October 1184). She was betrothed to King Emeric of Hungary but died before they could be married.
SOURCE: Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_I,_Holy_Roman_Emperor#Ancestry


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