Philip of Swabia (German: Philipp von Schwaben; February/March 1177 – 21 June 1208), styled Philip II in his charters, was a member of the House of Hohenstaufen and King of Germany from 1198 until his assassination.
The death of Philip's older brother Henry VI, Holy Roman Emperor, in 1197 meant that the Hohenstaufen rule (which reached as far as the Kingdom of Sicily) collapsed in imperial Italy and created a power vacuum to the north of the Alps. Reservations about the kingship of Henry's underage son, Frederick, led to two royal elections in 1198, which resulted in the German throne dispute: the two elected kings, Philip of Swabia and Otto of Brunswick, claimed the throne for themselves. Both opponents tried in the following years through European and papal support, with the help of money and gifts, through demonstrative public appearances and rituals, to decide the conflict for oneself by raising ranks or by military and diplomatic measures. Philip was able to increasingly assert his kingship against Otto in the north part of the Alps. However, at the height of his power, he was assassinated in 1208. This ended the dispute for the throne; his opponent Otto quickly found recognition. Philip was the first German king to be murdered during his reign.
Life
Early years
Philip was born in or near Pavia in the Imperial Kingdom of Italy as the tenth child and eighth (but fifth and youngest surviving) son of Frederick Barbarossa, King of Germany and Holy Roman Emperor and his second wife Beatrice I, Countess of Burgundy. His paternal family was the noble House of Hohenstaufen, the name given to the dynasty by historians since the 15th century. The origins of the family are still unclear today; the ancestors on the paternal side were minor nobles and their names have not been preserved. All that is known about Barbarossa's great-grandfather Frederick of Büren is that he married a woman named Hildegard (whose own parentage was disputed: she was a member of either the Comital family of Egisheim–Dagsburg or the obscure Schlettstadt family). A few years ago it was assumed that the Schlettstadt property did not belong to Hildegard but to her husband himself and the Hohenstaufen were therefore not a Swabian but an Alsatian family. It wasn't until around 1100 that the family under Duke Frederick I of Swabia located into the East Swabian Rems valley.
Much more important for the Hohenstaufen family was the prestigious connection with the Salian dynasty. Frederick Barbarossa's grandmother was Agnes, a daughter of Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor. Philip's father saw himself as a direct descendant of the first Salian ruler Conrad II, to whom he referred several times as his ancestor in documents. After the extinction of the Salian dynasty in the male line in 1125 firstly Frederick II, Duke of Swabia (Barbarossa's father) and then his brother Conrad tried in vain to claim the royal dignity invoking his descent from the Salians. In 1138, Conrad III was finally elected King of Germany, being the first scion of the Swabian Hohenstaufen dynasty to be elected King of the Romans, against the fierce resistance of the rival House of Welf. In 1152 the royal dignity passed smoothly to Conrad III's nephew, Frederick Barbarossa, who was also Holy Roman Emperor from 1155 onwards. Barbarossa became embroiled in a conflict with Pope Alexander III. It was not until 1177 that the long-standing conflict of the Emperor with the Pope and the Italian cities of the Lombard League could be resolved in the Treaty of Venice.
The Hohenstaufen had never used the name Philip before. The prince was named after the Archbishop Philip of Cologne, who was an important helper and confidante of Barbarossa at this time. The name of the Archbishop of Cologne was thus accepted into a royal family. For historian Gerd Althoff, this demonstrative honor makes "Barbarossa's preparations for the confrontation with Henry the Lion tangible". A little later, the Archbishop of Cologne played a key role in the overthrow of the powerful Duke of Bavaria and Saxony.
As a child, Philip was initially prepared for an ecclesiastical career. He learned to read and also learned Latin, and was placed at the Premonstratensian Monastery in Adelberg for his further education. From April 1189 to July 1193 Philip was provost at the collegiate church of Aachen Cathedral, while his father left Germany for the Third Crusade in 1189, but he drowned in the Göksu (Saleph) River in Anatolia the next year. In 1190 or 1191 Philip was elected Prince-bishop of Würzburg, though without being consecrated, probably due to intervention of his brother Henry VI. In 1186 Henry VI married with Constance, the aunt of the reigning King William II of Sicily; this gave the Hohenstaufen the possibility of a union of the Kingdom of Sicily with the Holy Roman Empire (unio regni ad imperium). As a result, however, the relationship with the Pope deteriorated, because the Holy See wanted to maintain the feudal claim over the Kingdom of Sicily. In the spring of 1193 Philip forsook his ecclesiastical calling, perhaps because of the childlessness of the imperial couple; also, Philip's three other brothers were also without male heirs: Duke Frederick VI of Swabia had already died in 1191 and Conrad of Rothenburg, who succeeded him as Duke of Swabia, was unmarried. In addition, Otto I, Count Palatine of Burgundy, although already married, had no male descendants yet. However, the concerns of the imperial couple turned out to be unfounded. Empress Constance gave birth to a son on 26 December 1194 in Jesi, the later Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor. While the Emperor was absent, the princes elected his two-year-old son Frederick as King of the Romans in Frankfurt at the end of 1196; with this move, Henry VI wanted to see his succession secured before he prepared for the Crusade of 1197.
To improve relationships with the Byzantine Empire, in April 1195 Henry VI betrothed Philip to Irene Angelina, a daughter of Emperor Isaac II and the widow of junior King Roger III of Sicily, a lady who was described by Walther von der Vogelweide as "the rose without a thorn, the dove without guile": she was among those taken prisoner by Henry VI when he invaded Sicily in 1194. In early 1195, Philip accompanied his imperial brother on his journey to Sicily and at Easter 1195 he was made Margrave of Tuscany, receiving the disputed Matildine lands; in his retinue in Italy was the Minnesinger Bernger von Horheim. Philip's rule in Tuscany there earned him the enmity of Pope Celestine III, who excommunicated him. On 3 May 1196, Philip was documented for the last time as Margrave of Tuscany. After the murder of his brother Conrad in August 1196, Philip succeeded him as Duke of Swabia. The marriage of Philip and Irene Angelina (renamed Maria upon her wedding) probably took place at Pentecost (25 May) 1197 in the Gunzenle hill near Augsburg. Five daughters were certainly born from the union:
- Beatrix (April/June 1198 – 11 August 1212), who married her father's rival, Emperor Otto IV on 22 July 1212 and died three weeks later without issue.
- Maria (1199/1200 – 29 March 1235), who married the future Duke Henry II of Brabant before 22 August 1215 and had issue.
- Kunigunde (February/March 1202 – 13 September 1248), who married King Wenceslaus I of Bohemia in 1224 and had issue.
- Elisabeth (March/May 1205 – 5 November 1235), who married King Ferdinand III of Castile on 30 November 1219 and had issue.
- Daughter (posthumously born and died 20/27 August 1208). She and her mother died following childbirth complications.
Sources identified two short-lived sons, Reinald and Frederick, also born from the union of Philip and Irene-Maria Angelina, being both buried at Lorch Abbey alongside their mother. However, there were no contemporary sources who could ascertain their existence without doubt.
Struggle for the throne
Outbreak of the conflict
Philip enjoyed his brother Henry VI's confidence to a very great extent, and appears to have been designated as guardian for the king's minor son, in the event of his early death. In September 1197 Philip had set out to fetch Frederick from Apulia for his coronation as King of the Romans in Aachen. While staying in Montefiascone, he heard of Henry VI's sudden death in Messina on 28 September 1197 and returned at once to Germany. He appears to have desired to protect the interests of his nephew and to quell the disorder which arose on Henry VI's death: On 21 January 1198, Philip issued a charter for the citizens of Speyer, in which he indicated that he was acting in the name of King Frederick; however, he was overtaken by events.
Meanwhile, a number of Princes of the Holy Roman Empire hostile to the ruling Hohenstaufen dynasty under the leadership of Prince-Archbishop Adolph of Cologne took the occasion to elect a German anti-king in the person of the Welf Otto of Brunswick, the second surviving son of the former Saxon duke Henry the Lion and a nephew of King Richard I of England. He was by no means Adolph's preferred candidate, because the Archdiocese of Cologne had benefited considerably from the fall of the powerful Duke Henry the Lion. Rather, a group of financially strong citizens ran Otto's election. In exchange for his support, the Archbishop was able to reduce the high debt burden of his diocese. The hostility to the kingship of a child was growing, so Philip was chosen by Ghibellines as defender of the empire during Frederick's minority, and Otto I of Burgundy, the only living elder brother of Philip who was passed over for being considered inefficient and busy solving problems in his own fief, also supported him. He finally consented to his own election at Nordhausen. On 6 March 1198, in front of the ecclesiastical and secular greats present in Ichtershausen, he declared his willingness to be elected king. Two days later (8 March) Philip was elected German King at Mühlhausen in Thuringia. The election took place on Laetare Sunday, a day that was of considerable symbolic importance in the Hohenstaufen royal tradition. Otherwise there were a number of symbolic deficits: Although backed in the election by Duke Leopold VI of Austria, Duke Ottokar I of Bohemia, Duke Berthold V of Zähringen, and Landgrave Hermann I of Thuringia, all the three Rhenish Archbishops (Cologne, Mainz and Trier), who traditionally performed an important ceremonial act of institution, were absent from Philip's election, and Mühlhausen was an unusual location for a king's election. For Mühlhausen, in the Hohenstaufen period up to Philip's election as king, only one single residence as a ruler can be proven. With this choice of location, Philip may have wanted to symbolically erase the humiliation that his great-uncle Conrad III suffered in autumn 1135 in Mühlhausen during his submission to Lothair III. Instead, the Imperial Regalia (crown, sword and orb) were in Philip's possession. His rival Otto was only elected on 9 June 1198 in Cologne by Archbishop Adolph (who had bought the votes of the absent archbishops). Only the Bishop of Paderborn, Bishop Thietmar of Minden, and three Prince-Provosts took part in the election of the Welf. After his election, Philip failed to make up for the coronation quickly. Rather, he moved to Worms next to his confidant, Bishop Luitpold. The hesitant behavior of Philip gave Otto the opportunity to be crowned by the rightful coronator ("Königskröner") Adolph of Cologne on 12 July 1198 at the traditional royal place in Aachen, which had to be captured before against the resistance of loyal Hohenstaufen liensmen.
In an empire without a written constitution, a solution had to be found under the conditions of a consensual system of rule where there were competing claims. These habits were agreed upon through consultation at court meetings, synods, or other gatherings. The consensus thus established was the most important process for establishing order in the Middle Ages. In the controversy for the German throne, one of the rivals was only able to prevail in the long term if the other side was offered noticeable compensation. It was necessary to create a compromise allowing the inferior opponent to abandon the kingship while preserving his honour.
In the first few months after his election as king, Philip failed to issue documents and thereby assert his kingship. His first surviving royal document, issued to Bishop Bertram of Metz, dated from Worms on 27 June 1198. Two days later, Philip forged an alliance with King Philip II of France. In Mainz Cathedral on 8 September 1198, it wasn't the Archbishop of Cologne, as usual, but Archbishop Aymon II of Tarentaise who crowned Philip as German King. It is uncertain whether his wife was also crowned alongside him. Despite these violations of the consuetudines (Customs) when he was elected and crowned as King, Philip was able to unite the majority of the princes behind him. For the princes, property, ancestry and origins were essential for their support of Philip. Nevertheless, he knew that he had to settle the conflict with Otto and his supporters. A first attempt to mediate by Archbishop Conrad of Mainz in 1199 was rejected by the Welf.