Palatinate of the Rhine, County

The preaching in western Europe, as in the First Crusade, leads inadvertently to attacks on Jews.

A fanatical French monk named Rudolphe is apparently inspiring massacres of Jews in the Rhineland, Worms, …

…Speyer, …

…Cologne, and …

…Mainz, with Rudolphe claiming Jews are not contributing financially to the rescue of the Holy Land.

The Archbishop of Cologne and the Archbishop of Mainz are vehemently opposed to these attacks and ask Bernard to denounce them.

This he does, condemning the actions in strong terms, reminding the Crusaders that those who attacked the Jewish people during the previous Crusade came to a sorry end and were massacred to the last man by the Turks.

When the campaign continues, Bernard travels from Flanders to Germany to deal with the problems in person.

He then finds Rudolphe in Mainz and is able to silence him, returning him to his monastery.

In 1156 also, Frederick I confers the hereditary title Count Palatine on his half-brother Conrad, who controls extensive territories along the middle Rhine; these become known as the Palatinate.

The title and territories of the Rhenish Palatinate pass to the Wittelsbach family in 1222 when sixteen-year-old Duke Otto II of Bavaria, a son of Louis I and Ludmilla of Bohemia and grandson of the dynasty’s founder, Otto I, gains the lands through marriage to Agnes of Palatinate, a granddaughter of Duke Henry the Lion and Conrad of Hohenstaufen.

From this point, the lion becomes a heraldic symbol in the coat of arms for Bavaria and the Palatinate.

The Palatinate will remain a Wittelsbach possession until 1918.

Heidelberg, located in southwestern Germany on the Neckar River, about fifty miles (eighty kilometers) south of Frankfurt am Main, is first mentioned in written sources in the twelfth century.

Modern Heidelberg can trace its beginnings to the village Bergheim (Mountain Home), which now lies in the middle of modern Heidelberg, mentioned in documents dated to 769.

The people had gradually converted to Christianity, and in 863, the monastery of St. Michael was founded on the Heiligenberg inside the double rampart of the Celtic fortress.

The Neuberg Monastery was founded around 1130 in the Neckar valley.

The bishopric of Worms extended its influence into the valley at the same time, in 1142 founding Schönau Abbey.

The first reference to Heidelberg can be found in a document in Schönau Abbey dated to 1196, which is considered the founding date for Heidelberg.

Heidelberg castle and its neighboring settlement in 1155 had been taken over by the house of Hohenstaufen.

Conrad of Hohenstaufen became Count Palatine of the Rhine (German: Pfalzgraf bei Rhein).

The Electorate of the Palatinate had passed in 1195 to the House of Welf through marriage.

Louis I, Duke of Bavaria, obtains the Palatinate in 1225, and thus the castle comes under his control; Heidelberg serves from this time as the new capital of the Palatinate.

The German princes are not absolute rulers either.

They have made so many concessions to other secular and ecclesiastical powers in their struggle against the emperor that many smaller principalities, ecclesiastical states, and towns have retained a degree of independence.

Some of the smaller noble holdings are so poor that they have to resort to outright extortion of travelers and merchants to sustain themselves, with the result that journeying through Germany could be perilous in the late Middle Ages.

All of Germany is under the nominal control of the emperor, but because his power is so weak or uncertain, local authorities have to maintain order—yet another indication of Germany's political fragmentation.

The Golden Bull of 1356, an edict promulgated by Emperor Charles IV (r. 1355-78) of the Luxemburg family, provides the basic constitution of the empire up to its dissolution.

It formalizes the practice of having seven electors—the archbishops of the cities of Trier, Cologne, and Mainz, and the rulers of the Palatinate, Saxony, Brandenburg, and Bohemia—choose the emperor, and it represents a further political consolidation of the principalities.

The Golden Bull ends the long-standing attempt of various emperors to unite Germany under a hereditary monarchy.

Henceforth, the emperor shares power with other great nobles like himself and is regarded as merely the first among equals.

Without the cooperation of the other princes, he cannot rule.

The efforts of Bavaria’s Wittelsbach dukes to increase their power and to give unity to the duchy had met with a fair measure of success.

Now, however, Louis II and Henry XIII, the sons of Duke Otto II, who for two years after their father's death have ruled Bavaria jointly, split their inheritance: …