Dissertation Project

The Crusader Army under the leadership of Frederick Barbarossa - A Prosopography

The following dissertation project is a prosopographically orientated study of all participants in the Third Crusade under the leadership of Frederick Barbarossa. The aim is to analyse the army of the crusaders regarding its internal relationships and dynamics for the period between 1187 and 1191. Here, the internal composition of the army as well as the social ties and the resulting dynamics among the crusaders will be visualised.

Using prosopography as a method, crusader-biograms will be compiled across all social statuses, which will be used to work out the composition of the Crusader Army that set out from Regensburg on 11 May 1189, the reasons and occasions for the participants to take part in the undertaking, the functions they fulfilled, the personal interests they pursued, in whose company they travelled, how they financed the undertaking, what illnesses they suffered and when, where and how they died, in order to make a substantial contribution to crusade research.

Based on the work of Siegmund Riezler (1843-1927) and Reinhold Röhricht (1842-1905), whose lists of crusade participants from the end of the 19th century to the present day are regarded as the basis of prosopographically oriented crusade research, the intention is to examine and analyse both already known and previously unconsidered sources. In addition to historiographical, documentary, and epistolary sources from the three kingdoms of the High Medieval Empire, the Regnum Theutonicum, the Regnum Italiae and the Regnum Burgundiae, narrative sources from French- and English-speaking countries will also be analysed. Furthermore, in addition to historiographical sources from the West, relevant Arabic, Syrian, Byzantine, and Armenian sources will also be included to draw a precise and at the same time multi-perspective picture of the participants in the Third Crusade.

Methodologically, there are links to more recent regional, national, and dynastic-historically orientated works on individual crusaders and groups of participants, which need to be comprehensively supplemented regarding research on the Holy Roman Empire as a space of emergence and resonance for the crusade movement.