The English King Who Was Held Captive

Introduction: In 1193 the rulers of Germany and England met for the first time in history. Their meeting offers an appropriate subject for a talk in memory of Tim Reuter, whose death in 2002 cut sadly short the life and career of the scholar who, choosing to work in both England and Germany, did more than any other twentieth-century English medieval historian to bridge the divides between Anglophone and German scholarship. Or does it? After all, that first meeting was hardly a propitious one. The king of England, Richard I, returning from crusade, had been seized by the duke of Austria near Vienna in December 1192 and then handed over to Emperor Henry VI. A contemporary illustration of the meeting shows Richard lying on the ground, kissing the emperor’s feet in a ceremony of submission. Whether or not he had to endure quite so humiliating a ceremony, there is no doubt that he was subsequently kept a prisoner in Germany for more than a year. Not until February 1194, when he did homage to Henry and a king’s ransom had been paid, was he released. The German chronicler, Otto of St Blasien, wrote: ‘I prefer not to give the exact weight (of gold and silver) that he paid because if I did, it would be thought incredible and I would be accused of lying’. Hardly surprising that it would be almost 150 years before another king of England, Edward III in 1338, visited Germany.