Cultural depictions of Conrad II, Holy Roman Emperor
Conrad II was German king (1024–1039) and Holy Roman emperor (1027–1039). As founder of the Salian dynasty, he was a successful ruler who left his successor a stable monarchy. His behaviours in ecclesiastic affairs have caused some controversies even in his lifetime. He also left two notable architectural projects in the Speyer Cathedral and the Limburg Abbey. He is depicted several times in folk literature and fine arts. Historiography The reign of Conrad, who was "an illiterate layman", was framed by those of two very educated and religious rulers who were both named Henry. The Italian Chronicon Novalicense calls him a "rex idiota" ("idiota" just means "illiterate", and not "idiotic"). Wilson remarks that this reflects the prejudice of the clerical elite towards the emperor. Gregory Halfond notes that the Frankish-German lay aristocracy knew this when they chose Conrad—a king who, unlike Henry II, would not continue a "conflictual kingship" (Stefan Weinfurter's term) and would not favour the imperial church over the lay aristocracy. Halfond opines that their view of Conrad was not wrong. The views of Conrad II's personality and reign in the nineteenth century and early twentieth century were divided. Pro-papal, anti-imperial scholars tended to have a negative view. Harry Bresslau denounced him as the "least spiritual of all German rulers." Augustin Fliche described him as a "souverain without faith". By contrast, small-German (kleindeutsche), laicist, anti-clerical scholars saw him as the epitome of medieval imperial grandeur. Karl Hampe called him "perhaps the most self-contained and strong-willed ruling personality of the entire German Middle Age" and "a full-bodied layman, well versed in sword-play", "with a healthy sense of power, little touched by the world of ideas". According to Johannes Fried, only after World War II, the scholarly depiction of Conrad slowly changed: "It was the remarkable 1992 exhibition "The Salian Reich" that lifted him and his family out of the shadows of the graves in Speyer, into which they had sunken previously in the general German historical consciousness." He has become understood as a ruler who was conventionally pious and who saw himself as the Lord's Anointed. Fried praises Herwig Wolfram's erudite biography Konrad II., 990-1039: Kaiser dreier Reiche for the portrayal of the ruler, who appeared as a pragmatist who "always had many arrows in his quiver"—he was not a German national hero with lofty plans, nor a great one in the historical sense, but a successful and respectable politician who shared work with his Empress and who was more similar to modern doers than to medieval heroes. Reviewing Wolfram's book, Monnet praised Conrad as the ruler associated with a brilliant moment in the imperial history, and yet also the first who recognized the dangers in his vast collection of three kingdoms and succeeded in bringing the ministeriales into princely and royal administration. Regarding his military capability, Wolfram opines that, "Conrad II was not an accomplished general; his most important military triumphs were achieved by others, particularly in Lotharingia and Burgundy, and his victories against the Poles, as well