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Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow 93.: Letter of Conrad III to the Greek Emperor, John Comnenus, 1142. - A Source Book for Mediaeval History. Selected Documents Illustrating the History of Europe in the Middle Age

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Collection: Primary Sources
Subject Area: History

93.: Letter of Conrad III to the Greek Emperor, John Comnenus, 1142. - Oliver J. Thatcher, A Source Book for Mediaeval History. Selected Documents Illustrating the History of Europe in the Middle Age [1905]

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A Source Book for Mediaeval History. Selected Documents Illustrating the History of Europe in the Middle Age, ed. Oliver J. Thatcher and Edgar Holmes McNeal (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1905).

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93.

Letter of Conrad III to the Greek Emperor, John Comnenus, 1142.

Although the German and Greek emperors had not adjusted their conflicting claims to southern Italy and Sicily (see no. 58, introductory note), they were agreed in regarding the Normans as usurpers and a common enemy. In order to destroy them the emperors determined to make common cause against them, as is apparent from the following letter. John Commenus, wishing to strengthen the alliance with Conrad, asked him to choose some German princess for his son, Manuel. Conrad chose his sister-in-law, Bertha von Sulzbach, who, at the time of her marriage with Manuel, assumed the name Irene.

Conrad, by the grace of God emperor of the Romans, Augustus, to John, by the same grace emperor of Constantinople, greeting and fraternal love.

As our predecessors, the Roman emperors, made friendship with your predecessors and established the honor and glory of the kingdom of the Greeks, we desire to do the same; and as they defended it, so we will defend it. It is known of all men that your new Rome [Constantinople] is the daughter of our Rome, the root from which have come your branches and fruits. Therefore we are determined to maintain toward you the attitude of a kind mother to her daughter, all the more that we perceive in you a desire to act as a dutiful daughter. We two should have the same interests, the same friends, and the same enemies, on land and sea. Anyone who fails to honor the daughter shall have occasion to know and fear the strength of the mother, be he Norman or Sicilian, or any other. For we have not forgotten the attacks which our enemy has made upon our own empire. With the help of God, we shall repay to every one according to the measure of his guilt. Then the whole world shall see how easily those who have dared to rebel against us both are overwhelmed and cast down; for if we cut his wings, we shall, as it were, take the enemy flying, and cut out of his heart that arrogance which has caused him to revolt against us. It is our firm purpose to maintain friendly relations toward you, and we are sure you hold the same purpose toward us, all the more now that we are bound together by the approaching marriage of your son and the sister of our wife, the empress. . . .