Hello and welcome to the history of the Germans, Episode 19, Henry II and the House of God.

Now before we dive in, I have a few housekeeping announcements.

Today's episode is the last one of

season one. In season two we will look at the next dynasty, the Salians, who ruled

from 1024 to 1125. And that will start in about six weeks. But don't worry, there'll be

some history of the Germans in the intervening period. I will release one episode looking at the perception history of the Otonians,

looking at what people believed about them in the 19th and the first half of the 20th century.

We will trace how in the 1960s historians developed a new understanding of their role,

and the early medieval ages in general.

Two weeks after that, there'll be a Q&A episode, scheduled to be released on June 24th.

So please send me questions on the history of the Germans so far, the podcast or anything else you like to know. I'll try to answer all of them. And when you send me a message,

please state whether you want me to read

out your full name or just your initials when I quote the question. You can contact me on

History of the Germans at gmail.com or on Facebook, Instagram, Reddit and Twitter under

History of the Germans or some derivation thereof. I'm looking forward to your questions. And with that, back to the show.

In this episode, we are going to talk about how Emperor Henry II reorganized the kingdom,

in particular how he further developed the imperial church system. As you may remember, the imperial church

system is the idea that the kingdom

is run through the bishops and abbots, not the Counts and Dukes. So rather than relying on the

feudal obligations of the barons, the king passes land and rights to the church, which owes him

allegiance as God's anointed. It also helps that the king appoints the bishops, at least some of whom,

were trained at his court chancery. There are basically two ways we can do that. One is to look at it

...