. Both Conrad III and Frederick I were elected as kings when another candidate was the legal heir of the previous ruler: Conrad succeeded Lothair III instead of his son-in-law Henry X of Bavaria, and Frederick succeeded Conrad III instead of Conrad’s seven-year-old son Frederick
[58]. However, there is a difference between the two Hohenstaufen. While Conrad III died never having achieved unity in the empire, Frederick’s catastrophic Italian campaign of 1166–1168 produced unexpected results: half his court had died of the plague, including his young cousin, Frederick of Rothenburg. Barbarossa was now free to crown his own son, Henry VI, junior king in 1169
[59].
This change is reflected in the works of Godfrey of Viterbo, which contains a narrative revised for the different situation of the 1180s. Godfrey’s position as tutor to Henry VI makes his work even more interesting, as most of his works were apparently written for the education of the young king[60]. A noticeable change in the narrative is that while Otto of Freising praised the elective principle of the imperial succession in the 1150s[61], already Godfrey of Viterbo’s first work, the Speculum regum, instructed Henry VI to look up to his ancestors, including Nimrod, whom God himself gave royal power, Jupiter, who was the first man to call himself a god, and Augustus, who founded the Roman Empire and almost proclaimed himself a god, but then had a vision of the Mother of God with Child[62]. The Speculum's story of Constantine the Great is a different case altogether: Henry VI is taught that Constantine was a base foreigner who robbed Rome of her impérium and gave it to the Greculi[63]. Moreover, he was an Arian heretic who introduced heresy to the whole world. Godfrey’s later works, including all the versions of the Pantheon, describe Constantine in line with Otto of Freising s Chronica[64].
Godfrey’s history of the Franks is an even more ideologically biased. In one version, Clovis was baptized even before Constantine the Great was. Clovis was, therefore, more virtuous and beloved of God, just like his people, the Franks, were[65]. In Godfrey’s other versions of Frankish history a more realistic chronology is observed[66]. The Carolingian overthrow of the Merovingians is portrayed as a natural development of a people who could not bear feeble rulers