CORRADO III, EMPEROR. — Duke of Franconia, nephew of Henry V and brother of Frederick of Swabia, representative of the Salian tradition and party, which the Diet of Mainz in 1125 set aside in favor of the candidate of the higher clergy, Lothair of Saxony. The party of the Staufen, however, proclaimed C. king of Germany on 18 December 1127; and he immediately turned toward Italy, in order to establish there a firm base of resistance. Milan welcomed him, and the archbishop Anselm della Pusterla crowned him king of Italy on 29 June 1128. But the hostility of Honorius II and later, once the schism had arisen, also that of Anacletus II, together with the fierce rivalry provoked by Milan, made C.’s situation precarious and forced him to return to Germany in the autumn of 1130. For several more years the Staufen, strengthened by Bavarian and Swabian support, were able to hold out against Lothair; then Frederick, toward the end of 1134, and C., in 1135, had to yield, contribute at the Diets of Bamberg, Merseburg, and Mühlhausen to Lothair’s renewed power, and finally take part in Lothair’s second expedition to Italy in 1136–37.
When Lothair died on the return journey, on 3 December 1137, C. was elected king of Germany at the Diet of Coblenz (7 March 1138). The struggles against the duke of Bavaria soon caused Germany to split into the two Guelph (Bavarian) and Ghibelline (Swabian) parties; and, despite the minor external successes in Bohemia and Poland, they revealed the weakness of the central power and also prevented C., when Innocent II appealed to him against the democratic revolution in Rome, from descending into the peninsula for his coronation and the customary settlement of Italian affairs. Important negotiations took place during those years between Manuel Comnenus, emperor of the East, and C.; without resolving the conflicts between the two «Roman emperors», they nevertheless led, as they had already under Lothair, to an anti-Norman understanding and to the preparation, encouraged by S. Bernard, of a new Crusade. C. took part in it personally after taking the cross at Christmas 1146. Following the overland route, he crossed the Bosporus with the intention of reaching the Holy Land through Asia Minor, exposing himself, in addition to the difficulties of the march, to attacks by the Seljuk Turks. For the most part, the army dispersed: only a small contingent was able to return with C. to Constantinople and await there, in order to resume the undertaking, the arrival of the French led by Louis VII. He reached Jerusalem by sea, but the scarcity of success after so much sacrifice and so many losses discouraged C., who returned to Germany in 1148.
Amid the renewed struggles with the Guelphs, C. did not neglect preparations for the constantly postponed descent into Italy, but he died on 25 February 1152, leaving to his nephew and heir, Frederick Barbarossa, the way open to the strengthening of imperial authority.