Henry the Lion has been viewed very controversially by his contemporaries and by posterity. The remark by the Holstein pastor Helmold von Bosau, that during the Duke's campaigns in Slavic lands, there was never talk of Christianity, but always only of money, aligned with those who praised Henry as a real politician in the sense of modern statehood. Always in search of precursors to national-liberal politics in the so bleakly ultramontane landscape of the high medieval empire, they oddly agreed with the reservations of Staufer historians, who criticized the duke for his conflict with the emperor and the empire. Henry the Lion bore the main responsibility for the emperor's defeat against the Lombard cities allied with the pope due to his refusal.