This article is an analysis of a series of texts, in prose and poetry, by German, French, and Italian authors, which praise Emperor Henry III (1039–56) in the stylised form of the Latin panegyric. It argues that the rhetorical training of the authors—often on deliberate display in their praise—lent their literary products an intellectual sophistication and political resonance which are not always immediately visible in the often highly stereotypical texts. Further, it considers the interpretative problems inherent in reading texts so bound by typological and stylistic precedent. Finally, it argues that thinking about panegyric as a social practice can help us understand some of role played by the imperial court in the radical upheavals in the western Empire in the second half of the eleventh century.