FREDERICK II. AND THE PAPACY[28] (1216–1250)
Character and Policy of Frederick II.—His Work in Naples and
Sicily—Frederick and Honorius III.—The Early Struggles of Frederick
and Gregory IX.—Frederick’s Crusade and its Consequences—Peace of
San Germano—Germany under Frederick—St. Engelbert and Henry
VII.—German Civilisation under the Later Hohenstaufen—The Eastward
Expansion of Germany—Livonia and Prussia—Frederick and the Lombard
League—Battle of Cortenuova—Renewed Struggle with Gregory IX.—The
Tartars—Innocent IV. and the Council of Lyons—Henry Raspe and
William of Holland—The Italian Struggle—Frederick’s Plans for
Ecclesiastical Revolution—Frederick’s Death.
[Sidenote: Character of Frederick II.]
Frederick II. was nearly twenty-two years old when the death of Innocent
III. allowed him to govern as well as to reign. He was of middle height,
and well proportioned, though becoming somewhat corpulent as he advanced
in age. He had good features and a pleasant appearance. His light hair,
like that of his father and grandfather, inclined towards redness, but
he ultimately became very bald. Despite his troubled childhood, passed
in solitude and gloom at the palace of Palermo, he had been carefully
educated. He became familiar with many tongues, and versed in many
literatures. The half-Greek, half-Arabic cultivation of Sicily had
thoroughly permeated a spirit in which keen rationalism and dreamy
mysticism were curiously interwoven. He had a true mediæval love for
dialectic. He delighted in geometry and in astronomy. He regulated his
public and private life by the predictions of his astrologers, among
whom Michael Scot held the first place. He was curious in natural
history, collecting a great menagerie of strange animals and studying
their habits and structure. The camels and dromedaries, employed in
carrying his baggage train, excited the wonder of the Italians, and his
elephant, a present from the Sultan of Egypt, was almost as famous as
the elephant of Charlemagne. In his concern for his own health he busied
himself with surgery and medicine, while his care for his animals turned
his interests towards veterinary science. He enjoyed hunting and
hawking, not only as a sportsman, but as a naturalist. He wrote a
treatise on falconry that attests his zoological and anatomical
knowledge. Yet with all his love of fresh air and exercise, he was a
valetudinarian who depended upon his physicians almost as much as upon
his astrologers, regulating his life and diet very carefully, and
indulging so frequently in baths that his enemies reproached him with
bathing on Sundays.
With advancing life Frederick’s personal habits grew more and more
oriental. He secluded his wives from the public gaze, keeping them under
the custody of eunuchs after the Eastern fashion, and maintaining at
Lucera a regular harem of concubines, the expenses of which were duly
entered in the public accounts of the realm. Though a respectable
strategist, Frederick was no warrior, taking small delight in feats of
physical skill, and having little of the rough vigour and determination
of his chivalrous contemporaries. But he was a subtle and almost a great
statesman, who sought to gain his ends by craft, duplicity, and
dexterity. Courteous, polished, and seductive in manner, he seemed to
belong to a different race from that of his rude Swabian and Norman
ancestors. His many-sided character, so full of contradictions, has
nothing of the homogeneity and simplicity of the warriors and statesmen
of the Middle Ages, but at one time reflects the astute and effeminate
oriental, and at another anticipates the accomplished and brilliant
despots of the Italian Renascence. His want of sympathy for the ideals
of his time comes out strongly in his dealings with the Church. He was
believed to have imbibed from his Arab and Jewish masters an utter
scepticism as to all religion. Moses, Mohammed, and Christ, he is
reported to have said, were three impostors who had deluded the world in
turn; and he is also alleged to have maintained that the soul perished
with the body. But if Frederick upheld these views before a select
circle, he was careful to submit himself to all the obligations of the
Church, and to prove his orthodoxy not only by the most formal and
positive denials of these charges, but also by a most sanguinary
persecution of heresy.
[Sidenote: Frederick’s policy in Naples and Sicily.]
Frederick’s character and policy can best be studied in his favourite
Sicilian and South Italian homes. Despite the protection of Innocent
III., he had had, as we have seen, the greatest difficulties in
maintaining his position both against the untamed descendants of the old
Arab lords of Sicily, and against the fierce and turbulent feudal
aristocracy that had come in with the Normans. The first years after
Innocent’s death were taken up with renewed struggles against the
Saracens in Sicily. It was not till after an almost constant fight
between 1221–1225 that Frederick succeeded in entirely effecting their
subjection. He then strove to divide his Arab subjects by transporting a
large number of them to the desolate town of Lucera on the mainland. The
ruined city was rebuilt on a magnificent scale for its infidel
inhabitants. Workers in steel and weavers of silk made Lucera wealthy
and prosperous, and the grateful Arabs showed unwavering fidelity to
their sympathetic conqueror. Frederick frequently visited Lucera, where
he delighted to live the very life of his oriental subjects. Frederick
looked upon the Arabs as most kings looked on the Jews. They were his
personal slaves and dependants, whom he protected the more since,
besides the commercial gifts, which they shared with the Hebrews, they
were doughty warriors, who were ever willing to fight for him in his
Italian wars. Moreover, their loyalty was superior to the terrors of the
papal ban, and their arms proved an admirable counterpoise to the fierce
Norman aristocracy, which, allying itself with the Papacy, sought to
break down the fabric of centralisation which the Sicilian kings had
established at its expense, and which Frederick now strove to elaborate
into a strong despotism. The constant feudal revolts were suppressed
with firm deliberation and cold-blooded cruelty. Hardly less formidable
to Frederick than the feudalists were the great cities such as Messina,
Syracuse, and Catania, whose liberties were also menaced by a policy
that concentrated all power in the monarch, and whose frequent
rebellions were another continued source of trouble. The same firm hand
that checked the nobles ultimately managed to triumph over the
disaffection of the citizens.
Victorious over Saracens, nobles, and townsmen alike, Frederick
skilfully played off one class or race against the others, and banished
from his court the turbulent leaders of the lay and spiritual
aristocracy. With the help of a handful of faithful prelates and barons,
and of a wider circle of lawyers, notaries, and royal dependants,
Frederick issued a series of laws for the government of Sicily and
Naples that frankly strove to abolish the feudal state in the interests
of autocracy. He resumed possession of the estates that had been carved
from the royal domain in the days of confusion. Like another Henry of
Anjou, he either destroyed the unauthorised castles, erected by the
feudal lords, or at least garrisoned them with royal troops under trusty
commanders. Private wars were forbidden under pain of death, and even
the judicial duel was only allowed in specified cases and under careful
precautions. Criminal jurisdiction was withdrawn from the nobles’ courts
and put in the hands of royal judges. Frederick even made it a merit
that he suffered the feudal tribunals to continue to exercise civil
justice. The towns were deprived of the right of choosing their
magistrates, and put under the rule of royal officials, while councils
of notables, chosen by the inhabitants, gave the magistrates some
insight into public opinion, or at least proved a convenient channel for
receiving the royal commands. The feudal prelates shared in the ruin of
their lay colleagues, and every churchman was forced to pay taxes, and
to abandon civil office. The Church courts saw their jurisdiction
limited and their privileges curtailed. The further growth of
ecclesiastical property was prevented by a severe law of mortmain.
A great administrative system grew up on the ruins of seignorial,
ecclesiastical, and municipal independence. All laws emanated directly
from the monarch. The _Magna Curia_, sitting at Capua, took supreme
cognisance of all judicial business, while the _Magna Curia Rationum_
occupied the position of the Angevin Exchequer. _Chamberlains_ looked
after the finance and the administration of the provinces, while
_Justices_, strangers to the districts in which they bore rule, tried
criminals and upheld peace and good order. Local _bailiffs_ cared for
the royal interests in the villages, and acted as judges in the first
instance, while the _Grand Justiciar_, the head of the Court of Capua,
made yearly perambulations of the provinces to control the local
machinery. Representative _General Courts_ anticipated by a generation
or more the system of estates of Northern Europe, and brought the
autocrat in touch with the needs of the chief orders of the community.
The arts and sciences flourished at the court of the brilliant and
enlightened young despot. In 1224 Frederick established the University
of Naples, and provided it with every faculty, ‘in order that those who
have hunger for knowledge may find within the kingdom the food for which
they are yearning, and may not be forced to go into exile and beg the
bread of learning in strange lands.’ It was the first university in
Europe established by royal charter, and, all through its history, the
rigid dependence of its teachers and students on the State deprived it
of that freedom which was necessary to play a real part in the history
of thought, though the fostering care of its master, which prohibited
his subjects from studying elsewhere, made it an efficient educational
instrument, and it had the honour of numbering among its earliest
disciples Thomas of Aquino. The more ancient school of medicine at
Salerno was revived through Frederick’s bounty, and no one was allowed
to practise the physician’s art within the realm without the licence of
the Salerno doctors. At Frederick’s accession, we are told, there were
few men of letters in Sicily. His largesse soon attracted to his court
doctors from every part of the world. The palace itself became a centre
of intellectual activity. Michael Scot translated for Frederick many of
the works of Aristotle. The famous mathematician, Leonard of Pisa, who
introduced Arabic numerals and Arabic algebra into the West, enjoyed the
sovereign’s patronage. Learned Jews and Arabs were as sure of
Frederick’s favour as the best of Catholics. Nor were the lighter and
more elegant arts forgotten. It is possible that Frederick himself wrote
Latin poetry. It is certain that his compositions in the vulgar tongue
mark the starting-point of the vernacular literature of Italy, and for
the first time gave a currency among the great and learned to the songs
of the Sicilian dialect that had hitherto only enjoyed the favour of the
poor and humble. Dante regarded Frederick as the father of Italian
poetry, and the example of the king and his court gave such vogue to the
Sicilian idiom that it was nearly a century before the vernacular poets
forsook it for the Tuscan. Frederick also loved the poets of Provence,
even if he did not also write verses in the tongue of the Troubadours.
He also favoured the speech of Northern France, and recognised its
general prevalence as the common language of knights and soldiers. His
ministers, headed by the famous Peter della Vigna, emulated his
activity, and his children, especially the bastard Manfred, strove,
amidst great difficulties, to continue his work. Frederick loved art so
well that he rifled Ravenna to adorn his palace at Palermo, and
collected jewels, plate, and costly furniture as well as manuscripts. He
was a great builder, and his summer palace at Foggia, where he loved to
dwell by reason of its proximity to the great forest of the Incoronata,
which was reserved for the royal hunting, was, with the still existing
castle of Castel del Monte, a striking example of the severe yet elegant
style which he had adopted.
[Sidenote: Frederick and Honorius III., 1216–1227.]
The successor of Innocent III. was Honorius III., a member of the noble
Roman house of Savelli. He was a gentle, earnest, mild-mannered man, who
had grown grey while discharging a monotonous round of financial
business in the papal Curia. He was neither a statesman nor a zealot,
yet he was a high-minded and religious prelate, and intent above all
things upon renewing the Crusades. He had been tutor of Frederick, and
wished him well. But though Honorius’ conciliatory temper gave the young
king ample opportunities for working out his Sicilian policy, there were
grave matters outstanding that could not but give rise to difficulties
between the Papacy and its former ward. Frederick had promised Innocent
III. to prevent the permanent union of the Empire and Sicily by
investing his young son Henry with his Italian kingdom, to be held as a
fief of the Papacy. He had also pledged himself to embark personally
upon a Crusade. As success strengthened his love of power and impatience
of external control, Frederick became unwilling to fulfil either of
these obligations. Honorius urged him repeatedly to depart for the East
to uphold the declining cause of the Cross. Frederick exhausted his
ingenuity in piling up excuses for delay, and the meek Pope was content
to accept them. At last, in April 1220, Frederick allowed his son Henry
to be elected King of the Romans, and therefore his successor in the
Empire as well as in Sicily. This was an impudent violation of his
plighted word and an open defiance of the Pope. He had the effrontery to
pretend to Honorius that the election had been made without his
knowledge, and in September he returned from Germany to Italy,
professing the utmost deference to the papal authority, and offering a
settlement of the long-outstanding dispute about the inheritance of the
Countess Matilda. He was now profuse in promises to the Pope and clergy.
In November 1220 the long-suffering Honorius crowned him Emperor at
Rome. The Pope, moreover, allowed him to keep Sicily for his lifetime,
on condition that he maintained therein a separate administration from
that of the Empire. In return for all this, Frederick again solemnly
took the Cross, and lavished concessions on the Church. He annulled all
laws hostile to the privileges of the clergy. He declared the Church
exempt from all taxes, and conferred on all ecclesiastical persons
absolute immunity from lay jurisdiction. He sacrificed the rights of the
municipalities in favour of the prelates, and he promised to lend the
whole force of the secular power to supplement the Church’s efforts for
the extirpation of heresy. If he hoped to shift on the towns and the
heretics some of the worst disabilities that he had imposed upon
himself, he had nevertheless seriously limited his authority and
hampered his Sicilian policy. It was not sound statecraft that promised
freely in the hope of being able to repudiate the concession when he had
obtained the end for which he affected to pay the price.
Frederick seemed at first in earnest about the Crusade, but he again
piled up delay upon delay. In 1221 Damietta was lost to the Christians
(see chapter xix.), and the Pope, who felt that Frederick was
responsible for this severe blow, mildly threatened him with
excommunication; but Frederick soon talked him over, and it was agreed
to postpone his Crusade until 1225. Though that term soon passed away,
Frederick now contracted his second marriage, with Iolande or Isabella,
daughter of John de Brienne, and the heiress of the kingdom of
Jerusalem. This match gave him a new and a more personal motive to
undertake the promised adventure. Meanwhile papal legates had stirred up
Germany with some purpose, and Hermann of Salza, Grand Master of the
Teutonic Order, won over many of the princes. The eager Pope at last
thought that Europe was again on the verge of making a real effort to
redeem the recent failures. But the organisation of Sicily lay nearer
the Emperor’s heart than the delivery of the Holy Sepulchre from the
infidel. The establishment of the Saracens at Lucera was a curious
comment on his crusading zeal, and directly threatened the neighbouring
papal territories with infidel invasion at the very moment when
Frederick was calling on the inhabitants of Spoleto, a fief of the Holy
See, to render him military service. The new laws promulgated for his
Southern dominions afflicted the clergy with severe disabilities, and
gave the lie direct to the promises made after Frederick’s coronation.
Moreover, in 1226 Frederick held a great diet at Cremona, where he
renewed the ancient imperial claims over Lombardy. In their alarm the
Lombard cities renewed their league, and blocked the roads by which the
imperial troops could cross over the Alps from Germany. Frederick put
the guilty cities under the imperial ban, and a German prelate declared
an interdict over their lands. Honorius at last lost all patience. He
pronounced the interdict invalid, and prepared to renew the ancient
league between the Papacy and the Lombard cities. Despite the incredible
forbearance of the Pope, the lying and chicanery of the Emperor had
wantonly provoked a rupture. The death of Honorius in March 1227
precipitated the inevitable renewal of the old contest of Papacy and
Empire.
The next Pope was Ugolino, cardinal bishop of Ostia, a kinsman of
Innocent III., a man of the highest character, and an ardent upholder of
the great Pope’s ideas. He had long been known as the special patron of
St. Francis and St. Dominic (see chapter xviii.), and the most strenuous
foe of all sorts of heretics. [Sidenote: The first struggle between
Frederick and Gregory IX., 1227–1230.] Gregory IX. (this was the name he
assumed) was already a very old man. But the fire of youthful enthusiasm
still glowed within him, and his strong will and restless energy at once
brushed aside the specious excuses that had so long deceived his
predecessor. For the moment it seemed as if Frederick was at last in
earnest for the Crusade. Bands of German, Italian, and French warriors
gathered together in Apulia during the summer, and on 8th September
Frederick himself took ship at Brindisi for the Holy Land. But
pestilence had already decimated the crusading army, and after a few
days Frederick put back at Otranto, alleging that a sharp attack of
fever had necessitated his return. The Emperor soon recovered, but the
Landgrave of Thuringia, the commander of his army, now died, and many of
the survivors of the expedition went back to their homes. Frederick’s
excuses availed him little with Gregory IX. On 29th September the Pope
pronounced him excommunicate, and laid under interdict every spot
wherein he might chance to tarry. This was the signal for a violent
renewal of the ancient strife between Papacy and Empire. Gregory
denounced the Emperor in threatening manifestos, and swarms of Mendicant
Friars wandered throughout Italy, seeking to turn Frederick’s subjects
from their allegiance to the forsworn, grasping, and profligate Emperor.
Frederick did not shrink from the conflict. ‘No Roman Emperor,’ he
declared, ‘has ever been so badly treated by a Pope. The Roman Church is
so swollen with avarice that the goods of the Church will not suffice to
satisfy it, and it is not ashamed to disinherit and make tributary
emperors, kings and princes.’ For the moment Frederick was in the
stronger position. The Pope’s emissaries failed to turn either Italy or
Germany from its allegiance. The partisans of the Emperor stirred up a
tumult in Rome, and at Easter 1228 Gregory was forced to take flight to
Viterbo.
[Sidenote: Frederick’s Crusade, 1228–1229.]
In June Frederick again took ship at Brindisi, and landed in September
in Acre. His wife, Isabella of Brienne, died before his embarkation, on
the birth of their son Conrad, but Frederick still claimed the crown of
Jerusalem. Gregory now forbade the excommunicate Emperor from
presumptuously undertaking the holy work, and commanded the faithful to
withdraw from his armies. As Frederick still persisted, the sentence of
excommunication passed because of his refusal to become a Crusader was
renewed because he went to the Holy Land without reconciling himself to
the Church. The Patriarch of Jerusalem and the Orders of the Temple and
the Hospital obeyed the papal command. But the rash violence of the Pope
overreached itself, and many Crusaders, conspicuous among whom was the
young Teutonic Order and its famous master, Hermann of Salza, did not
scruple to follow Frederick to battle. Public opinion blamed the Pope
for his rigour, and a contemporary said that Frederick was the victim of
Gregory, as Christ was the victim of Caiaphas. Though not unprepared for
battle, Frederick trusted more to negotiation than to his arms. Long
before his departure for Palestine, he had been conducting friendly
negotiations with El-Kamil, the Sultan of Egypt. In February 1229 he
concluded a ten years’ truce with the Sultan, by which Bethlehem,
Nazareth, and Jerusalem were restored to the Christians, on condition
only that the Mosque of Omar remained in Saracen hands. On Mid-Lent
Sunday Frederick took the crown of Jerusalem from the high altar of the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and placed it on his own head. But the
Patriarch cast an interdict over the Holy Places, and no priest could be
found to hallow the coronation by celebrating the offices of the Church.
Frederick gave fresh cause for scandal by visiting the Mosque of Omar.
He soon returned to Acre, and in June was back in Italy. Despite the
thunders of the Church, the excommunicate Emperor had done more for the
Christian cause than a generation of orthodox pilgrims. Hermann of Salza
declared with good reason that Frederick could have obtained still
better terms for the Christians had it not been for the hostility of
Pope and clergy.
During Frederick’s absence, Gregory had devastated Apulia with fire and
sword. His dead wife’s father, John de Brienne, the ex-king of
Jerusalem, acted as captain of the papal mercenaries against him. On
Frederick’s sudden reappearance, the papal troops were driven over the
frontier and the Patrimony of St. Peter itself threatened by the
victorious Emperor. Gregory found that his rashness had brought him into
an impossible position, and was glad to accept the mediation which
Hermann of Salza and Duke Leopold of Austria now proffered. [Sidenote:
The Peace of San Germano, 1230.] On July 23, 1230, peace was made
between Pope and Emperor at San Germano. In return for a promise to
protect the Pope’s dominions and a confirmation of the papal rights over
Sicily, Frederick was released from his excommunication. Soon after,
Pope and Emperor met at Anagni with Hermann of Salza as the only witness
of their conference. ‘The Pope,’ wrote Frederick, ‘has opened to me his
heart, and has calmed my spirit. I will remember the past no longer.’
‘The Emperor,’ wrote Gregory, ‘has come to seek me with the zeal of a
devoted son, and has shown to me that he is ready to accomplish all my
desires.’ Yet, despite these mutual protestations, the Treaty of San
Germano so little went to the root of the matter that it was little more
than a hollow truce. Both sides still watched each other with jealous
suspicion. However, the truce was kept for several years, since neither
Pope nor Emperor was ready to strike the decisive blow for power.
Frederick devoted the period succeeding the Treaty of San Germano to the
building up of his Southern despotism. His policy now became more
exclusively Italian. With the hope of getting help from the German
princes in carrying out his Southern schemes, he recklessly played into
their hands, and wantonly destroyed the well-ordered authority over his
Northern kingdom that he had inherited from his father and grandfather.
[Sidenote: Contrast between Frederick’s Italian and German policy.] His
German and Sicilian policies stand in the strongest contrast. While he
trampled down all feudal communities in the Norman kingdom in favour of
a centralised bureaucracy dependent upon himself, he threw to the winds
every monarchical and national tradition in Germany. There was something
of the wilfulness that is so characteristic of him in this strangely
twofold and contradictory action. It strikes at the very root of
Frederick’s claims to the higher statesmanship. Their only
reconciliation is the fact that the Emperor’s policy was but the policy
of the moment. So long as he could crush his papal enemy, he was utterly
careless of the general tendency of his work. The ruin of the
Hohenstaufen was already prepared for when Frederick bartered his German
kingship for an immediate triumph over his hated foe. It was all the
more certain, since the elaborate edifice that he imagined he was
building up in Italy was but a house erected on the sand.
[Sidenote: Government of St. Engelbert, 1220–1225.]
The long civil war between Frederick and Otto of Saxony had done much to
shake the authority of the German king and stimulate the development of
the feudal principle. A partial recovery was effected during the years
succeeding the collapse of the Guelf, when the wise rule of Engelbert,
archbishop of Cologne, contributed powerfully towards restoring the
prestige of the absentee sovereign. Like Barbarossa, Frederick sought to
rule by means of the German episcopate, but the bishops of his time were
no longer in the commanding position which the warlike prelates of the
twelfth century had held. The episcopal towns which they had once ruled
through their officials had become great centres of commerce and wealth,
and were rapidly advancing on the road to autonomy. The lay princes were
more independent, and even the _ministeriales_, who had played so
decisive a part in earlier struggles, were attaining an independent and
permanent position of their own as a lower aristocracy whose imperial
offices were becoming hereditary fiefs. There was not time enough for
Engelbert’s attempts at reformation to succeed. It was not until 1219
that the last partisans of the Guelfs tendered their submission. But
even before that, in 1216, Frederick had conferred on his four-year-old
son Henry the duchy of Swabia, and in 1220 he had procured, as we have
seen, his election as King of the Romans. He smoothed the way to this by
a formal alliance with the ecclesiastical princes, conferring upon them
a series of privileges that extended to them complete jurisdiction over
their fiefs.[29] In 1222 Henry was crowned king at Aachen by Engelbert,
who ‘cherished him as a son and honoured him as a master.’ Henceforth
the administration was carried on in the name of the young king.
Engelbert watched with a jealous eye the power of Valdemar II. of
Denmark, who had been allowed by Frederick to retain possession of
Nordalbingia and the extensive German districts which he had occupied,
when fighting as a partisan of Otto IV. But the German lords of the
conquered districts were averse to foreign domination, and, headed by
Count Henry of Schwerin, sought to restore their estates to their
fatherland. [Sidenote: Defeat of Valdemar of Denmark, 1223–1227.] In
1223 Henry of Schwerin had the good luck to take the King of Denmark
prisoner, and in 1225 Valdemar only obtained his release at the price of
renouncing Schwerin, Holstein, and his other German acquisitions.
Afterwards Valdemar sought to regain his losses, but in 1227 he was
defeated at the bloody battle of Bernhöved in Holstein, and was glad to
renew the conditions which he had accepted two years before. Henceforth
the Danes were confined to their own territories, and the chief
hindrance was removed to the expansion of the German power in the Baltic
lands.
Engelbert’s war against Denmark was the greatest evidence of his energy
and success. Before the struggle was over he was assassinated in 1225 by
a band of robber knights, who resented his strenuous maintenance of
public order. The Church honoured him as a martyr, and he was soon added
to the catalogue of saints. [Sidenote: Henry VII., King of the Romans,
1222–1235.] He left no competent successor, and the land fell into such
anarchy that a chronicler complained that Germany had become as bad as
Israel under the Judges, when there was no king, and every man did what
was right in his own eyes. The young Henry VII.—so Frederick’s son was
generally called—attained man’s estate in the midst of these
disturbances. He was a dissolute, capricious, feather-headed youth,
quite unable to uphold order or frame a clear and consistent policy.
Complaints of the disorders arising from his neglect soon crossed the
Alps to his father, but Frederick’s exhortations and remonstrances only
irritated his son against him without turning him from his evil ways.
Before long the growing differences between Frederick and Henry added a
new element of difficulty to the Emperor’s position. The King of the
Romans sought, so far as he could, to maintain a diametrically different
policy from that approved of by the Emperor. The last generation of the
‘ministeriales,’ utterly alienated from his father, abetted his designs
and gave them some coherence.
[Sidenote: Frederick’s Privileges to the Princes, 1231–1232.]
In 1231 Frederick forced Henry to promulgate at Worms a _Statutum in
favorem principum_, which in 1232 he personally confirmed at a diet at
Civitate in Friuli.[30] It was the elaboration and the generalisation of
his alliance twelve years earlier with the prelates. ‘Let every prince,’
declared the Emperor, ‘enjoy in peace, according to the approved custom
of his land, his immunities, jurisdictions, counties and hundreds, both
those which belong to him in full right, and those which have been
granted out to him in fief.’ It was a complete recognition of the
territorial supremacy of the great nobles, whether churchmen or laymen.
No new castle or city was to be set up within their dominions, even by
the Emperor. The hundreds men [_centumgravii_] were to act in their
name, and no new money was to be struck in any prince’s land that could
reduce the currency of his local mintage. The towns and the lesser
estates were to be depressed in their favour. The cities were not to
exercise jurisdiction outside the circuit of their walls, were not to
entertain _Pfahlbürger_, or harbour fugitives or the vassals of any
prince. It was a complete renunciation of the earlier policy of the
Hohenstaufen. But though powerful in securing the territorial supremacy
of the princes, Frederick’s law had little effect in checking the growth
of municipal autonomy. The greater cities were already getting rid of
their episcopal or baronial lords, and Frederick was quite unable to
check the flowing tide.
[Sidenote: Persecution of Heresy.]
In his shiftless way Henry tried to pose as the champion of the towns
and the lesser nobility, that was gradually evolving out of the ancient
official class, against the great feudalists whom his father so
obstinately favoured. Since Frederick wished to remain for the moment on
good terms with the Church, Henry ostentatiously took up an
anti-clerical attitude. He had favoured the savage persecutions of
heresy which Frederick had allowed Franciscan and Dominican inquisitors
to carry out in Germany as well as in Italy (see also chapter xviii.).
Conspicuous among them was the Franciscan, Conrad of Marburg, who
wandered ‘preaching and teaching’ all over Germany until 1233, when he
was assassinated. Henry now sought to end the persecution which he had
once favoured. But in 1234 a regular crusade was fought against the
Stedinger of the mouths of the Weser, who had refused to pay their
tithes. They were easily defeated, and those who escaped massacre
abandoned their homes and took shelter in Friesland.
Henry’s relations with Frederick had long been strained. In 1232 he
visited his father in Friuli, and was forced to renew his oaths of
obedience. But his blunders and follies crowned all his enterprises with
failure, and, after his father had been forced to disavow all
responsibility for his rash deeds, the young king strove to unite the
towns and the lesser nobles in revolt against the Emperor (1234).
[Sidenote: Revolt and Ruin of Henry, 1335.] In 1235 Frederick was
compelled to appear in Germany, where he easily put down his son’s
rebellion. The cities adhered for the most part to the Emperor, and the
‘ministeriales’ and lesser nobles were not strong enough to stand alone.
On the advice of the peace-loving Hermann of Salza, the young king made
his submission to his father. His punishment was perpetual imprisonment
in Apulia. In 1242, wearied with the restraint, he rode his horse over a
precipice, and perished.
[Sidenote: The Diet of Mainz and the English marriage, 1235.]
Never was Frederick’s power so strongly manifested as during his visit
to Germany in 1235. In the summer he celebrated at Worms his third
marriage, with Isabella of England, the sister of Henry III., and soon
afterwards held a numerously attended Diet at Mainz, where he published
a series of famous constitutions, in some of which he sought to extend
to Germany some of the principles that had for so long inspired his
Sicilian policy. He established a court justiciar [_justiciarius
curiæ_], who was to hold sessions of his court on all lawful days,
hearing all causes save the high matters which the Emperor reserved for
himself. This class included all the questions of dispute that might
arise between the great vassals. Frederick strove to limit private war
to cases where justice should be denied, and to raise up beside the
courts of the princes the imperial court which he had thus reorganised.
But at the same time he renewed the former privileges granted to the
princes, and thus made his reforms of no effect. The feudal magnates
were still to exercise every regalian right, the bishops were still to
keep a tight hold over their see towns, and the free municipalities were
still to renounce the protection of their ‘Pfahlbürger,’ and see their
independence circumscribed by the local grandees. The lesser nobility
soon succumbed before these blows, and the future of Germany was thus
intrusted to the great feudatories. A good illustration of this is the
circumstance that the ancient power of electing the kings passed away
from the general assembly of the barons to the limited circle of
magnates, who were later known as the seven electors. In the same
conciliatory spirit, those who had a hand in the revolt of King Henry
were fully pardoned, and special concessions to the more powerful
princes bound them individually to the imperial cause. Among these may
be specially mentioned the recognition of Otto of Lüneburg, the heir of
the Guelfs, as Duke of the new duchy of Brunswick (see also page 331).
Frederick’s friendship with the Guelfs, following closely upon his
alliance with England, clearly marks his departure from his ancestors’
policy. Even the towns were conciliated by the renewal of their
privileges. Only the Duke of Austria, the brother-in-law of Henry VII.,
still remained unappeased. He was proscribed in the diet of 1236 and his
territories invaded. But the Duke resisted so vigorously that Frederick,
who had before this returned to Italy, was forced once more to cross the
Alps. Early in 1237 the Emperor entered Vienna in triumph, though even
after this the stubborn duke held his own, and when peace was at last
made in 1239, he secured the full restitution of his estates.
[Sidenote: Conrad, King of the Romans, 1237.]
Frederick took with him to Vienna Conrad, his son by Isabella of
Brienne, then a boy of nine. The assembled princes declared that the
little Conrad was to be preferred to Henry, as David had been put in the
place of Saul. He was elected King of the Romans, and on Frederick’s
speedy return to Italy, the government of Germany was, for a second
time, carried on in the name of a boy-king. The troubles that had
disturbed the reign of Henry were now quickly renewed.
Notwithstanding the rapid diminution of the royal power, the age of
Frederick II. is one of no small moment in the development of German
civilisation, though little of the credit for it can be set down to the
absentee and incurious Emperor. But in truth the removal of the imperial
authority was not all loss. [Sidenote: German Civilisation under
Frederick II.] It had never been sufficient of a reality to secure for
all Germany permanent peace, and even in the days of the strongest of
German kings much of the merit of upholding order and civilisation had
belonged to the local potentates. Their complete recognition and the
full legalisation of their power now substituted a large number of small
local centres of authority for the one unifying power of the old German
king. German unity suffered, but national unity was a far-off ideal in
Northern Europe in the thirteenth century. The great development of
trade, wealth, law, literature, and civilisation showed that Germany was
far from being an absolute loser by the change of system. Unluckily the
power of these lesser rulers did not, as in France, prepare the way for
a strong monarchy when the time grew ripe for a single government.
Germany paid the penalty for her premature unity under her early kings
by her inability to set up a national authority when national states
became possible.
[Sidenote: Commerce and the Towns.]
Despite the hostility of emperor and princes, the towns more than held
their own. Great changes were coming over the commercial relations of
Europe. The volume of trade was much greater, and now flowed in channels
which gave Germany a larger share of the world’s traffic. The rich
products of the East now came from Venice over the Brenner, and either
went down the Lech to Augsburg and Nürnberg or descended the Rhine to
marts like Cologne, where the traders of the north and south met
together, and the cloth of Flanders or the wool of England, and the
wood, iron, and coarse products of the Baltic were bartered for the more
costly articles of luxury that had come over the Alps. Safe behind their
strong walls, the citizens could hold their own against prince or
emperor, while their interest in the maintenance of the public peace and
the safety of the roads and waterways attracted them to the side of any
powerful and peace-loving ruler. A few strong princes could keep better
order than a mass of robber-nobles levying endless tolls and exactions
on all goods passing through their territories. Even before the fall of
the Hohenstaufen the towns had not only escaped the direct rule of the
Emperor, but had gradually withdrawn themselves from the authority of
the neighbouring lords. The extension of the German race and power to
the East opened up for them new avenues for trade.
[Sidenote: Law.]
The development of local authorities was marked by the growth of local
codes of laws. The earliest code of German customary law, the
_Sachsenspiegel_, was drawn up before the fall of Henry VII., and
prepared the way for a series of similar collections of customs in the
second half of the thirteenth century. The towns followed the same
process, and it became the ideal of each community to attain the laws
which a more ancient and better established community already enjoyed.
For the East the customs of Magdeburg, for the North the laws of Lübeck,
which themselves were derived from those of Soest in Westphalia, became
the model on which the newer towns based their constitutions.
[Sidenote: Literature.]
Literature followed the direction of politics and law. The use of the
vernacular tongue spread as, side by side with the Latinised culture of
the clergy and the popular epics that had flourished at least since
Barbarossa’s days, the lay nobles and knights developed a literary
medium of their own. [Sidenote: The Minnesinger and the Romancers.] The
early part of the thirteenth century was the great period of the
Minnesinger, the knightly poets of love, whose polished and spontaneous
lyrics, inspired by the Troubadours of the Langue d’oc, celebrated
chivalrous devotion to beauty and romantic affection in terms that
showed how far society had outgrown the rudeness of the Dark Ages. Side
by side with them was the great school of romancers, influenced by
North-French models, who told to German ears the romances of Charlemagne
and Arthur. Lyrists like the Tyroler Walter von der Vogelweide, and epic
poets like Wolfram of Eschenbach and Gottfried of Strassburg, found
their best welcome at the courts of the more cultured princes, such as
Frederick of Austria and, above all, Hermann of Thuringia, whose castle
of the Wartburg, dominating his town of Eisenach, has an almost
legendary celebrity in their history. Little as he was in their land,
Frederick himself did not neglect to show his favour to the German
poets. But the fact that the impulse that inspired so much of their work
came from France showed that the Germany of the later Hohenstaufen was
not only losing its primacy in politics, but failed even to gain the
headship in thought and art. The German builders of Frederick’s age
continued to construct their churches on Romanesque lines, and the
‘French style’ of Gothic only came in very slowly and partially. The
fact that Germany possessed no university indicated her subordinate
position in the world of thought. Though one of the strongest of the
thirteenth century scholastics, Albert the Great, was a German, more of
his work was accomplished at Paris than at Cologne.
[Sidenote: The Expansion of Germany in the North and East.]
The extension of German influence over the North and East showed that
the spirit of the great Saxon and Frankish Emperors continued to inspire
the Germans of the thirteenth century. The triumph of St. Engelbert over
Valdemar of Denmark had restored German hegemony over the Baltic lands.
From it followed the commercial supremacy of Lübeck, the domination of
the Margraves of Brandenburg over the Slavonic Dukes of Pomerania, and
the extension of German influence beyond the Oder. [Sidenote: Decay of
the Slavonic States.] The ancient strength of the Polish monarchy
declined, and the Russian monarchy, which had been so powerful under
Saint Vladimir and Iaroslav the Great, split up even more hopelessly
than the more western Slavonic state. The only strong Slavonic power was
Bohemia, which all through the thirteenth century increased greatly in
importance under Ottocar I. (1197–1230), Wenceslas III. (1230–1253), and
Ottocar II. (1253–1278). But the Czech monarchs became so powerfully
attracted by German civilisation that they welcomed German merchants,
minstrels, priests, and knights, and were soon to profit by the growing
weakness of the German power to put themselves among the mightiest of
Teutonic states.
[Sidenote: The Livonian and Prussian Crusades.]
The decline of the Slavonic world left to itself the heathenism of the
East Baltic lands. From the Gulf of Finland to the borders of Germany
the savage and pagan Livonians, Esthonians, Lithuanians, and Prussians
still lived their old fierce lives, and it was not till early in the
thirteenth century that a pious missionary, named Christian, took up in
earnest the long-interrupted work of St. Adalbert, and became the first
bishop of the Prussians. A little before this Albert of Buxhöwden, a
canon of Bremen, set up the bishopric of Riga, which became the centre
of missionary effort among the heathen of Livonia. The result was that
Germany had the credit of bringing religion and civilisation to the race
that had escaped the nearer influence of Poles and Russians. In 1200
Bishop Albert of Riga established the order of Knights of the Sword, a
military brotherhood of the crusading type, specially destined to subdue
the heathens of the Livonian lands. More than twenty years later the
Prussians pressed Poland so severely that the latter country had to call
in German help. [Sidenote: The Knights of the Sword and the Teutonic
Knights.] The Teutonic Order, engaged for nearly a hundred years in the
Holy Land, had never obtained in that region the importance or the
wealth of the Temple or the Hospital. Hermann of Salza, the friend of
Frederick II., had convinced himself that the affairs of the Christians
in Syria were desperate, and even before Frederick’s crusade had shown
his willingness to transfer his main activity against the Prussians.
Frederick II. himself confirmed and enlarged the offers of the Polish
duke, and from 1230 onwards the Teutonic Knights were busily engaged
waging war in Prussia. Bit by bit the military monks overcame the
obstinate resistance of the heathen. Even more arduous was the struggle
of the Knights of the Sword in Livonia. But in both lands the discipline
of the few finally prevailed over the disorderly heroism of the
undisciplined barbarians. The two orders formed a close alliance, and
before the end of the century Livonia, Curland, and Prussia were
altogether in their power, leaving Lithuania alone as the last
resting-place of heathenism in Central Europe. Thus was effected the
last great expansion of Germany to the east. While the Knights of the
Sword remained a limited conquering class, powerless to prevent the
continuance of the native idiom and manners of their newly Christianised
subjects, Prussia gradually became almost as much Germanised as
Pomerania or Silesia. German traders followed the Teutonic warriors, and
in both lands a German burgher class supplemented the work of the ruling
aristocracy. Even in Poland German towns grew up everywhere. The Baltic
bade fair to become a German lake, and the Scandinavian powers shrank
back into insignificance and isolation.
[Sidenote: Breach between Frederick and the Lombard Cities, 1235.]
While the German race was working its way to fresh destinies with little
guidance from its nominal king, Frederick himself was again becoming
embroiled in the troubles of Italian and ecclesiastical politics. Even
in the quiet times that followed the Treaty of San Germano, the Lombard
cities had watched with alarm the despotic and anti-municipal policy of
the Emperor. So early as 1232 delegates from Lombardy renewed their
league, which was soon to be extended by the inclusion of the chief
towns of Romagna and the March. Other leagues grew up in Tuscany and
Umbria. Soon Frederick’s suspicions were excited, and his anger passed
all bounds when the North-Italian cities formed a close alliance with
the revolted King Henry, who found south of the Alps the civic support
that he had sought in vain to procure in Germany. Frederick at once
strove to set up some power antagonistic to the League. Faithful in
North Italy to his German policy, he saw in the feudal aristocracy his
best immediate support. Even under the shadows of the Alps the Italian
barons had not the strength and commanding position of the Teutonic
feudalists. But some of the more capable barons were able to extend
their authority by exercising influence over the cities, and chief among
these was the ancient house of Romano, German in its origin, and now
represented by the two brothers Eccelin and Alberic, who had established
themselves in Verona and Vicenza respectively. It was upon this bastard
feudalism of Italy, that owed half its importance to its capacity for
establishing civic tyranny, that Frederick henceforth chiefly relied. It
was a policy even more fatal to him than his alliance with the princes
in Germany. But for the moment it attained an equal success. After all,
feudal ruffians like Eccelin were better fighters than the ill-trained
militia of the Lombard cities.
In 1236 Frederick was back in Italy, and found a ready welcome from
Eccelin da Romano, who now aspired to appropriate the whole region
between the Alps and the Adige, and soon made himself lord of Padua and
Treviso. Recalled over the mountains by the Austrian troubles, Frederick
again appeared in Italy in 1237. But a small portion of his army came
from Germany. He relied for the most part on the Ghibelline barons of
Italy, on Eccelin and his following, and on his trusty Saracens from
Lucera. The Lombard League sought in vain to withstand his progress.
Frederick’s clever strategy soon out-generalled the civic host, and on
27th November 1237 the whole army of the League was signally defeated at
Cortenuova, half-way between Brescia and Milan. [Sidenote: Battle of
Cortenuova, 27th Nov. 1237.] Taken at a disadvantage, the valour of the
citizens was powerless to withstand the skill and discipline of the
imperial army. The Milanese abandoned their _carroccio_ in their flight,
and their Podestà, the Venetian Tiepolo, fell into the victor’s hands.
Frederick celebrated his success by a sort of Roman triumph through the
streets of Cremona, where his famous elephant, with its Saracen drivers
on its back, dragged the captured _carroccio_ of Milan through the town,
with the Podestà Tiepolo tightly bound to its standard-pole. Soon after,
Frederick married his daughter to Eccelin, and granted the dominion of
Sardinia to his bastard son Enzio, who had wedded the heiress of the
island. The majority of the cities desisted from the hopeless struggle
and made peace with the victor. Only a few irreconcilable Guelfic
strongholds, including Milan, Alessandria, Brescia, Piacenza, and
Bologna, persisted in withstanding the Emperor. They could again hope
for the support of the Pope, who now thought the time was ripe for
breaking with the Emperor.
[Sidenote: Gregory IX. as legislator and religious leader.]
During the years of peace Gregory IX. had busied himself with the
suppression of heresy, the organisation of the Inquisition, the
encouragement of the new orders of Mendicant Friars [see chapter
xviii.], the rekindling of the religious zeal of Europe, and his great
work of ecclesiastical legislation. In his war against the heretics he
had, as we have seen, the Emperor no less than the Mendicants as his
allies. He firmly identified the Papacy with the new religious movement
when he canonised Francis and Dominic and the Emperor’s kinswoman, St.
Elizabeth of Thuringia, the devoted disciple of Conrad of Marburg. With
the help of his penitentiary, Raymond of Pennaforte, he collected the
constitutions and decretals of earlier Popes in an official code of five
books, which was invested with exclusive authority in the courts and the
law-schools. Henceforth the Decretals of Gregory IX. stood side by side
with the Decretum of Gratian itself among the authoritative texts of the
Canon Law. It was, in a measure, an answer to the antagonistic
legislation of Frederick in Sicily. But all Gregory’s efforts could do
little to stop the progress of the Emperor, and he was further hampered
by the constant turbulence of the Romans, who more than once drove him
from their city. After the triumph at Cremona, Frederick significantly
sent the Milanese _carroccio_ to the Roman enemies of the Pope.
[Sidenote: Renewed breach between Gregory and Frederick, 1239.]
Gregory’s turn would come when the last of the Lombard cities had been
reduced. Frederick was already boasting of his intention to restore
Middle Italy to its obedience to the Empire. Accordingly Gregory openly
declared himself on the side of the Lombard League. Hermann of Salza
made his last efforts on behalf of peace, but his death soon removed the
one man whom both Pope and Emperor implicitly trusted. In March 1239
Gregory for a second time launched a bull of excommunication against
Frederick, and absolved his subjects from their allegiance.
The new contest between Pope and Emperor was waged with extraordinary
and almost unprecedented bitterness and violence. The Emperor reproached
the Pope for standing in the way of the repression of heresy in
Lombardy, and called upon all kings and princes to unite against the
greedy and self-seeking priest who sought to make the humiliation of the
Roman Cæsar the first step towards the abasement of all temporal
authority. The Pope answered by accusing Frederick of the most outspoken
blasphemy, of utter incredulity, and the most shameless profligacy. It
was significant that both Frederick and Gregory strove hard to get
public opinion on their side, and that neither failed to win over a body
of ardent supporters.
[Sidenote: Collapse of the German opposition.]
Gregory did his best to stir up a revolt in Germany. His legate proposed
the election of the King of Denmark, as King of the Romans in place of
Conrad; but, despite the adherence of the Duke of Austria and of other
discontented magnates, the scheme was shattered through the steady
devotion of the German episcopate to the young king. It was equally in
vain when Gregory offered the crown to Robert of Artois, St. Louis’
brother. The French nobles roundly told the Pope that even if the
Emperor deserved deposition, his deprivation could only be effected by a
General Council. Headed by the regent, Siegfried, Archbishop of Mainz,
the German clergy rejected the alliance of the Papacy, so that Frederick
was able to carry on his war against Gregory in Italy without the
distraction of a German revolt. Even the Mendicant preachers of the
papal sentence did little to turn German opinion away from the Emperor.
[Sidenote: Frederick’s successes in Italy.]
Frederick answered Gregory’s attacks by declaring the incorporation of
the March of Ancona and the Duchy of Spoleto with the imperial
dominions, and by absolving the inhabitants of those regions from their
fealty to the Pope. He turned from his Lombard enemies to invade the
papal territory, and made himself master of Ravenna and Faenza, and
before long of towns so near Rome as Foligno and Viterbo. Nothing but a
strange freak of fidelity on the part of the Romans to Gregory saved the
holy city from the Emperor’s advance. Secure for the moment in his
capital, Gregory strove to emphasise the solemnity of his ecclesiastical
censures by summoning a Council to Rome, to join with him in the
condemnation of the Emperor. But the Pope’s violence had alienated even
clerical opinion, and a mere handful of prelates answered his summons.
Frederick derided the packed Council, and refused safe-conducts to those
wishful to take part in it. Nevertheless a certain number of
North-Italian, French, and Spanish bishops and abbots collected together
in the spring of 1241 at Genoa, and the Pope, by lavish payments,
prevailed on the Genoese to provide a fleet to take them to Rome.
However, the seafaring towns, with Pisa at their head, were all on the
Emperor’s side, and an imperial fleet, superior in numbers and fighting
capacity, bore down upon the densely packed Genoese galleys near the
island of Giglio. After a show of resistance, the mass of the Genoese
fleet was captured. Most of the Spanish prelates escaped, but a crowd of
French and North-Italian ecclesiastics, including three archbishops and
the abbots of Cluny, Cîteaux, and Clairvaux fell, with the delegates of
the Lombard towns, into the hands of the imperialists. [Sidenote: The
capture of a General Council, 1241.] The prisoners were taken by Enzio
to Naples, ‘crowded together in oppression and bonds, and tormented by
hunger and thirst,’ until the prison wherein they were cast, ‘heaped
together like pigs,’ seemed a ‘welcome place of rest.’[31] Flushed with
this signal triumph, Frederick once more advanced upon Rome. This time
Gregory could not resist his progress. The enemy were at the gates when,
on 21st August, the aged Pontiff suddenly ended his long and stormy
career.
[Sidenote: The Danger from the Tartars.]
When the rival heads of Christendom were thus fiercely contending for
supremacy, Europe was, for the first time since the tenth century,
menaced with the horrors of barbarian invasion. The great Tartar Empire,
which had already conquered China and threatened the whole Eastern
world, now found an easy victim in the divided principalities of Russia,
and poured its hordes of fierce warriors over the plains of Poland and
Hungary. Germany itself was now threatened by their advance, but Pope
and Emperor, though they reproached each other with indifference to the
danger, were unable to make even a truce to resist the common enemy. In
1240 the sack of Kiev by the Mongol chieftain Baty, grandson of Genghiz
Khan, led directly to the invasion of the West. The young King Conrad
armed Germany to meet the savage hosts of Baty. Luckily for Europe the
death of the Khan of All the Tartars called Baty back to Asia, and the
alarm of the Mongol fury passed away as quickly as it arose.
The triumph of Frederick was further assured by Gregory’s death. With
affected moderation Frederick withdrew for the moment to Naples, but a
mere handful of cardinals ventured to assemble in conclave. Their choice
fell upon Celestine IV., who died in a few weeks, before there was time
to consecrate him. For more than eighteen months the Holy See now
remained vacant, but finally, in June 1243, the cardinals agreed to
elect Sinobaldo Fiesco, a Genoese cardinal, who had been professor of
law at Bologna, and was reputed to be Ghibelline in his sympathies.
[Sidenote: Innocent IV. and the continuation of the struggle,
1243–1250.] But as Pope Innocent IV., the imperialist lawyer showed from
the first a stern determination to continue the policy of Gregory IX.
The saying attributed to Frederick, ‘I have lost a good friend, for no
Pope can be a Ghibelline,’ though probably never uttered, expressed the
facts of the case. Some hollow negotiations for a pacification were
entered upon, but soon broke down. Within a year of Innocent’s election,
Frederick’s Saracen hordes were again ravaging the Campagna. In June
1244 Innocent fled from Rome to Genoa, whence he crossed the Alps and
took up his abode in the free imperial city of Lyons. It shows the
weakness of Frederick in the Arelate that Innocent was able to live in a
town nominally subject to the Emperor as long as he chose. So safe did
the Pope feel himself that he summoned to Lyons the General Council
which, as Gregory IX. had already designed, should strengthen the papal
condemnation of the Emperor by the ratification of the prelates of
Christendom.
[Sidenote: The Council of Lyons and the deposition of Frederick, 1245.]
In June 1245 the Council assembled at Lyons. It was reckoned the
thirteenth General Council, according to the Roman computation, but even
the French refused to acknowledge it as such, and very few German
prelates ventured to attend its sessions. However, a fair attendance of
prelates was ensured, though the presence of a bishop like Grosseteste,
who, five years later, remonstrated before the Pope’s face against the
exactions of his agents and his abuse of his patronage, showed that
there was some spirit left among the fathers of the Council. Five
troubles, declared Innocent, grieved his spirit, and the calling of the
assembly was destined to relieve Christendom from them. Its business was
the protection of Christianity from the Tartars, the ending of the
schism between the Eastern and Western Churches, the extirpation of
heresy, the revival of the Crusades, and the condemnation of the
Emperor. In practice the last item absorbed all the energy of the
Council, though the presence of the fugitive Latin Emperor, Baldwin II.,
did something to make the fathers realise the sorry plight of Eastern
Catholicism and the need of uniting all sorts of Oriental Christians
against the Tartars and Turks. Frederick condescended to send as his
representative to the Council his chief justiciary, Thaddæus of Suessa,
but his condemnation was a foregone conclusion, and Thaddæus had
difficulty in obtaining a brief adjournment while he returned to Italy
to acquaint his master with the state of affairs at Lyons. Without
waiting for the arrival of Peter della Vigna, whom Frederick now
despatched to represent him, Innocent on 17th July pronounced in the
name of the Council the deposition of his enemy, both as regards the
Empire and his two kingdoms. ‘We order,’ added he, ‘those who have the
right of election within the Empire to proceed at once to a fresh
election. As regards Sicily, we ourselves will do all that is fitting,
after taking the advice of our brethren the cardinals.’
[Sidenote: Henry Raspe and William of Holland, anti-kings.]
The last hope of Christendom lay in the mediation of Louis IX., who saw
that the continued contest of Pope and Emperor was fatal to the
prospects of a great Crusade. The French king met Innocent at Cluny, and
Frederick offered to allow the archbishop of Palermo to thoroughly
investigate his orthodoxy. But nothing came of these projects, and the
blame of rejecting all compromise lay mainly at the door of the Pope.
The spiritual benefits first awarded to those who had assumed the Cross
to free the Holy Sepulchre were now offered to all who would take up
arms to carry out the Lyons sentence against the Emperor. In 1246 the
papal intrigues so far prevailed in Germany that four archbishops, a
considerable number of bishops, and a few temporal princes met together
and elected as King of the Romans Henry Raspe, Landgrave of Thuringia,
the brother-in-law and persecutor of St. Elizabeth. The majority of the
Germans remained true to Frederick, though enough Crusaders flocked to
Henry’s standard to enable him to win a victory over his rival King
Conrad, near Frankfurt. ‘He shows us his back and not his face,’ boasted
Henry over his defeated enemy. ‘He fled as men are wont to fly who fight
with the Holy Empire.’ But next year Conrad turned the tables on Henry,
who fled home and died soon afterwards in the Wartburg. The imperial
crown now went begging for a time. ‘I will willingly fight the enemies
of the Church,’ declared King Haco of Norway, to whom it was offered,
‘but I will not fight against the foes of the Pope.’ At last the young
William, Count of Holland, was persuaded to accept election by the
papalists. But only one lay prince, the Duke of Brabant, William’s
uncle, associated himself with the bishops who assembled for the
choosing of the new monarch. For the rest of Frederick’s life a fierce
fight was fought between William and Conrad. Neither of the two could
succeed in crushing the other, and Germany gradually drifted into all
the worst horrors of feudal anarchy.
[Sidenote: Frederick’s visions of a lay Papacy and of an Ecclesiastical
Revolution.]
Frederick remained in Italy, struggling with all his might against the
papal partisans, and holding his own so far that Innocent found it wise
to remain at Lyons. Now that all possibility of reconciliation with the
Church was cut off, Frederick threw prudence to the winds. He no longer
scrupled against soliciting the help of the heretical Cathari that still
swarmed all over Lombardy. Visions of power such as he had never
imagined in the days of his success now began to flit before his mind.
The apocalyptic visions of the Neapolitan seer, the abbot Joachim, began
to weigh upon his mystical temperament. Despite the canonisation of
Francis of Assisi and the enrolment of his followers under the banners
of the Papacy, there was still an undercurrent of revolutionary
religious feeling in Italy of the sort that afterwards found expression
in the risings of the Fraticelli. Of this opinion Frederick now began to
make himself the mouthpiece, hoping thus to be revenged upon his
enemies, and to win for himself that first position in the world to
which he conceived he was divinely called. He had long used the
Franciscan doctrine of Poverty as a weapon against the greedy political
Popes. ‘It is upon poverty and simplicity,’ he wrote in 1227, ‘that the
Primitive Church was built, in those days when she was the fruitful
mother of saints. No one may presume to lay other foundations for her
than those appointed by the Lord Jesus.’ He now worked out the same idea
in a manifesto addressed to all Christian princes. ‘God is our witness,’
he declared, ‘that our intention has always been to force churchmen to
follow in the footsteps of the Primitive Church, to live an apostolic
life, and to be humble like Jesus Christ. In our days the Church has
become worldly. We therefore propose to do a work of charity in taking
away from such men the treasures with which they are filled for their
eternal damnation.’ ‘Help us,’ he wrote later, ‘to put down these proud
prelates, that we may give mother Church more worthy guides to direct
her.’ But his only conception of ecclesiastical reform was the
absorption of the Church in the State. Even in their affliction the
Orthodox princes of the East seemed to him fortunate, since they had no
Pope or independent patriarchs to contend against. He now strove to
exclude all papal authority from Naples by condemning to the flames the
introducers of papal bulls and all who, under pretext of religion, spoke
or acted against his authority. He anticipated Henry VIII. in his effort
to abolish the papal power, and, like the great Tudor, condemned as
traitors or heretics all who denied his absolute supremacy over the
Church. More than that, Frederick proclaimed himself as worthy of the
adoration of his subjects, like the pagan Emperors of old. He claimed to
be a vicar of Christ, a lay pope, a Christian caliph—nay, an emanation
of the Divinity. Jesi, his birth-place, was the blessed Bethlehem where
Cæsar first saw the light, and Peter della Vigna was the apostle of the
imperial Messiah, the Peter who would never betray his master.
[Sidenote: The Italian struggle, 1245–1250.]
The contest was fought out fiercely with sword and fire. The Guelf and
Ghibelline towns were pillaging, burning and destroying each other.
Enzio, the son, and Eccelin, the son-in-law of Cæsar, strove to stamp
out in blood all Guelfic resistance in Northern Italy. Frederick of
Antioch, another bastard of Frederick’s, worked a similar reign of
terror in Tuscany. So well did Frederick’s fortunes go, that he dreamt
of crossing the Alps and marching to Lyons. In 1247 he was turned from
his bold purpose by the unexpected revolt of Parma. He hurried back from
Turin eager for revenge. Before long the dispersed partisans of Pope and
Emperor flocked to Parma, eager to defend or attack the city. [Sidenote:
The Revolt of Parma.] With all his energy, Frederick could only blockade
it on one side, and neither dearth of provisions nor the hideous cruelty
of the Emperor moved the Parmesans to think of surrender. At last in
despair Frederick built over against Parma a new city called Vittoria,
devastating the whole Parmesan territory to supply it with building
materials and fortifications. But in 1248 the Parmesans made a great
sally, won an unexpected victory, slaying the faithful Thaddæus of
Suessa, destroying utterly Frederick’s new city, and leading home spoil
the _carroccio_ of imperialist Cremona and the whole harem of the
Emperor, that had been unable to keep up with his rapid flight.
[Sidenote: Fall of Peter della Vigna and captivity of Enzio, 1247.]
Everything now went against Frederick. Despite the reign of terror
exercised in the South, plots and conspiracies multiplied, and the
Apulian barons rose in revolt. The blind rage of the suspicious despot
now fell on Peter della Vigna, his trusted confidant, who had long kept,
as Dante says, the two keys of Frederick’s heart. He was arrested on
charges of conspiring with the Pope to murder his master. His eyes were
cruelly torn out, and he sought his own death to avoid further torture.
In 1249 Frederick’s favourite son Enzio was defeated and taken prisoner
by the Bolognese at Fossalta, and spent the rest of his life in hopeless
captivity. But Frederick was not yet at the end of his resources. In
1250 fortune smiled once more on his cause. The Ghibellines of Lombardy
at last won the upper hand. Good news came from beyond the Alps of
Conrad’s triumphs over William of Holland. Frederick himself spent most
of the year at Foggia, surrounded by his faithful Saracens, in whom he
still placed his chief trust. [Sidenote: Death of Frederick, 1250.]
Towards the end of the year he started once more for the north, but he
was seized with a mortal illness before he had traversed many stages. He
took to his bed at Fiorentino, a hunting lodge a few miles short of
Lucera. An ancient prediction of his astrologers that he would die near
iron gates at a town called Flora further troubled his spirit. ‘This is
the spot,’ he said, ‘long ago foretold to me where I must die. The will
of God be done.’ He calmly drew up a will, bequeathing to Conrad both
the Empire and the kingdom, while his favourite bastard, Manfred, who
carefully ministered to his last hours, was to act as his regent in his
brother’s absence. On 19th December he died, either, as his friends
believed, calmly and religiously, clad in the white robe of the
Cistercians and reconciled to the Church by the Archbishop of Palermo,
or a prey to hideous despair and misery, as the Friars his enemies loved
to imagine. He was buried beside his Norman ancestors at Palermo, where
his tomb may still be seen. With him expired the Roman Empire as a real
claimant to any share of the rule of the world, though for another
generation faction raged more fiercely than ever as to the disposal of
its heritage. The Papacy had at last triumphed over the Empire. The
_sacerdotium_ had laid low the _regnum_, and all that remains of the
history of the world-strife of Pope and Emperor is to write its
epilogue. But the mystic followers of the abbot Joachim could not
believe that their hero, the all-powerful Emperor, was removed from the
world. ‘He shall resound,’ they cried, ‘among the people; he is alive,
and yet is not alive.’ But though many impostors arose in his name,
Frederick came not back to his disciples, nor did he leave behind him
any successor. The last of the great Emperors and the first of great
modern Kings, Frederick, with all his brilliant gifts, was but the most
dazzling of the long line of imperial failures. Though he filled so
large a part in the history of his own day, he left singularly little
behind him. Yet as we survey the horrors through which the generations
that succeeded him travelled slowly to the realisation of a brighter
future, we shall not think Dante wrong when he puts the golden age of
Italy in the time ere Frederick had been hounded to death by his
remorseless enemies.