GUELF AND GHIBELLINE. (II)
[Sidenote: Honorius III (1216-27) and the Crusade.]
The bull of summons to the Lateran Council of 1215 mentions as the two
great desires of the Pope's heart the recovery of the Holy Land and
the reformation of the Church Universal; and it is made clear that the
various measures of reform to be placed before the General Council are
intended to bring Christian princes and peoples, both clergy and
laity, into the frame of mind for sending aid to Palestine. Moreover,
at the Council it was agreed that an expedition should start from
Brindisi or Messina on June 1, 1216. In any case Innocent's death
would probably have caused a delay. His successor, Honorius III, was a
noble Roman of mild and gentle character, who, during Frederick's
youth, had been his tutor and the guardian of the kingdom of Sicily.
No less than his predecessor was he bent on carrying out the project
of a crusade, and immediately on his accession he appealed to all
Christians in the West to lay aside their enmities, and refused to
allow any excuse for not setting out to those who had taken the
crusading vow. But the apathy was general, and since Frederick could
not leave Europe so long as his rival Otto was alive, the expedition
was robbed of its natural chief. A crusade, however, did go, and in
accordance with the plan agreed upon at the Council the attack was
directed against Egypt. Damietta was taken (1219), but then a long
pause was made in the expectation of Frederick's coming. In 1221
arrived a German contingent under Frederick's friend Herman von Salza;
but the crusaders were now defeated and could only secure their
retreat by the surrender of Damietta.
[Sidenote: Frederick II.]
For despite the death of Otto in 1218 Frederick had been detained in
Europe. Before leaving he was anxious to secure the election of his
son Henry as King of Germany. This he did not accomplish until 1220,
and then only by the surrender to the German princes of many important
royal rights, especially the right of spoils. It was necessary also to
reassure the Pope, who feared the continued union of Sicily and
Germany. Honorius accepted Frederick's assurances and even crowned him
Emperor in St. Peter's (November, 1220); and Frederick again took the
cross. But he found that the royal rights in the kingdom of Sicily had
been much impoverished during his minority and his subsequent absence.
His efforts to recover them caused a further delay in his promised
crusade and brought him into conflict with papal claims. Honorius was
very long-suffering. In 1223 he agreed to a postponement of two years
on condition that Frederick should affiance himself to Iolanthe, the
daughter and heiress of John of Brienne, who in right of his wife bore
the title of King of Jerusalem. In 1225 Frederick not only married
Iolanthe but followed the example of his father-in-law by taking the
title of King of Jerusalem in right of his wife, who since her
mother's death was lawfully Queen. On the strength of this act of
self-committal he obtained another delay of two years until August,
1227, agreeing that if he did not then start he should be _ipso
facto_ excommunicate.
But lapse of time did not make it any easier for him to leave his
dominions. In 1226 the Lombards, fearing that Frederick's success in
the recovery of royal rights in the South was merely a prelude to his
renewal of imperial claims in North Italy, revived the old Lombard
League. Frederick put them to the ban of the Empire. But the Pope had
approved the League; and when both parties agreed to refer the quarrel
to him he naturally proposed an arrangement favourable to the
Lombards. A breach with Frederick was only averted by Honorius' death
(March, 1227).
[Sidenote: Gregory IX (1227-41).]
His successor was Gregory IX, a relative of Innocent III who had made
him a Cardinal and employed him on important embassies. He has been
described as a man "of strong passions and an iron strength of will."
He is said to have been more than eighty years of age at his
accession; but he was vigorous and alert in mind and body, a man of
blameless life and ardent faith, eloquent and learned, especially in
law. Hitherto he had been friendly to Frederick. But he held views
even more advanced than those of Innocent regarding the power of the
Papacy. Hence, while to Honorius the Crusade was the end towards which
his whole policy was directed, Gregory only desired to use the
crusading vow taken by temporal rulers as a weapon for the assertion
of the papal power against them. It was Gregory who as Cardinal
Ugolino had placed the cross in Frederick's hand at his imperial
coronation. As Pope he now demanded the immediate fulfilment of
Frederick's promise; and despite his reluctance to go and the outbreak
of an epidemic in his army, Frederick embarked at Brindisi on
September 18th, 1227. But three days later under the plea of sickness
he turned back. Gregory never hesitated. On September 29th in the
cathedral of Anagni in fulfilment of the terms agreed to by Frederick
himself, he excommunicated the Emperor with the accompaniment of every
kind of impressive ceremonial. There seems little doubt that the cause
of Gregory's determination to exact from Frederick the utmost penalty
for his failure to carry out the agreement lay in Frederick's Italian
policy. Frederick had postponed the crusade in order to build up a
power in Sicily, which he was now trying to extend to North Italy by
crushing the Lombard League. This was a fatal bar to the policy of a
papal state in Central Italy, inaugurated by Innocent III. No less
imminent was the danger from the success of Frederick in baffling the
papal schemes for the separation of the Sicilian and German crowns. It
was becoming apparent that only by the extinction of the Hohenstaufen
line could the papal policy be carried out.
[Sidenote: Frederick's crusade.]
The age of the Crusades was indeed over. Frederick, in justifying his
action to the princes of Europe, pointed to the conduct of the Papacy
to Raymond of Toulouse and John of England as a warning to secular
princes, and attributed the papal hostility not to a desire for the
promotion of a crusade, but to greed. Gregory's conduct seemed to bear
out this interpretation of his motives. Despite the excommunication
Frederick once more set sail in June, 1228. But an expedition under
such circumstances was an independent act subversive of all
ecclesiastical discipline. Consequently, instead of his departure
being the signal for the removal of his sentence, Frederick was
followed to Palestine by the anathema of the Church. The Pope having
got Frederick into his power intended to keep him there. Thus when
Frederick reached Palestine the Templars and Hospitallers held aloof,
while the Mendicant Orders preached against him; and when, in
accordance with his treaty with the Sultan, he entered Jerusalem, the
city and all the holy places were laid under an interdict. But
Frederick was not daunted. Since no ecclesiastic would crown him he
took the crown himself off the altar and placed it on his head. For as
in the case of the Pope, so with Frederick, it was from no religious
motives that he persisted in the crusade. It was a purely political
expedition. He put the Pope in the wrong in the eyes of European
princes by refuting the charge of the Roman supporters that he never
seriously intended to go on crusade. But, more important still, his
own attitude and act were a manifesto on behalf of the Empire against
the claim put forward by Innocent III for the Papacy as the head and
leader of Christendom. But the very means of his success added to his
enormities. It was nothing that he had gained for Christendom without
fighting more than had been won since the First Crusade. For he had
dealt with the Sultan of Egypt as an equal, and in the treaty which
gave him Jerusalem and several other places he had undertaken to
enforce certain articles favourable to the Sultan, even in the event
of opposition from Christian Princes. Thus it is not astonishing that
while Frederick was winning this success in Palestine Pope Gregory was
using papal emissaries, in the shape of the lately founded Orders of
mendicant friars, to denounce the Emperor in every country of Western
Europe, and even let loose on Frederick's Sicilian territories an army
of so-called crusaders under John of Brienne, who resented the
adoption of the title of King of Jerusalem by his imperial son-in-law.
This monstrous attack upon a successful crusader turned the sentiment
of Europe against the Pope. Frederick returned in June, 1229, and by
the help of his Saracen troops drove out the invaders. In return for
peace with the Church Frederick was willing to give to the Pope almost
extravagantly generous terms, and a treaty was arranged at San Germano
in August, 1230, by which Frederick surrendered his claim over the
Sicilian clergy and obtained in return the removal of the
excommunication, which carried with it a tacit recognition of his
crusade.
[Sidenote: The Pope and Roman claims.]
It was nine years before the struggle was openly renewed. There were
many causes of difference in the interval, but Pope and Emperor found
two occasions for common action. In the first place Gregory imitated
the policy of his great relative in using every method for extending
the immediate suzerainty of the Pope over the towns and barons within
the Roman duchy. But despite Innocent's civic victory the Roman
Commune desired to place themselves on a level with the other free
cities of Italy such as Milan and Florence, and claimed jurisdiction
over the whole district. Twice already had the Romans expelled Gregory
and recalled him before they demanded from him, in 1234, the surrender
of sovereign rights within the duchy. Gregory fled and appealed for
help to Christendom; and Frederick supplied the troops which restored
the Pope for the third time and forced the Romans to withdraw their
claims.
[Sidenote: Frederick and heresy.]
Pope and Emperor also pursued a common policy against heretics. The
Lateran Council of 1215 issued a series of ordinances against
heretics, making it the duty of the secular power to punish them under
pain of excommunication. But each country and even each city issued
its own regulations for giving effect to the injunctions of the
Council. Only gradually in the second quarter of the century was the
old episcopal jurisdiction over heresy superseded by the establishment
of the papal Inquisition. Meanwhile, in 1220 at his imperial
coronation Frederick put out in his own name an edict for the secular
suppression of heresy, which had been dictated to him from Rome. In
1231 this edict was enforced in Rome itself when Gregory IX
established the Inquisition there and made it the business of the
Senator, the head of the civic commune, to execute the sentences of
the Inquisitor. The regulations now drawn up for the conduct of the
secular power in such cases, were sent over all Europe with orders for
their enforcement. In the same year Frederick renewed his attack upon
heretics in his Sicilian Constitutions, and in the course of the next
eight years he issued "a complete and pitiless code" of "fiendish
legislation," placing the whole of the machinery of state at the
disposal of the Inquisitor. But Gregory was not deceived. Rather he
complained that Frederick's orthodoxy took the form of the punishment
of his personal enemies, of whom many were good Catholics. Certainly
Frederick's anti-heretical edicts were not prompted by religious zeal.
He was more detached than any ruler of the Middle Ages from the
current ideas of the time. He seems to have been, if it is possible,
utterly non-religious.
[Sidenote: Legislation of Emperor and Pope.]
Moreover, his regulations against heresy were part of his general code
of law for the government of the diverse races in his kingdom of
Sicily, and in this code issued in 1231, although their temporalities
were secured to the clergy, as a class they were subjected to taxation
and to the secular jurisdiction of the State. Pope Gregory's
counter-blast to this policy is contained in his addition to the Canon
Law known as his Decretals (1234). By these the clergy were declared
entirely exempt from secular taxation and jurisdiction, on the ground
that all secular law was subordinate to the law of the Church, and
that the duty of the secular power was to carry out the commands of
the Church.
[Sidenote: The second contest.]
Thus each side was maintaining its pretensions until the opportunity
should come for asserting them. This was found for the second time in
the affairs of Lombardy. The Lombard cities still feared the designs
of Frederick. In 1235 they renewed their League. Again the Pope was
accepted as arbiter, and again Frederick complained with justice that
he was too favourable to the cities. In 1236 Frederick declared war
against the League. His pretext of punishing heresy which was rife in
Lombardy, deceived no one; while his declaration, when Gregory desired
him to turn his arms to Palestine, that "Italy is my heritage, and
this the whole world knows," confirmed the worst apprehensions of the
Pope and the Lombards. Moreover, Frederick's first move was entirely
successful, and in 1237 he completely defeated the Lombards in battle
at Corte Nuova, took the Milanese standard and sent it to be placed in
the Capitol at Rome. The subjugation of the Lombards would mean the
union of Italy under Frederick's rule, while, since the acquisition of
Sicily by the Hohenstanfen, the Lombards remained the only allies of
the Papacy in Italy. Gregory therefore declared himself, and in March,
1239, he excommunicated Frederick and released his subjects from their
allegiance. Frederick issued a manifesto addressed to all Princes, in
which he appealed to a General Council. Gregory's counter-manifesto
was couched in terms of the most unrestrained violence. Frederick was
described as the beast in the Apocalypse (Rev. xiii. 1), which had
upon its seven heads the name of blasphemy; and he is charged with
saying that the world had been deceived by three impostors, Christ,
Moses and Mohammed, of whom two had died in glory, while the third had
been crucified.
This is not the place to investigate the interesting question of the
truth of Gregory's charges against Frederick. The French sent a
mission to Frederick to enquire as to the accusation of infidelity,
and he thanked them warmly and denied it. The Duke of Bavaria told
Gregory in 1241 that most of the German princes and prelates would
shortly go to Frederick's aid. In fact, the papal exactions had caused
intense disgust over all Western Europe, and no prince would allow
himself to be set up as a rival to Frederick. Yet the papal
condemnation caused many to hold aloof from the Emperor who, moreover,
did not venture to set up an antipope. He contented himself with
persecuting the friars who were the most active emissaries of Rome,
and with confiscating the estates of the Church, until it was said at
the papal Court that he had sworn to reduce the Pope to beggary and to
stable his horses in St. Peter's.
[Sidenote: Innocent IV (1243-54).]
Frederick had suggested the calling of a council, and Gregory summoned
one to Rome. But Frederick had begun to reduce the Roman duchy and,
anyhow, he did not want a council which would merely register the
papal decrees. So when a number of bishops ignored his prohibition and
met at Genoa in order to embark for Rome, the fleets of Pisa and
Sicily met them off the island of Meloria and captured nearly the
whole of the prospective Council. Frederick's attack upon Rome itself
was only averted by the death of Gregory IX on August 21, 1241. The
new Pope died seventeen days after his election, and then, for some
reason, the Papacy was vacant for two years. The delay was attributed
to Frederick; and the French actually declared to the Cardinals that
if a new Pope were not chosen quickly, the French nation, in
accordance with an ancient privilege given by Pope Clement to St.
Denys, would set up a Pope of their own. At length, in June, 1243,
Innocent IV was chosen; and Frederick, alluding to previous dealings
with him, remarked that by this election he had lost a friend among
the Cardinals, since no Pope could be a Ghibelline.
The truth of this was soon apparent. Innocent demanded the restoration
of all Frederick's conquests in the States of the Church in return for
peace; and although nothing was said about the time of the removal of
the excommunication, Frederick accepted the terms. But when Frederick
saw that there was no intention of absolving him, he refused to
surrender the papal cities and thereby technically broke the treaty.
Innocent intended to get a treaty which would carry an acknowledgment
of the Emperor's failure, and then to reduce him to submission by a
council held outside Italy. Negotiations continued until Innocent fled
to Lyons, a practically independent city. France, England and Aragon,
however, declined to receive him, and Innocent exclaimed that he must
come to terms with the Emperor, "for when the dragon has been crushed
or pacified, the little serpents will be quickly trodden underfoot."
[Sidenote: First Council of Lyons.]
At Lyons there met in 1245 the General Council to which Frederick had
appealed, and which is reckoned by the Romans as the thirteenth of the
OEcumenical Assemblies of the Church; 140 archbishops and bishops,
besides numerous lesser clergy, were present. Frederick was
represented by a celebrated jurist, Thaddeus of Suessa, who pleaded
the Emperor's cause. Several points were proposed for settlement; but
all other matters were brushed aside, and Innocent hurried on the
third and last session of the Council in which Frederick was declared
deposed, his subjects were released from their allegiance, the German
princes told to elect another King, and Sicily kept for disposal by
the Pope in consultation with the Cardinals. All remonstrances were
unavailing; even Louis IX quite failed to move the Pope. Frederick
realised that it was a fight to a finish, and in a protest he called
upon the other princes of the West to help him in depriving the clergy
of the wealth which had choked their spiritual power. But this was
interpreted as a design for the destruction of the Church, and despite
the testimonies to Frederick's orthodoxy published by the Archbishop
of Palermo, the papal charge of heresy against him gained wide belief.
Innocent in his reply asserted among other things that the Pope was
the Legate of Christ who had entrusted him with full powers to act as
judge over the earth, and that the Emperor should take an oath of
subjection to the Pope who, as overlord, gave him his title and crown.
Thus the claims now made on behalf of the Papacy left no room for a
belief in the balance of spiritual and secular authority.
[Sidenote: Death of Frederick.]
Both sides resorted to every kind of expedient. Frederick, aiming
especially at the friars, ordered that any who spread or even received
the papal letters of condemnation against him should be burnt!
Innocent declared an actual crusade against Frederick, stirred up
revolt in Sicily, and at length succeeded in raising a rival King in
Germany. Henry Raspe, Landgrave of Thuringia, owed his election (1246)
almost exclusively to the great prelates of the Rhine; but he died the
next year and, although another King was put forward in the person of
William Count of Holland, a young man of twenty, he made no progress
so long as Frederick lived. Moreover, in Italy Frederick's cause was
gaining ground, until the revolt of Parma and the failure of his
efforts to retake it ended in the complete rout of his forces (1248).
In 1250 Frederick himself died directing by his will that all the
rights of the Church should be restored in so far as they did not
conflict with the claims of the Empire, provided that the Church
herself should recognise the imperial rights. Almost to the last
Frederick had been quite willing to be reconciled to the Church, and
he died unsubdued. But the Papacy was fighting for that supremacy
which experience had shown to be the condition of its existence. Not
that any Emperor ever cherished the thought of destroying the Papacy
any more than the Pope dreamed of annihilating the Empire. Many
passages have been cited to prove that Frederick contemplated the
establishment of a Church of his own in Sicily. Here perhaps he did
not aim at anything more than Henry VIII afterwards accomplished in
England or the barons under Louis IX, as we have seen, threatened on
one occasion in France. The language used by his followers was
extravagant, even blasphemous, and he did not discourage it. How far
he ever aimed as setting himself up as Pope is more doubtful. But in
any case, and however much we may be inclined to sympathise with him,
it must be allowed that there was abundant reason for the hostility of
the Pope.
[Sidenote: A papal candidate for Sicily.]
And the reasons which caused the Papacy to hound Frederick to death,
also determined it not to rest until it had exterminated the whole
"viper's brood." Innocent IV expressed the most indecent joy at
Frederick's death, and refused all offers of peace from his son and
successor, Conrad IV. But being too weak to wrest Sicily from the
Hohenstaufen he sought for some prince who would accept it as a papal
fief. It was refused on behalf of Louis IX's brother, Charles of
Anjou, and also by Henry III's brother, Richard Earl of Cornwall, who
said that the Pope might as well offer him the moon. Henry III,
however, accepted it for his second son Edmund, Earl of Lancaster, a
boy of eight, promising to pay the expenses of the conquest. The
Pope's action was utterly unscrupulous. In May, 1254, Conrad died in
the twenty-sixth year of his age, and the only legitimate Hohenstaufen
representative who remained, was his son, distinguished as Conradin,
who was under the guardianship of Berthold Marquis of Hohenburg.
Conrad's Regent in Italy had been his half-brother Manfred, the son of
Frederick by an Italian lady, and the most brilliant of all
Frederick's children. Berthold, alarmed at the difficulties, made way
for Manfred, who found Innocent ready to come to terms. To Manfred was
confirmed the principality of Tarento originally the gift of his
father, and he was recognised as Papal Vicar for the greater part of
the Sicilian kingdom. But the grant of Sicily was confirmed to Edmund
of Lancaster, and the Pope determined to take possession of the
kingdom in person. Manfred, now a vassal of the Church, held the
bridle of the Pope's horse as he entered his new dominions. But
Manfred soon found that the Pope's object was to reduce him to
harmlessness and then to get rid of him. He therefore raised the
standard of revolt and defeated the papal forces (December, 1254).
[Sidenote: Alexander IV (1254-61).]
At this juncture Innocent IV died at Naples. Matthew Paris relates the
dream of a Cardinal who saw the Church accusing the Pope before the
throne of God because he had enslaved the Church, had made her a table
of money-changers and had shaken faith, abolished justice, and
obscured truth. However necessary to the independence of the Papacy
was this strenuous struggle, the utterly unscrupulous means employed
and the almost complete identification of its spiritual power with its
temporal interests is impossible to justify or even to excuse. The new
Pope, Alexander IV, a nephew of Gregory IX, without Innocent's ability
tried to follow the policy of his predecessor. In 1255 he ratified the
grant of Sicily to the young English prince on severe conditions.
Indeed, he surpassed his predecessors in the demands made on Henry III
and the English Church; until in 1258 his claim for the repayment of
the money which he alleged to have been expended in the prosecution of
Edmund's cause, brought on a grave constitutional crisis in England
and reduced Henry III to impotence.
[Sidenote: King Manfred.]
Meanwhile Manfred had regained all the dominions of the Sicilian crown
in the name of Conradin, but in 1258 he quietly set aside his nephew
and accepted the throne for himself. However necessary such a step
might be, it divided Sicily from Germany. This was what the papal
party desired: but Manfred, the son of an Italian mother, aimed, like
his father, at an Italian monarchy. Consequently Alexander declared
against him. In Italy, however, the cessation of supplies from England
left Alexander almost powerless, and Manfred was accepted as the head
of the Ghibellines in the peninsula.
[Sidenote: The rival Kings of the Romans.]
But before his death in May, 1261, Alexander had gained a distinct
success in Germany. The young King, William of Holland, the destined
Emperor, had been killed in 1256. The Pope forbade the choice of
Conradin, and the votes of the German princes were divided between the
Englishman, Richard Earl of Cornwall, and Alfonso the Wise, King of
Castile and grandson of Philip of Suabia. Richard, wealthy and
attracted by the imperial title, was crowned Emperor at Aachen in 1257
and bought himself a measure of support so long as he remained in
Germany. Alfonso, on the other hand, did nothing to secure his new
dominions. Alexander and his successors, by professing a judicial
attitude, gradually established the impression in Germany that the
decision in these matters rested with the Papacy.