THE SIXTH CRUSADE.
[Sidenote: Chief features of the sixth crusade.]
The infatuation by which in every instance the champions of the cross
had nullified or thrown away the advantages gained by their victories
was to be shown not less persistently in the sixth crusade. But the
short-sighted obstinacy of the mass was to be brought out in more
prominent relief by its contrast with the moderation and sagacity of
the great sovereign whose name is especially associated with this
enterprise. In the career of this remarkable man we have a picture in
which we see running together or side by side the lines which belong to
the old order of things with others which seem to belong exclusively to
the modern civilization of Europe. The struggle between Frederick II. and
Gregory II. anticipated in more than one of its features the struggle
between Leo X. and Luther.
[Sidenote: Depression of the Latins in Palestine.]
The famine which Dandolo urged on the leaders of the fifth crusade (p.
153) as a reason for delaying their voyage to Palestine till the spring
which followed the conquest of Zara, pressed less heavily on the Latin
Christians in the Holy Land than the destruction wrought by an earthquake
which laid many cities in ruins and which was regarded as a presage of
the last judgment. In spite of this belief much money and labour was
spent in repairing the shattered walls of Acre; and amongst the captives
impressed for the work was, it is said, the Persian poet Saadi.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1204. Truce between Saphadin and the Christians.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1206.]
Both sides in fact were greatly weakened and depressed: and the tidings
that Constantinople was in the hands of Boniface, Dandolo, and Baldwin
carried with them for Saphadin a conclusive reason for concluding a peace
of six years with the Christians. But before the six years had come to an
end the death of Almeric and his wife had left to Mary, the daughter of
Isabella and Conrad of Tyre, the titular sovereignty of Jerusalem. Unable
to find on the spot a man of sufficient energy and ability to share
with her the shadowy dignity, the barons invoked the aid of the French
king, Philip Augustus, to find her a husband. His choice fell on John of
Brienne, who promised to lead a powerful army to Palestine within two
years. The prospect of this formidable increase to the strength of his
enemies led Saphadin to propose a renewal of the peace, and to give as
guarantees of his good faith any ten castles which they might choose to
name. As we might expect, the approval of the Teutonic knights and the
Hospitallers called forth the angry protests of the Templars and the
clergy: and the decision was given for war.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1210. John of Brienne, titular king of Jerusalem.]
Three hundred knights only accompanied John of Brienne when he set out
for Palestine. In England the wretched John was defying the pope while
the kingdom for his sake lay under the papal interdict; the French king
was more anxious to turn that interdict to his own advantage than to
face once more the perils of a distant enterprise; and for the time even
Innocent III. felt that the chastisement of Christian heretics was a
more pressing duty than the deliverance of the Holy Sepulchre. Hence the
marriage of John of Brienne to Mary, and their coronation as king and
queen of Jerusalem, were soon followed by the sterner business of war.
In his encounters with Saphadin his exploits may have equalled those of
Tancred; but he was compelled to write and tell the pope that the Latin
kingdom was attenuated to the shadow of a shade.
[Sidenote: Zeal of Innocent III. in promoting a new crusade.]
His entreaties roused in the pope the old crusading spirit. Innocent
revoked the indulgences which had made the crusade against the Albigenses
as attractive as the crusade against the Saracens; and in his encyclical
letter he declared that the Moslem power was tottering and ready to
vanish away. It had lasted 666 years, the mystic number which showed it
to be the Beast of the Apocalypse. A little while ago he had written to
the sultan of Aleppo to thank him for his moderation to the Christians
and his respect for their religion. He now demanded of Saphadin the
peaceable and immediate surrender of all Palestine, as a country from
which he was deriving far more of annoyance than of profit.
[Sidenote: Robert of Courcon.]
The crusade which Innocent now wished to set in motion was preached in
France by Robert of Courcon, an Englishman whom he had made his legate.
This pupil of Fulk of Neuilly had inherited all his earnestness with
some portion of his eloquence; nor, if the numbers whom he enrolled
as pilgrims be taken as a test, was his success much less splendid.
But in truth the barons and knights who engaged in these expeditions
were getting tired of the zeal which invited the maimed, the halt, the
blind, and the leper to take the kingdom of heaven by violence; and the
same charge which had been heard in the days of Fulk was now urged with
greater force against his disciple. Robert was convicted of diverting
to other purposes money given solely for the recovery of the Holy Land;
but he had a firm friend in Innocent who, in 1218, appointed him the
colleague of Pelagius, bishop of Albano, in his legatine commission.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1215. Fourth council of Lateran.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1216.]
[Sidenote: Crusade of Andrew, king of Hungary.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1217.]
A few months sufficed after the council of Clermont to get together and
send forth the armies of the first crusade: for these latter enterprises
the time of preparation was extending to years. In his sermons preached
before the fourth council of Lateran Innocent declared his intention
of accompanying the champions of the cross to the scene of their
exploits; and the troubadours in their songs extolled him as their
firm and courageous guide. But another year had passed before the king
of a people who had done what they could to bar the way of the first
crusaders was prepared to set forth on his eastward journey. The ships
of Venice conveyed Andrew, king of Hungary, first to Cyprus, and thence
to Palestine, where an unsuccessful attack on a tower or castle on Mount
Thabor seems to have disgusted him with the undertaking. He determined
to return to Hungary, and he reached home with scant glory, but rich in
relics gathered in Armenia and Greece.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1218. Siege of Damietta.]
[Sidenote: Death of Saphadin.]
[Sidenote: Terms of peace offered by Coradin.]
In the following year another force, which had been brought together
at Cologne and on its way had done some work in Portugal by taking
Alcazar from the Moors, joined the Templars and Teutonic knights who
had fortified a post on mount Carmel. These warriors now inclined to
the policy of Almeric I. which had aimed at attacking and recovering
Palestine through Egypt. The siege of Damietta was begun; the castle was
soon taken; and the Christians were still further aided by the disorders
which in Egypt followed the death of Saphadin, and which drove his son,
the Egyptian sultan Kameel, to take refuge in Arabia. In the crusaders’
camp success, as usual, produced arrogance and sloth. Their strength
was increased by the arrival of new bands from France under the counts
of Nevers and la Marche, from England under William Longsword, earl
of Salisbury, and from Italy under the bishop of Albano and Robert of
Courcon. The latter landed only to be cut off by sickness; and while
the other chiefs lay idle, Kameel was brought back to his throne by his
brother the Syrian sultan Coradin. At length the siege was resumed with
some vigour and good fortune: and Coradin, knowing the consequences
which the fall of Damietta would bring with it, dismantled the walls
of Jerusalem and then offered peace to the besiegers, pledging himself
to rebuild the walls which he had just thrown down, and to surrender
not only the piece of the true cross but the whole of Palestine, with
the exceptions of the castles of Karac and Montreal for the purpose of
protecting the pilgrims for Mecca.
[Sidenote: Mad rejection of the terms by the crusaders.]
[Sidenote: 1219. Nov. 5. Fall of Damietta.]
All that the crusaders could even hope to accomplish was thus within
their grasp. But the eagerness of king John of Brienne, with the Teutonic
knights and the French, to seize the prize was for the Templars and
Hospitallers, with the Italians and the papal legate, a sufficient reason
for rejecting the proffers of the sultan with indignant contempt. Folly
carried the day. Damietta was taken, and the Christians hurried in to
plunder and to slay. The pillage was abundant enough; but in the work of
slaughter pestilence had been beforehand with them. Three thousand only
remained, it is said, of the 70,000 who were shut up in the city at the
beginning of the siege, and to these plague-stricken wretches life was
promised on condition that they should clear the streets and houses of
the dead bodies of their kinsfolk.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1220. March of the Christians for Cairo.]
[Sidenote: The old terms again rejected.]
[Sidenote: Ruin of the crusaders.]
The crusades had everything once more in their hands; but the winter was
allowed to pass by without further action. When spring came round the
legate, in opposition to the remonstrance of John of Brienne, insisted on
attempting the conquest of Egypt. On their march to Cairo they received
from the Sultan Kameel the same offers which they had rejected during
the siege of Damietta; and they rejected them again. But the Nile was
fast rising. The Egyptians opened the sluices; the camp of the crusaders
was inundated; their tents and baggage swept away. It was now the turn
of the legate to sue for peace, and he offered to surrender Damietta. In
the Saracen camp it was no easy task for the Sultan Kameel to repress
the stern indignation with which many of the chiefs demanded the utter
destruction of the enemy. He urged the vast importance of doing nothing
which should excite fresh crusades in Europe, while Syria was menaced and
ravaged by Tartar invasions, and of recovering Damietta without a blow
from a garrison strong enough to sustain a siege as long as that which
had come to an end a few months ago.
[Sidenote: Frederick II., grandson of Barbarossa.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1212.]
[Sidenote: The popes and the emperors.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1200.]
[Sidenote: Otho of Brunswick.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1214. Battle of Bouvines.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1216. Honorius III. pope.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1220.]
[Sidenote: Nov. 22.]
The triumph of the Egyptian sultan seemed to be complete; but he had now
to encounter an enemy of a very different temper. At the age of eighteen
Frederick, the son of the infamous Henry VI. and grandson of Frederick
Barbarossa, had been summoned by the pope to assume the imperial crown
which Otho of Brunswick, the son of Henry the Lion, was pronounced to
have forfeited by his misdeeds. It was the old story. The strife between
pope and anti-pope was but a reflection of the almost fiercer strife
of rival emperors; and in this struggle the pope naturally inclined to
that side from which the church was likely to reap the most advantage.
Otho, the nephew of Richard Cœur de Lion, came of a house which had been
generally loyal and faithful to the Roman pontiffs; his rival belonged
to the Swabian house of Hohenstaufen, at whose hands the popes had
experienced more of enmity than of friendship. The remembrance of the
days of Frederick Barbarossa was vivid in the mind of Innocent III., to
whom the two emperors appealed after their coronation. The deliberation
was grave and long; but the issue was not doubtful. Otho’s rival Philip
was ‘an obstinate persecutor of the Church’, and he was even then
scheming to deprive the pontiff of his kingdom of Sicily. He must be put
down before he could reach his full strength; and therefore the pope
declared himself for Otho, himself devoted to the Church, by his mother’s
side from the royal house of England, by his father from the duke of
Saxony, all loyal sons of the Church. ‘Him, therefore, we proclaim king;
him we summon to take on himself the imperial crown.’ Innocent, like the
frogs in the fable, was only exchanging king Log for king Stork. The
reign of Otho was a period of desperate strife and anarchy in Germany,
of desperate struggles on his part to throw off the papal yoke. The pope
turned his eye on the youthful Frederick, then basking in the sunshine
of his Sicilian paradise and giving promise of the brilliant qualities
of his nature which were afterwards to be sullied by darker lines of
angry passion. In 1212 Frederick was chosen emperor at Frankfort. In
1214 his victory at Bouvines shattered the power of Otho. The gratitude
of Frederick for the favour of the pope had been shown by taking the
crusader’s vow and pledging himself to lead an army for the recovery of
the Holy Land. While his rival Otho lived, it was impossible for him to
fulfil his promise. Two years before his death Innocent III. had passed
away from the scene of proud dominion and unceasing toil, and the more
moderate and kindly Honorius III. sat in his seat. In courteous language
which might pass for that of friendship, the pope besought him to march
to the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre; but the dark shadows were already
stealing across the clear sky. Without asking the sanction of the pope
Frederick by a compact made with his vassals and prelates at the Diet of
Frankfort procured the election of his son Henry to the crown of Germany.
Honorius expressed his displeasure at a step which seemed designed
to unite permanently the Sicilian kingdom with the empire. Frederick
hastened to say that he had no such wish, and that Sicily should revert
to the pope if he should die without lawful heirs. When, a little while
later, he was crowned with his queen by the pope in the church of St.
Peter’s, Frederick promised that part of his army should be ready for the
crusade in March of the following year, while he himself would follow in
August with the rest.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1221. Loss of Damietta.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1222. April.]
[Sidenote: Treaty of Ferentino.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1225. July. Treaty of San Germano.]
[Sidenote: Frederick, king of Naples, Sicily, and Jerusalem.]
But Frederick had enough, and more than enough, to do in dealing with the
turbulent barons of Apulia and in guarding against Saracen insurrection
in Sicily. A fleet of forty ships was sent to no purpose: and the tidings
of the loss of Damietta were construed as an expression of divine
displeasure for his slackness. It was clear that only a vast army under a
skilful general could turn the scale in favour of the Latin Christians of
Palestine: but nothing was said of the besotted folly which had more than
once flung aside all the advantages which could possibly be gained by the
most successful crusade. Such an army could not, however, be got together
in a month or in a year. The decision was postponed from a meeting at
Veroli to a meeting at Verona which never took place. When next the pope
and emperor met at Ferentino (March 1223), it was agreed that two years
more should be spent in preparations, and that Frederick, now a widower,
should marry Iolante, the daughter of the titular king of Jerusalem, and
thus as his heir go forth to the maintenance of his own rights. King John
of Brienne, who was present at the debate, started at once on a mission
in which he hoped to achieve a success not unlike that of the hermit
Peter, of Bernard, or Fulk of Neuilly. But the times were changed, and
king John could only report to the pope the impossibility of moving at
the time named in the treaty of Ferentino. A new agreement was made at
San Germano, postponing the departure of the army for two years longer.
Four months later Frederick married Iolante, and proceeded at once to
deprive his father-in-law of his shadowy royalty. John of Brienne, he
insisted, was king only by right of his wife: by her death the title had
passed to his daughter, and to him as her husband, and he, Frederick,
was thus king of Naples, Sicily, and Jerusalem. John was furious, but
he could revenge himself only by accusations, whether true or false, of
gross and habitual profligacy on the part of the young emperor.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1227. Gregory IX. pope.]
‘Never did pope love emperor as he loved his son Frederick.’ Such were
the words of Honorius when he parted from him after his coronation at
Rome. Before the close of his pontificate in 1227 the gentle pontiff had
to address not a few stern remonstrances to his loving son. The real
struggle was reserved for the papacy of the cardinal Ugolino, a kinsman
of Innocent III., who assumed the triple crown at the age of eighty
years. To an eloquence unrivalled in his own day, to a profound knowledge
of the canon law and the decretals, Gregory IX. united the monastic
severity of Gregory the Great and the inexorable will of Gregory VII.
The sovereign with whom he had to deal was still a young man of only
thirty-three, a young man with whose wishes and dreams, with whose tastes
and accomplishments, Gregory had nothing whatever in common. Frederick
had been born and bred in Sicily; and in the voluptuous splendours of
that beautiful island, in the luxury of its sunshine, in the gorgeous
profusion and glory of its vegetation, his youth passed in a passion
of delight, fed by the charms of music, poetry, painting, and a rich
literature which laid at his feet the treasures of ancient knowledge.
From the lays of the troubadour and the company of noble knights and fair
women, Frederick could turn to men learned in the lore of the East and in
the philosophy of Alexandria and Athens. His life was far from faultless.
With more truth it may be described as one of license which cast to the
winds, at least for himself, the moral code of priests and monks, but
a license to which all grossness and coarse rioting, all unrefined and
boorish vices, were altogether abhorrent. Here in his southern paradise
Frederick could say, with a freedom horrifying to the sacerdotal spirit
of the age, that if God had seen his beautiful home he would never have
chosen the barren land of Judæa for the abode of his own people. Here
too he was subjected to influences which were likely to cultivate a
temper far more disliked and dreaded by popes and their followers than
irreverence or even blasphemous profanity. Around him were gathered
populations brought from many lands, all softened by the genial and
delicious climate. The Norman had here laid aside some of his northern
roughness, and become an apt disciple of the gay science in which
Frederick had won a foremost place. Even the Germans were toned down
to something like decency of demeanour and language: and in contrast
to these were numbers of Jews, who surpassed the Christians as much in
refinement and learning as in their wealth, and of Saracens not less
polished, not less cultivated, who delighted to call themselves subjects
of Frederick and to submit themselves peaceably to his rule. Frederick
was, in short, learning the dangerous lessons of toleration, and his eyes
were being gradually opened to the perilous views which have become the
orthodox creed of modern statesmen. As a ruler, he could survey without
dislike the mingling of different religions, and see that an empire
surpassing the wildest dreams of feudal grandeur could be achieved by
the extension and freedom of a commerce spread over all portions of
the earth. As a man of learning he could promote the cultivation of a
philosophy which, whatever might be its merit, could not fail to set
the mind working and accustom it to regard all questions as matters to
be settled by reason and evidence, not by authority. A picture more
repulsive to the mind of a man like Gregory IX. cannot well be imagined.
The light-hearted enjoyment and the liberal government of the one were
hopelessly opposed to the monastic gloom and ingrained despotism of the
other.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1227. Excommunication of the emperor.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1228.]
[Sidenote: Departure of Frederick from Brundusium.]
Frederick may have been slow in fulfilling his promise: there is no
evidence that he ever deliberately intended to break it. But he had no
intention of wading through a sea of blood if he could obtain his ends
without striking a blow. He had already had some friendly intercourse
with the Egyptian sultan: and from these relations he was hereafter to
reap good fruit. For the present they served only to excite the anger of
Gregory, whose patience was exhausted when at length Frederick gathered
his forces at Brundusium (Brindisi) only to see them decimated by fever,
and when he himself, having set out with his fleet, was compelled to
return after three days to the harbour of Otranto. On St. Michael’s day
the pope excommunicated Frederick with bell, book, and candle. In his
discourse to the Apulian bishops, the subjects of Frederick, he spoke
of the tender care with which the Church had nursed him in his infancy
and childhood in order that he might fight the serpents and basilisks
whom she had unwittingly fostered in her bosom. She had borne him on
her shoulders; she had rescued him from those who would have slain him;
she had hoped to find in him a protecting staff and support. These
hopes had been cheated. Frederick had purposely exposed his army at
Brundusium to pestilence, and after pretending to set off on his voyage
for Palestine had returned under a false plea of illness to the luxuries
of the baths of Puteoli. On St. Martin’s day and again on Christmas day
the excommunication was repeated with all its appalling ceremonies. The
sentence was by the pope’s orders to lie published in all churches of his
obedience. By one of the clergy of Paris, who professed to know merely
the fact of the quarrel and nothing of the merits of the case, it was
published as a sentence of condemnation against the one who might be in
the wrong. ‘I excommunicate the aggressor, and I absolve the sufferer.’
Frederick appealed not to the pope, but to the sovereigns of Christendom.
His illness had been real, the accusations of the pope wanton and cruel.
‘The Christian charity which should hold all things together is dried
up at its source, in its stem, not in its branches. What had the pope
done in England but stir up the barons against John, and then abandon
them to death or ruin? The whole world paid tribute to his avarice. His
legates were everywhere, gathering where they had not sown, and reaping
where they had not strawed.’ But although he thus dealt in language as
furious as that of the pope, the thought of breaking definitely with
him and of casting aside his crusading vow as a worthless mockery never
seems to have entered his mind. He undertook to bring his armies together
again with all speed, and to set off on his expedition. His promise only
brought him into fresh trouble with the pope, who in the Holy Week next
following laid under interdict every place in which Frederick might
happen to be. If this censure should be treated with contempt, his
subjects were at once absolved from their allegiance. The emperor went
on steadily with his preparations, and then went to Brundusium. He was
met by papal messengers who strictly forbade him to leave Italy until he
had offered satisfaction for his offences against the Church. In his turn
Frederick, having sailed to Otranto, sent his own envoys to the pope to
demand the removal of the interdict; and these, of course, were dismissed
with contempt.
[Sidenote: Landing of Frederick at Ptolemais.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1229. Feb. 13. Treaty between Frederick and the sultan
Kameel.]
In September the emperor landed at Ptolemais; but the emissaries of the
pope had preceded him, and he found himself under the ban of the clergy
and shunned by their partisans. The patriarch and the masters of the
military orders were to see that none served under his polluted banners.
The charge was given to willing servants: but Frederick found friends in
the Teutonic knights under their grand-master Herman of Salza, as well as
with the body of pilgrims generally. He determined to possess himself of
Joppa, and summoned all the crusaders to his aid. The Templars refused to
stir, if any orders were to be issued in his name; and Frederick agreed
that they should run in the name of God and Christendom. But while the
enemy was aided greatly by the divisions among the Christians, the death
of the Damascene sultan Moadhin was of little use to Frederick. The
Egyptian sultan Kameel was now in a position of greater independence, and
his eagerness for an alliance with the emperor had rapidly cooled down.
Frederick on his side still resolved to try the effect of negotiation.
His demands extended at first, it is said, to the complete restoration of
the Latin kingdom, and ended, if we are to believe Arabian chroniclers,
in almost abject supplications. At length the treaty was signed. It
surrendered to the emperor the whole of Jerusalem except the Temple or
mosque of Omar, the keys of which were to be retained by the Saracens;
but Christians under certain conditions might be allowed to enter it for
the purpose of prayer. It further restored to the Christians the towns of
Jaffa, Bethlehem, and Nazareth.
[Sidenote: Frederick at Jerusalem.]
To Frederick the conclusion of this treaty was a reason for legitimate
satisfaction. It enabled him to hasten back to his own dominions, where
a papal army was ravaging Apulia and threatening Sicily. One task only
remained for him in the East. He must pay his vows at the Holy Sepulchre.
But here also the hand of the pope lay heavy upon him. Not merely
Jerusalem but the Sepulchre itself passed under the interdict as he
entered the gates of the city, and the infidel Moslem saw the churches
closed and all worship suspended at the approach of the Christian
emperor. On Sunday, in his imperial robes, and attended by a magnificent
retinue, Frederick went to his coronation as king of Jerusalem in the
church of the Sepulchre. Not a single ecclesiastic was there to take
part in the ceremony. The archbishops of Capua and Palermo stood aloof,
while Frederick, taking the crown from the high altar, placed it on his
head. By his orders his friend Herman of Salza read an address in which
the emperor acquitted the pope for his hard judgment of him and for his
excommunication, and added that a real knowledge of the facts would have
led him to speak not against him, but in his favour. He confessed his
desire to put to shame the false friends of Christ, his accusers and
slanderers, by the restoration of peace and unity, and to humble himself
before God and before his Vicar upon earth.
[Sidenote: Moderation of the emperor.]
From the Saracens he won golden opinions. The kadi silenced a muezzin who
had to proclaim the hour of prayer from a minaret near the house in which
the emperor lodged, because he added to his call the question, ‘How is
it possible that God had for his son Jesus the son of Mary?’ Frederick
marked the silence of the crier when the hour of prayer came round. On
learning the cause he rebuked the kadi for neglecting on his account
his duty and his religion, and warned him that if he should visit him
in his kingdom he would find no such ill-judged deference. He showed no
dissatisfaction, it is said, with the inscription which declared that
Saladin had purified the city from those who worshipped many gods, or any
displeasure when the Mahomedans in his train fell on their knees at the
times for prayer. His thoughts about the Christians were shown, it was
supposed, when, seeing the windows of the Holy Chapel barred to keep out
the birds which might defile it, he asked, ‘You may keep out the birds;
but how will you keep out the swine?’
[Sidenote: Condemnation of the treaty by Gregory IX.]
In glowing terms Frederick wrote to the sovereigns of Europe, announcing
the splendid success which he had achieved rather by the pen than by the
sword. He scarcely knew what a rock of offence he had raised up amongst
Christian and Moslem alike. By a few words on a sheet of parchment the
Christian emperor had deprived his people of the hope of getting their
sins forgiven by murdering unbelievers: by the same words the Moslem
sultan had prevented his subjects from ensuring an entrance to the
delights of paradise by the slaughter of the Nazarenes. From Gerold,
patriarch of Jerusalem, a letter went to the pope, full of virulent abuse
of the emperor as a traitor, an apostate, and a robber; but even before
he received this letter Gregory had condemned what he chose to consider
as a monstrous attempt to reconcile Christ and Belial, and to set up
Mahomed as an object of worship in the temple of God. ‘The antagonist
of the cross,’ he wrote, ‘the enemy of the faith and of all chastity,
the wretch doomed to hell, is lifted up for adoration, by a perverse
judgment, and by an intolerable insult to the Saviour, to the lasting
disgrace of the Christian name and the contempt of all the martyrs who
have laid down their lives to purify the Holy Land from the defilements
of the Saracens.’
[Sidenote: Return of the emperor with the crusaders to Europe.]
[Sidenote: Renewed excommunication of the emperor.]
But Frederick in his turn could be firm and unyielding. He returned from
Jerusalem to Joppa, from Joppa to Ptolemais; and there learning that a
proposal had been made to establish a new order of knights, he declared
that no one should without his consent levy soldiers within his dominion.
Summoning all the Christians within the city to the broad plain without
the gates, he spoke his mind freely about the conduct of the patriarch
and the Templars, with all who aided and abetted them, and insisted that
all the pilgrims, having now paid their vows, should return at once to
Europe. On this point he was inexorable. His archers took possession
of the churches; two friars who denounced him from the pulpit were
scourged through the streets; the patriarch was shut up in his palace;
and the commands of the emperor were carried out. Frederick returned to
Europe, to find that the pope had been stirring up Albert of Austria to
rebel against him, and that the papal forces were in command of John of
Brienne, who may have been the author of the false news of Frederick’s
death, and who certainly proclaimed himself as the only emperor. To the
pope Frederick sent his envoys, Herman of Salza at their head. They were
dismissed with contempt; and their master was again placed under the
greater excommunication with the Albigensians, the Poor Men of Lyons, the
Arnoldists, and other heretics who in the eyes of the faithful were the
worst enemies of the Christian church. Such was the reward of the man
who had done more towards the re-establishment of the Latin kingdom in
Palestine than had been done by the lion-hearted Richard, and who, it may
fairly be said, had done it without shedding a drop of blood.