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Chapter 1

A Contested Vow

Just one day after the death of Pope Honorius III on 18 March 1227, the cardinal clergy assembled at the Septizodium palace in Rome elected Hugolino dei Conti, cardinal bishop of Ostia and Velletri, as the next bishop of Rome. The new pontiff, then about seventy-five years old, took the name Gregory IX. As was customary, a few days later the pope dispatched a letter notifying “the entire world” about his elevation to the Apostolic See, sending that missive to prelates, nobles, and Christian rulers everywhere, including Frederick II, emperor of the Romans and king of Sicily. In addition to the news of Gregory’s election, this announcement made one thing plainly clear: the pope’s commitment to the upcoming crusade that was supposed to depart the upcoming summer. In the version of his letter sent directly to Frederick, which stressed his past affection for the prince while holding a “lesser office” as cardinal bishop, Gregory called upon the Hohenstaufen ruler to prepare himself “manfully and powerfully” for the upcoming passage to the Holy Land, reminding him about all of the pope’s labors in the past to support crusaders.¹

Over the following months, Frederick’s unfulfilled crusading vow would become the source of a public crisis between the new pope and the emperor. By August, a force of crusaders gathered at Brindisi intending to accompany the emperor to Syria, but when pestilence struck the army, killing many and seriously sickening Frederick, he decided against sailing for the holy places. On 19 September, Gregory excommunicated him or, more accurately, formalized his excommunicate status, which had been automatically incurred by the violation of his previous oath to depart on crusade that summer. By doing so, the pope placed his priestly office at odds with the Christian emperor, a sworn crusader and vassal of the Roman church. Their confrontation continued even after the emperor left on crusade in 1228, still excommunicate, and persisted during Frederick’s time in the Holy Land. In the meantime, Gregory widened his accusations against the Hohenstaufen ruler and his officials in the Regno, denouncing their abuses of the church’s liberty, attacks on papal supporters, and what might now be called war crimes—allowing Muslim mercenaries to torture and kill priests. To oppose Frederick, Gregory eventually gathered a papal army and coordinated a military campaign against the emperor’s supporters in southern Italy that was waged under the “banner of the keys,” the sign of the pope’s spiritual power as the head of the church and status as the temporal lord of the papal patrimony.

According to many scholars, Frederick’s violation of his crusading oath gave Gregory the excuse he needed to humiliate and depose the imperial ruler. “Pope Gregory felt himself by stern necessity compelled to compass the destruction of the Hohenstaufen,” Ernst Kantorowicz writes. “He seized the first opportunity of compelling the foe to fight.” Others offer similar appraisals. For Gregory, who “knew little of conciliation or peace,” Thomas Van Cleve claims, “the crusade per se was far less important than it had been to Honorius III. It was, indeed, secondary to a much more ambitious goal: the complete triumph of the papacy over the Empire in the struggle for predominance in Christendom.” Or, as David Abulafia puts it, Gregory was “keen to indicate from the start the absolute primacy of his office over that of the emperor…. With his election, cooperation between the pope and emperor gave way to the idea of the subordination of emperor to pope.”²

And yet, judging by Gregory’s repeated declarations and actions, the crusade mattered immensely to his conceptualization of the papal office, forming a public red line between him and the emperor. After generations of summoning crusades, the Roman church had invested vast amounts of spiritual, political, and material capital in the unrealized goal of defeating the so-called Saracens and securing the holy places once and for all. As seen above, during his time as a cardinal legate, Hugolino dei Conti had devoted himself to the project of freeing Jerusalem. As pope, he became responsible for crusading at an especially critical juncture in its history, when disappointment and anxiety about crusading failures reached new levels due to the collapse of the Fifth Crusade. As his predecessor Honorius had warned Frederick and other notable figures on more than one occasion, the Christian people “murmured,” “clamored,” and made “public complaints” about the failure of their leaders to take up the business of the cross and work together to free Christ’s patrimony. Now Gregory faced those same outcries. The need to find a solution to Jerusalem’s captivity had never been greater, or at least, not so acute since the recapture of the city by Salah al-Din two generations earlier.³

In the ensuing struggle between the pope and the prince, communicating the causes and significance of their confrontation to the wider community created its own kind of battlefield, a means to isolate and pressure one’s opponent by denying him moral and material support. Letters from the papal curia and imperial chancery circulated around Christendom, each side trying to generate sympathy for its cause.⁴ Outside of official channels, rumors spread about the pope’s decision to excommunicate the emperor and about the sensational events of Frederick’s crusade. Once in motion, the confrontation between the two men escalated in ways that neither side could have anticipated, as a shockingly violent battle unfolded for control of the Regno. For contemporaries, these events provoked consternation and amazement, a sense of calamity in their world and uncertainty about how to restore the proper balance between the two powers.

Figure 2. A lead papal bull of Pope Gregory IX. Courtesy of the Portable Antiquities Scheme.

The Delayed Crusade

By the time of Gregory’s election as pope, Frederick’s crusading plans had undergone many twists and turns since he had renewed his solemn vow in Hugolino’s presence seven years earlier.⁵ These developments set the stage for his subsequent confrontation with the pope. After Frederick’s imperial coronation in 1220, Honorius III had set and reset deadlines for his passage, threating him with excommunication if he failed to leave but reluctantly granting him extensions when circumstances—such as a rebellion by his Muslim subjects on the island of Sicily—forced him to delay his departure.⁶ The pope even helped to broker a marriage between Frederick and Isabella of Brienne, daughter of John of Brienne, the Latin king of Jerusalem.⁷ Frederick’s vow, Honorius reminded him, represented more than a private commitment: it was a public obligation that had been renewed on multiple occasions before lay and clerical witnesses. On 25 July 1225, in the presence of two papal legates—Jacob Guala, cardinal priest of San Silvestro e Martino, and Pelagius, cardinal bishop of Albano and former legate on the Fifth Crusade—Frederick had yet again “publicly” renewed his crusading vow at San Germano by swearing on the Gospels and setting a departure date for mid-August two years later. This time his solemn vow included the crucial stipulation that his failure to fulfill its terms would automatically trigger his excommunication and the interdict of his lands.⁸

Immediately after his election, Gregory also turned his attention to another major piece of unfinished business from Honorius’s papacy: enforcing a peace agreement between the emperor and the Lombard League, an alliance of northern Italian cities, including Milan, Brescia, Mantua, Treviso, Padua, Piacenza, and Bologna, that opposed the Hohenstaufen ruler’s rights in the region.⁹ This political protest had turned violent in 1226, when the members of the league blocked Frederick’s planned imperial assembly at Cremona, which had been called to reform the empire, eradicate heresy, and pursue the business of the Holy Land.¹⁰ If, however, the rebellious Lombards expected papal intervention on their behalf, they must have been disappointed. Honorius’s commitment to the crusade trumped an alignment of interests between Rome and the Lombard League. The pope and his representatives repeatedly signaled their support for Frederick, who invoked his protected status as a sworn crusader against the Lombards’ “illicit conspiracy.”¹¹ By January 1227, Honorius had formulated written oaths for the Lombards to swear, sign, seal, and forward to all of the concerned parties, including Frederick. Both sides had to commit to keep the peace and forego any further “rancor” toward the other, to restore all captives from their recent fighting, and to revoke all bans and other measures passed during their confrontation.¹² The Lombard cities also agreed to provide four hundred soldiers for a period of two years as a contribution to the upcoming crusade. The rectors of the league dragged their feet and did not return the signed agreements by the required February deadline. Honorius had to write to them weeks later, insisting that they send the required documents and expressing skepticism about their lame excuse that one of their envoys had dropped the pages into the water during their transport, rendering them illegible. The pope died shortly after sending this letter.¹³

His successor took immediate steps to secure the terms of this agreement, being committed to the idea that peace among Christians represented a necessary first step toward a successful crusade. On 27 March, Gregory resent Honorius’s final letter to the Lombard rectors with minor changes, demanding that they send the promised “form of peace” (forma pacis) to him and the emperor as quickly as possible. Failing to do so might give Frederick a reason to delay his departure for the Holy Land, thereby provoking the anger of “God and men” against the Lombards. A few weeks after that, he wrote to the rectors again, observing that several signatures and seals were missing from the letters once they had arrived. For this reason, he had not forwarded the incomplete set of documents to the emperor. In writing and in verbal instructions given to the letter’s bearer, he insisted that the rectors should send new versions of the documents with all of the appropriate seals. They also needed to ready the soldiers they were supposed to contribute in support of the upcoming crusade, as required by the terms of the recent peace agreement. If necessary, the archbishop of Milan would compel them to fulfill their obligations by ecclesiastical censure.¹⁴

In April, the pope announced the successful resolution of the conflict between Frederick and the Lombards to the archbishop of Cologne and prelates throughout Germany, calling upon them to instruct all of the sworn crusaders in their dioceses to ready themselves for the upcoming passage overseas. Crusade preachers, authorized by Honorius before he died, had been laying the groundwork for the campaign for months. Like every crusade before it, appeals for this latest expedition drew more enthusiasm from some corners of Europe than others, as the expedition faced shortages of manpower and financial means, stragglers, and reluctant crusaders. English monastic histories such as the Waverley Annals remember an outpouring of enthusiasm in England for this armed journey to the holy places, recording that people “inspired and strengthened by apostolic letters and advisements, signed and armed besides by the virtue and wood of the holy cross, desired to go forth to avenge the injuries done to God by the enemies of the Christian name.” In his Flowers of History, the English chronicler Roger of Wendover pictures a “great motion throughout the world for the work of the cross,” especially among “the poor.” Authorized crusade preachers, bearing “written mandates” from the pope, did not have a monopoly on proclaiming the Lord’s wishes for a new crusade. Roger also describes a fisherman who saw a vision of Christ’s body with bloody wounds, pierced by the nails and lance from the crucifixion, who told everyone in the local marketplace about this miraculous sign.¹⁵

During the first few months of his papacy, therefore, Gregory’s desire to destroy Frederick seems nowhere in sight. Writing to the emperor on 22 July 1227, just before Frederick’s planned departure on crusade, Gregory struck a pastoral—if, perhaps, paternalistic—tone. The pope offered an exegesis of sorts on the five insignia of the Christian imperial office, including the relics of the cross and holy lance, the triple crown, the scepter for the right hand, and the orb for the left. All of these symbols served as reminders of Frederick’s duty and devotion to Christ: the cross, of the Lord’s suffering; the lance, of the blood that poured from his side; the triple crown, denoting grace, justice, and glory, of Frederick’s crowns in Germany, Lombardy, and the imperial one bestowed upon him by the pope; the scepter, of earthly power to punish the wicked; and the orb, of dispensing mercy. In closing, Gregory stressed his past affection for the emperor and his present concern for his eternal salvation. On the eve of Frederick’s planned departure for the Holy Land, the pope sought to valorize rather than undermine the imperial office, as long as its present occupant remembered the true nature of his calling in the service of the Lord.¹⁶

Various chronicles relate how a large crusading force gathered at Brindisi in July and August to await passage overseas. They also describe how the summer heat, spoiled food, and disease took a terrible toll on the soldiers camped outside the city. Some of the troops returned home, while others waited for transport as August turned into September. Frederick numbered among those who fell ill; Ludwig, landgrave of Thuringia, died of sickness. After an aborted attempt to set sail for Syria, the emperor decided to delay his own departure again until the following May, although a good portion of the crusaders left for Acre at his command, including Gerold of Lausanne, the patriarch of Jerusalem and the papal legate assigned to the army, and Hermann of Salza, the master general of the Teutonic Order. Opinions remained divided about the real reasons for the emperor’s decision not to leave for the Holy Land. According to some, the emperor made the best of unfortunate circumstances, postponing his passage due to his illness. For others, he had only pretended that he planned to cross overseas and feigned being sick. The Waverley Annals claim that the “pagans” corrupted him with gifts, while the Annals of Schäftlarn say that other crusaders did not fall ill, but rather, Frederick had poisoned them. Roger of Wendover observes that the emperor’s failure to depart brought “shame and harm to the entire business of the cross,” adding that, “in opinion of many,” his failure to depart was the reason why the Lord revealed himself on the cross in the vision described above, “placing his grievance against the emperor for the injuries caused by him before each and every one.”¹⁷

Communicating Excommunication

On 19 September, Pope Gregory confirmed Frederick’s self-inflicted sentence of excommunication at Anagni. As one of Frederick’s modern biographers wryly observes, excommunication represented an “occupational hazard” for medieval emperors.¹⁸ Gregory IX’s anathematizing of Frederick II, however, hardly represented a run-of-the-mill excommunication, if there ever was such a thing. It placed the pope and the most powerful ruler in Europe publicly at odds during a moment when the fate of Jerusalem seemed to hang in the balance.¹⁹

Gregory’s anonymous biographer, a member of the curia with close ties to the pope, describes the scene of the emperor’s solemn excommunication in the Life of Gregory IX.²⁰ Gregory had come to his hometown in July. The bishops of Rome commonly left the city during the summer months to escape the heat. On 18 September, no doubt anticipating his plans for the following day, he elevated six presumably supportive clerics from the curia to the college of cardinals, promoting, among others, Sinibaldo Fieschi—the future pope, Innocent IV—as cardinal priest of San Lorenzo in Lucina.²¹ On the Feast of the Archangel Michael, assisted by the cardinals and other archbishops and bishops and wearing his pontifical robes, Gregory delivered a sermon in the city’s cathedral church on the Gospel of Matthew 18: 7: “For it must be, that scandals come to pass, but woe to the man by whom that scandal comes.” After delivering multiple warnings to Frederick about the need to fulfill his vow, the pope, like the “archangel triumphing over the dragon,” had “publicly announced” Frederick’s excommunication, affirming the sentence incurred when he had failed to depart on crusade as he had sworn to do at San Germano. Although the author of Gregory’s vita does not say so, the solemn ceremony must have closely followed the guidelines for excommunication and anathema from canon law, including twelve priests holding lit candles, throwing them on the ground, and stamping them out.²²

In canon law, the rules for excommunication give instructions for a letter to be sent throughout the appropriate parish announcing the sentence. In this case, the “parish” constituted nothing less than the entirety of Christendom.²³ The papal letter In maris amplitudine shows this messaging campaign at work. Issued on 10 October, the encyclical opens by describing the tempests that menaced the ship of Saint Peter on the storm-tossed seas: the “perfidy of the pagans” in the holy places; the “frenzy of tyrants” assailing the liberty of the church; the “madness of heretics” tearing Christ’s “tunic” asunder; and the “perversity of false sons and brothers.” For this reason, the Apostolic See had elevated and supported Frederick since his boyhood to act as a defender of the church. When he traveled to Germany to receive his crown, he had assumed the cross, a source of hope for the Holy Land. When crowned emperor “by our own hands, although in a lesser office,” Frederick had “publicly” renewed his vow, planning to leave on crusade two years later. When the deadline drew near, however, with “many excuses,” he had failed to depart. At San Germano, he had bound himself by another such oath, promising to make his passage by August two years later. The legates on hand, “publicly by the authority of the Apostolic See,” had authorized a sentence of excommunication that would be triggered if he failed to meet these obligations. Now he had done so. Gregory’s letter describes the gathering of the crusader army at Brindisi and its decimation by the summer heat, disease, and desertion, followed by the emperor’s failure to depart for Syria, which left those crusaders who did set sail leaderless and endangered the Holy Land to the emperor’s shame and the “shame of all Christendom.” After lamenting the conditions overseas and emphasizing his commitment to the crusade, the pope had “unwillingly but publicly” pronounced the emperor as excommunicate, commanding him to be “shunned by all” and instructing prelates to announce his status publicly and gravely proceed against him if his stubbornness persisted.²⁴

It is hardly surprising that this product of the papal chancery offers a onesided picture of Frederick’s actions. That was the point: to sway opinions and trigger indignation, leaving no room for doubt about the rightness of Gregory’s decision. As intended, In maris amplitudine circulated widely, having been sent to prelates in Italy, Germany, England, and elsewhere. In his Flowers of History, Roger of Wendover includes a version of the text sent to Stephen, the archbishop of Canterbury. Roger did more than just “copy” or “transcribe” the letter. He narratively framed the letter, describing the pope’s decision to anathematize the emperor by relating how Gregory “ordered the sentence of excommunication to be published in every place through apostolic letters.” Other chroniclers offer similar observations about how the pope commanded Frederick “to be denounced throughout the empire,” how he sent his “general letters throughout the entire west” regarding the emperor’s public excommunication, or how he denounced the emperor “as excommunicate throughout the western church, through his letters sent to all the prelates, that is, archbishops, bishops, and archdeacons, so that they might denounce him in their dioceses.”²⁵

The emperor responded by sending out his own “excusatory” letters, including the encyclical In admiratione vertimur. This product of the imperial chancery lamented the unforeseen devastation of the crusading army at Brindisi, explaining the circumstances of Frederick’s delayed passage overseas and complaining about the pope’s “unjust” judgment. The emperor wanted the “entire world” to hear about his innocence and his grievances against Gregory, whose letters tried to “raise up hatred” against him in every land. In admiratione vertimur replays more or less the same version of events as In maris amplitudine, but in a different key, showing how Frederick tried to honor his crusading vow from the beginning, despite the Roman church’s half-hearted attempts to protect and to assist him since his boyhood. Disregarding his doctors’ orders, he had traveled to Brindisi and even set sail for Syria before his near-fatal illness forced him to debark. Fully intending to head overseas the following May, he had sent ahead numerous galleys and soldiers along with funds to support them, fulfilling his other obligations made at San Germano two years earlier. In the closing portions of this encyclical, Frederick gave instructions for the letter to be “read aloud and heard in public.”²⁶ Richard of San Germano describes how the emperor sent one of his officials, Roffrid of Benevento, to do just that on the Capitoline Hill in Rome. In his Flowers of History, Roger of Wendover explains that “just as the pope had the issued sentence published in every Christian land, so the aforesaid emperor wrote to all of the Christian kings and princes complaining that the sentence had been injuriously passed against him.” Roger relates that another such letter, sealed with Frederick’s golden bull, arrived at the court of Henry III and warned the English king that Gregory wished to make all rulers into his “tributaries.” Responding to both sets of letters, Henry tried to carve out a middle ground between the two sides for the good of the holy places, beseeching the pope to show compassion for the emperor and calling on Frederick to reconcile with the Roman church as soon as possible. This was not the last time he would find himself in this uncomfortable position.²⁷

Chroniclers and annalists from every corner of Europe followed these astonishing events, implying or openly revealing their sympathies in the matter. The Guelf Annals of Piacenza, so-called to designate their anti-imperial bias, describe how Frederick’s failure to depart overseas provoked Gregory to “publicly anathematize and excommunicate the emperor before all of the people who had come to visit the threshold of the apostles Peter and Paul.” The Annals of Schäftlarn state that Gregory “prudently” excommunicated him, while the Chronicle of Burchard of Ursburg says that he did so “for frivolous and false reasons, casting aside any judicial procedure.” The Waverley Annals record that Frederick caused great harm to crusaders at Brindisi, prompting the pope to “solemnly” excommunicate him “at Rome and many other places,” but the Annals of Saint Emmeram of Regensburg attribute the pope’s decision to the “devil’s instigation,” nearly destroying the crusading expedition. The variety of attitudes in such historical works is striking and are indicative of the event’s polarizing nature—and not just for chroniclers as the crafters and keepers of memory.²⁸

The circulation of such misinformation and hard-edged accusations did not foreclose the possibility of reconciliation between the pope and emperor. To the contrary, by raising the public stakes in their confrontation, their propaganda seemed designed to build pressure for a negotiated settlement, each side seeking leverage to strike the best terms possible for their own set of interests. In September, after hearing about the pope’s judgment against him, Frederick sent a group of envoys to meet with the pope during a provincial synod at Perugia to explain the reasons for his delayed departure. Frederick later complained about the pope’s refusal to give his representatives a proper audience, despite the council’s collective urging that he do so. According to the emperor, Gregory met individually with each bishop present, intimidating them into silence before allowing the envoys to speak and then dismissing them out of hand.²⁹ Such reluctance to deal with Frederick signaled to everyone that his reconciliation with the church would not come easily. On 18 November, after returning to Rome, Gregory seemed to reinforce this message, repeating his sentence of excommunication in the basilica of Saint Peter before a crowd of cardinals and other clergy. Yet the following month, the pope sent two cardinals, Otto, cardinal deacon of San Nichola in Carcere Tulliano, and Thomas of Capua, cardinal priest of Santa Sabina, to meet with the emperor at San Germano bearing a relatively conciliatory letter that expressed the pope’s despair about the current “scandal” in the church and the lamentable state of the Holy Land, along with hopes for the emperor’s speedy return to the church after he rendered sufficient satisfaction to God and justice to men.³⁰

This posturing continued into the spring. On Maundy Thursday in 1228, a feast day traditionally linked with the excommunication and reconciliation of sinners, Gregory “publicly” reiterated the emperor’s anathema before the large crowds gathered for Holy Week in the Church of Saint Peter.³¹ Writing to the archbishops, bishops, and other clergy in Apulia that same month, instructing them to repeat and publicize this sentence on Sundays and feast days, the pope described how he had wielded the “medicinal sword of Peter” against Frederick in the “spirit of mildness,” pronouncing the sentence of excommunication for the benefit of the ruler’s soul, but also because the breaking of his crusader vow would cause a great “detriment to the faith and a grave scandal among the entire Christian people.” Frederick, however, “showing contempt for the keys of the church,” had ordered the divine mass to be celebrated—or rather profaned—in his presence. Gregory reiterated the terms of his excommunication and interdict: wherever the emperor went, there should be no celebration of the mass. Regardless of rank, anyone who celebrated the divine services in the ruler’s presence before his reconciliation with the church would lose his benefice. If the emperor continued to attend mass, thereby refusing to acknowledge his excommunicate status, the pope would proceed against him as a “heretic and despiser of the keys,” declaring all those who owed him fealty absolved from their oaths in accordance with canon law.³²

By suspending the celebration of mass and certain sacraments in Frederick’s presence, halting liturgical action and imposing silences, forbidding the ringing of bells, and instructing those with special permission to celebrate mass to do so behind closed doors with lowered voices, the interdict publicized the pope’s judgment for those not exposed to his epistolary denunciations of the emperor. The papal interdict apparently had little impact in Germany, but its enforcement in the Regno clearly concerned Frederick. Writing to his officials in that kingdom, he declared his imperial duty to assure the proper performance of the “divine worship,” thereby avoiding a “human scandal.” He ordered them to inform all of the clergy under their authority that they must “publicly celebrate the divine offices in their churches,” or else he would revoke all of the worldly goods, properties, and incomes attached to their positions.³³

Rituals remained a flashpoint in other dangerous ways. The pope found this out for himself a few days after Maundy Thursday when a group of Roman citizens stormed into the Church of Saint Peter and assaulted Gregory along with the other clergy present. The pope’s biographer, who probably witnessed the scene, insists that Frederick had turned the Romans against their bishop with his “bribes and lies.” The mob, casting aside their fear of God, interrupted the pope while he said mass at the high altar over Saint Peter’s remains, laying their “profane hands” on him and yelling “Crucify him!” much like those who crucified Christ. Other chroniclers agreed that the emperor lay behind this “sedition” in Rome. A few weeks later, the pope excommunicated the Romans and left for Perugia. He would not return to “the City,” as contemporary sources called Rome, for two years.³⁴

Jerusalem Delivered—or Not

In the summer of 1228, the public crisis between the pope and emperor entered a new stage when Frederick departed for Jerusalem. From start to finish, controversy surrounded this unprecedented situation in the history of crusading, wherein an excommunicate emperor and crusader, openly at odds with the pope, set out to free Jerusalem. During the months that followed, messengers and letters circulated back and forth between Europe and the Holy Land as the pope, emperor, and their supporters tried to shape public opinion about the expedition. In this “game played for high stakes,” as one scholar has described Frederick’s volatile crusade, controlling public perceptions of the expedition overseas became nearly as important as maintaining control of the crusade or even the holy city of Jerusalem itself.³⁵

Throughout the entire period of his anathema, Frederick had continued to make and publicize his plans to embark on crusade, despite his excommunicate status. In a letter sent to Italian communes the preceding April, the emperor drew a clear contrast between his commitment to freeing Jerusalem and the pope’s recent decision to speak against him on Maundy Thursday before the large crowds gathered for Holy Week. Rather than preaching about Frederick’s crusade and encouraging his listeners toward the “service of the cross,” the pope had raised the subject of Milan and other “traitors” to the empire, denouncing Frederick for not sufficiently compensating them after their recent rebellion. This revealed that Gregory did not have sufficient cause to judge him based on the “business of the Holy Land,” given Frederick’s past efforts toward that end and imminent departure overseas. Stressing his burning desire to fulfill his oath, as evident “before the entire world,” and accusing the pope of damaging the crusade by favoring traitors to his imperial rule, the emperor called for his loyal followers to support the upcoming expedition. In a similar letter sent from the imperial court in June, he described how he had again sent solemn envoys to the curia bearing the written “form of satisfaction” that he would make so that he might cross overseas with the pope’s blessing. Demonstrating his intransigence, Gregory rejected those terms but refused to explain what kind of satisfaction he would find acceptable to lift the ban. Frederick’s message was clear. Although the pope had unjustly opposed him at every turn, the emperor refused to turn aside from fulfilling his duties in the Holy Land.³⁶

The emperor set sail in August 1228. The course of his crusade is well known. After various stops en route, including a five-week stay on Cyprus, he landed at Acre on 7 September 1228. In November, Frederick marched with a mixed army of crusaders, local Christian nobles, and members of the military orders to Jaffa planning to fortify the city, which was within striking distance of Jerusalem. Ships reaching the port resupplied the army by year’s end. Frederick, however, did not intend to free the holy city by military means, seeking instead to establish a truce with the Ayyubid sultan, al-Kamil. The Egyptian ruler had his own reasons for making such a deal, including political infighting with his brother and nephew, the sultans of Damascus. Negotiations had begun between the two even before the emperor left on his crusade. In February, they agreed to a ten-year peace: al-Kamil would restore Jerusalem to the emperor, along with Bethlehem, Nazareth, and various other villages, and allow the Christians living there access to the coast; both sides would release any prisoners they held; and the two rulers would pledge to support each other against their respective enemies. On 17 March, Frederick and the crusaders entered Jerusalem, completing their armed pilgrimage. On the following day, Easter Sunday, the Hohenstaufen ruler crowned himself king of Jerusalem in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. The day after that, he began his return journey to Jaffa and Acre.³⁷

Not surprisingly, the pope and his circle attacked the legitimacy of Frederick’s expedition from the beginning. Gregory’s anonymous biographer writes that when Frederick left Brindisi for Syria, he “set sail more like a pirate than an emperor, a transgressor of his vow and oath.”³⁸ From the moment of his arrival in Acre, Frederick’s excommunicate status reportedly caused disruptive scenes in the city. Roger of Wendover writes that the local clergy and people welcomed the emperor with great honor, but, “since they knew he was excommunicated,” they refused to give him the kiss of peace or to eat with him, counseling him to “return to the holy church, making satisfaction to the pope.” Canon law was clear on this point: those who kissed, prayed with, or ate with an excommunicate person were liable to excommunication themselves.³⁹ Not long after the emperor reached Acre, according to the Estoire de Eracles, an old French chronicle devoted to events in the Holy Land, a Franciscan messenger arrived bearing letters from Gregory to Gerold of Lausanne, patriarch of Jerusalem and papal legate, instructing him to “denounce the emperor Frederick, as excommunicate and foresworn.” Frederick answered, laying his grievances with the pope “before the entire army” and denouncing the papal sentence against him as unjust.⁴⁰

These sorts of demonstrations continued on the road to Jaffa and Jerusalem. Some chroniclers record that the Hospitallers and Templars greeted Frederick on bended knee, committed to serving him. Others, however, relate that the military orders, along with the friars, refused to march with the emperor’s forces, declaring their obedience to the Roman church. They traveled instead to the east of the main army. Worried that the “Turks” might exploit this weakness, Frederick sent riders to cry out his commands “in the name of God and Christianity, without naming the emperor.”⁴¹ In a letter sent to the pope, which Gregory subsequently forwarded to other destinations, Gerold explained how the crusaders watched with fear and confusion as envoys passed back and forth between the Christian and Muslim camps, causing a “scandal” in the army. The patriarch, who remained at Acre but followed the crusaders’ progress from afar, denounced Frederick’s coziness with the sultan, who sent him “dancing girls and jugglers” and other unmentionable persons after he heard that Frederick preferred to dress, eat, and live “in a Saracen manner,” behavior that the “army of Jesus Christ” found abhorrent.⁴²

Gerold likewise portrayed Frederick’s ten-year truce with al-Kamil as unrealistic, unsustainable, and a danger to the Christian presence in the Holy Land. He forwarded to the pope a French transcript of the pact that had been sent to him by Hermann of Salza, master general of the Teutonic Order, adding his own derisive commentary on its terms in Latin.⁴³ According to Gerold, the emperor gave away everything and got little in return. He even surrendered his breastplate, shield, and sword to the sultan, telling him that he never wished to take up arms against him again. Gerold stressed the “secretive” and “fraudulent” nature of the negotiations, as Frederick finally made his “hidden” plans “public,” having agreed to the terms of the treaty without ever having them “read aloud or recited openly” before his fellow crusaders, thereby denying the bishops and members of the military orders accompanying the army a chance to consult with the Latin patriarch before they agreed to anything—hardly the behavior of a Christian prince and crusader.⁴⁴ Possession of the Temple Mount, including the Temple of the Lord, as the crusaders called the Dome of the Rock, was an especially sensitive point. Gerold highlighted the treaty’s clause allowing the infidels continued access to the holy site. With “a greater multitude of Saracens coming to pray at the temple than the crowds of Christians coming to the sepulcher,” he wondered, “how will the Christians be able to maintain their dominion for ten years, without discord and danger to their persons?”⁴⁵ The “clamor” of Saracens’ call to prayer, proclaimed from that high place above the city, caused all sorts of confusion and uncertainty among the crusaders.⁴⁶

With regard to the Temple Mount, Frederick seemed to realize that he possibly had a possible public relations disaster on his hands. In his letter Letentur et exultent, which celebrated his triumphs in the holy places, he carefully explained that the Saracens would enter the site “in the manner of pilgrims,” unarmed and unable to spend the night, praying and departing. Apologizing for these upsetting sights and sounds, Hermann of Salza likewise stressed that Christians would also have free access to pray at the site, that the Saracens could keep only a few “unarmed, elderly priests” at the temple, and that the emperor’s guards would monitor the gates into the site, deciding who could enter and exit. He even pointed out that the infidels allowed the Christians similar rights of worship in the cities under their control.⁴⁷

Frederick’s entry into Jerusalem and coronation in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher provoked more tense scenes. Roger of Wendover describes how the bishops accompanying the army ritually cleansed the city with processions, prayers, and holy water but did not allow any cleric to celebrate mass for as long as the emperor remained present. To the relief of some of the crusaders, a Dominican friar named Walter continued to perform divine services just outside the city walls.⁴⁸ In his letter to Gregory, Gerold reported that he “denied the pilgrims across the board license to enter Jerusalem or visit the sepulcher,” telling them that the pope would not approve of such a visitation, which might endanger their souls.⁴⁹ Sent to Jerusalem by the Latin patriarch, the archbishop of Caesarea placed the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and all of the city’s holy sites under interdict. The patriarch also instructed preachers to spread the word around the army that anyone violating this prohibition would have to seek absolution from the pope himself. These actions, Hermann of Salza wrote, caused a great deal of anger toward the church among the crusaders. Hermann also explained that Frederick “complained publicly before all of the bishops that the holy places, under the power of the Saracens for so long and now free by divine aid, placed under interdict, had been enslaved by the patriarch and restored to their earlier misery by the prohibition of the divine office.” Addressing the pope directly, Frederick passed over these events in silence, except for the sardonic comment, “some other time and place, we will take care to explain fully just how much counsel and aid we received from the patriarch of Jerusalem, and the masters and brothers of the religious houses.”⁵⁰

Even Hermann of Salza advised Frederick to forego mass during his coronation ceremony in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, despite the fact that others in the army advocated such a celebration. On Easter Sunday, speaking before a crowd of prelates and magnates, before the rich and poor, the master general of the Teutonic Order delivered an address in Latin and German. Speaking on Frederick’s behalf, he declared that the emperor had fulfilled his crusade vow. He even made excuses for the pope, who had excommunicated Frederick and hounded him with letters sent across the sea after hearing that Frederick was gathering an army “against the church.” If the pope had known the emperor’s true intentions, he never would have written such things. Likewise, Hermann relayed, Frederick lamented the fact that complaints made against him by some of the crusaders had displeased the pope, causing “harm to the entire Christian people.”⁵¹

The day after his coronation, Frederick began his return to Acre. A second letter attributed to the patriarch of Jerusalem, found only in the Major Chronicle of the English monk and historian Matthew Paris, describes more troubles after the emperor arrived there.⁵² When Gerold and the leaders of the military orders objected to his “treacherous” and “fraudulent” treaty with the sultan, Frederick sent out a “public herald” to summon the crusaders for a gathering outside of the city. In a personal address to the crowd, he publicly denounced those opposing him, forbidding the soldiers on pain of death from staying in the Holy Land any longer. The letter also claims that he posted guards at the city gates, denying the Templars permission to enter; seized and fortified churches around the city; and sent his followers to harass the Dominican and Franciscan friars preaching on Palm Sunday. The streets of Acre erupted into chaos. Gathering the bishops and pilgrims on hand, the patriarch excommunicated anyone attacking church persons and property, passing a sentence of interdict over the city. Finally, after some half-hearted attempts to make peace with Gerold and the others, Frederick headed to the port by a hidden side street and on the third of May “secretly” set sail for Cyprus.⁵³

Matthew observes that the patriarch’s letter, which was written to defame the emperor and reached “audiences around the west,” did considerable damage to Frederick’s reputation. Commencing his chronicle seven or eight years later, the English monk—whose colorful and opinionated historical works will feature throughout the rest of this book—offers another provocative story about the hatred that developed between the military orders and the emperor.⁵⁴ According to Matthew, the Templars and Hospitallers sent a letter bearing their seals to al-Kamil, informing him that the emperor would soon be visiting the spot of Christ’s baptism at the Jordan, the perfect place to ambush and kill him. Repelled by this treachery and hoping to create confusion among the Christians, the sultan forwarded the letter to Frederick, complete with the identifying seals, and foiled the plot.⁵⁵

Other chroniclers, however, celebrated the emperor’s remarkable achievement during this “year that will be long remembered by future generations.” Burchard of Ursburg writes that the pope “cast aside and despised” Frederick’s letters announcing the miraculous capture of Jerusalem to Christendom at large, while Richard of San Germano declares that things would have gone far better for the “business of the Holy Land” if the emperor had crossed over “with the grace and peace of the Roman church.” He added that al-Kamil almost hesitated to negotiate with Frederick at all, knowing about the great “hatred” that the church held for him. The anonymous author of the Brief Chronicle of Sicily, proclaiming “I who write this, I was there personally, and do not diverge from the path of truth,” layered his description of Jerusalem’s liberation with references to the Book of Revelation, lending an apocalyptic resonance to Frederick’s deeds. Even Roger of Wendover, who was not especially sympathetic toward the emperor in his chronicle, describes messages from God, marvelous signs, prophecies, and astrological predictions that foretold the holy city’s restoration “to the Christian people generally, specifically to Frederick the Roman emperor.”⁵⁶

As for Pope Gregory, in still more letters sent to bishops, princes, kings, and communes around Europe during the summer of 1229, he made his perspective on Frederick’s crusade unmistakably clear. Referring to the letters written by Gerold of Lausanne and Hermann of Salza, the pope seemed especially concerned that false rumors and misinformation would reach Christian ears about the emperor’s actions overseas. He accused Frederick of four particular crimes, among others.⁵⁷ First, Frederick had surrendered his armor and weapons to the sultan of Babylon, the “adversary of Christ,” renouncing the “arms of the Christian soldiers, the power of the sword taken from the altar of Saint Peter, assigned to him by Christ through his vicar for taking vengeance against malefactors and honoring the good, for defending and preserving the peace of Christ and the faith of the church.”⁵⁸ By doing so, Frederick had effectively abdicated the imperial office. Second, his pact allowed the followers of “Machomet” to “preach and proclaim” their nefarious law in the city while it simultaneously imposed “silence on the herald of evangelical truth.” Third, he had left critical crusader castles and fortifications exposed to assault by the “pagans.” Fourth, he had bound himself under oath to fight on the sultan’s behalf against his enemies, including other Christians, meaning that he would have to take up arms against a future Christian army seeking to avenge Christ and cleanse the Holy Land of the nonbelievers. Frederick had committed nothing less than treason against the Lord, rendering him “infamous,” subject to spiritual and temporal judgment, and unworthy of any honor or sacraments. Far from bolstering his reign by going on crusade, the emperor had publicly disqualified himself from ruling at all.⁵⁹

Battle for the Regno

During the period leading up to Frederick’s departure for Syria, Gregory’s confrontation with him had expanded into a new theater of accusations and counter-accusations over conditions in the Regno, that is, the kingdom of Sicily, Calabria, and Apulia. The emperor nominally held these territories as a “vassal” of Saint Peter, making the pope his direct temporal lord with regard to their holding. This legal dimension enabled Gregory to bring a different kind of public pressure to bear on Frederick, accusing him of being a malfeasant vassal, not just an emperor who had abdicated his Christian duties. As time passed, this battle for the Regno would eclipse the emperor’s unorthodox crusade as the primary site of contest between the two leaders.

Gregory’s general complaints about the Regno echoed earlier ones made by Honorius III during the closing year of his papacy about disturbances in the region that had revealed Frederick’s “ingratitude” toward the Roman church for the past and present benefits bestowed upon him. A “clamor” and “murmurs” had reached Gregory’s ears about injustices in the kingdom, about how the emperor had denied bishops access to their sees, assaulted the clergy, despoiled widows and orphans, and violated papal vassals and other nobles in the region who enjoyed the protection of the Apostolic See. People now mocked those securities, seeing the rich and powerful reduced to beggary and exile. As seen above, the pope also denounced Frederick for forcing clergy to celebrate the divine office despite the interdict, making him a “despiser of the keys” and possible heretic. Under these circumstances, Gregory threatened in the spring of 1228 that Frederick should rightly fear the possibility that the pope would deprive him of his “feudal right” to the kingdom of Sicily, which he held as a vassal of the Roman church.⁶⁰

The tense situation in the Regno continued to escalate after the emperor left for the holy places. In August, consulting with a provincial synod in Perugia, Gregory followed through on his threat to absolve Frederick’s vassals in the Regno of their oaths of fealty to the Hohenstaufen ruler. As Gregory explained in letters addressed to “all the prelates of the church,” Frederick, in addition to violating his crusade vow and “sneaking” off to Syria, was guilty of abusing the Roman church and its territorial patrimony, “usurping the spiritual and temporal rights” of the Apostolic See, and attempting to subvert the church’s vassals through threats, lies, and bribes. The pope also accused him and his officials of allowing “Saracens”—in this case, meaning Muslim auxiliaries forcibly relocated to southern Italy and settled in Lucera after their rebellion in Sicily years earlier—to despoil churches and assault Christian clergy.⁶¹ Aware of Frederick’s efforts to counter papal messages, Gregory warned his audience not to believe any falsehoods they heard to the contrary, either sent in writing or told to them by the emperor’s messengers. In addition, Gregory excommunicated and anathematized anyone who “shows him help and favor against the Roman church, either attacking its patrimony or illicitly usurping the spiritual and temporal rights of the Apostolic See.” As always in such communications, instructions followed for the clerical recipients of these letters to publicize the contents in their cities and dioceses and enforce such papal judgments.⁶²

Over the course of the fall, Gregory identified Raynald of Urslingen, Frederick’s vicar in the Regno, as a particular culprit in the effort to subvert the papal patrimony in Ancona, where the church’s enemies conspired “secretly” (occulte) and agitated “publicly” (publice) to corrupt papal vassals.⁶³ In a letter sent to Raynald on 7 November, Gregory denounced his destruction, burning, and occupation of various places that belonged by right to the Roman church. Even worse, according to what “people were saying,” Raynald and his troops mutilated priests with unheard of sacrilege, allowing Saracens to crucify some clergy, blinding others. Now he had invaded Ancona, showing himself an “open enemy of the Apostolic See.” Gregory gave him eight days from receiving this letter to withdraw; otherwise, the pope had given firm commands for his papal chaplain Cinthius to excommunicate him and all of his followers publicly, passing a sentence of ecclesiastical interdict over his lands.⁶⁴ In a letter written to the Genoese podesta and commune that same month, Gregory repeated his accusations about Raynald and the atrocities committed by his Saracen soldiers. When Raynald did not withdraw, Gregory excommunicated him, his brother Berthold, and his other supporters. Anyone supporting them would be excommunicated and deprived of their ecclesiastical fiefs or benefices. Only a year’s service in the Holy Land would be considered a sufficient form penance for absolution.⁶⁵ Perhaps in response, Raynald ordered the expulsion of the Franciscans from the Regno, accusing them of bearing “apostolic letters” to the region’s bishops. Just how much Gregory relied on the peripatetic friars to convey messages in the region is unclear, although no one could mistake his ongoing devotion to their order. A year earlier, at Assisi in July 1228, the pope had formally canonized Saint Francis.⁶⁶

By this time, Gregory had begun to look beyond such epistolary denunciations, legal threats, and “spiritual” weapons, extending papal sanctions into the realm of armed conflict with Frederick’s supporters on the Italian peninsula. Over the course of the winter, he started to coordinate the assembly of what chroniclers called a “papal army,” or the “army of the lord pope.” As the pope’s biographer describes his decision, “since the punishment of the spiritual sword did not chasten the sinner, overcome by necessity, the successor of Peter took the step of wielding the temporal sword.”⁶⁷ Acting in his capacity as the lord of the Papal States, Gregory fielded this force with the help of John of Brienne, Frederick’s former father-in-law and a papal rector since 1227, along with John de Colonna, cardinal priest of Santa Prassede; Pelagius of Albano; and the papal chaplain Pandulf, who was “experienced” in military affairs. By the spring of 1229, this army, deployed as three smaller units, had pushed the emperor’s vassals and allies from Ancona, Spoleto, and Campagna and began advancing into the Regno.⁶⁸

When they talk about it at all, historians typically call this conflict the War of the Keys, named after the symbol featured on the papal army’s banner. Discussions about this campaign typically revolve around the question of where it fits in the trajectory of so-called political crusades, in other words crusading campaigns called for the primary purpose of defending papal territories or subduing papal enemies within Europe.⁶⁹ The general consensus seems to be that the War of the Keys was a kind of “half” or “quasi” crusade authorized by the pope, promoted much like a genuine crusade but lacking important elements of “true” crusading, including the promised remission of sins for combatants—at least not until the closing stages of the conflict—and the actual use of the cross as a martial sign.

Clearly, the difference between symbols such as the cross and the keys made an impression on contemporaries like Richard of San Germano, who describes in his chronicle a pitched battle between a “crusader army” (crucesignatorum exercitus), a designation for supporters of the emperor who had recently returned from Syria while still bearing their crosses, and the pope’s “keysader host” (clavigeros hostes).⁷⁰ For contemporaries, however, the controversy caused by the War of the Keys did not revolve around the question of whether the battle against the emperor constituted a crusade or not. It centered on a different issue—whether the pope possessed the legitimate right to wield the “material sword” (gladius materialis), as well as the “spiritual sword” (gladius spiritualis). Recent generations of theologians and canon lawyers had debated the exegesis of the “two swords” (Lk 22:38): Did God bestow each sword directly to its bearer, the emperor and the pope, the principal representatives of the two powers? Or did God grant both swords to the pope, who then delegated the material sword to the emperor to wield in defense of the church? Canon lawyers, in their glosses, offered a wide variety of opinions on the matter. Regardless, in either scenario the pope did not wield the material sword directly—the power of armed force, coercion, and punishment—but delegated its use to secular rulers, lay people who were not constrained by the clerical prohibition of bloodshed.⁷¹

When Gregory called for the raising of a papal army, the political theology of the two swords moved from canon law commentaries into the public eye as the pope sought to secure material support for his campaign. Deploying the material sword in defense of the church did not come cheaply. Facing an insufficient supply of local troops from the papal patrimony, Gregory appealed for aid from communities, clergy, and rulers around Europe, including the king of Sweden, the rectors of the Lombard League, and the Portuguese prince, Peter. In his Flowers of History, Roger of Wendover describes how Gregory’s legate Master Stephen arrived in England to collect one-tenth of the kingdom’s “moveable property,” clerical and lay, “for his war undertaken against the Roman emperor.” Gregory’s “apostolic letters sent through various part of the world” enumerated the many reasons why he took this action, including all of Frederick’s misdeeds while on crusade, his plunder of the military orders’ properties in the Regno and overseas, his disregard for the church’s interdict, and more. “For these causes,” Roger writes, “the lord pope went to war against him, asserting it was just and necessary for the Christian faith for such a mighty persecutor of the church to be cast down from the imperial dignity.” During an assembly called by King Henry III at Westminster, Stephen, bearing Gregory’s “written authorization,” read the pope’s letters aloud, spelling out the papal demand for a special tax to sustain his war against the emperor.⁷² Some of these written appeals survive in a register of letters, charters, and other documents from Salisbury, revealing how the pope pitched his war against Frederick as the response to a “common danger,” insisting that a threat to the “head” of the church represented one to the “entire body.” For these reasons, Gregory wrote, “we have begun to exercise the temporal power, gathering many armies with ample stipends for this purpose, for such possessions ought not to be spared, when the church is universally and bitterly assailed.”⁷³

These letters provide a striking example of the pope’s unique public standing as the figure who could call for armed Christian action on behalf of the entire church as a “common” enterprise and a shared responsibility, summoning leaders to defend “the papacy and Saint Peter’s regalia” and to fight “for the Lord under his commander Saint Peter” against the excommunicate emperor, who was a predator of churches, abuser of clergy, and friend to the infidels.⁷⁴ Gregory’s unusual and to some extent unprecedented measures on behalf of the Apostolic See also remind us about the hard limits to the pope’s actual reach. Assembling such armies always represented an ad hoc logistical affair that was constrained by financial limits, insufficient numbers, and uneven enthusiasm from the vassals, friends, and family members who comprised a typical medieval army. Gregory’s papal army was no exception.⁷⁵ Judging by the pope’s calls for the Lombards to fulfill their obligations to the church, the rectors of the league did not provide as much assistance as the pope would have liked. They did send troops, but not enough. Gregory also complained about their late arrival, about their lack of funds, arms, and horses, and about the fact that some of the levies were already planning to head home. He even forwarded them dispatches from the front lines, written by John of Brienne and John de Colonna and affixed with the papal bull, testifying to the desperate need for help.⁷⁶

According to Roger of Wendover, the Apostolic See’s demands for a direct tax to pay for the papal army—the first of its kind—met with reluctance and public protest. Realizing that Henry III would not prevent the pope’s exactions, the English earls and barons emphatically refused to pay the tithe. After debating among themselves, the clergy decided to pay the demanded one-tenth, in part anxious about the legate Stephen’s express power to excommunicate those who refused to render the funds or colluded to commit fraud in their collection. The pope’s representative also had the right to demand that clerics swear an oath on the Gospels to make their payments, that they record the amounts on their “rolls” with seals affixed in testimony, and that they agree to censure anyone caught impeding the payments. Roger writes that the clerics in question had to pawn all sorts of sacred vessels and liturgical objects to meet the demands of such an unprecedented exaction. In this regard, the English clergy seemed less concerned with the pope’s right to fight a Christian emperor in defense of the church than they were with how he planned to pay for it.⁷⁷

Others challenged and denounced Gregory’s decision to authorize armed force against the emperor. In a letter sent to Frederick during his stay in Syria, his bailiff Thomas of Acerra expressed astonishment that the pope, the emperor’s “public enemy,” had “decreed contrary to Christian law to vanquish you with the material sword, since, he says, he is unable to cast you down by the spiritual sword.” Thomas asserts that Frederick’s allies, especially among the clergy, could not believe that the “Roman pontiff could do such things, taking up arms against Christians, especially since the Lord said to Peter ‘put your sword in its scabbard, for all those who strike with the sword, shall perish by it.’ ” They wondered by what right the pope acted, excommunicating thieves, arsonists, and murders on the one hand and then turning his authority to such ends on the other.⁷⁸ Chroniclers expressing sympathy for the emperor accused the pope’s army, in turn, of committing atrocities, unlawfully invading the Regno, causing fearful locals to desert their homes, attacking crusaders or forcing those bound for the holy places via Italy to turn back, despoiling churches, and generally creating chaos in the region.⁷⁹

Troubadours, some with close ties to the imperial court and others already critical of the Rome’s aggressive attacks on supposed heretics in Provence, penned and presumably recited their own critiques of the papal war in the Regno. In a Provençal poem lamenting the general corruption of the church, Pierre Cardenal denounced the clergy for trying to expel Frederick from his “refuge” and emboldening the infidels, as “pastors” became “killers.” Cardenal lamented a world turned upside down, because “kings and emperors used to rule the world, now the clergy possess such dominion.” Guilhem Figueira lambasted the Roman church for shedding Christian blood, wrestling with Frederick over his crown, calling him a heretic, and offering false “pardons” for the sins of those who did the fighting. Yet others found the pope’s actions justified. Responding to Figueira’s poem, Gormonda di Montpellier celebrated Rome’s battles against heretics, “worse than Saracens,” defending the church’s struggle against figures like the heretical Count of Toulouse and the emperor.⁸⁰ The Guelf Annals of Piacenza likewise valorized Gregory’s decision to deploy the material sword. Seeing that Frederick intended the destruction of the Roman church and desolation of Italy, the pope first sent his envoys through the empire, announcing the emperor’s excommunication, labeling him a heretic, and absolving his followers of their fidelity to him. When he saw that the “spiritual sword” lacked effectiveness, after taking counsel with others Gregory called upon the faithful of the Roman church to defend by force its rights and possessions.⁸¹ Gregory’s biographer, not surprisingly, struck a similar tone in his presentation of the pope’s decision to gather an army, celebrating its victories at places like Monte Cassino, where “by God’s judgment” papal forces expelled the imperial justiciar and a group of “Arabs” occupying the monastery.⁸²

The pope himself recognized that his recourse to armed force in the Regno might raise particular problems for the church’s reputation. As he wrote to his legate and military commander Pelagius on 19 May 1229, sometimes the church, rarely and unwillingly, had to “turn to the aid of the material sword” against tyrants and persecutors. It must do so, Gregory qualified, in the proper way, not thirsting for blood or to seize another’s riches but to recall those in error to the path of the truth. The pope expressed dismay that some in the “army of Christ”—as he called the papal army in this instance—slaughtered the “lost sheep” that they were intended to find and restore to the flock, mutilating and killing prisoners who had freely surrendered. He denounced this behavior, including chopping off limbs and beheadings, and instructed Pelagius to protect those who fell into the “hands of the army of Christ.” Such captives should enjoy more “liberty” as prisoners of the church than they previously enjoyed while ostensibly free, when they were really in bondage to the “pharaoh,” Frederick. Thus, calling for mercy in the face of violence, the pope intended to protect his public reputation and that of the church from its detractors and the “deceitful stain of false opinion.”⁸³

Making Peace Public

By the summer of 1229, papal forces had made considerable advances, pushing back Frederick’s vassals and allies on all fronts. Rumors of the emperor’s demise circulated, demoralizing his allies. In June, however, Frederick returned from Syria, landing at Brindisi and quickly gathering his supporters to repulse the pope’s forces. By the following summer, Gregory and the emperor had come to terms of peace, the Treaty of San Germano. Modern historians have puzzled over the apparently quick reversals that led to this agreement, wondering why Frederick—holding the upper hand in military terms—agreed to a negotiated peace rather than invade the Papal States. He generally receives high marks for restraining himself, or at least recognizing that he could not effectively rule while laboring under the “embarrassing” sentence of excommunication. For those who view the pope as utterly determined to destroy Frederick, the compromise reached at San Germano seems like a defeat for the “irascible” Gregory’s hierocratic designs, a “deep humiliation” for the Roman pontiff who had wanted to “ruin the hated emperor.” Exhausted from their struggle, then, both sides agreed to settle their differences, biding their time until they might resume their conflict.⁸⁴

Such evaluations of the peace achieved in 1230 miss their mark. Peacemaking in the Middle Ages, as Jenny Benham observes, was about “public perception.”⁸⁵ Gregory and Frederick, and their respective proxies and representatives, had fought their political battles in public for three years. Their peace took shape in a similar way: transcending individual attitudes and uncompromising ideologies, it was negotiated with a marked sensitivity to the difference between private and open discussions. When all of the relevant communications, letters, revised texts, and verbal exchanges are taken into consideration, Gregory, rather than humiliating Frederick or imposing unreasonable terms on him, emerges as a counter to centrifugal forces, trying to find a balance between sets of private interests involving members of the curia, papal vassals, the military orders, the citizens of Rome, and the Lombards, among others.

As Frederick no doubt intended, his military successes after his return from Syria clearly played a role in forcing Gregory to the bargaining table. Some returning German crusaders joined him, still bearing their crosses, although others apparently refused to fight on his behalf, given his excommunicate status. Richard of San Germano describes how the papal army began to dissolve almost immediately after Frederick landed, reporting that John de Colonna fled the battlefield, pretending he needed to return to the curia to secure pay for his troops. In August 1229, keeping up his own forms of public pressure on Frederick, Gregory again renewed his sentence of excommunication, circulating a written version of the sentence that revisited the now long list of sins and crimes committed by him and his agents, including Raynald of Spoleto. Suggesting the gravity of Frederick’s crimes, the pope opened the sentence by excommunicating a stock list of supposed heretics, ironically the same list featured at the emperor’s coronation. Frederick continued to send out “excusatory letters” to the “princes of the world” about his successes in the Holy Land, denouncing the patriarch of Jerusalem’s defamatory letters and calling upon figures like the crusading bishop of Winchester and the master general of the Teutonic Order as his witnesses.⁸⁶

While these dueling letters circulated and the fighting in the Regno continued, however, negotiations for an end to the discord between church and empire had already begun. Over the winter and spring, representatives including Frederick’s envoys Hermann of Salza, Lando, archbishop of Reggio in Calabria, and Marinus, archbishop of Bari, joined by the pope’s legates Thomas of Capua and John de Colonna, traveled back and forth between the papal curia and imperial court. In July 1230, a gathering of prelates, princes, and imperial officials met at San Germano and nearby Ceprano to negotiate the final terms of peace between the pope and emperor, leading to Frederick’s absolution by the end of August. After three years of scandal and war, peace had returned to the Christian community.⁸⁷

Scholars rarely seem to consider the full range of evidence available for the negotiations leading up to the Peace of San Germano, including a series of letters and documents exchanged between the pope, the curia, and Thomas of Capua during the months leading up to Frederick’s absolution.⁸⁸ Written in a plainer style than papal encyclicals, the cardinal’s letters reveal behind-the-scenes details, such as when Thomas commented on the heavy rains and flooding that impeded his travels in the Regno, or when he described how he found the cardinal bishop of Albano “more dead than alive” after spending months besieged by the emperor’s forces in the monastery of Monte Cassino.⁸⁹ His on-the-road communications also suggest the limits of his willingness to commit things to writing during such challenging negotiations, since his letters contain frequent references to information that would be shared “verbally” (viva voce) by the bearer or writer of the letter at a later date. The written word possessed a permanence that could become a disadvantage, potentially exposing things that were meant only for certain ears—conversations that are now lost to the historian.⁹⁰

What remains nevertheless reveals a great deal, exposing the conflicting interests, points of contention, and collective mediation that lay behind the Peace of San Germano. The “form of peace” provided by the Roman church became an immediate source of debate. Initial versions called for the emperor to make amends for his occupation of ecclesiastical properties within one month. Later versions allowed for a window of three months if he was in the Regno, four months elsewhere in Italy, and five months beyond the peninsula. A dispute emerged about the possession of two towns, Gaeta and Sant’Agata, which the church would retain for one year while a solution could be found for their rightful disposition.⁹¹ In February, the talks almost collapsed when a contingent of Lombards arrived at the papal curia with objections to the ongoing negotiations. A month later, Thomas informed Gregory that he might achieve his goals if he could offer absolution to Frederick immediately, but he knew that the representatives from Lombardy opposed such a move. The emperor desired peace, the cardinal legate insisted, but he also remained suspicious, in part due to disturbing “rumors” he had heard from the city of Rome about the church playing him false.⁹²

Although negotiating the form of peace involved off-the-record conversations, guaranteeing its terms represented a public and collective commitment. Frederick was expected to swear various oaths, binding himself to obey the “mandates of the church,” to make amends for his occupation of church lands, and to observe the truce that ended the fighting in central Italy, or he would suffer an automatic reinstatement of his excommunication. But he also had to secure the accompanying oaths of “worthy and sworn” princes, barons, counts, and others named by the church willing to pledge on his behalf (fidejussores), bound for eight months from the day of his absolution to assist the church against him if he failed to fulfill the agreed-upon conditions.⁹³ In the later stages of negotiations, papal and imperial envoys argued over the protections that would be extended to the church’s faithful “adherents,” guarantees that Frederick would “remit all rancor” and revenge toward them. The princes swearing on Frederick’s behalf hesitated to give such assurances.⁹⁴ People who had suffered the “hardships of war,” Thomas wrote, held high hopes for peace, but others were “throwing stones” without saying why, preferring to “fish in stormy waters” rather than seek concord. In response to his envoy’s disillusionment, Gregory sent words of encouragement, calling upon him to persist in his labors for peace. One of the final documents sent from the curia to Thomas in early July contained instructions for the drawing down of forces in the region, the lifting of sieges, and the end of hostilities.⁹⁵

By July 1230, only after months of performing such a balancing act, the stage was set for the ceremonial formalizing of this peace at San Germano at the foot of Monte Cassino. The siege of that monastery had ended; Frederick met in the town below with Gregory’s envoy, Guala, the Dominican friar. Rather than the noises of war, the sound of ringing bells filled the town after Guala announced the emperor’s agreement to the church’s form of peace. On 23 July, before a “multitude” of German and Italian princes and prelates, cardinal legates, imperial officials, and local counts, Berthold of Aquileia, the archbishop of Salzburg, and the bishop of Regensburg recited the reasons for Frederick’s excommunication, reading them aloud “in public.” Thomas of Acerra, swearing on Frederick’s behalf with his hand on the Gospels, rendered an oath to obey the “mandates of the church” before a number of witnesses, promising to observe the form of peace. The emperor agreed to restore lands seized from the Roman church and also from the Templars and Hospitallers; to allow displaced prelates in the Regno access to their sees; to exempt clergy from the jurisdiction of civil courts; to forego any tallages and taxes on clerical properties; and to keep the peace, taking no revenge on faithful papal vassals who had fought against him during the recent war.⁹⁶

The princes committed to guaranteeing the peace on Frederick’s behalf made their pledges, while the bishops present produced “testimonial letters” memorializing the oaths rendered aloud in Frederick’s name and by others. Seal after seal was affixed to the written copies of these agreements, including those authenticated by Frederick’s golden bull—documents that would be preserved in the papal archives and forwarded to interested parties. On 25 July, Guala returned from the Roman curia, lifting the interdict pronounced by Pelagius on San Germano, thereby allowing for the celebration of the divine offices there and elsewhere in the Regno. On 28 August, at nearby Ceprano, John de Colonna and Thomas of Capua performed the ritual of absolution for Frederick, “publicly and solemnly,” before a crowd of cardinals, clergy, princes, and a “multitude of various people,” to the “general joy of all Christendom.” An encyclical sent from the imperial chancery in September describes this scene, telling its recipients that they deserved to know about the restoration of peace after receiving so many disturbing letters from the pope and emperor. Over the following months, Gregory circulated his own letters celebrating his agreement with Frederick, assuring the Lombards of his gratitude for their efforts on the church’s behalf and asking the French King Louis IX to beseech God for their continued concord. Through such shared acts of ritual performance and remembrance, written assurances, and prayers, the scandalous discord between church and empire had come to an end.⁹⁷

A few days after Frederick’s absolution, on the first of September, Pope Gregory hosted the emperor at Anagni, welcoming him to one of his family’s residences. They shared the kiss of peace and met together in the pope’s private chambers and the next day shared a meal joined by Hermann of Salza. Later, Gregory’s biographer reports, they spoke at length, “in secret discussions” and also “in public.” According to Frederick’s descriptions of this meeting in his letters, the pope received him kindly, explaining the reasons for his past judgment of the emperor and expressing his benevolence toward him, thereby wiping away any enmity Frederick might have harbored toward Gregory. “We hold him in all reverence,” the emperor declared, “our only and universal father, showing ourselves to him as a devout son of the church in the bond of love that joins the priesthood and empire to one another.” Two days later, with the pope’s blessing, Frederick returned to Apulia, while Gregory and his entourage returned to Rome.⁹⁸ Even if the pope and emperor harbored personal resentments toward each other, this scene of public harmony struck the right chord after years of sensational conflict. What exact shape that reformed peace would take, however, still remained to be seen.