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Chapter 3

The Widening Gyre

Writing to Frederick in September 1235, after years of celebrating the harmony that lay between the two powers, Pope Gregory acknowledged the tension and mistrust that had recently begun to change the tone of their relationship. Much went unsaid in this letter. During an imperial assembly at Mainz a month earlier, the emperor had openly declared his intention to subdue the rebellious cities of Lombardy, despite his previous commitment to place the “Lombard business” into the “hands of the church.” He now seemed to suspect that the pope and papal legates were working against his interests in the region. Overseas, the emperor faced a continued challenge to his rights in the Holy Land, another sign that papal mediation had failed him, perhaps by design. Responding to these unspoken disturbances, Gregory assured Frederick that he was still on his side, blaming recent troubles on those who preferred to “fish in muddy waters” and to work “in the shadows,” sowing “quarrels and complaints” and seeking to “dissolve the bonds of love in the hearts of princes with their poisons.” Such men, the pope reminded Frederick, had harmed the interests of the papal curia and the imperial court in the past. Specifically, Gregory told him not to believe “secret letters and documents” falsely attributed to the pope and meant to cast doubt on his commitment to the emperor’s rights. His past actions on Frederick’s behalf in the kingdom of Jerusalem and Lombardy served to demonstrate his sincerity. Frederick should “block out” the words of such liars and write back to the pope when the truth became known from Gregory’s actual letters.¹

Nothing remains of such forgeries, and the pope remained vague about the identities of the “liars” trying to destroy the peace. But the sentiment behind his letter, the sense of erosion in his relationship with Frederick, was quite real. Over the following three years, the Hohenstaufen ruler followed through on his military plans to subdue the seditious cities of northern Italy, campaigning with his own troops, his local allies, and even Muslim mercenaries imported into the region from the Regno. The emperor’s decision to settle the Lombard business by force placed Pope Gregory in a difficult position: the “evangelizer of peace” confronted a high-profile war on the Italian peninsula that he had spent years trying to prevent. During this same period, other problems surfaced, swept up in the widening gyre of discord between the pope and the prince as they began to dispute over conditions in the Regno, the emperor’s supposed abuse of the clergy, and the pope’s interference in Frederick’s kingdoms. They argued about dilapidated churches, vacant clerical offices, feudal rights and talliages, and the free movement of envoys. They even disagreed over the whereabouts of a missing Tunisian prince, who was supposedly on his way to Rome to be baptized when he disappeared, somewhere in Apulia.²

As these disputes and grievances accumulated, Gregory and Frederick faced a growing public crisis between their offices that neither party seemed entirely to want but did not necessarily know how to avoid. The relentless political problems in northern Italy became a particular source of tension between them. Responding to the centrifugal forces spinning them apart, the pope and emperor slowly hardened and publicized their positions, leaving them less and less room to maneuver. Undeniably, the tone of their direct communications took on an increasingly confrontational posture. At the same time, these years of worsening relations were also ones of persistent if fraying restraint, each side repeatedly stepping back from an outright confrontation. Both parties had good reasons to avoid another costly and disruptive confrontation. Neither of them had particularly benefited from their last open confrontation, while their years of relative cooperation had brought undeniable benefits. Above all, the two Christian leaders remained committed, in the capacity of their respective offices, to the greater goals of peace, crusading, and wiping out heresy. Another battle between the papacy and empire would endanger those projects, as Gregory and Frederick repeatedly reminded each other, each trying to pressure the other into backing down for the common good.

Almost four years would pass before Gregory deployed the “nuclear option,” excommunicating Frederick for the second time. If the pope was eager to annihilate the emperor, he certainly took his time going about it. At the very least, he knew that he had to proceed cautiously. After years of celebrating the concord that ought to exist between their offices, he began to erase the record of their cooperation, reminding everyone about his previous struggles with Frederick and accusing him of ingratitude, double-dealing, and sedition. The emperor broadcast a similar revision of the past. The peace, it turned out, had been a false one that concealed true enmity. As the rumor mill churned and new sources of scandal arose, as the sights and sounds of war began to drown out calls for harmony, the two powers once again stood on the verge of open conflict, provoking a renewed sense of anxiety in Christendom.

Angels of Peace and Sowers of Dissension

By the summer of 1235, even as Frederick married Isabella of England with the pope’s blessing, if not encouragement, Gregory knew that trouble lay on the horizon with regard to the volatile situation in Lombardy. As it had since the beginning of his papacy, the immediate circumstances of the “Lombard business” continued to shape the pope’s interactions with the emperor across the board. Gregory continued his efforts to thread the needle between supporting the Lombard League while stopping short of an open break with the emperor, sending his legates to the region to act as “angels of peace” and to counter the shadowy figures who tried to sow dissension with their lies and deceptions. Meanwhile, Christians around Europe followed news of the growing escalation between Frederick and the Lombard League, recognizing that the growing chances of war in northern Italy affected the Roman church directly and indirectly concerned the entirety of Christendom.

In July, anticipating the emperor’s upcoming assembly at Mainz, Gregory sent a batch of letters to the clergy and lay nobles at the imperial court. Declaring that the time approached for the planned crusade to redeem the holy places, the pope called upon the recipients of his communications to lay aside any “rancor” toward the Lombards, working instead with the emperor for peace. Further discord, he insisted, would serve only to undermine the upcoming crusade’s prospects for success. Gregory also reminded the recipients of his letters that Frederick had previously placed the Lombard business in the mediatory hands of the Roman church. If they needed evidence of that fact, he forwarded copies, bearing the papal seal, of the agreement struck a year earlier between the emperor and the Lombard rectors in which both sides promised to abide by the pope’s arbitration in Lombardy, the March of Treviso, and Romaniola.³

The pope had good reasons for communicating his concern. On 24 August, Frederick wrote to Gregory, informing him about the proceedings at Mainz. Coming on the heels of Henry VII’s unsuccessful rebellion, the imperial assembly proclaimed peace in Germany.⁴ But it also formed a council of war against the cities of Lombardy that continued to reject Frederick’s authority. As the emperor described the scene for the pope, not wishing to “conceal” anything from him, the nobles present swore to avenge all of the wrongs perpetrated by the Lombards against their ruler, taking an oath to that effect “with their hands raised in the air, as is customary among them.” Divided into two forces, the emperor’s armies would march into Italy the following April. As for the agreement made with the pope in Tuscany the previous spring, Frederick, submitting his dispute with the Lombard rebels for papal judgment, insisted that he still desired to follow the pope’s “paternal counsel” and honor that commitment. As evidence of his restraint, he would delay his final decision about the campaign until the upcoming Christmas, allowing for the rectors of the league and the Roman pontiff to reach a favorable accommodation. Otherwise, there would be no more delays, no more chances for the Lombards to put him off with “sweet-sounding words” and “false promises.”⁵

Frederick indicated that a papal notary, Master Peter, who was retained at the imperial court until the end of the deliberations at Mainz, would give the pope this letter and inform him more fully in person about the emperor’s intentions. There is no way of knowing what Peter might have said off the record. Regardless, despite his publicly stated intentions to wage war against the Lombard League, the emperor had still not closed the door to papal mediation. To the contrary, he likely intended his open threats against the Lombards to place pressure on both the league’s rectors and the pope to reach a political solution before a costly, disruptive, and hazardous military campaign became necessary. At the same time, by marshaling his forces and allies north of the Alps and setting a firm Christmas deadline for further negotiations, the emperor sent a clear message to everyone involved that he would no longer tolerate the status quo in Lombardy.⁶

In response, Gregory turned to his highest-ranking legate in northern Italy, Albert Rezzato, patriarch of Antioch. As discussed previously, Albert had already represented papal and imperial interests in Syria, helping to broker peace in the crusader kingdoms during the Ibelin uprising. Gregory had first sent Albert—bishop of Brescia before his promotion to the patriarchate of Antioch—to Lombardy in March 1235, instructing him to act as a mediator between the warring communes of Bertinorio and Faeza, whose conflict violated the crusade-related truce declared in 1234. In May, Gregory tasked Albert with a “full legation” to Lombardy, the March of Treviso, and Romaniola, deputizing him to “reform the peace” in the conflict-ridden region after years of devastating losses in lives, goods, and properties, which damaged the crusade to free the Holy Land and impeded the church’s effort to wipe out heretics, the “little foxes” in the Lord’s vineyard. After hearing about Frederick’s threats to invade Lombardy, the pope relied upon Albert to ensure that the rectors of the Lombard League would send their fully empowered ambassadors to the papal curia by the first of December, well in advance of the Christmas deadline imposed by the emperor.⁷ Recognizing the dangerous escalation in the conflict between the league and Frederick, the pope projected a measured but firm tone with both sides. In September, writing to the emperor and Hermann of Salza, who was once again acting as a go-between for the imperial court and the papal curia, Gregory assured them that he was doing everything he could to bring the Lombards to the negotiating table. Around this time, he addressed the letter to Frederick described at the beginning of this chapter, warning him about the liars and sowers of dissension that wanted to drive them apart. Corresponding with Hermann and calling upon him to convince the emperor to extend the deadline for this “arduous business” past Christmas, Gregory stressed the preparations underway for the new crusade that would be imperiled if Frederick broke his word to abide by the pope’s mediation and invaded Lombardy, a move that the church would not bear. Just what actions the pope might take remained unsaid. Communicating with the Lombards, the pope was far more explicit about possible consequences for noncompliance, threatening them with excommunication if their envoys failed to appear on time and assessing a penalty of thirty thousand marks if they failed to show up.⁸

The fall and winter months, however, proved just how intractable the situation in Lombardy had become. In November, during an assembly in the bishop’s palace at Brescia, the cities of the Lombard League renewed their alliance against the emperor, adding Ferrara to their ranks and securing a promise from the city’s podesta to block the Germans and their allies from using any roads and rivers under Ferrara’s control.⁹ The following month, disregarding the pope’s threats, the rectors of the league failed to send their envoys to the papal curia installed at Viterbo by the December deadline, prompting Hermann of Salza, who was on hand for the planned negotiations, to leave the city. As Gregory later explained to Frederick and several high-ranking German bishops, the Lombard delegation, having been delayed for legitimate reasons, had arrived just a few days after Hermann left. When the pope tried to recall the master of the Teutonic Order to the curia, he declined to return, citing letters from the emperor demanding his immediate return to the imperial court. Moving forward, the pope tried to pick up the pieces, calling upon all the parties involved to remain committed to future peace talks, stressing the need to observe the general truce declared in advance of the upcoming crusade, and warning everyone about the negative consequences if they violated the church’s mandates.¹⁰

Heading into the spring of 1236, Frederick made no secret of his imminent march into Lombardy, rallying his friends and allies and intimidating his enemies. In March, Peter de Vinea and Thaddeus of Suessa, two prominent members of Frederick’s court with a long future ahead of them as imperial representatives, staged a public gathering at Piacenza’s communal palace for just such a purpose, joined by the emperor’s supporters from Verona, Pavia, Cremona, and else-where.¹¹ The choice of Piacenza for this open-air convocation was not a coincidence. Months earlier, the popular party and its captain, William de Andito, had sent the city’s “golden keys” to Frederick as a sign of their submission to the emperor.¹² Gregory made his own plans in advance of Frederick’s arrival, seeking as much leverage and advantage as possible. In March, he appointed a new legate to Lombardy—Marcellino, bishop of Ascoli, sent as an “angel of peace” to the war-torn region. Writing to Marcellino to impose limits on his ability to pass sentences of excommunication and interdict against communities without a “special mandate” from the Apostolic See, Gregory specifically placed Verona, Piacenza, and other “disturbers of the peace” outside of that constraint. With those communes, Marcellino was free to employ ecclesiastical censure as he saw fit. In his legatine commission to the bishop of Ascoli, the pope specifically asked him to intervene in Piacenza, informing the soldiers and citizens of the city about his special concern for their community.¹³ The following month, Frederick declared his intention to hold an imperial council at Piacenza in July, which would deliberate over the eradication of heresy, the reform of the empire, and the effort to free Jerusalem. Once peace was restored to the region, the riches of Lombardy would be at the crusade’s disposal. In his summons for this gathering, the emperor menacingly declared his intention to pay back what he owed to his friends and enemies alike, subduing the rebels against his rule in Italy.¹⁴

In June, Gregory sent yet another “angel of peace” to Lombardy: James, cardinal bishop of Palestrina, who was endowed with full legatine powers to work for the abolishment of heresy and the business of the Holy Land for the honor of church and empire. Gregory knew that some parties might object to this choice, telling Frederick not to listen to those who disparaged James or questioned his motives. The emperor had wanted Albert of Antioch sent back as a legate to the region, a request that the pope denied for unclear reasons.¹⁵ A native of Piacenza, James quickly intervened in the civil strife disrupting his hometown. The Genoese chronicler Bartholomew records that the Piacenzans “wisely” expelled their podesta at James’s urging. The Ghibelline Annals of Piacenza—always suspicious of the church’s motives—describe how James “under the guise of peace” effectively staged a coup, bringing troops into the city after some of the citizens exiled William de Andito and his sons before electing a new podesta, a Venetian named Rainier Zenum. From that point forward, this chronicler observes, Piacenza stood in a state of rebellion against the emperor.¹⁶

Scholars sometimes view Gregory’s appointment of James as his legate to Lombardy as a provocative move, a sign that he was not truly committed to peace with Frederick and perhaps even worked behind the scenes to oppose him. Or, James’s actions might reveal that he and some of the other cardinals decided to act against the emperor for their own reasons, regardless of what the pope wanted.¹⁷ Regardless, by this time Frederick had begun to express increased skepticism about the pope’s willingness or ability to broker peace in Lombardy. In a widely circulated letter addressed to the French king Louis IX in June 1236, the emperor revisited all of his past grievances against the Lombards, from their blockading of the Alpine passes before his planned assembly at Cremona in 1226 to their involvement in his son Henry’s conspiracy and their recent failure to appear on time at the papal curia for peace talks. Every time he had placed the matter into the pope’s hands, the results had been more lies and treachery by the Lombards. Frederick emphasized his undiminished commitment to the upcoming crusade, rejecting Gregory’s insistence that the cause of freeing Jerusalem outweighed the emperor’s obligation to quash the rebellion against his rule in northern Italy. “Surely,” Frederick queried, “we are not to believe that the pope intends the business across the seas to blunt the sword of justice?”¹⁸

Rumors of the approaching war in Lombardy spread far and wide, contributing to confusion about the current state of affairs between the emperor and pope. Taking note of the emperor’s growing “rage” and “inexorable hatred” for the Italians, Matthew Paris writes in his Major Chronicle that Frederick turned to the pope for help against them, creating a great deal of “anxiety and worries” for the Roman church when the pope gathered the entire curia for deliberations about how to “reform an honorable peace” between the two sides. He did this not for altruistic reasons, Matthew observes, but rather because he knew that he might need Frederick’s help in the future against his own enemies. In his narrative of these events, the English chronicler includes a letter that he attributes to Frederick, proclaiming the emperor’s hereditary authority over Italy, denouncing the heretical Lombards for impeding his new crusade, and calling upon the pope to support him. According to Matthew, not wishing to seem indifferent to the emperor’s demands, Gregory acquiesced to his plans—for the time being.¹⁹

Trouble Overseas

During this period of rising tensions on the Italian peninsula, Gregory and Frederick continued to wrestle with the equally unsettled conditions of the crusader kingdoms “across the sea,” another unraveling area of cooperation between the two powers. Preparations for the so-called Baron’s Crusade had continued to move forward since 1234, anticipating the expiration of Frederick’s ten-year truce with the Egyptian sultan, al-Kamil. Bearing letters and “written warrants” from the pope, mendicant friars and other papal envoys had fanned out around Europe to raise support for the upcoming campaign by preaching the cross, offering indulgences, and collecting funds through donations and pious bequests. They also raised money through the redemption of crusader vows, which were sworn and immediately redeemed by a cash payment. This intensive effort in England raised further complaints from Matthew Paris, who was always ready to excoriate the greed of the friars and papal curia.²⁰ In 1235, Gregory made the decision to split the crusading campaign into two forces, directing one toward Syria and the other toward the embattled Latin Empire of Constantinople, which was being assailed by the “schismatic” Byzantine emperor-in-exile, John III Doukas Vatatzes. According to Matthew, much of the blame for the schism between Latins and Greeks again lay with the greed and corruption of the papal curia, which had alienated the Greeks and caused their rejection of Rome’s authority. No longer willing to stand such disobedience, Matthew writes, the pope decided to send a “universal army signed with the cross” against them.²¹

As shown above, Gregory’s determination to mobilize a major crusading expedition had played a significant role in conditioning his public relationship with Frederick. The pope’s efforts to achieve a peaceful settlement between the Lombard League and the Hohenstaufen ruler repeatedly invoked the needs of the crusades as requiring an end to strife between the two sides. Peace between the Christians living overseas, and even forms of strategic peace between Christians and certain Muslims, was equally critical for the success of any future effort to free Jerusalem. In March 1235, in a remarkable sign of how Frederick’s truce with al-Kamil had changed the diplomatic playing field between Christian and Muslim powers, Gregory exchanged a number of letters with the sultan of Konya, ‘Ala ad-Din Kaiqubad, exploring the possibility of “friendship and peace” between them, the same “friendship” that the Muslim leader enjoyed with the “lord of the Germans, Frederick.” This unusual exchange illustrated the opportunities posed for Christian diplomacy when the pope and emperor did not stand at odds. Gregory met face-to-face with the sultan’s envoy, a Christian named John de Gabra, who had been sent to the papal curia via Frederick’s imperial court. John, carrying ‘Ala ad-Din’s letters and bearing other information that he would only relay in person, shared the sultan’s proposal to form an alliance to destroy their mutual enemies and help the Christians “recover Jerusalem and all of the lands that they held in the days of Saladin.” After his meeting with Gabra, the pope sent him back to Frederick’s court to continue with these negotiations. This is the last thing ever heard of the sultan’s emissary and the proposed peace between the Muslim ruler and the bishop of Rome.²²

Peace among Christians living in the crusader kingdoms remained just as elusive, despite the truce established in 1234 by Albert of Antioch and the archbishop of Ravenna between John of Ibelin and Frederick’s officials. When news reached the pope in the summer of 1235 that John and his supporters at Acre were planning an assault on Tyre, which was held by Frederick’s imperial marshal, Richard Filangerium, Gregory again tried to intervene on the emperor’s behalf. Writing to the Hospitaller, Templar, and Teutonic orders in Syria, calling for “peace and tranquility” rather than “dissension and scandal,” he instructed them to work for the “preservation of imperial rights” and stop the attack on Tyre. An injury against the emperor, Gregory stated, is like “an injury to us.” He sent a similar message to John of Ibelin and the citizens of Acre, threatening them with ecclesiastical censure if they did not reverse their confrontational course.²³

In his letters to the various parties concerned, the pope did not disguise or dissemble his reasons for supporting Frederick. Damage to the emperor’s power would equally harm the church and impede the upcoming crusade. After the emperor’s recent service, meaning his support against the rebellious citizens of Rome, Gregory felt especially beholden to back the Hohenstaufen position overseas. Writing directly to Frederick in September 1235 and celebrating the empire as the “strong-arm and defender of the Apostolic See,” Gregory reviewed his past efforts to defend Frederick’s rights in Syria. With this address, he included a separate “form of peace,” laying out the new terms for a settlement in the kingdom of Jerusalem that would restore the status quo before the recent rebellion against the imperial marshal. In that same letter, however, Gregory also tried to explain his controversial decision to lift the sentence of interdict passed against Acre by his own legate, Theodoric of Ravenna, after proctors from the city at the papal curia provided sworn assurances of their good behavior moving forward. The pope did so because of the particular situation in that city. With so many different kinds of Christians and kinds of worship in the city, he worried that leaving the ban in place might encourage some citizens to abandon the Roman rite altogether, allowing for the spread of heresy. Gregory must have realized that Frederick would question his decision to lift the interdict before finalizing the terms of peace, so he asked Peter de Vinea, who was present at the curia for negotiations over the problems in Lombardy, to approve of the papal agreement with the citizens of Acre. To Gregory’s disappointment, Peter refused, since his mandate from the emperor did not authorize him to do so.²⁴