form Boniface VIII’s Unam Sanctam to the the Babylonian Captivity of the Church

The popes have won the 200-year fight with the emperors, first the Salians and then the Hohenstaufen. A total war that ended in total victory. The imperial family of the Henrys of Waiblingen has been annihilated either in battle, through illness or at a last resort by execution. The empire is reduced from dominating power in Europe to coordinating mechanism for the princes. How could anyone deny that, to use the words of pope Boniface VIII, “it is altogether necessary for salvation for every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff”.

Well, someone will deny that and six years after these words were uttered the church will march north into its Babylonian Captivity in Avignon. How did that happen? That is an even more intriguing question than how the Hohenstaufen could be wiped out.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 92 – The Papal Epilogue

The popes have won the 200-year fight with the emperors, first the Salians and then the Hohenstaufen. A total war that ended in total victory. The imperial family of the Henrys of Waiblingen has been annihilated either in battle, through illness or at a last resort by execution. The empire is reduced from dominating power in Europe to coordinating mechanism for the princes. How could anyone deny that, to use the words of pope Boniface VIII, “it is altogether necessary for salvation for every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff”.

Well, someone will deny that and six years after these words were uttered the church will march north into its Babylonian Captivity in Avignon. How did that happen? That is an even more intriguing question than how the Hohenstaufen could be wiped out.

Before we start just a reminder. The History of the Germans Podcast is advertising free thanks to the generous support from patrons. And you can become a patron too and enjoy exclusive bonus episodes and other privileges from the price of a latte per month. All you have to do is sign up at patreon.com/historyofthegermans or on my website historyofthegermans.com. You find all the links in the show notes. And thanks a lot to Mark D., Leo von M. and Anthony B. who have already signed up.

And another thing. I am planning a Q&A session in about two weeks. So if you have any questions relating to the podcast, the history we have gone through these last two years or more general topics, just send them to me at historyofthegermans@gmail.com or on twitter @germanshistory or on my Facebook page History of the Germans Podcast.

Last week we ended the podcast on the death of Konradin, son of Konrad IV, last king of the Romans from the House of Hohenstaufen. With his end, any legitimate concept of a unity between empire and the regno of Sicily had vanished. The papacy rejoiced in the belief that from now on, no temporal power could encircle them. They are not only free of the antichrist and his hellish brood, but they had also won.

The 27-point papal program that Gregory VII had written up way back in the 1070s had become reality. The bishop of Rome was the undisputed leader of the church whose legates ranked above any bishop or abbot. Beyond the walls of the churches, the power of the pope requires the princes to kiss his feet. He has the right to depose kings and emperors. Remember that Gregory VII had written these assertions a mere 25 years after emperor Henry III had summarily dismissed three popes. When that was written, it was pure pie in the sky.

Let us just recap how the papacy had arrived at a point where the popes were seen as the spiritual and temporal leaders of western Europe.

It all starts with the economic boom that kicks in somewhere in the 10^th century. As people find their basic needs for food, shelter and safety being covered, they are demanding more. Self-actualisation is what it is called in Mazlov’s pyramid of needs. And that meant they are looking for more than just existence but meaning and hope for the afterlife.

Access to paradise or at least a shortened period in purgatory depended on the sinner’s ability to obtain valid sacraments, specifically baptism, confession and the last rites. Which meant the quality of the clergy that administered these sacraments became a question of death and afterlife.

Initially the emperors had taken the lead in reforming the church. Otto III and Henry II, holy men themselves, saw their purpose in improving the spiritual wellbeing of their subjects, presumably more than their physical condition. Meanwhile the papacy was in utter disarray. Beholden to the aristocratic mob in Rome, the pontiff had little of what we call today soft power.

So up until Henry III the faithful looked to the emperors to deliver on the promise of sober, learned vicars who could administer valid sacraments.

This changed with the council of Sutri, where Henry III dismissed three popes, one a young aristocratic thug, the second a similar man just from a different clan and the third, who had bought the papacy from the first for cold hard cash. Henry III made the fateful mistake to replace these ineffectual frauds with competent churchmen from his imperial clergy.

His cousin Pope Leo IX took the lead in pulling the curia out of the well it had fallen into. He established the college of cardinals stuffed with again competent clerics from across Europe. He created the system of legates that conveyed papal policy far afield. And he defanged the Roman mob with the help of the emperor and powerful Northern Italian magnates.

Though Leo IX was at times disappointed with Henry III, the arrangement was pretty much a co-operation between the two where the pope was the junior partner. In the 11^th century the idea that the pope would rank above the emperor would have sounded alien. The dominant cultural influence was the empire of Constantinople where the patriarch was clearly subject to imperial rule. The theological concept that underpinned that went back to pope Gelasius in the 5^th century. Gelasius had suggested that God had granted the emperor the material sword, i.e., temporal power, whilst the bishops and above them the pope held the spiritual sword, the authority to bind and loose men from their sins. In Gelasius theory the pope was not superior to the emperor in the hear and now, but superior in the afterlife.

Looking back I believe that it wasn’t in 1077 that this system of dual responsibility broke down, but earlier, under the regency of empress Agnes. During the minority of Henry IV when Agnes was regent, the imperial control over the selection of the popes had been slipping. Agnes tried to re-establish the imperial prerogative and appointed Cadulus as antipope against Alexander II. That was a fatal mistake. Cadulus had been a reactionary who tried to roll back the church reform. Suddenly the imperial power was seen as hindering the one thing people wanted, i.e., a better clergy and hope focused on the popes. Anno of Cologne toppled Agnes by kidnapping young Henry IV at Kaiserswerth, recognised Alexander II and tried to get back in the lead on church reform, but it was too late. Anno opened the synod at Mantua as imperial representative but was quickly relegated to the back benches. The popes, specifically Gregory VII quickly took charge of all aspects of church reform, dispatched legates and tightened the reins over the bishops and monasteries. The boy-emperor and his deeply divided regency council was unable to push back.

By 1077 when it all comes to a head in Canossa, emperor and pope are no longer partners in a joint endeavour but established rivals. Europe now has two centres of power that both believed to be dominant and universal leaders of all of Christendom.

We have followed the ups and downs of the struggle over almost 50 episodes and we have seen how the popes have become stronger and stronger. There was Henry IV kneeling in the snow at Canossa, not the politically decisive moment, but one that lingered in the imagination for centuries to come. Lothar III being made a plaything of Bernard of Clairvaux and his pet pope Innocent II. Konrad III, another king put in place by papal machinations is followed by Barbarossa who has not much interest in theology or the quality of pastoral care but in gaining control of Northern Italy.

By 1150 it is no longer in dispute that the papacy is responsible for the spiritual wellbeing of their flock. That is on the one hand a huge source of authority, but it also means that they can be blamed for anything that fails to meet standards. And standards are constantly rising as more and more people can afford to care about their religion.

The popes end up having to fight on two fronts. On one side they have to deal with the rise of charismatic preachers who live a life of poverty, some they have condemned as heretics and others they co-opt as mendicant brothers like the Franciscans and Dominicans. On the other hand they are worried about the military and political power of the Hohenstaufen that is building up in Italy, threatening to encircle the church.

Innocent III opens up a new frontier when he assumes direct responsibility for the crusades, rather than being just an instigator and supporter .

A man like Innocent III may be able to juggle these three balls in the air without dropping any of them. But his successors cannot. And balls begin to drop. Sometimes as we have seen the popes allow Frederick to expand his power in exchange for a promise of going on crusade. But after the fifth crusade ends up unsatisfactory for both sides despite the recovery of Jerusalem, the priorities shift.

The popes retreat from the crusading movement in the Holy Land. Crusades become private projects of for instance King Louis IX of France and other important nobles with modest support from the popes.  

That makes the crusade against Frederick II such a watershed moment. The papacy is converting the major religious endeavour of the Middle Ages into a tool to further its political objectives. Men are offered absolution for killing Christian soldiers, money is gathered from the king of England, churches are taxed to fund mercenary armies to invade Sicily. The pope is no longer the institution that seeks the recovery of Jerusalem.

On the flipside they achieve their stated political objective in 1268. At least that is what it looks like. They have deposed both the imperial dynasty and the king of Sicily, the encirclement of the church is broken.

But in all that they have made two fatal mistakes, one political and one spiritual. One was to stray away from the reason they had been elevated to be universal ruler of Christendom in the first place, the promise of a reform of the church. The other mistake was their choice of champion for the crown of Sicily. Let’s start with the latter.

All good things come in threes as the Germans say, so let me repeat for the third time who Charles of Anjou is, he is one of the two most ambitious men in 13^thcentury Europe. He has already risen from 11^th son of Louis VIII to first count of the immensely rich county of Provence and now to King of the even richer regno of Sicily. Only a fool would expect him to stop there.

The popes did get a foretaste of Charles ambition when he came down to Rome in 1266. Though his deal with the pope explicitly prohibited him from taking any positions in Northern Italy or In the papal states, he accepted the title of senator of Rome, making him master of the Holy city. Shortly after taking over as king of Sicily he engaged himself in the Guelf-Ghibelline fighting in Tuscany which ended up him becoming podesta of Florence and Lucca. In subsequent years he brought all of Tuscany, even Siena and Pisa under his control.

This starts to look increasingly like an encirclement of the papacy. But it is worse than that for the popes. Other than Frederick II, Charles had also been able to gain control over at least parts of the college of cardinals. We are by now on our second French pope. The first had been Urban IV, the son of a cobbler from Troyes in Champagne. Urban had died in 1264 and was replaced by Clement IV, born in southern France, who had been the main sponsor of Charles campaign to conquer Sicily. Both Urban IV and Clement IV had added cardinals from back home so that the college was split roughly fifty-fifty between Italians and Frenchmen. The latter tended to support Charles of Anjou.

After Clement IV had died in 1268, a few months after the execution of Konradin, Charles had sufficient allies in the conclave that he could prevent the election of a new pope for a full three years. In these three years he expanded his position in Italy and had his back sufficiently covered that he could go gallivanting on crusade.

The ones who did not get covered were the cardinals. In 1271 the citizens of Viterbo, bored with the endless delays locked the cardinals into the papal palace and removed the roof. This ended the longest conclave in history, 1006 days. The new pope, Gregory X was, as it had to be, a compromise candidate. An Italian but an Italian who had spent most of his career in France, making him palatable to both sides.

Gregory X turned out not to be quite what Charles had ordered. The new pontiff organised a rapprochement between the Greek orthodox and the catholic church which removed any justification to attack Constantinople, something Charles very much wanted to do. He also reformed the process of the papal conclave and established the rules still in place today so as to avoid another 3 year vacancy of the throne of St. Peter. And he was the pope who received Marco Polo and his brother who had brought letters from Kublai Khan. Gregory X opens negotiations with the Mongols, and they send envoys to his council in Lyon in 1274 to negotiate military operations in the Middle East. So maybe Louis IX was not completely insane hoping for Mongol assistance during his crusade. Nothing came of it though, since Gregory X died in 1276.

Afterwards the church went through 4 more popes in as many years before in 1281 Charles got what he wanted, a French Pope. Pope Martin IV became the willing instrument of Charles’ ambitions. By now his plans had become a touch megalomaniac. He wanted to take a crusade into Constantinople to unseat the Greek orthodox emperor Michael Paleilogos. From there he would roll up the Greek islands and the coast of Asia Minor, assume the crown of Jerusalem and finally take Egypt and North Africa. Charles idea was to create a Mediterranean empire, even bigger than the one the Normans under Robert Guiscard and Roger II had dreamt of.

In 1282 he began assembling an army to put his plan into action. Pope Martin IV had ordered the clergy across Europe to preach the crusade against Constantinople. That great effort required as one would expect a great many gold coins. And where could those be collected? In the kingdom of Sicily of course where the bureaucracy and tax collection system of Frederick II was still very much alive and kicking.

The taxes raised to fund the expedition to Constantinople was not the first exceptional tax Charles had raised in his new kingdom and would not have been the last since his expedition was likely to take years. As we have heard many times before the Sicilians are less and less willing to accept the oppressive taxation. On top of that the home-grown aristocratic leadership of the country had been replaced by foreigners Frenchmen, Castilians and Provencals. The streets were patrolled by French-speaking soldiers. This combination of foreign oppression and excessive taxation created a powder keg. 

And that bomb went off on March 30^th, 1282. A drunken French sergeant accosted a Sicilian lady outside the church of Santo Spirito in Palermo just as Vespers were about to begin. Her husband did not take it lightly and a fight ensued at the end of which the Frenchman laid dead.

Here is Steven Runciman’s description of what followed: “To the sound of the bells messengers ran through the city calling on the men of Palermo to rise against the oppressor. At once the streets were filled with angry armed men, crying “Death to the French” (“moranu li Francisi” in Sicilian language). Every Frenchman they met was struck down. They poured into the inns frequented by the French and the houses where they dwelt, sparing neither man, woman nor child. Sicilian girls who had married Frenchmen perished with their husbands. The rioters broke into the Dominican and Franciscan convents; and all the foreign friars were dragged out and told to pronounce the word “ciciri”, whose sound the French tongue could never accurately reproduce. Anyone who failed the test was slain… By the next morning some two thousand French men and women lay dead; and the rebels were in complete control of the city.” End quote. I apologise for the mispronounciation of Sicilian in this section – please do not kill me for that.

These were the famous Sicilian vespers, an event that put the fear of God into many European ruler who were all experimenting with taxation models.

Charles immediately mustered his army on the mainland and prepared to get his capital back. The rebels needed the help of a professional land force and most importantly a navy to repel their king who would have all of them hanged, drawn and quartered.

So they called upon king Peter III of Aragon for help. Peter not only had a formidable navy based in Barcelona and the Balearics, he also was the husband of Constance, the daughter of King Manfred of Sicily and granddaughter of Frederick II. Peter III and Constance arrived in Palermo in September and by October the last of the Angevin soldiers were driven from the island. That is the Hohenstaufen revenge I mentioned last week.

Now comes the interesting bit. Pope Martin IV excommunicated Peter of Aragon and put Sicily under interdict. That is something an Innocent III or Gregory IX would have never done. Charles of Anjou had become far, far too powerful. He had encircled the papal lands and he had even penetrated the college of cardinals. He was on the verge of acquiring a Mediterranean empire in which the pope would be nothing but his plaything. So by all accounts, the pope should have rejoiced at the Sicilian rebellion and the arrival of a new power that could keep the Angevins in check. But he did not. Because he could not wiggle out of his iron grip. Charles of Anjou had achieved what Frederick II never could have and may not even have wanted to, total control of the papacy.

Martin IV died in 1285. His successors, Honorius IV and Nicholas IV continued to prioritise the recovery of Sicily for the House of Anjou above all else. Not even the fall of Acre in 1291 that put an end to the crusader states in Outremer could shake their perceived mission to help Charles and now his successor, Charles II.

When Nicholas IV died, the cardinals, despite the new rules about papal conclaves had another serious round of disagreements about who should become pope now. The French majority in the college of cardinals that had prevailed earlier had succumbed to the climate and unfamiliar diseases so we are back to a fifty-fifty split.

For 27 months they debated before finally settling on one of the most unusual choices of pope well pretty much ever. Pietro del Morrone was an 85-year-old peasant who had lived for more than six decades as a hermit in the Abruzzi mountains. He had no experience with the curia or papal bureaucracy. He did neither read nor speak Latin. He had appeared once in the papal court of Gregory X where he allegedly hung up his coat on a sunbeam. If you have seen the hermit in Monty Python’s Life of Brian, that is Pietro del Morrone.

Nobody had asked him whether he was interested in the job and if they had, he would have had very clear that it was not for him. When he hears of his appointment he descends into a state of utter panic. It is only after lengthy discussions and prayers that he accepted the appointment.

Pietro del Morrone took the name Celestin V and begun his utterly shambolic pontificate. None of that could have been a surprise. Which begs the question why did the cardinals chose him.

They chose him because the church was badly in need of reform. It was not just the abuse of the powers of excommunication and crusader absolutions for political purposes that had eroded their standing. Money had become a constant criticism. The popes had been demanding levies from churches in France, England and Germany, ostensibly for crusades, but these crusades never happened or were directed against the enemies of the pope. Cardinals were dressing in ever more elaborate garb and lived in ever larger and more luxurious palaces.

In the last 20 years another strain of papal behaviour became more prevalent. Nepotism, i.e., the elevation of members of the current pope’s family into key positions in the church was an old tradition. But under in particular Nicholas IV it became ridiculous. Almost a third of the college of cardinals were his nephews and other family members.

None of these changes happened in secret. The laymen heard their vicar preach against the emperor and his vast range of sins. They also heard about the fall of Jerusalem in 1244 and the loss of Acre in 1291. They saw the tithe they had hoped would go into the building of their mighty gothic cathedral be sent to Rome to fund mercenary armies in wars against Manfred of Sicily. If you read through Matthew Paris, a big chunk of the narrative is taken up with complaints about the moneys send to Rome by king Henry III. This was one of the main complaints that led to the second baron’s revolt. The French nobles found that their king’s crusader zeal was constantly hampered by papal interference, something that likely trickled down into the population at large.

Something had to change. And the cardinals believed that the election of a pope who was the closest thing to a living saint they could find will get the church back onto the wagon.

Oh boy did that backfire!

Celestin V may be a near saint and have a great following of devout laypeople, but he was utterly incompetent when it came to managing the cutthroat politics of late 13^th century Italy. Barely crowned pope, he finds himself living more or less as a prisoner of King Charles II in the Castello Nuovo in Naples. Charles of Anjou had died in the meantime, and his son continued the policy of running Italy by using the papacy.

Celestin V was a perfect pope for Charles II, mainly because he was in the habit of granting any wish anyone brought to him. But for the curia, Celestin V was an unmitigated catastrophe. Instead of improving the standing of the church, the papal hermit wearing rags and praying constantly provided a very uncomfortable foil to the cardinals in their splendid scarlet robes and ruby encrusted crosses.

No wonder he lasted only a mere 5 months. Though, other than previous incompetent popes of advanced age he did not have the decency to die. He abdicated, the first official papal abdication. The next one did not happen until 2013.

The architect of this abdication was cardinal Bendetto Caetani, a man who was the exact opposite of the holy hermit. Sophisticated, a papal diplomate with 40 years experience, an able administrator and from a Roman aristocratic family with papal connections. The story goes that Benedetto Caetani had introduced a secret speaking tube into the Celestine’s cell at the Castello Nuovo and in the small hours of the night simulated the voice of God warning the pontiff of the flames of Hell were he to continue in his office.

On December 13^th, 1294 Celestine V gathered his cardinals, took off his papal vestments and read out a formal abdication document drafted by Benedetto Caetani who was – surprise, surprise – immediately elected as pope Boniface VIII. Boniface had always been a staunch supporter of the Angevin cause, which is why Charles II allowed him to be crowned in Naples and let him leave for Rome with his predecessor in tow.

When Boniface VIII and his cardinals reached Rome, they found that old Celestine had absconded, presumably trying to get back to his hermit hut in the mountains. It took the papal minions a while to catch the old man who seemed to have been still quite fleet of foot. When he is brought before Boniface he utters a prophecy: “You have entered like a fox, you will rule like a lion and you will die like a dog”. After that the ex-pope was locked up in a remote castle where he died a few years later.

Boniface VIII was indeed in many ways a lion amongst the popes. He founded the university of Rome, codified canon law, re-established the Vatican library and archives. Note, he actually spent some time of his pontificate in Rome, something few of his predecessors had been able to do. He was also able to push back against the encroachment by the Angevins.

What he had nothing of though was spirituality. For him the church and its powers to bind and loose, to excommunicate and depose served solely political or financial purposes. He declared the year 1300 a Holy Year inviting pilgrims to come to Rome offering full and copious pardons for all sins, confessed or not, to anyone who came to Saint Peter. That brought 200,000 pilgrims to the Holy City and vastly enriched the papal coffers. The crowds were so huge, the main basilicas introduced one-way systems for pilgrims to pass along the great relics whilst the sacristans needed rakes to gather up all the money offerings. Dante sets his divine comedy in the year 1300 and the regimentation of the crowds in hell is modelled on the management of the crowds on the Ponte Saint Angelo.

The other thing he lacked was any kind of diplomatic finesse. Conciliation or compromise were alien concepts to him. That brought him quite quickly into conflict with various monarchs in Europe, most specifically with Philipp IV, the Fair of France. The conflict began when Philipp put a heavy tax on the French clergy to fund the 100 years war that was just kicking off.

Boniface used the opportunity to state once and for all that no church in Christendom could be taxed by a mere monarch without an express permission from Rome. Philipp responded by banning papal tax collectors from entering and leaving France thereby cutting the curia off from one of its main sources of income.

At the same time Boniface got into a spat with the powerful Colonna family. Some Colonna supporters had hijacked a transport of gold bullion destined for the Vatican, possibly encouraged by king Phillip. In response Boniface placed garrisons into the main Colonna strongholds, had two Colonna cardinals who had nothing to do with the affair stripped of their rank and excommunicated the family en masse.

But his most implacable opponents came from within the church itself. The more radical wing of the Franciscans had been shocked by the managed abdication of Celestin V. For the minor brothers who pursued a life of asceticism and poverty, Celestin had been the ideal pope. The “angel pope” sent to defeat antichrist and bring on that old chestnut, the 1000 years of bliss. They loathed the worldly Boniface and all he stood for. They accused Boniface of having killed Celestine V the true legitimate pope.

There we are.  By a wonderous twist of fate it is the pope and not the emperor who is denounced from church pulpits. They are calling him out not just for his nepotism, avarice and simony, but for the full gambit ranging from murder, illegitimacy, idolatry and sodomy. Just replace the name Frederick II with Boniface and you get a rerun of the PR campaigns of the 1240s. The similarity is no surprise because both were run by the Franciscans. John Julius Norwich thought that within just 3 or 4 years Boniface was the most detested pope that ever lived, which is quite an achievement given the breadth of the field.

Boniface is not one to back down though. He suspected that a lot of his problems had been orchestrated in Paris, so that is where he keeps pushing back. When Philipp the Fair imprisoned a bishop, Boniface responds by ordering the king to immediately release him and summons him and his bishops to come to the papal court to defend his actions.

Philipp obviously refused but surprisingly 39 French bishops show up in Rome in November 1302. There Boniface fired his final broadside. Based on liberal quotations from our old friend Bernard of Clairvaux and Thomas Aquinas he offered the broadest definition of papal absolutism in his bull Unam Sanctam. Quote “it is altogether necessary for the salvation for every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff” end quote.

That was clearly directed at Philipp the Fair who retaliated by having his Franciscans adding more to their song sheet. They now accuse the pope of sorcery, forcing priests to violate the secrets of confession and worst of all having said he would rather be a dog than a Frenchman. Philipp and the Colonna demanded a general council of the church to determine whether Boniface had obtained the chair of St. Peter illegally and whether he was suitable as pope.

Boniface did refuse. So, the French sent an army of 1,600 men led by Sciarra Colonna a mercenary commander and member of the famous Roman family. Their orders were to seize the pope and if necessary by force, transport him to France. Meanwhile pope Boniface was drafting the excommunication and deposition bull for Philipp the Fair to be published on September 8^th, 1303. On September 7^th 1303 the French and Colonna arrived at Agnani where the pope was staying. After a short scuffle they forced entry into the papal chambers. Boniface rose, dared them to lay hands on the vicar of Christ and threw bans and excommunications at the intruders. Sciarra Colonna took off his gauntlet and slapped the pope in the face mid-sentence.

This event, later called the outrage of Agnani, that slap in the face marks the end of the imperial papacy.

Pope Boniface was imprisoned for three days but was freed by the citizens of Agnani. He could escape to Rome but died there a month later, many say of shock and deep sorrow. His successor apologised to Philipp for Boniface’ behaviour and revoked all his acts against the king.

3 years later the conclave elected pope Clement V., until then archbishop of Bordeaux. Clement V will never go to Rome and settle ultimately in Avignon. By then almost the entire college of cardinals is made up of Frenchmen. The Babylonian Captivity of the papacy has begun. For over 100 years the papacy will be nothing but a shadow of its former glory, the popes in Avignon being at the back and call of the king of France and later riven with schisms until another Colonna, Martin V is elected pope at the council of Constance in 1417 and the papacy returns to Rome.

Dante who writes his divine comedy shortly after these events summarises his view of the popes of his era when he has Saint Peter say the following:

“He who on earth usurps my place

Yes, my place, my very place,

Which lies vacant in the eyes of the son of God

Has made my tomb a common sewer of blood and pollution

Into which the malignant fall”

(End quote)

The struggle between pope and emperor is finally, finally over and the winner is, the king of France.

The story arch may have completed, but that is not the end of this season of the History of the Germans. Next week we will talk about the afterlife of Frederick II and the fascinating story of how in the 1920s a German Jew, Ernst Kantorowicz, turns Frederick II from a medieval Sicilian king into the epitome of the German authoritarian ruler who in his mind foreshadows another. I hope you will join us again.

And do not forget. After that I want to do a Q&A session. Several of you have already sent in questions to historyofthegermans@gmail.com, on Facebook and on Twitter. So please keep them coming. And by the way patrons who have signed up on Patreon.com/historyofthegermans or on my website are guaranteed their question being answered. If Patreon isn’t for you, do not worry, I will try to answer all your questions as well. As always, all the links are in the show notes.    

from Manfred of Sicily to the execution of Konradin

When Frederick II died there were four legitimate male descendants of the emperor, his son Konrad IV, elected king of the Romans, his son Henry, a mere six years old, but from most noble blood, his son Manfred from his relationship with Bianca Lancia who had married on her deathbed. And there was a grandson, the child of his unlucky oldest son Henry (VII). 18 years later when this episode ends, the House of Hohenstaufen will be wiped from the face of the earth. Lets find out how that could happen..

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 91 – The Hohenstaufen Epilogue

When Frederick II died there were four legitimate male descendants of the emperor, his son Konrad IV, elected king of the Romans, his son Henry, a mere six years old, but from most noble blood, his son Manfred from his relationship with Bianca Lancia who had married on her deathbed. And there was a grandson, the child of his unlucky oldest son Henry (VII). 18 years later when this episode ends, the House of Hohenstaufen will be wiped from the face of the earth. Lets find out how that could happen..

Before we start just a reminder. The History of the Germans Podcast is advertising free thanks to the generous support from patrons. And you can become a patron too and enjoy exclusive bonus episodes and other privileges from the price of a latte per month. All you have to do is sign up at patreon.com/historyofthegermans or on my website historyofthegermans.com. You find all the links in the show notes. And thanks a lot to Christian O, James G and Robert H. who have already signed up.

Last week we heard about the death of emperor Frederick II, a death that left the whole world stunned. He was 56 years old, certainly an age where death was possible, but after nominally 54 years on the throne, there were few people alive who could imagine a world without the Stupor Mundi, the wonder of the world. So many times had the popes announced the death of their hated opponents, many simply did not believe he was dead.

Even Salimbene di Parma, Franciscan monk and a totally committed partisan of the popes is unsure he can believe the news. What makes them especially hard to believe is that the Franciscan had bought wholesale into the prophecies of Joachim of Fiore, who had predicted that the antichrist would rampage across the land until the year 1260 when he would be defeated and a 1000 years of bliss would ensue. Frederick must hence still be alive creating havoc in the world from some secret hiding place. As he said himself, he only believed it when he saw Innocent IV himself telling a crowd in Ferrara that he, the pope, had heard it from reliable sources that the emperor was dead. Salimbene was not the last who believed the emperor was still alive. For decades false Fredericks would appear all over the empire.

But dead he was. And whilst that was a shock for the Ghibellines in Italy and the Hohenstaufen supporters north of the Alps, it was a source of jubilation for pope Innocent IV. He wrote In January 1251 full of apostolic compassion: “Let heaven and earth rejoice”. And he reminded his flock that the threat from the House of Hohenstaufen is not yet banished. The crusade had to continue, first against king Konrad IV and then against any other descendant of that infernal beast until all and every one of his descendants is gone.

Konrad IV was up in Germany when he hears about his father’s death and the unrelenting opposition of the pope. I think I said last time he was in his 30s, that was a bad calculation error. He was only 22, but that made him still an adult under the conventions of the time and he had been fighting the imperial cause for the last 8 years.

The fighting In Germany had always been hampered by the lack of resources on both sides. The anti-kings Heinrich Raspe and now William of Holland had limited resources of their own, whilst their only significant allies, the archbishops of Cologne and Mainz yielded more spiritual than military power. Konrad IV could rely on his family lands in Southern Germany, though his father’s constant demands for money and prioritisation of the Italian theatre of war meant he could never muster any sizeable forces.

The other drag on Konrad was that he had only been the elected king of the Romans. His father had never allowed him to be crowned, presumably because he feared that Konrad would gain more independence and share the sorry destiny of his oldest son Henry (VII) – who ended up in brackets for opposing the emperor. Meanwhile his opponent William of Holland had been crowned in Aachen by the correct archbishop, just without the correct imperial regalia.

In 1251 Konrad has to make a decision what to do. He could either focus on the German lands, which means seeking a decisive battle against William of Holland and the archbishops. That would give him access to Aachen and force Konrad of Hochstaden, the archbishop of Cologne to crown him. And it seems this was his intention in the first couple of months of 1251. He is gathering the princes for a royal assembly in Augsburg and we find him accelerating the issuance of rights and privileges from his chancery.

But in the end, he decides on the alternative strategy. His father had made him heir, not just of the empire, but also of Sicily and Jerusalem. Sicily was an inheritable kingdom where legitimacy did neither require election nor coronation. He had become full king the second his father had breathed his last. But becoming king on paper is not the same as getting the riches of Sicily sent up to Germany for his campaign to subdue the north. Sicily was run by his half-brother Manfred at least ostensibly on his behalf. These two had barely ever met and we know little about their relationship. So one reason for Konrad to go down south might be to ensure that Manfred does not steal the kingdom from under his nose.

But the other, more significant reason is that someone else is also heading for Italy, none other than our friend Pope Innocent IV. He had left Lyons almost as soon as he had heard about the emperor’s death. On his last day in the city, he has one of his cardinals preach a final sermon to the citizens. Most of it is standard, praising God for being delivered from the imperial antichrist, thanking the citizens for their hospitality, etc., etc. He ends his speech with the following: “My friends, since we arrived in this city, we have done much good and largely bestowed alms; for when we first came here, we found three or four brothels, and now at our departure we leave behind us only one; but that extends from the eastern gate of the city to the western one.” (unquote)I love the Holy Church when they spread the gospel so generously amongst the people.

The pope’s journey is not just a homecoming. His objective is to use the uncertainty following the death of Frederick II to finally wipe out Hohenstaufen power. He hopes that his presence in Northern Italy will give the Guelfs the needed boost to bring down the Ghibellines. That sort of falls a bit flat, largely because the Guelf and Ghibelline rivalry is now almost detached from the actual pope and the actual emperor. These are deeply entrenched political parties without actual program fighting for supremacy.

Where he is more successful is in bringing the papal lands under his control. The Sicilian and imperial podestas in the cities are replaced by papal appointees and the countryside is freed of remaining troops loyal to Frederick II.

That left him room to pursue his main project, to kick the Hohenstaufen out of the kingdom of Sicily. When Frederick II died, there were already some grumblings in his kingdom. The tax burden caused by the endless warfare had become unbearable and isolated protests appeared all over the country. And the big cities wanted to form independent communes, just like their neighbours in Northern Italy had done more than a hundred years earlier. Naples that had grown to become the largest city on the mainland saw its chance. Innocent IV tried to ride on the wave and – in his role as Sicilian feudal overlord – issued privileges to the communes of Naples, Capua, Messina and several others.

Meanwhile Konrad IV had arrived in Sicily and together with his brother Manfred gained control of the situation. Sieges of Suessa, Capua and San Germano were successful in 1252/53. Naples put up a more spirited defence and it took until October 1253 before Konrad and Manfred could enter the city. They did not put the town to the sack but just banished the city leadership, forgave the citizens for their obstinacy and had the city walls taken down.

By 1254 things had calmed down a lot. The kingdom of Sicily was back under Hohenstaufen control. Tax income began to fill the royal coffers.

Konrad IV next step was to look for reconciliation with the pope. At least as far as we know Konrad IV had neither dancing girls nor scientists nor Muslim friends, so a lot of the arguments for Frederick’s excommunications did not apply. But we know enough about papal policy by now that these arguments carry no weight. This conflict has nothing to do with alleged heresy, this is about one thing, breaking the Hohenstaufen grip on Italy, the linkage between the Sicilian kingdom and the empire.

Therefore Innocent’s response was another long list of baseless accusations. Matthew Paris had kindly listed them: (quote) “The pope accused him of being a heretic, and a homicide, one who despised the keys of the Church, and who caused divine services to be performed during the time of interdict. He also charged him with having killed one Frederick, his nephew, by poison, and also his brother Henry, by the agency of John the Moor, who first poisoned him, and afterwards, as he was long in dying strangled him with a napkin.” End quote. All lies, so business as usual.

Given no other option the young king began working on plans to use Sicilian money to establish his power in the empire. Historians argue whether his plans were a replay of Frederick’s strategy to gain control of the Italian communes, or a new approach focused on Germany. But that never came to pass.

Innocent IV had not only reopened the propaganda war bit also rekindled the crusading idea, which now sounded more appealing given the Holy Land was in a mess and Sicily looked ripe for the picking. All he lacked was a suitable new king of Sicily. He had spoken to many candidates in the past and he again touched base with Richard of Cornwall and Charles of Anjou, but both turned him down again. Finally he came up with another idea. He offered the crown of Sicily to Edmund, son of king Henry III of England. Edmund had a slight disadvantage for being 6 years old at the time. The idea was that Henry III would finance the expedition to the tune of 135,000 marks of silver in exchange for making his second son a king. Henry seemed to have got very excited about the idea. Matthew Paris again: The king then sent to the pope all the money he could draw from his treasury, or the exchequer, as well as whatever he could scrape from the Jews, or extort by means of his circuit justiciaries for the purpose of making war against Conrad and subjugating the Sicilians and Apulians”. The English money provided the pope with the funds to muster a large mercenary army to send south.

Konrad IV fought back valiantly, but the constant fighting as well as the unfounded accusations of fratricide and other grievous offenses took its toll on the young man. Matthew Paris (quote):

“The hostility, threats, reproaches and defamations, heaped on him by the pope, afflicted King Conrad beyond measure, and he began to pine away under the weight of his grief His malady was also brought on, according to report, by poison administered to him, and he at length took to his deathbed, as it proved, giving vent to bis grief in the following words: ”Alas ! alas ! wretched man that I am; why did my mother give me birth? why did my father beget me to be exposed to so many sufferings? The Church, which ought to be a mother to my father and me, is rather a stepmother.  The empire, which flourished from before the time of Christ’s nativity till this time, is now rotting away, and is consigned to oblivion.” Then, cursing the day of his birth, he breathed forth his wretched and afflicted spirit.” End quote

Konrad IV died on May 21^st, 1254 near the castle of Melfi in Puglia.

It was then down to Manfred to defeat the papal invasion, which he did successfully. Relying on his loyal subjects and in particular the Saracens of Lucera who were fighting for their mere existence they beat the papal mercenaries, in particular as the English money ran out.

This particular story has an interesting epilogue of itself. The idea of buying little Edmund a throne in Italy went down like a led balloon with the barons of England. They remembered Henry’s father, King John who had squeezed the country dry to fund foreign wars solely for the benefit of his dynasty. So the barons dug up that old document most had by then forgotten called the Magna Carta. They insisted that the king would only pursue such policy and in particular only introduce new taxes with the baron’s consent. The debate escalated and though Henry binned his plan for Sicily, the opposition against his unpopular regime grew. It culminated in the so-called Second Baron’s war in which Simon de Montfort forced Henry to accept the Provisions of Oxford. This is the actual moment when parliament was established in England. Proper history trivia, the fight against the Hohenstaufen gave rise to parliamentary democracy! If you want to know more about this episode, why not listen to the inimitable David Crowther whose History of England looks at Henry III and the Baron’s war in episodes 65 and 66.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/7MJpktkuG0Zz3wblKY6Ojk?si=88nb_qvrSOO6f2fytjBP0A

But back to our story.

With Konrad IV out of the way, according to Frederick II’s testament the next ruler should have been Henry, his son from his marriage to Isabella of England and indeed nephew of aforesaid King Henry III. But little Henry had died already, either poisoned by Conrad as the pope claimed or poisoned by the pope for unclear reasons as Matthew Paris claims or of natural causes.

Frederick II had ordered that in this case his son Manfred from his relationship with Bianca Lancia should inherit everything, including the empire. Manfred has his hands full in 1254 fighting back the papal invasion and stabilising his kingdom leaving no headspace for imperial matters.

So what happened to the empire once Konrad IV had died? Well there was already another king, elected only by few but properly crowned, William of Holland. William had been placed on the throne by Innocent IV and was widely seen as a puppet of the ecclesiastics. But the Hohenstaufen side could not yet field their own candidate. The son of Henry VII had died in 1251 without offspring. And that left only Konradin, the just 2-year old son of Konrad IV as the last remaining Hohenstaufen north of the Alps. He was simply too young to be raised to the throne.

So people arranged themselves with William of Holland. William had gained some support in the north by marrying a Welf princess, who came with the formal endorsement from the Margrave of Brandenburg and the duke of Saxony.

We are now moving into a period where only certain imperial princes are allowed to elect the king instead of just those who happened to be present at the election diet. According to the Sachsenspiegel these are the three archbishops of Cologne, Mainz and Trier and three imperial princes, the duke of Saxony, the Margrave of Brandenburg and the Count Palatinate on the Rhine. By 1257 they will be joined by the king of Bohemia which establishes the prince-electors who will be formally recognised in the golden bull of 1356. Why these seven and not say the duke of Bavaria, the House of Welf or the duke of Lorraine is one of these complex questions historians had tried to answer for a hundred years. We will look into this when we get back to the imperial storyline after next season.

The marriage to the duke of Brunswick’s daughter may have provided William of Holland with support in the north but nearly snuffed out his reign. On his wedding night a candle fell over in their bedchamber and the whole room was quickly engulfed in flames. The vigorous royal couple just about managed to escape.

Having escaped unharmed William calls a well-attended royal assembly and takes the reins of the kingdom. All looks like the story may now continue, just with a Dutch instead of a Swabian dynasty. But in the end William was count of Holland first and king of the Romans second. He used his position to start a war with his neighbour, the countess of Flanders which he won. But this blatant use of royal power to further his own aims alienated many of the imperial princes.

In 1255 the archbishop of Cologne tried to kill him and the papal legate by burning down the house he was staying in. After that William mistrusted the imperial princes and tried to align himself the cities. These, led by Cologne had funded the Rheinische bund, an association of mutual support that stretched from Zurich to Bremen. That however was not enough to stabilise William’s reign. He returned to Holland and fought his local wars. In a winter battle against the Frisians in 1256 fought on a frozen lake his horse broke through the ice and weighed down by his armour he drowned in the cold water. RR Martin would have called his “a reign of fire and ice”.

With William gone, the princes were running several election assemblies without much success. One king emerged by some mysterious process. Alfonso X of Castile was a grandson of Philip of Swabia and as such had made noises that the duchy of Swabia should come to him. The citizens of Pisa, strong allies of Frederick II and trading partners of the kingdom of Castile went to him and offered him the crown. They were seconded by the citizens of Marseille, presumably also interested in the Mediterranean trade. Both cities were inside the empire, but so far no city ever and certainly none in Italy and Burgundy had played any role in the election of the king of the Romans. But somehow this “election” in inverted commas struck a cord with some actual electors in Germany. Alfonso X had at least some Hohenstaufen blood and so he was elected by 3 princes and invited to come to Aachen for his coronation. And that is where the story ends. Alfonso X never went to Germany or played any role there.

The other 4 electors chose Richard of Cornwall, brother of king Henry III. Richard had no dynastic claims to the throne whatsoever, but he was a highly regarded soldier and a member of the highest aristocracy. What tipped the balance was papal support. Innocent IV is by now dead, he passed in 1254 shortly after Konrad IV. But his successors pursued the same policy of pushing out the Hohenstaufen. Richard of Cornwall wasn’t a Hohenstaufen.

As for the German princes, they had become so used to their king residing in foreign lands and not bothering them much, they saw an English king as an advantage. Plus Richard had bribed the archbishops of Cologne and Mainz and the Count Palatinate most generously.

Richard of Cornwall was significantly more engaged in imperial affairs than Alfonso X, though that is a very low bar. He travelled to Germany four times in his reign that lasted until 1272. Traditionally this period is referred to as the Interregnum, the horrific time where there was no effective king. The modern view is a bit more nuanced. Fredrick II’s and Konrad IV’s reign had also been very loose so that the shift to largely absent monarchs made only a difference in degree. Richard holds royal assemblies, issues privileges and enfeoffs nobles, not much different to Konrad IV. He even makes several attempts to be crowned in Rome.

But what matters to us here is that the time when the king of the Romans or the emperor projected power south of the Alps is very much on hold now. Innocent IV had achieved #1 of his main objectives. The empire and Sicily are politically separated. The encirclement of the church is over.

That may explain why Innocent IV’s successor pope Alexander IV took a more lenient approach to Sicily. After the failed invasion, they let things go their way down south.

Manfred had been able to establish his position after 1254. Though already king based on Frederick’s testament he has himself elected king of Sicily by his barons and crowned in Palermo. What helps stabilising his reign is the diminishing tax burden. Manfred has much lower ambitions in Northern Italy and has found an arrangement with the pope, which removes the need of constant war taxes. He even manages to expand his territory by marrying the daughter of the ruler of one of the successor states of the Byzantine empire which brings the island of Corfu and the city of Durazzo in Albania under his control. His daughter Constance marries Peter, heir to the kingdom of Aragon, adding another important ally in the Mediterranean.

He founded the city of Manfredonia that became an important grain port and still bears his name. His court replicated many of the splendours of his father’s and the remaining copy of the Arte de venadi con avibus was created here.

For about 6 years Manfred was left in peace by the popes. But by 1260 Manfred could no longer resist the Ghibelline calls for help in Northern Italy. He got involved in the battle of Montaperti, where the Sienese, a thoroughly Ghibelline city defeated a coalition of Guelf cities, led by their perennial rival, Florence. This battle was one of the larger engagements in the perpetual Guelf-Ghibelline wars and features heavily in Sienese and Florentine consciousness. But that is pretty much it. The Florentines won another battle against the Sienese shortly afterwards and the fighting continued for 200 years.

But it did have an impact in Rome. Pope Alexander IV and his successor Urban IV became concerned that Manfred would finally turn into his father and again attempt to encircle the pope.

So they searched for a new candidate to become king of Sicily. Young Edmund had been stripped of his role as papal champion in 1258 once English money had dried up completely.

Their eye fell on that other great man of ambition of the mid-13^th century, Charles of Anjou, younger brother of king Louis IX of France and count of Provence. Charles had continued building his reputation as a general during the crusades and as a competent administrator in his rich. He was not a nice man. His greed and ambition was legendary. The sculptor Arnolfo di Cambio made a statue of him for the citizens of Rome that shows him a with a stern, bleak expression that suggests a remoteness of character, a grim determination.  

Charles of Anjou took the mantle as athlete of Christ and began planning. He was a meticulous man and he realised that Manfred was a worthy opponent. For three years he gathered funds, had the Franciscan brothers preach the crusade against the Hohenstaufen and built connections into his intended target.

On February 3, 1266, Charles’ army crossed the border into Sicily and marched towards an encounter with Manfred’s forces at Benevento. Not much detail is known, but Manfred fought with his characteristic courage and refused to flee when things went awry. He was cut down and died on the battlefield. Since he was excommunicated, he was refused a church burial, but Charles still awarded him the honour of a defeated prince.

Charles quickly gained full control of Sicily. The few barons who decided to continue the fight were defeated but treated fairly. He did not dismantle the system of government Frederick II had established. He instead co-opted the Hohenstaufen bureaucracy and re-issued the constitutions of Melfi. They continued in force almost unaltered until the 18^th century.

The members of the court of Manfred who could not bear Angevin rule fled to Aragon where Manfred’s daughter Constance ruled as queen, or to Swabia.

Because there is still one legitimate Hohenstaufen left, Conradin, the young son of Konrad IV. He is 14 years old living on the Hohenstaufen lands in Germany when he hears about the demise of his uncle Manfred. The refugees from Sicily and from Ghibelline cities in Northern Italy beseech him to come south and reverse their fortunes. The swift success of Charles of Anjou they claim shows how quickly things can turn around.

And so he sets off. In 1267 he is welcomed enthusiastically in Pisa. There is rebellion in Sicily, in part because Charles had failed to reward some of his followers. The barons formerly loyal to Frederick and his family take heart from this new claimant and rise up. The Saracens of Lucera who knew they were on borrowed time threw out their French governor.

As Conradin travels south Ghibelline forces from all across Italy joined his banner. It feels a bit like his grandfather Frederick II’s journey to Germany in 1220 in reverse.  He crosses the border of the kingdom unopposed as Charles is too busy besieging Lucera.

When Charles hears about the incursion, he turns the army around to face his opponent.

The two sides meet at the village of Tagliacozzo. The ensuing battle is brutal. For a time it seems the Ghibelline forces, some clad in modern plate armour, had the upper hand. But late in the battle Charles regroups his forces and overwhelms his enemy.

Conradin flees from the battlefield but was captured by Giovanni Frangipani.

Charles uses the opportunity to restructure his new kingdom. The southern Italian barons who had been loyal to the Hohenstaufen are swept away and replaced with his own men from Provence, France and Northern Italy. There were confiscations, hangings and the occasional act of mercy to inspire awe and gratitude.

But there is one act that excited horror, even at this time.

Charles held a trial of Conradin and his closest companions. This trial was needed as façade to get rid of the last of the Hohenstaufen, who would forever pose a threat to the Angevin dynasty and their main sponsor the pope.

The court of Charles of Anjou condemned the sixteen year of Conradin, his friend, the margrave of Baden, Count Friedrich von Hürnheim, count Wolrad of Veringen and his marshal Konrad Kropf von Flüglingen to death by beheading.

On October 29^th, 1268 the 4 young men were brought to the Piazza del Mercato in Naples. The executor’s sword comes down on one neck after the other. As the head of the imperial boy, descendant of an unbroken line of emperors going back to the city of Troy drops into the basket, the story of the Hohenstaufen kings and emperors ends.   

Only one of Frederick’s sons is still alive, his beloved Enzio who is languishing in jail in Bologna. The story goes that when he hears of his nephew’s death he decides on one last desperate attempt to flee. He was held as an honoured prisoner, allowed food and wine in abundance as well as visits. So he bribes one of the wine merchants who bring the full barrels of wine and remove the empty ones, to smuggle him out of his palace inside an empty barrel. All goes well until the barrel is loaded onto a cart to leave the city. The merchant had left the bunghole of the barrel open so as not to suffocate the king of Sardinia. Enzios luscious blond hair had found its way out of the bunghole and the matrons of Bologna, all infatuated with the beautiful and tragic Hohenstaufen instantly recognise it. So he was caught and never left Bologna. The Bentivolglio family of Bologna who would rule the city on occasion claims to be descendants of one of Enzio’s many dalliance with the ladies of Bologna.

But this is still not quite yet the end of the story of the struggle between pope and emperor that we have followed for the last 90 episodes. Next week we will see how the popes and their champion, Charles of Anjou feared and maybe there is a little bit of Hohenstaufen revenge in there too. Because the men may be all dead or in prison, but the women are still out there. I hope you will join us again.

And I was wondering whether this isn’t a good time to do another Q&A session. We are coming to the end of these three seasons that in reality is just one continuing narrative. So if you have any questions about these last 300 years of German history, about the podcast or German history in general, just send them through to me at historyofthegermans@gmail.com or on any of my social media sites. Please indicate if you are a Patreon because Patreons are guaranteed an answer on air.

Before I go, let me thank all of you who are supporting the show, in particular the Patrons who have kindly signed up on patreon.com/historyofthegermans. It is thanks to you this show does not have to do advertising for products you do not want to hear about. If Patreon isn’t for you, another way to help the show is sharing the podcast directly or boosting its recognition on social media. If you share, comment or retweet a post from the History of the Germans it is more likely to be seen by others, hence bringing in more listeners. My most active places are Twitter @germanshistory and my Facebook page History of the Germans Podcast. As always, all the links are in the show notes.    

The Battle of Parma and the death of Piero delle Vigne

This week the epic struggle between empire and papacy goes into its final stretch. The pope has fled to Lyon. There he calls a church council which Frederick is now unable to forestall. Pope Innocent IV deposes Frederick, and – for the first time in history – calls a crusade, not against the Muslims, not against pagans, not against heretics or Greek orthodox rulers, but against a Latin Christian monarch who for years had tried to find an amicable solution to what was a political, not a religious disagreement. And all that against the backdrop of Jerusalem having fallen into the hands of the Turks, and the Mongol armies on the march.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 90 – Things are Falling Apart

I have to start with a correction. Last week I erroneously ascribed the quote “from my cold dead hands” to Clint Eastwood, though it was – as every child knows – Charlton Heston who said it. What makes this particularly embarrassing is that Clint Eastwood had been very vocal in his support for gun control since the 1970s. I can only apologize unreservedly and thanks to listener Gary for making me aware.

This week things will indeed be falling apart. The never-ending war is exactly what it is, a never ending, unwinnable war against an enemy that hides on the other side of the Alps and cannot be attacked. Money is running seriously low, and Frederick II is getting concerned about the loyalty of his closest associates. And those he will lose, one due to the vagaries of war, the other through a bout of paranoia.

Before we start just a reminder. The History of the Germans Podcast is advertising free thanks to the generous support from patrons. And you can become a patron too and enjoy exclusive bonus episodes and other privileges from the price of a latte per month. All you have to do is sign up at patreon.com/historyofthegermans or on my website historyofthegermans.com. You find all the links in the show notes. And thanks a lot to Chris M., Geir and Curtis B. who have already signed up.

Last week we had left Frederick II in ever worsening frustration about the progress of his struggle with Pope Innocent IV. He had suffered a humiliating defeat before the walls of Parma. His great new imperial capital of Victoria had been burned to the ground by the men, women and children of Parma. His most trusted advisor, Taddeo da Suessa had been captured, tortured and had died in prison. The imperial crown, the one today displayed in the Kunsthistorische Museum in Vienna had fallen to the enemy, was paraded through the city streets in a carnival procession. The soldier who took it sold it to the town for 200 pounds of silver and a small house next to the church of St. Christina so that for an undisclosed time thereafter it was kept in the sacristy of the cathedral of Parma. Salimbene reports that merchants from far and wide came to Parma to buy up the gold and silver vessels, the precious stones and cloth of gold for pittance. That is how the emperor’s own copy of the book on falconry ended up in the stock of a Milanese merchant in 1268 before vanishing forever.

What was almost a miracle was that Parma failed to trigger the domino effect the Guelfs had hoped for. None of the major cities went across to the other side in the immediate aftermath of Parma. He may have seen that as a sign of the unwavering loyalty of his communal allies, but it is more likely to be nothing but the continued animosity between Guelf and Ghibelline factions that is now largely detached from the fight between pope and emperor that had kicked it off in the first place.

Parma was nevertheless a massive blow to the imperial finances. The city of Victoria had held the imperial treasury, recently enlarged by the significant Babenberger funds. But all that had now been lost. Frederick had to again put a special tax on his Sicilian subjects. Subjects who had almost rebelled two years earlier.

Sicily had taken the imperial deal, which was peace and justice in exchange for obedience. They did accept loss of freedom of speech, worship and association into communes, but they drew the line when it came to their wallets. What had made things particularly irksome was that tax collection had been privatised. Tax farmers promised the emperor a fixed amount in exchange to charge his subjects whatever he can squeeze out of them. That meant taxation was not only a much heavier burden than necessary, but also grossly unfair. Frederick must have known that this was not sustainable, but at the same time, he could not give up. A one-sided end of hostilities would have brought the whole network of alliances to its collapse. And it would have allowed the pope to finally recruit what he called a true Athlete of Christ who would remove Frederick as emperor and as king of Sicily.

Politically Innocent’s position improved when King Louis of France finally left for his crusade in 1248. Until then Louis had undermined Innocent’s plans for a crusade against Frederick because Louis wanted all crusading efforts to focus on the Holy Land where Jerusalem had fallen to the Turks in 1244.

Do I need to mention that Saint Louis’ crusade was a catastrophic failure? Not really. You know the drill, though this one really is deja vue all over again. Because Saint Louis is a pious king and does things properly. So, he took his army to Damietta, and captured Damietta. The sultan offers peace with concessions and Louis being a true crusader, reject them. Then he moved on Cairo this time hoping not on prester John but on the Mongols. Yes, the Mongols, the same Mongols who had been putting the fear of god or fear of agile horsemen into anyone living east of the Rhine.

Just to give you an idea how deluded the papacy and the crusaders have become, here is a fun little story. In April 1245 Pope Innocent IV had sent two Franciscan friars to the court of the Great Khan in Karakorum with a letter. In this letter he enlightened the Khan about the errors of his ways, admonished him to get baptised in the catholic faith and recognise him as vicar of Christ. The great Khan Güyük’s response conveys his befuddlement with the papal proposition. Quote: “How do you think you know whom God will absolve and in whose favour He will exercise His mercy? How do you think you know that you dare to express such an opinion?” and concludes with “You personally, at the head of the Kings, you shall come, one and all, to pay homage to me and to serve me. Then we shall take note of your submission. If, however, you do not accept God’s order and act against our command, we shall know that you are our enemies.” (end quote). Unperturbed by this response Innocent sends further missions and for some reason the crusaders believe the Mongols are going to coordinate their attacks with their efforts in Egypt. Well they did not.

The crusaders get up to exactly the same spot the fifth crusade had perished at and -drumroll, did win the battle there. But then the inevitable happened. The honourable chivalric knights run into a trap laid by wily Egyptian commanders. The crusaders were beaten comprehensively, so comprehensively that the whole army including king Louis were captured. One year, 800,000 byzantine gold coins and the return of Damietta later, king Louis is released. Louis will stay in the Holy Land for another four years achieving nothing.

With Louis out of the picture, Innocent gains room to manoeuvre. He puts up a new anti-king to replace the luckless Heinrich Raspe. This “athlete of christ” is count William of Holland. This count has even less traction that the powerful landgrave. It takes him a year to get into Aachen and to get crowned. After that he returns back to Holland to fight some of his neighbours on the polders. His luck will improve later, but by 1248 he is no real threat to Frederick II and Konrad IV.

Innocent is also on the lookout for a second champion, the one who is supposed to take over the crown of Sicily. He talks to many, amongst them the two most ambitious men in 13^th century Europe, both brothers of kings.

The first is Richard of Cornwall, brother of King Henry III of England. Richard has become a major player in the convoluted politics of England at the time. Usually supportive of his brother, but sometimes also siding with the barons. This game of back and forth has made him one of the richest landowners in England and Count of Poitiers. He does know Sicily well, having visited his sister, the beautiful Isabella who had been married to Frederick II. He was an accomplished soldier who had headed up the last partially successful crusade to the Holy Land in the early 1240s. But Richard turned Innocent down, claiming obligations under the still formally existing alliance between England and the empire. As with William of Holland, this is not the last we will hear from Richard of Cornwall.

The other ambitious man was Charles of Anjou, younger brother of King Louis of France. He too was carving out his own little empire. He had set his eyes on Provence, specifically on Beatrice of Provence, so beautiful she “set men’s hearts thumping and the fingers of Troubadours to fevered twanging of Lyres”. Beatrice was the daughter and heiress to Count Ramon Berengar IV of Provence. Provence was at that time part of the kingdom of Burgundy and hence part of the empire. Its counts were from the family of the counts of Barcelona who had by now risen to kings of Aragon. When Ramon Berengar IV died in 1245 king James I of Aragon immediately occupied the county, seeking to marry Beatrice himself. Beatrice hid in her castle at Aix-en-Provence and asked – who else, but pope Innocent IV for help. Meanwhile a number of other suitors were setting out for the land of olives, wine and troubadours. These included count Raymond VII of Toulouse and it seems Frederick II himself. In such a crowded field a younger son of the king of France needs a powerful sponsor – and that was our favourite pope, Innocent IV. Innocent used Provence as leverage to stop Louis to be overly supportive of Frederick and bang, the lovely Beatrice and her even lovelier inheritance goes to Charles of Anjou. So Charles owed Innocent big time. Still Charles too turns him down when he is asked to contest the crown of Sicily, officially because he was going on the ill-fated crusade of his brother. And again, this is not the last we hear about Charles of Anjou.

Hence in 1248 there was no rival monarch for Sicily and the pretender north of the Alps was a non-entity.

But that is not making things great. Frederick II was 54 years old and he was increasingly alone in his frustration. Not only had Taddeo da Suessa passed away, so had the love of his life, Bianca Lancia. Many of his closest advisors and fellow members of his poet’s society had turned against him in 1246. He began to only trust his immediate family members. His illegitimate sons, Enzio and Frederick of Antioch replaced members of his court as imperial vicars responsible for operations in Northern Italy.

By the end of 1248 he began losing confidence in one of his longest standing and most important advisers. Pietro da Vinea had joined the imperial chancery way back in the 1220s and had raced up the career ladder. By 1224 he was already a judge at the high court. In 1230/31 he was one of the authors of the constitutions of Melfi. In 1243 he was called the imperialis aule protonotarius et regno sicilie logotheta. As protonotary he produced the Latin announcements of the emperor and as we have heard before, was the brains behind the imperial propaganda machine after the excommunication in 1239. His elaborate style of Latin became the benchmark for future chancellors all across Europe. And as Logothet, a byzantine title, he was the actual voice of the emperor. On many of the great occasions when the imperial majesty is presented to the people, Frederick would not speak himself, but sit on a throne, wearing his crown and projecting the majesty of the ruler, whilst Vinea would speak on his behalf.

Between 1234 and 1239 Frederick had a monumental gate constructed in Capua. This enormous gate formed the grand entrance into his kingdom of Sicily. It had a lot in common with ancient Roman triumphal arches and was to symbolise the political program of Frederick II and his kingdom. He is shown in the guise of an ancient Roman emperor, the first time such an iconography had been seen in Western Europe since the fall of the empire. The message was that he has the power to provide peace and justice, the Pax Romana. And justice is made manifest through three tondi, just above the entrance in the kingdom, showing a female head of justice in the middle and two judges, one of the Piero da Vinea and the other either Taddeo da Suessa or Giacomo da Morro, the former loyal to the end, the latter a conspirator in 1246. Few things indicate how much Pietro da Vinea was at the heart of the concept of the state Frederick II had built.

And this heart is about to be torn out. We do not know what exactly happened, but by the end of 1248 Frederick became convinced that Pietro da Vinea was betraying him. Being at the heart of the financial, legal and political system of the empire and the kingdom of Sicily had made Pietro da Vinea immensely rich. Unsurprisingly that fuelled rumours that he was corrupt. But during this time it would have been most unusual for a man in his position not to amass a fortune. Kings and emperors were expected to be generous with their closest advisors and diplomacy involved expensive gifts being given to intermediaries.

The accusation that Frederick will bring forward in February 1249 is that Vinea had begun secret negotiations with the pope. Frederick had ordered that da Suessa and Vinea should always negotiate with Innocent IV together. Neither – so he said – should be allowed to have any conversation with the pope on their own. He did not accuse Vinea of having made any specific arrangements with his enemy, just that he had spoken to Innocent alone and unsupervised. Matthew Paris – always good for a bit a salacious gossip – reports that Vinea had bribed the royal physician to poison Frederick, all on behest of the pope.

Papal propaganda blamed the fall of Vinea on imperial money problems. According to them, Frederick had run out of other financing options and needed the wealth of his closest advisor to keep going.

Whatever the actual reason, Frederick ordered Vinea to be blinded and paraded across Italian cities “pour encourager les autres”. Pietro was not the kind of man who could bear such treatment. In April 1249 guards found Pietro da Vinea lifeless in his cell in the castle of San Miniato near Florence. He had smashed his head in on the column they had been chained him to.

Dante encounters Pietro da Vinea in the 7th circle of hell, where he has been turned into a gnarly dusky tree covered in poisonous thorns and picked at by Harpies. He is in the wood of suicides where men go who have thrown away their earthly bodies forsaking their right to have human form in the afterlife – according to Dante. On the question of his culpability, Dante let Vinea say the following: “By the strange roots of this tree, I swear to you, I never broke faith with my lord, so worthy of honour. If either of you return to the world, raise and cherish the memory of me, that still lies low from the blow Envy gave me.”  (End quote). That is my view too, Vinea was the victim of paranoia and court gossip.

That is not the only disaster 1249 has in store for Frederick. There is the city of Jesi where he had been born and which da Vinea had styled as the new Bethlehem in his propaganda that placed the emperor as the successor and vicar of Christ. Jesi had fallen to papal troops.

And a mere month later comes the next blow. Frederick had handed military command in Northern Italy to his oldest and favourite son Enzio, the Falconello, so similar to his father in appearance and interests. Enzio had been occupied with a retaliatory expedition against Parma when he is called upon by the city of Modena, one of the Ghibelline allies against an attack by Bologna. Enzio races along the Via Aemilia down to Modena. His exhausted troops encounter the army of Bologna at a creek called Fossalta on May 25^th, 1249. In the initial encounter the imperial side is near defeated when nightfall stops fighting. The next morning the main combat action begins. As often in the warfare of this time, the battle is fought almost exclusively by knights on horseback who look for individual contests of strengths to show their chivalric mettle. The encounter is turning into dozens and dozens of individual skirmishes, one man against another. Both sides are almost equally matched. What turns the battle is that Enzio is getting unhorsed in one of his duels. Seeing their leader fall and the memory of the previous night’s failure disheartens the Guelfs and they run. Enzio is quickly back on a horse, but he cannot stem the tide. The imperial troops splinter and find themselves lost in the maze of rivers, creeks and canals that criss-cross the Po valley. Enzio and his remaining troop of knights find themselves surrounded by Bolognese fighters and concede.

For the Bolognese to capture Enzio, himself a king, even though only a king of Sardinia, but also the son of the emperor is a matter of enormous prestige. He and the other captives are led into the victorious city in a sumptuous parade. The citizens celebrate by hanging all their most valuable cloth out of the windows, put on their most sparkling jewels, most shiny armours as the mighty Carriocco of the republic of Bologna parades through the streets followed by the captives in chains, the broken imperial standards and finally King Enzio himself, riding on his warhorse and wearing his crowned helmet with his long blond hair flowing to his waist.  At the end of the great procession Enzio is brought to the palace of the Podesta where he is given a luxurious apartment, where he is held in honourable captivity. His father tries to get him out using both threats and concessions. Even when offered a silver ring going all around the city of Bologna, the consuls of the republic remain firm. They would not release Enzio since he would be the hostage that forever binds the wild boar that is Frederick II. For the remaining 22 years of his life, Enzio will remain in this building that still stands and is known as the Palazzo de Re Enzo in the centre of Bologna. Right in front of it rises the famous statue of Neptune by Giambologna and if visitors get to look at Enzo’s prison at all, it is because it houses the tourist office.

The domino effect that had been feared finally kicks in. Como, forever an enemy of Milan joins the league, the pass connecting Tuscany and Lombardy is taken and finally by the end of 1249 Modena, eternal enemy of Bologna makes peace. No worries, Bologna and Modena will resume fighting a few years later and their enmity is so deep they would fight a war over ownership of a bucket – not a joke. The bucket can still be seen in the cathedral of Modena. And let’s not forget that Ferrari is based in Maranello in the province of Modena whilst their rivals, Lamborghini are from Bologna. Modena going over to the League is a serious blow.

By the end of 1249 Frederick is tired and exhausted. There are no details, but from this time onwards he remains in Puglia, mainly in his favourite palace in Foggia. His health seems to be crumbling under the strain of a decade of warfare.

He leaves the fighting to his generals who are gradually being more successful. Even the citizens of Parma are being defeated, partially reversing the impact of the destruction of Victoria. He announced that he would travel to Germany and finally do the great show of unity with the princes, maybe even go on to Lyon and force the pope into an agreement. According to Matthew Paris Frederick renews his offer to go to the Holy Land, return church property and even abdicate, this time for the benefit of his youngest son, Henry, from his marriage to Isabelle of England. Here is how Matthew Paris describes the papal response (quote):

“To these offers, however, the pope obstinately persisted in the reply, that he would on no account so easily restore to his former condition him whom the general council of Lyons had deposed and condemned. By some it was positively affirmed, that the pope eagerly desired, above all things , to overthrow Frederick , whom he called the great dragon, in order that, he being trampled underfoot and crushed , he might more easily trample down the French and English kings, and the other kings of Christendom (all of whom he called “petty princes,” and “the little serpents “), who would be frightened by the case of the said Frederick, and might despoil them and their prelates of their property at his plea. These speeches, together with the enormous deeds which bore powerful evidence to the meaning of his words, generated offence in the hearts of many, and strengthened the justice of Frederick’s, so that his cause began to improve daily.”

But it is all too late. On December 13, 1250, at the now disappeared town of Castel Fiorentino in Puglia “Frederick, the greatest of earthly princes, the wonder of the world and the regulator of its proceedings, departed this life” to quote Matthew Paris.

On his last days he is surrounded by his son Manfred, the archbishop Berard of Palermo who had been his constant supporter and advisor since he was a teenager, the leader of his German knights, the Great Justice of Sicily and his personal physician. Neither of them left us with an eyewitness report what had happened.

Salimbene di Parma, consistent to the last in his disapproval of the emperor, says he had died as worms grew out of his corrupted body making his flesh fall off his bones under agonising pain. The stench of his cadaver he claims had been so unbearable, it could not be buried with the other kings of Sicily in Palermo. The fact that Frederick’s body is indeed buried in Palermo makes this account a little less credible.

Salimbene is not the only one on the papal propaganda team who has something to say about the manner of his death. The chronicler of the life of Innocent IV describes the emperor’s death as follows; Suffering from a horrific diarrhoea, gnashing his teeth and foaming at the mouth the emperor died under ear-splitting screams of agony, terrified of hell that awaited him, the excommunicate.

Then there is Giovanni Vilani who let the emperor die in his bed, but not from natural causes. According to him Manfred, his son by Bianca Lancia, had suffocated him with a cushion as he feared his father was about to cut him out of his will.

Matthew Paris paints a more typical death scene. The emperor feeling his end coming, makes his last will and testament.  Then he confesses his sins and takes on the habit of a Cistercian monk. Finally his old friend and longest standing supporter, the archbishop Berard of Palermo releases him from the excommunication. In Matthew Paris he dies a confessed sinner, a good death in the eyes of the Middle Ages.

What many agree is the death of the emperor is kept a secret for several days as Manfred grabs the levers of the state and informs his half-brother Konrad IV up in Germany about the demise of their father. News of his death are only circulated on December 26^th, exactly 56 days after his miraculous birth in the town square of Jesi.

Meanwhile his body has been transported to Palermo. As he had ordered, he was to be buried in a large ancient Roman sarcophagus made from Porphyre, the most prized reddish marble. This sarcophagus had initially been destined for his grandfather Roger II, but Frederick had Roger put into another, still impressive tomb and reserved this one for himself.

He lies next to his father, Henry VI and his first mother Constance in Palermo Cathedral. There had been an inscription on his sarcophagus that is now lost, that read:

“If honesty, if wisdom, intelligence and success, if noble conduct could hold back death, then Frederick who lies in this spot, had never died.”

Manfred wrote to his half-brother Konrad IV: “Gone is the sun that shone above the people, gone is the beacon of justice, gone is the harbinger of peace. But great consolation is left to us as he, our father, lived his life joyfully and victorious to the end.”

Frederick had ordered his affairs before he died. His imperial title and the kingdom of Sicily were to go to his son Konrad IV, now a man in his thirties, an accomplished general and – other than his elder brother – an obedient son. Should Konrad IV die, the crowns should go to the youngest of his sons, Henry, from his marriage to Isabella of England. And finally, should Henry pass as well, his inheritance should go to Manfred, his son by Bianca Lancia, indicating that indeed Frederick had married her on her deathbed and legitimised their children. His grandson, the son of his unlucky eldest son was to gain the duchies of Austria and Steiermark.

At the end of December 1250 the picture is surely not rosy, but the imperial side is winning again and there are 4 legitimate Hohenstaufen heirs, let alone a brace of illegitimate ones. The empire North of the Alps is tightly managed by Konrad IV, Sicily is secured by Manfred as Konrad’s viceroy. What could possibly go wrong? Well, we will find out next week. I hope you will join us again.

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Pope Innocent IV calls a crusade against the emperor Frederick II

This week the epic struggle between empire and papacy goes into its final stretch. The pope has fled to Lyon. There he calls a church council which Frederick is now unable to forestall. Pope Innocent IV deposes Frederick, and – for the first time in history – calls a crusade, not against the Muslims, not against pagans, not against heretics or Greek orthodox rulers, but against a Latin Christian monarch who for years had tried to find an amicable solution to what was a political, not a religious disagreement. And all that against the backdrop of Jerusalem having fallen into the hands of the Turks, and the Mongol armies on the march.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 89 – Holy War

This week the epic struggle between empire and papacy goes into its final stretch. The pope has fled to Lyon. There he calls a church council which Frederick is now unable to forestall. Pope Innocent IV deposes Frederick, and – for the first time in history – calls a crusade, not against the Muslims, not against pagans, not against heretics or Greek orthodox rulers, but against a Latin Christian monarch who for years had tried to find an amicable solution to what was a political, not a religious disagreement. And all that against the backdrop of Jerusalem having fallen into the hands of the Turks, and the Mongol armies on the march.

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Last week we saw pope Innocent IV making a momentous decision. He had set off northwards from Rome when he came to a fork in the road. One path led to Narni where the emperor Frederick II was waiting for him to hammer out the last details of a peace agreement his envoys had negotiated on for months. The emperor – who had run out of money and whose support was slowly crumbling away as the excommunication had been going into its fifth year – was prepared to do almost anything. Return all church lands and property seized – tick, furnish an army to go into the Hoy Land – tick, lead the defence of the west against the Mongol invasion – tick. He might even have considered abdicating as emperor in favour of his son Konrad IV, though that is hotly disputed. This was the path to peace.

But it was also the path to political irrelevance for the papacy. Even with all the concessions made, there was the undeniable fact that Hohenstaufen power surrounded the papal states. Even if Frederick takes his troops back into Sicily, the last few years had shown that if need be, any imperial force can operate without hinderance in Lazio, can abduct cardinals and manipulate politics within the city of Rome. The other Christian monarchs had not come to the pope’s aid then and there is little chance they would come at any point in the future.

Because What neither party realised was that all the time pope and emperor had held each other in their mutual death grip, the kings of England, France, Hungary, Poland, Aragon, Castile and so forth had risen in stature. No longer Reguli, little kings, as Barbarossa had still called them, they had built powerful institutions, had begun to raise taxes and had brought the church in their lands into obedience to them. They were happy to formally recognise the pope as their overlord and in many cases as their actual feudal master, but in reality, they did as they pleased.

The political power of the papacy balanced precariously on feet of clay. Giving in to Frederick’s advances would have exposed its inherent weakness. And that mattered more to Innocent IV than the holy Land, it mattered so much, he was prepared to risk a Mongol invasion just to avoid releasing Frederick from the ban. That is why he took the other path, the path that led to Civitavecchia, to a waiting Genoese fleet that took him and seven of his cardinals first to his hometown and later to Lyon, far out of reach of Frederick.

The arrival of the pope in Lyon did not only cause a massive headache for Frederick but was less than welcome to King Louis of France. Louis, an profoundly pious man and later made a saint was nevertheless a cold calculating politician. And as such, the idea of hosting the pope in France itself did not appeal. When Innocent asked to proceed to Rheims, the pre-eminent archiepiscopate of France and at this point a vacant seat, the response was swift.

According to the inevitable Matthew Paris, Louis wrote that “his nobles were by no means willing to consent that he should come to France. For they were afraid lest he should reward his entertainers like a mouse in a sack, or a snake in one’s bosom;”. Not quite the response of an obedient son of the church.

Not being able to proceed to Rheims and live off the proceeds of that rich diocese, Innocent now needed money. The papal states could not send much given that military operations continued, and all resources had to be channelled into paying the troops of cardinal Rainald of Viterbo and his Guelf allies.  So the pope complained to the immensely rich abbots of Cluny and Citeaux, asking them his especial and dearest sons for pecuniary assistance. Which was no doubt forthcoming since we find one of them shortly afterwards as bishop of Langres. The archbishop of Rouen buys a cardinal’s hat, whilst the archbishop of Lyon resigns in disgust leaving the archbishopric to Philip of Savoy who never took holy orders and would end its days as a married Count. Money has become a huge issue for the church by now and Rome’s demands for cash are influencing domestic policies. One of the key criticisms of the reign of Henry III that will lead to the second Baronial war and the Provisions of Oxford was his willingness to send the tithes of the English church down to Rome. The stench of mammon is cutting through all that frankincense and myrhh.

Though the money flow was an issue, Lyon had some great advantages. For one, Innocent IV could now call for a full church council without having to fear interference from the emperor. Though this fear was probably unsubstantiated. Frederick’s previous attempt to prevent a council by attacking and imprisoning prelates had backfired so badly it is unlikely he would have done it again. This time, when the council was called for June 1245, he guaranteed safe passage to any Italian churchman who wanted to attend. And he sent his own representatives to argue his side and maybe prevent the worst that way.

Taddeo de Suessa was the man Frederick sent over. He had been a long-standing member of the imperial chancery, had worked closely with Pietro da Vinea and was also an accomplished poet in that intellectual circle that formed the centre of Frederick’s court. But most importantly he was the foremost legal brain on Frederick’s side.

Was there a chance for Frederick to prevail in the council? On the outset it looked like zero given the invitations left no doubt of Innocent’s intentions. But some of the cardinals were inclined to a more lenient handling of the affair. What was more significant was that the other monarchs were keen to resolve the conflict. Louis IX wanted to go on crusade and the ongoing conflict prevented many potential crusaders from joining up. The Latin emperor of Constantinople, who was at the council was equally keen to get the papacy to focus on his crumbling empire. King Henry III was still technically in an alliance with Frederick. Though the monarchs were not there in person, their prelates were. So things are not quite as hopeless as it may look.

Innocent leaves no doubt about what he wants, the deposition of the emperor, a declaration that all his crowns and titles are forfeit. His arguments are still the same. Frederick is a godless heretic, lover of Saracen company, female and horrible dictu, male also; the denier of God; the destroyer of churches, whose treatment of the Sicilian Church was especially notorious. As king of Sicily he is faithless vassal who does not abide the orders of his liege lord, he is an invader of the papal states, etc. etc. pp.

Having been repeating the same set of arguments over and over again makes it quite easy for Taddeo to refute them. He can point to the emperor’s constant offers to resolve these issues – see above. Taddeo goes one step further and makes the offer of offers, Frederick would end the fighting in Italy and focus solely on the defence against the Mongols, the safeguarding of Constantinople and the recovery of the Holy Land. He would even go there in person, never to return. And as for the emperor’s alleged heresy, these are allegations so serious, they demand the emperor’s right to defend himself. These cannot be prejudged. A decision has to be postponed until the emperor himself arrives. He is on his way, Taddeo lets his audience know.

Innocent responds saying, how can he trust this man who consorts with Muslims and has a harem of dancing girls?  But Taddeo has an answer for that too. Let the kings of France and England stand as the guarantors of the agreement, those he surely do trust. But that is an even bigger non no for Innocent who fears the three monarchs would simply gang up on him.

The pope is stuck. What reason could the ever-benevolent successor of St. Peter have to prevent a sinner to come before the council and explain himself and if he had indeed erred, renounce his errors and ask for forgiveness.

So the council postpones its decision in anticipation of the imperial arrival. Frederick is meanwhile travelling with all pomp and circumstance through Piedmont and seeks permission to cross the alps from none other than the count of Savoy, whose brother had just been made archbishop of Lyon. Progress stalls but is by no means permanently stalled. Innocent IV realises that within just weeks Frederick will be entering Lyon and he will be back to where he was at that juncture in the road north of Rome. Only that now there was no escape. France was closed to him and most other places in the empire he could reach from here were under even closer control of Frederick.

And so he does what he had wanted to do right from the beginning. On July 17^th, 1245, he, not the council, proclaimed the sentence of excommunication and deposition of the emperor Frederick II. The council, which did not necessarily want to condemn him had to fall in line. Opposing the papal decision would have fatally undermined the status of the church, so they went along.

When Frederick hears that Innocent IV had declared all his crowns to be lost, he has his treasure chest brought up to him in Asti where he was staying, puts the imperial crown on his head and says, eyes blazing: “I have not yet lost my crown, neither will pope nor council take it from me without a bloody war”.

And a war it is. Not just a normal war, but a holy war. Innocent IV makes the fight against Frederick II a full-scale crusade. Anyone who picks up arms against the emperor will receive the same absolution from sins a crusader putting his life on the line in Acre or Tyre receives. And should one die in the pursuit of the heretic Sicilian, it is a direct road to heaven, without the need to stop even for the briefest of moments in purgatory. Never before had a full crusade been called against a Christian monarch, let alone an emperor. There were papal wars where soldiers received blessings and absolutions and to a degree Gregory IX had already called the fight against Frederick a crusade. But this is different. The crusade against the Hohenstaufen is given equal billing alongside the crusade in the Holy Land.

The crusader idea had been diluted for a while with actions against the Albigensian and the pagans in the east standing alongside the fight for Jerusalem. In fact the two great papal jurists, Gregory IX and Innocent IV had further developed the concept of crusades dividing them into two types, the ones fought outside Europe to spread Christianity and the ones fought here at home to purify the Mother Church from the gangrene of heresy and disobedience. Is anyone surprised that 150 years into the Crusades and an ideology of papal supremacy these two eminent thinkers conclude that the fight to keep the church pure was more important than those fought out in Palestine?

Louis IX of France is apoplectic about the papal move. He meets Innocent at Cluny and makes it clear to him that his new crusade against Frederick diverts from the urgently needed support to the Holy land, let alone the defence against the Mongols. But there is no way back for Innocent. He has singlehandedly convicted Frederick II despite all the arguments he had heard to the contrary. If he were to backtrack, it would be the admission of an error and since Gregory VII, the pope cannot err.

Where are the mongols when you need them to refute papal infallibility.

All Louis can do is banning the preaching of the crusade in France. Similarly the English barons force Henry III to cut off money flow to the papacy and only a small trickle of crusaders head for Italy. Equally attempts to raise forces in Denmark, Poland and Germany are ultimately unsuccessful. These guys quite sensibly think that defence against the Mongols has priority, and if one were to go on crusade, then properly, to Jerusalem.

Apart from the crusader absolution, Innocent tries various other ways to foster opposition to Frederick II. One very powerful instrument was the papal ability to control marriages, namely either to allow marriages within the otherwise prohibited level of consanguinity, aka marrying your cousin. Alternatively the pope could dissolve marriages that had been made between peoples too closely related. That was enormously powerful, since the prohibition was against consanguinity in the seventh degree, which basically meant virtually any marriage within the European high Aristocracy required a dispensation.

These efforts achieved at least one positive outcome for the pope, the election of an anti king in Germany, Heinrich Raspe, the Landgrave of Thuringia. He was elected mainly with the votes of the bishops and managed to achieve an initial victory against the forces of Frederick’s on, king Konrad IV. But luck quickly turned against the Landgrave and by 1247 he was dead. He had no children and there were no descendants left of that great family that had included the Saint Elisabeth of Thuringia.  Upon his death the great possessions of the Landgraves acquired with such astute wheeling, dealing were given to the House of Wettin. They later formed this string of duchies including Sachsen Anhalt, Sachsen Meiningen and Sachsen Coburg Gotha, of Prince Albert fame.

As a deposed emperor and king, Frederick’s reign is not legitimate, it is tyranny. And tyrannicide – as any decent scholastic will tell you – is justified. In 1246 a conspiracy is unveiled to kill the emperor and to take over the kingdom of Sicily for the pope. The conspirators are not some disgruntled Sicilian barons, but senior members of the imperial bureaucracy. One, Bernardo Orlando Rossi was the podesta of Parma and an administrator of a province in the regno of Sicily, Giacomo da Morra had been put in charge of the March of Ancona and a third, Guiglieno de Sanseverino was from a large family long loyal to the House of Hohenstaufen. When the plot was discovered, Morra and Snaseverino fled to Rome where the cardinals provided them with shelter and safety, which points the finger clearly at Innocent IV. Others were less fortunate. They holed up in some fortress which was quickly taken, and their bodies mutilated in the most gruesome fashion. Rebellion sparked across the kingdom as people had enough of the constantly rising taxes and interference in the economy to fund a war far, far away.

A direct involvement of the pope in the attempted murder was never established, but his behaviour towards the conspirators suggests he would have condoned their acts, had they been successful. For Frederick this conspiracy has a catastrophic effect on his mental state. These were men he had trusted, he had promoted and had relied upon to manage his beloved kingdom of Sicily. Their betrayal highlighted two things, on the one hand that the excommunication was undermining his moral authority and on the other that the constant demands for money and resulting tax burden was festering rebellion. Frederick badly wanted to get out of this cycle of eroding control, but Innocent was all the way out in Lyon and even if Frederick had got there, Innocent would fight tooth and nail not to lift the ban. There is more than a whiff of Greek tragedy about all that is happening from now on.

There is one bright spot in this otherwise quite dismal year 1246. The duke of Austria Friedrich der Streitbare, which roughly translates as Frederick the cantankerous, had died. His name was well deserved. This duke of Austria was almost perennially at war with his neighbours, the kings of Bohemia and Hungary but also with Frederick II himself. In 1236 Frederick had defeated him and the relationship had stabilised. In the 1240s it became clear that the warlike duke would die without male offspring. Under the Privilegium Minus, which you may remember from the days of Barbarossa, the dukes of Austria were able to pass their fief through the female line, which made his daughter Gertrud and his sister Margaret the potential heirs. Frederick had put in a bid for Gertrud but was most humiliatingly rebuffed by his vassal. The reason is not public, but it may well have been the excommunication that gave Gertrud and her dad pause for thought. Or it may have been all these wild rumours about harems and dancing girls and squads of illegitimate children that dented the imperial attractiveness as groom. Gertrud would marry someone else but by the time old Frederick the Cantankerous last of the house of Babenberg bit the bullet in – where else – a battle with a neighbour, the emperor took possession of Austria officially for safekeeping. But he had no desire to hand it to anyone else and the next 30 years are a convoluted mess of claims, counterclaims, battles and court cases, at the end of which a previously almost unknown count from Switzerland, a certain Rudolf whose castle was named after the hawks that flew above it took possession. His family, the lords of the hawks, the Habichtsburg later abbreviated to Habsburg would hold the reigns of Austria and quite a bid besides until 1918.

As 1246 gave way to 1247 Frederick’s position had not necessarily improved overall, but has remained stable, which is a great achievement given his deposition and the calling of a crusade against him. Sicily was back under control, and he had got his paws on the wealth of the house of Babenberg, providing very temporary relief for his money troubles.

Militarily the situation is somewhat bewildering. There are two papal armies active in central Italy but they are small and had suffered several defeats. In Lombardy the sort of baseline level of warfare is continuing. His vicars for the North, Ezzelino da Romano in Veneto and Enzio in the Romagna are reasonably successful. Not that any major cities could be swapped, but castles are being captured and enemy lands devastated.

It is a weird sort of war, since the enemy, the pope, sits unassailably in Lyon. And even if troops could be brought down, the PR backlash of capturing and mistreating a pope would defeat the whole purpose. But stopping hostilities isn’t an answer either, because once the Ghibelline side loses momentum, the Guelfs in the allied cities would take over and the whole house of cards would have crumbled. It is intensely frustrating.

Imperial propaganda tries to push back against the ever shriller allegations of imperial misdemeanours by highlighting the papal outfit in Lyon as one money-grabbing bazaar where all sorts of absolutions and dispensations are sold to the highest bidder. Tapping into the beliefs of the Franciscans, Pedro da Vinea calls for the church to focus purely on the spiritual and leave the worldly concerns to the temporal lords.

To break the gridlock, Frederick plans to go to Germany and at least put on a show of strength. If the German princes were to join him at one of his assemblies, the papal ban would look futile and petty. And that may help king Louis or one of the less fanatic cardinals to convince Innocent to reopen negotiations. Lots of ifs and buts, but something, anything to move this on…

Innocent does not want anything to move on or forward or anywhere. He knows Frederick is running low on cash and time is on his side. But the idea that the emperor could come to Germany is disconcerting. That needs to be stopped. Best way to stop that is stirring up something in Lombardy.

The city of Parma had been pro-imperial since hostilities began. But like in every Italian city, it did have a Guelf party within its walls. One of the conspirators of 1246, Bernardo Orlando Rossi had been Podesta of Parma and still counted many people there amongst his friends. Armed with plenty of papal cash he managed to instigate a Guelf uprising. The Ghibellines were thrown out, the gates closed and Parma joined the Lombard League.

Frederick had to respond. Parma controlled the road that connects Tuscany, where the empire had important bases and Lombardy. Parma was strategic. Hence, he ordered Enzio and Ezzelino to begin a siege of Parma. Frederick himself joined them in the summer.

Frederick decided that Parma was to be made an example of. He declared that the history of Parma was to come to an end. It was to be razed to the ground. In its place had a new city built, initially in wood, just outside the gates of the old one. This city he modestly called Victoria. Depending on the chronicler, Victoria was either a magnificent creation of astounding proportions or a rather unimpressive product of the febrile hubris of the emperor. Whatever it looked like, Frederick made it the nerve centre of the imperial activity in Lombardy. He had the imperial bureaucracy and treasury brought over there. Frederick had settled in Victoria for the long run. Sieges he knew could run for a long time and patience was the order of the day.

On February 18^th, 1248, a good 7 months into the siege, Frederick went out to the nearby hills to do what he loved doing more than anything, hunting with falcons. Having seen the imperial party disappear, the Parmegiani attacked Victoria. The imperial army, led by Enzio came out to face them. The attackers saw their enemy coming out and fled, not straight back home, but around the walls, away from the wooden provocation. Believing this to be the great opportunity to bring an end to this rather draining siege, Enzio and his men gave chase. Soon they were too far from their great new city of Victoria to see what happened there. The remaining citizens or Parma, including women and children, armed with any weapon they could, came pouring out of the gates and quickly overwhelmed the skeleton crew that protected the wooden city.

The attackers put the ostentatiously named settlement to the torch. They captured the imperial treasury, which included not just gold and precious vestments, but also the imperial crown. Most historians agree that it was indeed the imperial crown, the one today displayed in Vienna the one the emperor had put on his head in 1245 and threatened the pope with war, that was the one captured by the citizens of Parma. Equally many of Frederick’s personal possessions were looted, including his copy of De Arte Venandi con Avibus, the Art of Hunting with Birds. This lavishly decorated copy seems to have been in the possession of a Milanese merchant in 1268 and later disappeared. It was the full text, i.e., three times larger than the copy we still have today. That is the famous moamin, I mentioned some episodes back.

But the most devastating loss for Frederick was that of his advisor Taddeo da Suessa, the man who defended him in Lyon in 1245 and had become ever closer to the emperor who had grown incredibly suspicious since the betrayal of 1246. Da Suessa had his hands cut off and was then dragged off to die in a dank prison cell in Parma.

The emperor returned a few days later to the scene of devastation. He did take one long look around, held a face-saving great assembly and left. The siege of Parma was over. His army occupied the pass across the Apennines into Tuscany so that communications remained open. But Frederick will never go to Germany again. There will not be a great display of princely loyalty. Innocent IV remains in Lyon, the ban stays.

What still surprises me how little PR mileage the papacy got out of the failure of the siege. What better symbol for the validity of the papal ban than the crown of the deposed emperor falling into the hands of the crusaders. But we have reached a point in this battle of fanatical ideologues where neither side believes a word the other is saying and trusts any old nonsense their own leadership is spouting. That sound familiar? Nothing new under the sun.

I think I will leave it here. Next week we will talk about the last leg of this sad and sorry tale that involves the emperor, Frederick II. I hope you will come along. And apologies for not publishing on the 29^th of December. I was definitely in no state to record anything. My voice is gradually coming back, so normal service should resume. Before I go, let me thank all of you who are supporting the show, in particular the Patrons who have kindly signed up on patreon.com/historyofthegermans. It is thanks to you this show does not have to do advertising for products you do not want to hear about. If Patreon isn’t for you, another way to help the show is sharing the podcast directly or boosting its recognition on social media. If you share, comment or retweet a post from the History of the Germans it is more likely to be seen by others, hence bringing in more listeners. My most active places are Twitter @germanshistory and my Facebook page History of the Germans Podcast. As always, all the links are in the show notes.

Can Genghis Khan fore a reconciliation between Frederick II and the Papacy?

This week our story kicks off with the death of pope Gregory IX, nonagenarian impeccable foe of emperor Frederick II. Peace is in the air. Of the 11 cardinals getting together in the dilapidated Septizonium once built by emperor Septimus Severus, half wanted a more conciliatory vicar of Christ, but the other half did not. The very first papal conclave followed as the senator Matteo Orsini locks the cardinals up in horrible conditions. When finally one of them is chosen, he died just 17 days later from the exertions. By now all the cardinals have fled and the church remains without a head for almost 2 years. At the same time the descendants of Genghis Khan descend upon Europe. Jerusalem falls to the Turks, the Latin empire of Constantinople is on its last leg..

Is it time for the emperor and the pope to bury the hatchet and face the real enemies of Christendom…..?

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 88 – A Road to Peace?

This week our story kicks off with the death of pope Gregory IX, nonagenarian impeccable foe of emperor Frederick II. Peace is in the air. Of the 11 cardinals getting together in the dilapidated Septizonium once built by emperor Septimus Severus, half wanted a more conciliatory vicar of Christ, but the other half did not. The very first papal conclave followed as the senator Matteo Orsini locks the cardinals up in horrible conditions. When finally one of them is chosen, he died just 17 days later from the exertions. By now all the cardinals have fled and the church remains without a head for almost 2 years. At the same time the descendants of Genghis Khan descend upon Europe. Jerusalem falls to the Turks, the Latin empire of Constantinople is on its last leg..

Is it time for the emperor and the pope to bury the hatchet and face the real enemies of Christendom…..?

Before we start just a reminder. The History of the Germans Podcast is advertising free thanks to the generous support from patrons. And you can become a patron too and enjoy exclusive bonus episodes and other privileges from the price of a latte per month. All you have to do is sign up at patreon.com/historyofthegermans or on my website historyofthegermans.com. You find all the links in the show notes. And thanks a lot to Hugo G., Sighvatur, and Stefan B. who have already signed up.

Last week we left Frederick II and pope Gregory IX hurling the wildest accusations at each other. The pope, Frederick insists is a “false father” who acts out of unjust ill will against him, whilst the pope denounces the emperor as a heretic who believes the world deceived by three deceivers, Moses, Mohammed and Jesus Christ, a veritable monster of the sea, the antichrist himself. Multiple attempts at negotiating at least a truce have failed. The two sides are now firmly painted into their corners.

Emperor Frederick II has the upper hand militarily. His troops have surrounded Rome and could attack any time. His navy had just achieved a major victory, sank or captured 25 Genoese war galleys and got hold of a large number of bishops and abbots, including two cardinals. However, he did not dare to apply any more brute force for fear of a public relations backlash. Meanwhile the war with the Lombard League is still ongoing. Occasionally smaller cities are overwhelmed, but the large ones, in particular the mighty walls of Milan cannot be scaled. Money is running low. Every month the excommunication lingers on, and the Franciscan monks preach against him, his authority diminishes. Frederick is stuck. Neither can he take the pope and force him into submission, nor can he get him to agree to peace.

Pope Gregory IX too is in a difficult situation. His hold on the papal lands and the city of Rome is tenuous at best. His great council where he wanted to get Frederick condemned by all of Christianity had to be cancelled after the attendees had been captured on the high see and disappeared into southern Italian dungeons. His alliance with the Lombards raises eyebrows as at least Milan is harbouring a large community of Cathars. The kings of England and France are using their influence to pressure him into making peace. In particular the King of France is pushing for a reconciliation so that the forces of Christendom could be unified in another crusading effort. Jerusalem is much less secure as the 10-year peace agreement with Sultan Al Kamil had ended and Turkish raiders have appeared in the levant. The Latin Kingdom of Constantinople is teetering on the brink of collapse from both internal and external threats. Emperor Baldwin of Constantinople, formerly the count of Flanders, has to sell the great relics of the ancient city to the crowned heads of Europe, which is how the crown of thorns ends up in Sainte Chapelle in Paris.

Into all this, news reach Italy of an invasion by a new foe. Hardy men riding on fast and agile horses, shooting arrows from the saddle. The Mongols had arrived. The Mongol empire was about to reach its furthest extent under their great Khan Ogedei, a son of Genghis Khan. His lands stretched from Beijing to the Polish border, when he ordered an invasion of Central Europe in 1241. The Mongols advanced in three columns, one going into Poland, one into Bohemia and one into Hungary. The rulers of Poland were beaten at the battles of Liegnitz on April 9 and 2 days later King Bela IV of Hungary’s forces are smashed at the even larger battle of Mohi. Bohemia held out better, mainly because King Wenceslaus avoided open battles and focused on defending the walled cities. A forward Mongol detachment entered the city of Meissen in Saxony and burned it down. The Mongol forces broke through to Dalmatia and stood on the shores of the Adriatic.

Two people were expected to lead the response against these challenges in both the Holy Land and the eastern frontier of Christendom, the pope and the emperor. Demands for an immediate reconciliation were going up across Germany and eastern Italy in particular.

And right then, on August 22^nd, 1241, Pope Gregory IX died, according to Matthew Paris he was almost 100 years old. He had sat on the throne of St. Peter for an impressive 14 years. We saw him manly through the lens of his conflict with Frederick II, but he was an important pope on other levels too. Being an accomplished jurist his pontificate saw the publication of the New Decretals, a systematic compilation of all papal pronouncements that forms the basis of canon law to this day. He was an huge supporter of the mendicant brothers, he elevated St. Francis, Dominic, Elisabeth of Hungary and Anthony of Padua to sainthood. He regularised the persecution of heretics by expanding and professionalising the inquisition. At this point the inquisition was an improvement on the uncontrolled lynching of presumed heretics by mobs of townspeople. For instance Matthew Paris reports in 1240 the city of Milan, (quote) “more for fear of punishment than from love of virtue and in order to redeem their good name burnt the heretics who inhabited the city in great numbers; by which deed the number of citizens was greatly diminished. (end quote). Milan in 1200 had probably 100,000 if not 150,000 inhabitants, so you can do the maths.  

The death of Gregory IX may have been a lamentable event, but it also opened up the opportunity to resolve the differences between pope and emperor and focus on what really mattered, defence against the Mongols and support for the Christians in the Holy Land.

Hence you would expect the cardinals, of which there were 11 in the city of Rome and two in Frederick’s jails, to come together and quickly elect a pope. Getting together they did, but electing took its time.

The college of Cardinals was split right down the middle. Four of them, led by a Genoese, Sinibaldo de’Fieschi pushed for a candidate very much in the mould of Gregory IX, a committed foe of the emperor. Another six were taking a more conciliatory approach, looking for a candidate who could find an amicable resolution to the conflict. That group was led by the cardinal Giovanni Colonna.

To understand what happens these next few weeks months, we have to take a quick look at the political situation in the city of Rome. When Gregory IX returned to the city after the imperial army had failed before Brescia, he began to rejig the internal power structures. Frederick’s supporters were expelled from the city and even amongst the pro-papal faction, the Frangipani lost a lot of influence. Rome is gradually settling into two competing camps, one led by the Orsini and one by the Colonna family. These two families will dominate Roman politics until the papal states are subsumed into Italy in the 19^th century.

In 1241 the Colonna had aligned themselves with Frederick II, whilst the Orsini had become supporters of Gregory IX. When the pope died, Matteo Orsini was the senator and de facto rule of the city of Rome, whilst Giovanni Colonna, himself a cardinal, was in Frederick’s camp outside the city.

Matteo Orsini had – as one would expect – a strong personal interest in who would become pope. And he took on the task of organising the election process. The process of papal elections had gradually become more formalised over the previous 200 years. In 1073 Pope Gregory VII had still ascended the throne of St. Peter by spontaneous acclamation by the people of Rome. Subsequently elections were the privilege of the college of cardinals. Pope Alexander III had introduced a rule that a papal election required a 2/3 majority of the cardinals, since there had been several previous elections where the minority party had still elected their pope, causing endless schisms and wars.

As things stood, neither side could bring together a 2/3 majority. As the debate raged on, Matteo Orsini became concerned this could go on for ever and he feared there would simply not be a pope for a long time. So he ordered the cardinals to gather in a hall inside an ancient Roman monument, the Septizonium of emperor Septimus Severus and not leave until they had elected a pope.

This was a building, initially constructed in the 3^rd century as part of the imperial palace at the foot of the Palatine Hill. Its appearance can best be described as an oversized Roman Theatre wall. It was a free-standing façade divided into seven segments and three stories high. Somehow the Frangipani family had turned this thing into a fortress and private accommodation, though by the time of the papal election of 1241 it was allegedly already quite dilapidated. I will post some pictures of what it looked like in antiquity and then later in the 16^th century on the episode webpage. When you look at it you will realise that it is almost impossible to figure out where there could have been rooms inside this structure. But all sources agree that this is where the cardinals met.

The 11 cardinals began their deliberations inside the Septizonium on September 21^st. Amongst them was Giovanni Colonna, who had been admitted to the city of Rome by his rival Matteo Orsini to ensure the legitimacy of the election.

The four anti-imperial cardinals proposed Romano of Porto, whilst the pro-imperial faction proposed Goffredo of Santa Sabina. Ballot followed after ballot, but the numbers did not shift. The conditions in the hall where 10 elderly men were now living full time began to become difficult. Matteo Orsini tried to accelerate the process by allowing his guards to urinate in the attic above the hall, letting nasties rain down on the cardinals every time the heavens opened. At one point Matteo threatened to have pope Gregory IX exhumed and put on a throne inside the hall to accelerate the process. But for the cardinals on either side of the aisle, the choice to be made was more important than their discomfort. An English cardinal, Richard of Somerscote even died during this conclave.

Frederick II tried to break the gridlock by offering to release the two cardinals he held in custody, one of whom was pro-imperial, the other strongly on the Gregory IX’s side. His condition for the release of the two cardinals was however stringent, he would only allow it if the cardinals were to elect the imperial-friendly cardinal Otto of St. Nicholas.

This blatant attempt at blackmail and the prospect of continuing to live in this pigsty during November and December stirred the cardinals into action. The hardliner candidate Romano of Prato was out, largely because rumours went around, he had done something naughty to or with the queen of France. That opened up a space to elect Goffredo de Castiglione as pope Celestine IV. Celestine IV wasn’t the oldest of the cardinals, but he clearly had suffered more than others from the ordeal in the Septizonium. He called it a day after 17 days. This was the third shortest pontificate in history during which he managed to do one remarkable thing which was to excommunicate Matteo Orsini, the man who had locked them all up and had caused his own death.

So the process had to be restarted. But that was now more difficult. Once released from their horrific conclave the cardinals had sprinted out of Rome, faster than a Sicilian war galley. The only ones left in Rome were Giovanni Colonna, who had been locked up by his enemy Matteo Orsini as soon as the result had been announced. And Sinobaldo de’Fieschi, the papal hardliner and 2 of his fellow cardinals. That was not a sufficient quorum. Several of the remaining cardinals gathered at Agnani, a papal palace by the sea.

For the next one year and 9 month there would be no pope. The cardinals in Agnani refused to come to Rome, afraid of the general lawlessness of the city and the treatment they had received from Matteo Orsini who seemed to have shrugged off his excommunication more easily than Frederick. Three-way negotiations followed between the emperor, the cardinals in Rome and those in Agnani.

Frederick had hoped that the cardinals, once freed from the authoritarian fist of the pope would rejoice in their control of the church, but that is not what happened. The cardinals felt deeply uneasy about the lack of actual papal authority, and probably even more uneasy about the fact that it was largely their fault being unable to agree on a joint candidate.

So they did what people ever so often do. They deflected their sense of failure on to someone else, and who better than the emperor, heretic and apocalyptic monster. They blamed the lack of decision on the imprisonment of the two cardinals, James of Praeneste and Otto of St. Nicolas in Puglia. If only the emperor would release them from the terrible conditions of their incarceration and let them take part in the conclave, they would have selected a new Vicar of Christ months ago. The constant repetition of this allegations by the cardinals and then the Franciscans all across Europe, complemented with horror stories about the conditions in southern Italian jails, the PR war had developed not necessarily to the emperor’s advantage.

Public opinion blamed the emperor, not Matteo Orsini’s ambition or the stubbornness if Sinibaldo de Fieschi for this lack of papal guidance in the midst of the great calamity that was engulfing Europe.

Even though Frederick finally released the two cardinals he did it too late. The college had finally got together and unanimously elected Sinibaldo de’Fieschi, the proponent of a hard line against Frederick, as pope Innocent IV.

Upon receipt of the news, Frederick had church bells rung in jubilation all across his lands. Some Historians argued because he was mistaken in believing Innocent was a man he could deal with. I am more in the camp of the cynics who see this as a publicity stunt making Frederick out as a penitent sinner rejoicing in the restoration of the natural order of things where a pope leads the church.

In any event Innocent IV picked up right where Gregory IX had left off. He immediately renewed the excommunication of the emperor. Innocent IV’s demands were the same as those of Gregory IX. Reversal of the damage done to the church in Southern Italy, return of the papal lands occupied since the conflict erupted in 1239 and an inclusion of the Lombard league in any peace agreement.

The continuation of the struggle blew a major hole into Frederick’s arguments. Frederick had insisted that his disagreement was not with the Holy Mother Church, but with the old man on the papal throne who abused his position to pursue a personal vendetta. Now that we have a new pope, this new pope continues to go after the emperor. Frederick’s struggle is clearly not with one angry old man, but with the whole of the Church of Rome.

As the military struggle in Northern Italy continued to be inconclusive and costing him money he did not have, he was trying to get to some sort of compromise. He put together a negotiation team headed by Pietro de Vigna and Taddeo di Suessa and the new High master of the Teutonic Knights, Heinrich von Hohenlohe and sent them to Rome. They had wide ranging authority, which was something they needed. Innocent IV’ demands were huge. In fact what he asked for was literally 100% with no concessions whatsoever. All he was prepared to grant in return was an examination of the emperor’s faith by a commission comprised of episcopal and lay princes. But he would make no commitments as to the outcome of that investigation nor about the ultimate sanction. A commission with such a broad remit and decision power may well arrive at the solution that the emperor would have to put down one of his crowns, a solution Frederick would have found completely unacceptable.

Whilst the negotiations were ongoing, Frederick suffered a military setback. The city of Viterbo, just North of Rome had gone over to the imperial side in 1240. In 1243 the cardinal Rainier of Viterbo, one of the most anti imperial of the cardinals convinced his compatriots to stage a coup in the city. The insurgent Guelfs apprehended their Ghibelline neighbours  and took the reins of the state. The Ghibellines that had escaped the purge fled into the citadel inside the city where the imperial garrison and the Podesta were holding out. Frederick took his army and besieged Viterbo, but the commune had and still has some impressive fortifications whilst the imperial army was small and poorly equipped, another sign of how short money had become.

In November 1243 it was clear that Viterbo could not be taken. Frederick negotiated a truce, and pope and cardinal promised safe conduct for the besieged garrison inside the city. As the remaining Ghibellines and the imperial soldiers abandoned their stronghold to leave the city, the Guelfs broke through the thin line of papal officers protecting the safe conduct. Disregarding any promises made by their feudal and spiritual overlords, the jubilant Guelfs massacred most of them.

This so-called “Viterbo affair” provided a much-needed boost to the imperial PR machine. The reluctance to negotiate in good faith and the massacre of the imperial garrison revealed the pope as duplicitous and solely focused on his fight with the emperor.

Meanwhile the situation on the eastern border is becoming ever more concerning. Yes, the Mongols had disappeared as quickly as they had arrived. But nobody knew why they retreated and more importantly, when they would be back. In fact the decision to retreat is something that confuses historians to this day. For a long time the prevalent theory was that the Mongol leaders had to go back home to vote on the succession of Ogedei Khan, the son of Genghis Khan who ruled this vast empire that simultaneously fought wars in Korea, India, Georgia, Armenia and in eastern Europe. That theory is now largely dismissed since they retreated before the message of Ogedei’s death could have reached them. What is more likely is that the campaign in Eastern Europe had overstretched their supply lines plus the wet climate in the 1240s made their composite bows less effective. I guess we will talk about this in a lot more detail next season when we discuss the north of Germany, the Teutonic Knights and the Hanseatic League. For our narrative today it is important to remember that whilst we know the Mongols will not come back, the peoples living on the Eastern side of the empire, in Poland and Hungary did not know that. They desperately wanted the emperor to be free to come to their aid.

But what caused even more pressure on the pope was a knock-on effect of the Mongol invasion of Central Asia. Between 1077 and 1231 the region that makes up Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan and Iran was ruled by the so-called Khwarazmian empire. To my utter shame, I know nothing about this empire that included cities like Samarkand, Isfahan, Merv and Rey, each larger and richer than any Western European city, safe maybe for Paris and Milan. If you are interested in this region, Peter Frankopan’s book The Silk Roads is a fantastic way to get an idea of all these lands and cultures we have been studiously ignoring for far too long.

This great Khwarzmian empire broke under the onslaught of the Mongols between 1218 and 1231. The shahs who ruled it either died or fled. One of the last descendants of the Shahs formed a mercenary army that he hired out in the endless wars between Muslim powers in the Middle East. In 1244 the Ayyubids, that is the family of Saladin and Al Kamil allowed the mercenaries to take and sack Jerusalem, which they did. The story of the fighting is a bit convoluted, but it seems a battle had occurred before the gates of the city which ended in a complete defeat of the crusader army. The master of the Hospitallers at Jerusalem described the outcome as follows:

Quote “In the said battle, then, the power of the Christians was crushed, and the number of slain in both armies was incomputable. The masters of the Templars and Hospitallers were slain, as also the masters of other orders, with their brethren and followers, Walter, count of Brienne, and the lord Philip de Montfort, and those who fought under the patriarch were cut to pieces; of the Templars only eighteen escaped, and sixteen of the Hospitallers, who were afterwards sorry that they had saved themselves.“

The city fell after barely a month of siege. The graves of the kings of Jerusalem were opened, their bones dispersed. There was some murdering and plundering, though they let 6,000 Christians leave the city unmolested which suggests it was a lot more civilised than the siege of Jerusalem by the first crusaders who let the streets run red with blood.

This put immense pressure on pope Innocent IV. In particular king Louis IX, the most ardent of crusaders thought the conflict with the emperor a pointless distraction. All of Christendom’s efforts should be in his mind be directed towards the crusade in the Holy Land. In England the barons were already restless and resented the hapless king Henry III’s subservience to the pope. The Latin emperor of Constantinople having sold everything and anything that had not been nailed down in this once greatest city of the world was journeying from court to court looking for help.

Innocent IV was dragged kicking and screaming to the negotiation table. A deal was hammered out, details of which I will spare you. Suffice to say they were very much in favour of the papacy, land and privileges returned. Frederick was to recognise his errors and support Louis IX’ crusade as well as bring help to the German princes defending the eastern border. It also included some restrictions on his ability to operate in Lombardy.

Frederick was willing to accept it. He had simply run out of money and the excommunication was weighing on his authority. It has now been going of for five years and as I said before, time is a factor here. The German princes had been loyal at the beginning, but now the front is crumbling. The archbishops of Mainz and Cologne had moved over to the papal side, largely for financial reasons. The pope simply threatened to remove the implicit financial guarantee for the repayment of loans to the Lombard bankers and since Frederick no longer had the funds to pluck the hole, they moved.

So once the terms of the agreement had been finalised in Rome, he wrote to his allies in Germany that soon the issue will be resolved and he will come to help with the Mongol threat.

But then problems emerged. Innocent had not made any commitment as to when and how he would release Frederick from the ban. Innocent insisted on a gradual process. Frederick was to hand over the lands and privileges, display his devotion to the church in general and the pope in particular, and then, and only then, once he has been stripped down of his power, then Innocent would surely absolve him. Even some of the cardinals and certainly those pushing for immediate reconciliation such as the king of France and the recently arrived Latin emperor of Constantinople thought this was unworkable. Rather than yielding to his colleagues, Innocent appointed a brace of new – more malleable – cardinals. 

This was now no longer a question of irreconcilable differences but a problem of trust. And Frederick thought – quite rightly – that the best way to deal with the issue of trust was to talk it through, man to man, sinner and priest. That is what happened in 1230 where he hammered out his deal with pope Gregory IX and he was confident that his charisma and negotiation skills would be enough to bring this one over the line. He was after all the man who sweettalked a Muslim ruler out of Jerusalem.

They would meet, it was decided, at Narni, a hilltop town north of Rome. There all will be resolved. The pope left Rome and headed north. But at Sutri, halfway to Narni, Innocent IV put on a disguise and with few companions rode down to Civitavecchia, the harbour city of the papal states. There he boarded a Genoese Galley that took him to his home city, Genoa. He would stay in Genoa for three months before he moved on further to Lyon. Lyon may be formally in the empire and hence technically a territory under Frederick’s control, but just across the Rhone River lay the Kingdom of France, a last resort should Frederick come down with military might.

This flight to Lyon foreshadows the later and more significant flight of the popes to Avignon. Why he did it? Most likely not for fear of being apprehended and locked up in Puglia as Matthew Paris suggested. There had been many other opportunities for Frederick to have done this earlier. It was more likely the fear that when he was to meet Frederick, he would run out of arguments/fall under his spell. Frederick could have staged another Canossa, done ostentatious penance before the merciful pope who had to readmit the prodigal son. Innocent ran because he could not stay without lifting the ban. And he had seen what happened to his predecessor when he had lifted the ban in 1230. Gregory IX lost so much influence and Frederick was able to first consolidate his rule in Southern Italy and then inflict the victory at Cortenuova on the Lombards. Peace with Frederick looked very much like the end of the imperial papacy.

And that is the ultimate reason for this endless and irreconcilable conflict between Frederick and his popes. There may be some personal animosity and an abhorrence for the emperor’s ideas about science and truth. But it cannot be just that. We have gone through dozens of popes since 1077 and not one was willing to be a true friend and supporter of an emperor. The two institutions were on a diametrically opposing track. They could not make peace, because peace would mean one of them had won.

If Frederick had got his peace, his armies would encircle the papal lands. He would be able to dominate the papacy. The pope could not immediately excommunicate him again. A couple of years of that and the successor of St. Peter would be nothing more than an imperial chaplain. And that was acceptable to a Sylvester II but inconceivable for a 13^th century pope. We have gone beyond the point where either side can pretend. The Popes and the House of Hohenstaufen now fight it out to the death.

The next instalment of this epic tale may come through next week, December 29^th, though I do not want you guys to count on it. There is the tiny issue of Christmas along the way that tends to disrupt production. I also caught the coughing lurgi last week and struggle to shake it, so there may not be a show for the simple reason that I have no voice. All I can promise is that I will try. I know for a fact that I often crave my favourite shows during that lull period between Christmas and New Year.

In any event a very, very merry Christmas to you all. Another year has gone, a solid 45 episodes, all about just one family, the Hohenstaufen. I hope you have enjoyed it. I definitely did. I learnt a lot. Many events I thought I knew how they happened I had to re-evaluate, I encountered rulers like Lothar III and Konrad III I had never given much thought, we had saints and heretics, we found out about the Italian communes and their badass Carroccios and so much more. So thank you to all of you who make it possible for me to do what I enjoy doing and many happy returns!

The War of Words between Pope and Emperor

“Out of the sea rises up the Beast, full of the names of blasphemy who, raging with the claws of the bear and the mouth of the lion and the limbs and likeness of the leopard, opens its mouth to blaspheme the Holy Name and ceases not to hurl its spears against the tabernacle of God and against the saints who dwell in heaven. With fangs and claws of iron it seeks to destroy everything and to trample the world to fragments beneath its feet. It has already prepared its rams to batter down the walls of the catholic faith. . . . Cease ye therefore to marvel that it aims at us the darts of calumny, since the Lord himself it doth not spare. Cease ye to marvel that it draws the dagger of contumely against us, since it lifts itself to wipe from the earth the name of the Lord. Rather, that ye may with open truth withstand his lying and may refute his deceits with the proofs of purity: behold the head and tail and body of the Beast, of this Frederick, this so-called Emperor. . . .”

Such wrote Pope Gregory IX in 1239. How did we get there? Is there a way back from this? Let’s see…

Transcript

Hello and Welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 87 – The Beast out of the Sea

“Out of the sea rises up the Beast, full of the names of blasphemy who, raging with the claws of the bear and the mouth of the lion and the limbs and likeness of the leopard, opens its mouth to blaspheme the Holy Name and ceases not to hurl its spears against the tabernacle of God and against the saints who dwell in heaven. With fangs and claws of iron it seeks to destroy everything and to trample the world to fragments beneath its feet. It has already prepared its rams to batter down the walls of the catholic faith. . . . Cease ye therefore to marvel that it aims at us the darts of calumny, since the Lord himself it doth not spare. Cease ye to marvel that it draws the dagger of contumely against us, since it lifts itself to wipe from the earth the name of the Lord. Rather, that ye may with open truth withstand his lying and may refute his deceits with the proofs of purity: behold the head and tail and body of the Beast, of this Frederick, this so-called Emperor. . . .”

Such wrote Pope Gregory IX in 1239. How did we get there? Is there a way back from this? Let’s see…

Before we start just a reminder. The History of the Germans Podcast is advertising free thanks to the generous support from patrons. And you can become a patron too and enjoy exclusive bonus episodes and other privileges from the price of a latte per month. All you have to do is sign up at patreon.com/historyofthegermans or on my website historyofthegermans.com. You find all the links in the show notes. And thanks a lot to Robert W., Matthew S. and Brendan S. who have already signed up.

Last week we ended with Pope Gregory IX excommunicating emperor Frederick II, “in the spirit of glowing anger” as Matthew Paris described it. Excommunication was neither unexpected nor exceptional in the 13^th century. This is Frederick’s second time. Of his 7 predecessors as emperor, four of them had been excommunicated, Otto IV, Frederick Barbarossa, Henry V and Henry IV. The other three had been threatened with excommunication. Of his predecessors in Sicily, Robert Guiscard, Roger II, and William I had been excommunicated, as were a score of French kings, mainly due to sexual misdemeanour and two English kings, normally because they did not get on with their archbishop of Canterbury. In other words it happened in certain regularity. But we are not yet at the stage where the library of Salamanca declared anyone who stole a book to be automatically excommunicated and damned to hell.

So excommunication was a severe sanction but given the list above, not an existential threat to the ruler’s authority. However, it was a stain that needed to be removed within a reasonable period of time. Extended terms of excommunication undermined the ruler’s authority, brought about rebellions and general instability.

Excommunication was also not the ultimate spiritual weapon. There is the Interdict, which ordered the clergy in a particular area to stop performing the Holy Sacraments, namely not to say mass, not to baptise, not to hear confession and not to perform the last rites. That was a lot rarer and more powerful since it impacted the population immediately. Dying without confession meant you go to purgatory, or worse. Frederick II had experienced the effect of an interdict when it was placed on the city of Jerusalem after his coronation there in 1228. Frederick, himself the actual king of Jerusalem, a city he had just regained for Christendom, had to leave immediately. Otherwise his men and the population would have torn him apart.

And then there is deposition. Formally, excommunication releases all vassals from their oaths to the excommunicated ruler, so it is a sort of deposition. However, there had to that day only been one excommunication where the pope had explicitly ousted a ruler. And that was Gregory VII when he excommunicated Henry IV. Given the impact that had had on the fate of Henry IV, the imperial chancery was very concerned that Gregory IX would go down that route.

It is that fear of a deposition by the pope that forced the imperial policy to change priorities, away from subduing Northern Italy to getting rid of the excommunication.

Excommunication could normally be remedied by a combination of resolving the alleged papal grievances and public display of repentance. Frederick tried that first.

The excommunication of Gregory IX cited in my counting 12 different very specific acts justifying the sanction. Most of those related to the treatment of bishops and abbots in the kingdom of Sicily and the expropriation of the Knights Templars and Hospitallers. The last paragraph is a bit wider, accusing Frederick of impeding the crusade and restoration of the Roman empire.

Frederick responded immediately, saying that he had been away from Sicily for a long time and hence not always in control of developments but that he would reverse all disputed acts and offer compensation. He promises everlasting obedience to the church and repentance for his sins.

That should have been it, but Gregory rejects all these offers of remedy and compensation and refuses to recognise the emperor’s repentance as insincere. More worries were in the offing. There was an ominous end paragraph of the excommunication that could not easily be remedied (quote): “because said Frederick is seriously defamed by these deeds of his, many crying out, as it were, through the whole world, that he does not entertain right opinions respecting the Catholic faith, we, with God’s assistance, will proceed in this matter at its proper time and place, according to the rules of the law”. (unquote)

What that amounts to is nothing less than an inquisition into the emperor faith, a process to determine whether he is a heretic. If that were to take place, Frederick knew he would be on the high seas without a rudder. It was also increasingly clear that Gregory was not to be reconciled through rational argument. Either Gregory acted upon personal animosity to Frederick, or he acted out of a deep political conviction that an emperor in control of Italy would spark the end of the imperial papacy. Or it was a combination of both.

Given that Gregory was unlikely to be reasoned with, Frederick implemented a new three-pronged strategy.

Part one was the public relations battle where he painted the accusations against him as false and part of a a private vendetta of Gregory against him. Part two was to bring the cardinals and other senior churchman over to his side to rein in the pope, and finally the third element was brute military force.

The PR war is the one that kicked off immediately. Key to Frederick’s approach was not to blame the church – which would have painted him as a disobedient excommunicate – but to make the pope out as being driven by a personal hatred, abusing the church’s powers. For that he relied heavily on the literary abilities of his chancellor, Pietro da Vinea who wrote most of his letters and sometimes acted as the voice of his master. As an example in an assembly at Padua in 1239, Frederick sat on an elevated platform, on his throne, wearing his crown, sceptre and orb an almost motionless picture of imperial majesty, whilst Pietro, standing up at a dais but still lower than the emperor would hold an oration, addressing each and every point raised by Gregory and hurling accusations back.

Pietro’s letters are still seen as prime examples of medieval chancellery Latin, the principal means of communication between monarchs. In these months after the excommunication, Pietro would write and send dozens maybe hundreds of letters to all the courts and bishops of Europe in the emperor’s name.

Take the one to Richard of Cornwall, brother of king Henry III of England and his brother-in-law. In the latter he goes through all the injustices that Gregory IX had inflicted on him, his first excommunication when he had to turn back from his attempted crusade due to ill health, his efforts to undermine his policies that ultimately led to the return of Jerusalem, his invasion of Sicily in his absence, him spreading lies that he had died or been imprisoned in Syria, and after their reconciliation in 1230 had lured him without armed escort into northern Italy putting his life at risk. And in return he, Frederick had always supported the pope, conquered the city of Viterbo on his behalf, resolved differences with the Romans and sought papal arbitration in the affairs of Italy. He said: (quote) “We know that, from our acknowledgment of the Catholic faith, we have found a true mother in the church; but our father we have always found false” (end quote).

And then he turned the fire on the more general failings of the pope. Gregory, he said supported the city of Milan, which was mostly inhabited by heretics, had offered marriage dispensations in exchange for cash, has been raising unjust taxes on his vassals and squandered the wealth of the church. All this in his unjust persecution of the emperor.

He ends the letter to the king’s brother: (quote) “we would have you fear that similar proceedings are impending over you in your affairs. For the humiliation of all other kings and princes is believed to be an easy matter, if the power of the Caesar of the Romans is first overthrown.” (end quote).

This letter was sent with slight alterations to all the crowned heads of Europe, telling them that this vengeful, unreasonable pope would go after them, unless they took his side. And it did have an effect. Both king Henry III of England and the increasingly influential King Louis IX of France, later Saint Louis were intervening diplomatically on behalf of the emperor.

These circulars were not only read by the great territorial rulers. They also addressed the princes of the church, the cardinals and archbishops. He is scrupulously distinguishing between the papal office and its current incumbent. He does not deny the apostolic dignity of the pope, but he accuses the current incumbent of being unworthy of so illustrious a throne. He essentially tries to put a wedge between the pope and his cardinals and bishops. He points out that the excommunication was issued without the proper consultation of the college of cardinals. He asserted that many cardinals were uncomfortable with the decision, which is why the pope did not involve them. Now the holy Mother church, which Frederick as he said always defended and supported might lose the imperial protection for the acts of just one man, blinded by greed and hatred.

And he did offer to submit himself to the judgement of an oecumenical council of the bishops and secular lords of Europe provided Gregory IX does the same. That was a risky move since church councils are by now entirely under the control of the popes. The days of Otto III where an emperor would preside over councils and synods are long gone. What he proposed was something utterly new. Ever since Gregory VII the popes had declared themselves above the judgement of mere mortals. They were the representative of Christ on earth, so their words and deeds were that of the Lord. Likewise the emperors had refused to accept any form of authority above them in line with Roman law, though regular kneeling before the papal throne made that claim a little less robust. It was by all means a very long shot.

As for Gregory’s response, he went to full escalation. He declared Frederick to be the Beast that rises from the Sea, the antichrist of the book of Revelations. It is the segment you heard at the very beginning of the episode. Making Frederick out as the antichrist caught on due to the writings of Joachim of Fiore, a Cistercian abbot who had re-interpreted the apocalypse 40 years earlier. In his telling the world history breaks down into three phases. The age of the father, which is from creation to the birth of Christ. The following second period where we are now in, is the age of the Son. That will be followed by the age of the Holy Spirit. This third age will be a time of eternal peace and bliss before the gates of paradise open up. This idea of the age of bliss we encountered before when it was assumed it starts with the emperor hanging up his crown on the dead tree by the church of the Holy Sepulchre. But under Joachim of Fiore there is a twist. Between the Age of the Son and the Age of the Holy Spirit is the rise of the antichrist. Once Antichrist is defeated, the age of the Holy Spirit can begin. And to make things very uncomfortable for our Frederick, Joachim of Fiore had given an exact date when the Age of the Holy Spirit was to begin, the year 1260. We are now in the year 1239 and assuming the defeat of Antichrist is not happening over a fortnight, adherents of Fiore’s theories, and there were many, were on the lookout who could be the antichrist. A branch of the Franciscans were the most ardent believers in Joachim of Fiore, in particular as he had also invented the order of the Just who would take over the government in the Age of the Spirit, which they modestly believed were them, the Franciscans. So these mendicant brothers were travelling up and down the land denouncing the emperor as Antichrist in the hope of hastening the arrival of the Age of bliss.

To prove his point Gregory added accusation over accusation of crimes, some credible, others pure inventions. Frederick, he said had intentionally doomed to death the crusaders in the pilgrim camp of Brindisi, had poisoned the Landgrave of Thuringia, had made peace with the Sultan in the Holy Land to the detriment of the Christians, had in his own absence directed the war against the peace- loving Pope, while for greed he allowed his own kingdom to be wasted by fire and sword.

In response to the accusations against him personally, Gregory says that indeed he is unworthy of such a high office and as a human can only bear such a burden with divine assistance. This goes back to one of the fundamental constitutions of the church, that the validity of sacraments is independent of the worthiness of the individual priest. E.g., a baptism is valid even if the priest performing it is a drunk, ignorant simoniac. Hence an excommunication is valid even if the pope was a drunk, ignorant simoniac, which Gregory IX was most decidedly not. As I said before, he was either driven by personal animosity, or the fear of encirclement of the papacy by an overbearing emperor or both.

But his biggest gun, the one that will stick is this one: (quote) “This King of the Pestilence has proclaimed that — to use his own words — all the world has been deceived by three deceivers, Jesus Christ, Moses and Muhammad, of whom two died in honour, but Christ upon the Cross, And further, he has proclaimed aloud (or rather he has lyingly declared) that all be fools who believe that God could be born of a Virgin, God who is the creator of Nature and of all beside.

This heresy Frederick has aggravated by the mad assertion that no one can be born save where the intercourse of man and wife have preceded the conception, and Frederick maintains that no man should believe aught but what may be proved by the power and reason of nature.” (endquote)

Nether Gregory IX nor his predecessors will repeat this accusation of the three deceivers at any later point, nor do they provide any evidence of its veracity. They did not need to. Their contemporary’s believed it, hook, line and sinker. Matthew Paris, otherwise often sympathetic to the emperor, repeats it, it shows up in all the other chronicles, later biographies and everywhere else. As all good unfounded accusations, it stuck because it was shocking as well as just credible enough. It was credible because Fredericks interest in science and in the “the things that are, as they are” was well known. He had been an important European ruler for 27 years, had continuously travelled around his realm surrounded by exotic animals and dark skinned attendants, his Saracen bowmen were a legend, his astrologer, Michael Scot had found the location of heaven and hell, sure this man was capable of such profound heresy.

And Frederick never responded directly to this accusation, because what was there to say? If you cannot disprove it, there is only one communication strategy, the one the Queen and Kate Moss were always brilliant at, “never complain, never explain”.

There we are, the PR war stands at a not very stable 1:1. Frederick got the crowned heads of Europe on his side, or at least friendly to his cause, Gregory IX has thrown so much dirt at the emperor, a lot is sticking in the public opinion and the priests and monks keep repeating it from the chancels day in day out. For the next 10 years the papal and imperial chancery will trade insults in the most elaborate medieval Latin calling fire and brimstone on either side. At some stage Frederick compared himself to Christ and called the town of Jesi where he was born the new Bethlehem. I just mention this, but I cannot given opinion on what that means. According to medievalists this was not blasphemy.

Let’s leave that war of the quills and get on to the war of swords. Frederick’s objective was not necessarily to capture the pope but to corner him to a point where he had to give into the pressure. That had worked well in 1230 when Gregory was forced to lift the previous excommunication.

But given that public opinion amongst the princes and powerful prelates was still 50/50, he could not just break into Rome take the pope hostage and torture him until he lifts the ban as Henry V had done. So he went softly, softly. First, he reintegrated the march of Ancona and the duchy of Spoleto back into the empire with little resistance. Then he took over the storied abbey of Montecassino, just south of Rome. The city of Viterbo, north of Rome opened its gates to Frederick in early 1240. Slowly but surely the imperial forces was closing in on the city of Rome and its undefended pope.

Inside Rome large parts of the population had been pro-imperial, in particular after he had given them the Carroccio of Milan as a present. Many of the great Roman families had been given positions of power and importance within the imperial apparatus both in Southern and in Northern Italy.

On February 22, 1240, the Ghibelline party in Rome called for Frederick to come and take possession of his nominal capital.

Gregory IX was caught. Once Frederick had peacefully entered Rome there would be no escape. Frederick could force himself into the papal presence and when he repented and promised remediation, Gregory would have had to absolve him, as his namesake Gregory VII had to at Canossa. Or Frederick could round up the cardinals who would depose Gregory as a heretic and despoiler of the church. So Gregory needed to do something to turn this situation around, to make the emperor unwelcome in Rome. And he did. He organised a great procession through the streets of Rome parading the relics of St. Peter and St. Paul. The procession ended in the basilica of St. Peter. Gregory placed the skulls of the two greatest of the apostles on the high alter. He took off the Tiara, the papal crown and put it on the saints’ heads, then knelt down and begged them for help.

Yes, me neither. But it worked. The mood inside Rome changed as if a switch had been flicked. The majority of the population supported Gregory IX and began preparations for a long siege.

But the days when emperors dared to lay siege to the city of Rome are gone. The memory of the siege of 1167 when god’s wrath wiped out the flower of the German armies and the hopes and dreams of the Hohenstaufen was still strong. Or more prosaically, the PR effect of a prolonged and maybe even unsuccessful siege of Rome would have been devastating.

So Frederick returned to Sicily to lick his wounds. His great war is now ging into its fourth year and his coffers are depleted. Sicily is a rich land, but not rich enough to easily sustain endless campaigns against equally or richer foes in the North. We are in possession of a remarkable document, the register of the letters sent and received by the imperial chancery in 1139/40. This is remarkable because for most of the Middle Ages no such complete register exists. Normally we only have the documents that survived, but that is an often random if not biased selection. Having a register means the year 1139/40 is the one year we have a really good idea about how Frederick’s reign functioned. And at that point it was creaking. The cost of warfare had made it necessary to levy higher and higher taxes on the inhabitants of Sicily. It is this shortage of funds that made him tax the clergy and sometimes raid the church treasures, issues listed in his excommunication. Money will be a constant issue for his remaining reign. Just as costs mount, the constant demands for cash strangle economic activity and the actual tax take shrinks. His shrinking resources makes it harder and harder for him to strike a decisive blow to his enemies whilst at the same time still being sizeable enough to let him go on.  

Back in 1241 the pope celebrated his miraculous rescue by starting a counteroffensive. I mentioned last week that Gregory had orchestrated an unprecedented alliance between Genoa and Venice against Frederick II. I stupidly said last week that Pisa temporarily joined this alliance when Enzio styled himself as king of Sardinia. That I am afraid is simply not true. I know that I read this somewhere but I cannot find where I have read that. And it does not matter where I read it, because it did not happen. I do apologise. So for the record, the Pisans never betrayed their beloved emperor Frederick II.

But that still left the great maritime republics of Venice and Genoa. Not only are they each pretty powerful, they are also on two different sides of the Italian peninsula. Venice on the Adriatic and Genoa on the Tyrhennian sea. Sicily has an enormous coastline, leaving hundreds of places either navy could sack cities or capture vessels.

Frederick had his own fleet, the first and only medieval emperor ever to possess one. And he had a maritime ally, Pisa. Hence in the initial period of the campaign the Pisans were holding back the Genoese on the Western shore whilst the Sicilian fleet defended the eastern shore. Naval warfare at the time had more in common with piracy than seeking decisive sea battles. The objective was to capture enemy trading vessels and sell their cargo back home and occasionally sack a harbour city. The fortunes of war oscillated, sometimes the Sicilians were ahead, at others the Venetians. But what definitely suffered was trade between the East and the kingdom of Sicily, adding to Frederick’s money problems.

That would have gone on for a decade just as background noise to the broader scenario was it not for the second strategic initiative of pope Gregory IX in 1241. You may remember that Frederick had called for a general council of the church to decide on the accusations raised against both pope and emperor. That turned out to be a bad idea. Pope Gregory hijacked the idea and tweaked it. No longer a gathering of all of Europe to amicably resolve the situation, it was meant to be attended only by allies of the pope who would bring about the formal deposition of the excommunicated emperor Frederick II.

Frederick had to prevent this council from happening at any price. Once a formal deposition has been declared, God knows what will happen. He had the Alpine passes blocked, refused safe conduct to anyone crossing his territories and prohibited anyone from his Kingdoms to go to Rome for the Council. And he declared a sea blockade, announcing that he would have any ship boarded that transported delegates to the synod. This must be the only time a naval operation was set up to explicitly prevent a church council.

Despite Fredericks express threats many English, French, Spanish and Burgundian prelates still embarked on the arduous journey to Rome. They had gathered in Nice where a Genoese fleet was waiting for them. They first brought them to Genoa where they were joined by bishops and abbots from Northern Italy. On April 25^th, 1241 a fleet of 30 war galleys carrying almost 100 senior prelates leaves the harbour of Genoa with the destination of Rome.

Meanwhile a combined Pisan and Imperial fleet gathered south of the island of Elba keeping an eye of the likely route the Genoese would take. The Imperial fleet that was waiting may well have counted as many as 60 galleys, i.e., twice as many as the Genoese. Hiding such a mass of ships was not easy and so the Genoese admiral was soon informed that the enemy was waiting for them. But he made no use of this information. He did not wait for reinforcements to come down from Genoa nor did he alter his route to circumvent the imperial fleet that was patrolling between the islands of Giglio and Montecristo. If the name Giglio rings a bell, it is the island where in 2012 the cruise liner Costa Concordia sank with 3,229 passengers on board after hitting a rock, allegedly because the captain wanted to show his girlfriend where he was from. A bit further west from there is the island of Monecristo, best known from Alexandre Dumas’ novel.

Sorry, I digress. So we have the Genoese fleet heading straight into the imperial trap. Not only are they outnumbered, but their galleys were also slower than the Sicilian ones. That had less to do with the strength of the rowers, who by the way in the Middle Ages were not slaves, but professionals. The difference was hull speed. As a boat goes through the water it generates its own standing wave that slows it down. The resistance of the wave depends on the length and shape of the hull. The longer and the more slender the hull is, the faster the galley. Frederick ordered his galleys to be longer than his enemies’, i.e., up to 40 metres or 120 feet which is seriously long.

Medieval galleys also differ from Roman galleys. Romans did not like or understand naval warfare. So they replicated land-based war on the sea. Their galleys had fighting platforms forward that connected to enemy ships so that the legionnaires could slug it out like on dry land. Medieval galleys were more in the Greek tradition, they had above waterline battering rams designed to strike and sink an enemy ship.

And that gets us to the Battle of Montecristo, May 3, 1241. The prelates on board the Genoese ships are waking up and are told the journey is almost over. By evening they should be in Civitavecchia and safely on their way to Rome. But then in the morning mist the masts of imperial galleys appear on the horizon. Here is how Frederick himself described the battle in a letter to the kings and princes of europe (quote):

“Our said chief then attacked their galleys with our galleys, and the all-powerful God, who sees and fights from on high, and judges between right and wrong, seeing their wicked ways, and the malice of their hearts, as well as their insatiable cupidity, by his divine favour delivered these legates and pre- lates bound into our power, which they could not escape either by land or sea. After three of their galleys had been sunk, together with everything on board of them, and after losing about two thousand men without hope of recovery, twenty-two galleys were, by the will of Divine providence, conquered by our galleys, and, after great slaughter amongst their crews, were triumphantly taken, together with all the property and everyone on board.

In these galleys were the three aforesaid legates, with the archbishops, bishops, abbots, and many other prelates, besides messengers and proxies of prelates to the number of about a hundred, with the embassies from the rebellious cities of Lombardy, who were proceeding to the said council,[  ] ; and all these fell into our hands as prisoners, together with the bishop of Praeneste, who had often excited the chief hatred against us. Let this man, who carries the form of a wolf under the exterior of a sheep, refrain from thinking that he carries God in his heart; for we think that it is God’s especial judgment that has fallen upon him. Let him learn that God is with us sitting on his throne to judge between evil and good.” (end quote)

A resounding success. This was the worst defeat for the maritime republic of Genoa in the entirety of the Middle Ages.

The beast has indeed risen out of the sea and gulped up a whole church council. Amongst the captured were three papal legates, the archbishops of Rouen, Bordeaux, and Auch, the bishops of Carcassonne, Agde, Nimes, Tortona, Asti, and Pavia, the abbots of Citeaux, Clairvaux, Cluny, Fecamp and many more. The archbishop of Besancon had sadly drowned. The council could not take place.

Frederick’s immediate military and political objectives were achieved. He also managed to take the small city of Faenza as one of the brighter aspects of his Lombard campaign in 1241.

Next question, what to do with all these prelates? In the first step, he has them shipped south into his kingdom and then incarcerated separately in various castles. But what now? Keep them on dry bread and artificial honey until Gregory caves in? Send them home on the promise of supporting Frederick from now on? And what would public opinion make of an emperor who locks up a sea of bishops? And then we have the true threat to the European way of life appearing on the horizon, the Mongols. Jerusalem had fallen and the Latin emperors of Constantinople have been overthrown. Is it enough to shift the pope’s gaze away from the emperor he so hates and fears? All that we will talk about next week. I hope you will join us again.

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Frederick II is excommunicated again!

Emperor Frederick II has knocked the Milanese for six at Cortenuova. Their war cart, symbol of communal freedom has been captured and taken into Cremona in triumph. The Lombard league that once defeated his grandfather Barbarossa is falling apart and pope Gregory IX is cowering in the Lateran Palace. What shall he do now? Negotiate peace or go for complete submission? This decision will seal his fate and that of his entire family…

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 86 – Oops we did it again

Emperor Frederick II has knocked the Milanese for six at Cortenuova. Their war cart, symbol of communal freedom has been captured and taken into Cremona in triumph. The Lombard league that once defeated his grandfather Barbarossa is falling apart and pope Gregory IX is cowering in the Lateran Palace. What shall he do now? Negotiate peace or go for complete submission? This decision will seal his fate and that of his entire family…

Before we start just a reminder. The History of the Germans Podcast is advertising free thanks to the generous support from patrons. And you can become a patron too and enjoy exclusive bonus episodes and other privileges from the price of a latte per month. All you have to do is sign up at patreon.com/historyofthegermans or on my website historyofthegermans.com. You find all the links in the show notes. And thanks a lot to Brendan, Matthew and Robert who have already signed up.

And another thing. I was recently interviewed by Willem Fromm from the History of Cologne Podcast. It was a great chat mainly about the Coup of Kaiserswerth and the reign of Henry IV that kicks off the sequence of events that leads us to where we are today in our narrative. We talk about the kidnapper, archbishop Anno of Cologne, his background and role in the broader context of the 11^th century. I can only recommend Willem’s podcast. It is not just for people interested in Cologne, since Cologne is one of the few major cities north of the Alps that have continuously been inhabited since Roman times and as such is a true microcosm of European history. You can find the History of Cologne or in German, die Geschichte der Stadt Koeln everywhere where you get the History of the Germans.

And with that let’s go back to our favourite medieval emperor, Frederick II, who we last saw watching his elephant dragging the broken Carroccio of Milan – complete with shackled Podesta – through the streets of Cremona. What a triumph, but not a true triumph. A real triumph, one worthy of a Caeser, Augustus or Marcus Aurelius can only be awarded by the Senate and the People of Rome, which is exactly what they do.

The Carroccio of Milan arrives in Rome in January 1238. Not pulled by its traditional team of oxen, nor by the imperial elephant, but most humiliatingly by a span of mules. According to the Senate’s instructions the booty was escorted to the Capitol amidst the rejoicings of the people. There the chariot was mounted on five marble pillars. Then a relief was carved in white marble depicting this token of victory, with an inscription that said the following:

“O Rome, receive the chariot as a gift from Frederick II Caesar Augustus, an auspicious ornament for the city. This, taken by force from Milan, comes a sacred gift to report the triumph of Caesar; is sent in honour of the city of Rome. Love for her made him send it”

This inscription is still there on the Capitoline Hill, tucked away in one of the meeting rooms used by the City Council. Three of the five columns are accounted for, one carrying a copy of the Capitoline Wolf on the Campidoglio, the heart of the city of Rome.

As I said, the whole of Frederick’s propaganda takes on a distinctly ancient Roman tinge. And that is not entirely by accident.

Ever since Gregory VII wrestled the concept of sacred kingship out of Henry IV’s frostbitten hands, the emperors had been searching for a new source of legitimacy, independent from the coronation by the pope.

Barbarossa and his chancellor Rainald von Dassel had come up with the concept of the Sacrum Imperium, the empire that is holy in and. Of. Itself, not derived from a third party. In its next iteration the Hohenstaufen propaganda machine created the everlasting imperial dynasty that traces its way back to ancient Troy via Aeneas, last surviving prince of ilium, ancestor of Caesar and Augustus whose bloodline miraculously re-emerged in Constantine, Charlemagne and then via the Ottonians and Salians spawned the most ancient House of Waiblingen. Total nonsense and a long, long way from the obscure Friedrich von Buren, count in Alsace who was the true ancestor of Barbarossa.

Neither of these constructs could stand up to the increasingly imperial stance the papacy took in the 13^th century. Innocent III had declared himself the “verus imperator”, the true emperor. He saw the pope as the sun and the emperor as the moon, the latter merely reflecting the light he received from Vicar of Christ. Gregory IX, as we heard, declared the emperor of the Romans ranking below even the lowliest of village parsons. All this was based on the Constantine Donation, a document faked in the 8^th or 9^th century which in its actual text allegedly granted the pope temporal power of the City of Rome and its surrounding lands. That was now interpreted to cover not just the so-called papal states in central Italy but the whole of the ancient Roman empire. Constantine, it was claimed had given all of his powers to the pope in recognition of his role as the representative of Christ on earth.

This too is obviously nonsense, but it had been repeated from every church pulpit for centuries, Henry IV had kneeled in the snow and a 100 years later Barbarossa did the same in Venice. The popes had taken on the symbols of imperial rule, the Tiara, the purple and the title of Vicar of Christ. No wonder people in the 13^th century believed the spiritual power of the pope made him the supreme leader of the empire.

But if the pope was the true heir of the Roman emperors, what was the emperor. Barbarossa and Henry VI kept holding on to the idea of two swords, the spiritual one yielded by the successors of St. Peter and the temporal sword, yielded by Constantine and his successors. But with every move the popes had made since Gregory VII declared the pope supreme and infallible in 1077, the space for an emperor legitimised as a spiritual leader had shrunk to the point that by 1238 there was nothing left.

Frederick II never gave up on the notion of the two swords, but after Cortenuovo he started a new approach. He began to style himself as a Roman emperor of old, as a Caesar, Augustus or Trajan. Rome and its pagan emperors had gained their power through conquest, and they could hold on to this power because Rome brought peace and justice to the empire’s inhabitants. Underpinning this is the idea that would much later feature heavily in Thomas Hobbes Leviathan, that Home Homine Lupus est, a man is wolf to other men. That the state has been created to stop the inevitable violence between humans. And because of that humans accept the authority of the state.

We have already heard about this concept when we discussed the constitutions of Melfi. Frederick now expands the idea to the whole empire. In Frederick’s definition, his job is not mainly to help his subjects to gain access to heaven as an Otto III or Henry II may have thought, but to bring peace and justice in the here and now. He is emperor because he can stop the violence by enforcing the law. The people accept his authority, not because he is closer to God, but because he can make their lives better. To make their lives better he needs to do what the Romans did first, before the pax Romana, conquering.

And that gets us to the next leg in the story, the one that follows the triumphs and celebrations.

After Cortenuova the Lombard League is broken. When the conflict started in 1236 the Lombard League comprised 13 cities. At the time of Cortenuova, five of those, Verona, Vicenza, Padova, Treviso and Mantua had already swapped sides. After Cortenuova, another 2, Bergamo and Vercelli surrendered unconditionally and a third, Lodi that had been pro imperial ever since Barbarossa had re-founded it, threw off its Milanese overlords and came across to the imperial side. That left the League with just 5 members, Milan itself, Crema, Alessandria, Brescia, Bologna and Piacenza that had defected from the imperial side just before Cortenuova.

But how much co-ordination the League could still exert is unclear. Each of the cities was negotiating individually with the emperor. But nevertheless, Milan was the key. If Milan surrenders, the other four would bend the knee as well.

When Frederick II had set off in 1236 he had announced four main objectives he wanted to achieve:

1. The cities have to swear an oath of fealty to their emperor
2. The re-formed league of 1226 is to be dissolved
3. The imperial regalia as laid out in the laws of Roncaglia to be returned to the emperor
4. The cities provide satisfaction to the emperor to make up for the insults he had endured.

Let’s have a look at the Milanese negotiation position as the British chronicler Matthew Parris described it: quote: “At this time the Milanese, fearing the imperial mightiness, sent to the emperor, with all possible earnestness, begging him, whom they openly declared to be their true and natural lord, to avert his anger from them, to cease to attack them, and to cherish and protect them, as his liege subjects, under the wings of his mighty protection. They declared that they would thenceforth, as formerly, serve him as their lord and emperor, with all reverence; that, in token of this obedience, and that they might be protected in the arms of his affection, and that their previous rebellion might not be remembered, they would freely give him all the substance they possessed in gold and silver; moreover that, as a sign of their subjection and obedience, and of the imperial victory, they would collect all their standards and burn them at the feet of the emperor.

Besides this, that they would, when he, the emperor, was again fighting in the service of the cross in the Holy Land, find him annually ten thousand soldiers for the advancement of the Church and for his own honour, on the condition that he would love the citizens without any dissembled malice, and that the state of the city and citizens should be maintained.

That sounds like a complete victory. Oath of fealty – tick, dissolution of Lombard League – tick, return of regalia – tick and satisfaction – tick.

Well, as always, the devil is in the detail. Yes, the Milanese were willing to hand back the imperial regalia, safe for those granted to them individually by imperial charter. Yes, they would accept an imperial Podesta and judge, but not recourse to imperial jurisdiction. Yes, they would bow to the emperor, but they would not accept unconditional surrender. And that is what he wanted, unconditional surrender.

Matthew Paris records the response to the demand of unconditional surrender as follows: quote “We have learned by experience and fear your cruelty; we would rather die under our shields by the sword, or spear, or by javelins, than by treachery, famine, and flames.” The Milanes have a point. The last time they had submitted themselves to an emperor’s grace following a lost battle, the then emperor, Barbarossa had the whole city razed to the ground and its citizens expelled to live in open countryside, prey to attacks from their neighbours. So, they had good reasons to demand terms.

Most Historians – equipped with 20/20 hindsight  – believe this insistence of total submission to be Frederick’s big mistake. Olaf Rader says that Frederick had been “led by the euphoria of victory to push his demands to a point the proud Milanese could never accept”.

I would agree that Frederick was prone to hybris. He had set off as a teenager from his crumbling kingdom barely able to pay the fare to Rome and now 35 years later, he was Roman Emperor, king of Sicily and King of Jerusalem. No wonder he was a bit full of himself. And let us not forget that even in today’s world we are not short of people who get a bit full of themselves following great success and then take some very foolish decisions. Though the stakes in Frederick’s case were a bit higher than losing money one could never spend on a social media platform. Excessive Ego certainly played a role here. Frederick’s hatred of the Milanese goes back a long way. It was them who made him take an unintended bath back in 1212 and have forever called him Frederick of the wet pants. He wanted to see them kneeling in the dust.

But bad motivation does not always equal bad decision. Two reasons are usually given why insisting on total submission was a foolish thing to do.

The first was that the deal on the table was a great one, giving him all he had wanted to achieve in the first place. And secondly, that the war was unwinnable. For one, knightly armies could not break city walls, as Barbarossa had seen in Crema and Alessandria and Henry VI in Naples. And secondly, the cities were so much richer than the emperor and even comparatively small ones could keep larger armies in the field much longer than he could ever do.

All of this is true but put yourself into Frederick’s shoes.

As for the deal on offer, it was not what he needed. To use a modern term, the unique value proposition of imperial rule was to bring peace. As we have seen, as soon as the external threat goes away, the Italian cities resume their eternal fighting and even inside the cities, violent conflict was endemic. Frederick’s offer was to bring peace in exchange for the cities’ freedoms. It was the same deal Barbarossa had offered with the Laws of Roncaglia and it is the same deal Frederick had offered his Sicilian subjects with the Constitutions of Melfi.

And if you remember the constitutions of Melfi, the underlying idea was that peace and justice are two sides of the same medal. There could not be peace without justice and no justice without peace. To stop the eternal feuding between and within the cities, he needed to be able offer conflict resolution before the courts. That is why the Milanese refusal to allow the emperor full jurisdiction was a dealbreaker. That is why he had to get unconditional surrender so that every city would be governed by the same set of rules and submit to the same hierarchy of courts. So, it made sense for Frederick to insist on unconditional surrender.

But then I also agree with the Milanese that Frederick would probably had burned down their home had they surrendered.

That means there was no compromise, well unless Frederick would have known that the war was unwinnable. Did he know the war was unwinnable? Did he know that his army could never take a major city, except through year-long siege? That was not at all evident at the end of 1237. Frederick and his henchman, Ezzelino da Romano had just taken 5 cities, and not the smallest ones. Padua and Mantua were much larger, much better defended and much richer than Crema and Alessandria, where Barbarossa had spent so much of his resources. The Milanese had left their Carroccio behind instead of fighting to the very end as they had in Legnano. Frederick could well have come to what investment professionals call the worst of all conclusions “This time things are different”.

So, I can see why he went down this route, irrespective of his uberinflted ego telling him to do it. But in hindsight, it was still a pretty awful decision.

The first blowback was the PR disaster. Matthew Paris again (quote): “From that time the emperor began to lose favour with many, because he had become a tyrant ; and the Milanese, for their humility, were extolled and gained strength. According to the words of the Gospel, ” God resisteth the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” The Milanese, then, seeing that it was a matter of life and death, fortified their city more eagerly than usual with arms and trenches, and by entering into alliance with other cities.” (end quote)

The next pushback came when he demanded the city of Genoa to swear fealty. Genoa had strong Ghibelline leanings and it was on Genoese ships and with Genoese escorts that he had travelled on his epic journey to Germany all these decades ago. But the Genoese were a proud commune and though sympathetic to the Hohenstaufen, were not willing to bend the knee. Frederick’s response was swift, rough and ill-judged, he had the Genoese declared traitors, rebels and enemies of the empire. This triggered an unprecedented response. The Genoese who had been rivals with Venice and Pisa since time immemorial, joined into an alliance with the Serenissima – so deep sat their fear and disappointment with the emperor. Venice, just to close that loop was not at all happy about the imperial success in 1237. Now they had a thug on their doorstep and an emperor controlling most of Italy right behind him. They also did not take kindly to the son of their doge, Pietro Tiepolo being paraded around Italy as a prisoner and at a later stage strangled in a dank prison in Puglia. Venice openly supported the last remaining cities in the Lombard League with money, weapons and military leaders.

Frederick II undertook his own PR campaign. Right after the battle he wrote to the monarchs of Europe that he had broken a dangerous rebellion. He painted the Lombard cities as upstarts who were undermining the God-given order of things. All monarchs should unite to eradicate the last remnants of disease before it unseats the rulers themselves. This call did surprisingly have some effect. The king of England sent him a contingent of knights and it seems the king of Hungary did too.

The army Frederick had put together in 1238 was even bigger and even more formidable than the one he had fielded in 1237. Apart from the English and Hungarian knights there were German princes led by his son Konrad IV, the allied Italian cities, the Sicilians, his Saracen archers, contingents from Florence and Rome, a company of Burgundian knights, Castilians and even the emperor of Nicaea, ruler over one of the splinters of the old empire of Constantinople had sent his support.

This great army sent to suppress the Lombard League once and for all went not to Milan itself, but against the small, high-lying town of Brescia. A siege was contemplated, and the emperor boasted his great stores of siege implements. He had, moreover, commandeered the services of a Spanish engineer, Calamandrinus, who was a great inventor and deigner of battering-rams and the like. This Spaniard had it seems not come quite voluntarily. Ezzelino had despatched him to the emperor: in fetters, so that he might not escape.

By bad luck or the captive’s ingenuity, the reluctant engineering genius fell into the hands of the Brescians. They took a gentler approach to hiring, welcomed him with gifts of hearth and home and a Brescian bride, and he was forthwith employed in exercising his skill in the service of the beleaguered town against the emperor.

The campaign had begun with this minor calamity and the emperor sought in vain to bring about a change of fortune. In spite of successful skirmishes near Brescia, in spite of great gallantry amongst individual contingents — the English particularly distinguished themselves — the siege made no progress. Numerous assaults were made, none were successful. The missiles of Calamandrinus, which found their mark with great accuracy, destroyed the emperor’s siege equipment.

In order to protect his instruments of war Frederick tied captured Brescians to his attacking towers. A technique that had failed before Crema before and was again unsuccessful in Brescia. Moreover, the Brescians retaliated in similar ways by tying their imperial prisoners to the walls, also unsuccessfully. The fighting continued savagely for weeks.

After a fortnight of it, the emperor, who had counted on the rapid victory of his immense army, opened negotiations, but the townsfolk refused to treat. A plague broke out amongst the cattle in the imperial camp, bad weather and deluges of rain made the enterprise more difficult, Frederick’s peace-envoy appears to have betrayed his master; instead of persuading the Brescians to surrender he had encouraged them to hold out. After two months of useless sacrifice, and a final unsuccessful attack, the emperor finally broke off the siege in October.

Here is Matthew Paris again: quote “In this way the summer season was spent and ended, so that on the approach of winter, a truce was agreed to by consent of both parties, and those who had come to the assistance of the emperor, went away without effecting their purpose; and the emperor himself as he could not conquer and subject to his rule the city of Brescia, which was a small one in comparison to the other cities, became less formidable to his enemies, and less respected by his friends.” (end quote)

What a disaster. A middling town had defeated all and everything the monarchs of Europe could field. This was worse than a lost battle, it was proof that there was no chance for the knightly class against a determined city population.

It will take a long time for this to sink in across Europe, but pope Gregory IX immediately realised the implications. There was hope to take down this menace who was not just encircling the papal lands but had the audacity to stage a triumph in Rome, his very own city. Gregory had left Rome in February just as the carroccio of Milan had been dragged up to the Capitoline Hill. Almost all of Rome was on the imperial side at that point, the great families of the Frangipani, the Colonna and Orsini, all had become vassals of the emperor who had promised them great honours and positions in the kingdom of Italy he was to remould in the image of Sicily.

Gregory returned in November 1238 to a fundamentally changed situation. Imperial support had melted like snow in the sun. Gregory ordered the great fortresses inside the city built into the ancient monuments and held by supporters of the emperor to be destroyed, marbles and mosaics from antiquity lost for good.

Gregory’s efforts were not confined to Rome. He sent a legate, a sworn enemy of Frederick and accomplished diplomat to Lombardy to reforge the old Lombard league, he helped bringing together that unusual alliance between Genoa and Venice. Slowly but surely the opposition to Frederick consolidates whilst his allies doubt his abilities to keep control.

Gregory issued a list of 14 complaints against the imperial behaviours, mainly about his treatment of the church in Sicily – excommunication was in the air. Hermann von Salza, the eternal go-between, the one who could have been able to keep the peace, is mortally ill.

The final straw that breaks the Camel’s back is a wedding. Enzio, the emperor’s favourite son is to wed. Despite his unpromising name Heinz, he was the ultimate 13^th century heartthrob. Well built, alert and light of foot, incomparably daring and fearless, the first in every fight, a hero rejoicing in danger and bearing many a wound is how he had been described in contemporary sources. Not as much an intellectual as his father, but a poet of joyous, love and life affirming songs. You can imagine him pulling out his lyre during a pause in battle to amuse his friends. He was so close to his father, people even called him falconello, the little falcon.

For sure, Frederick wanted to have the best possible bride for the true apple of his eye. And that bride was Adelasia, heiress to two of the four Sardinian provinces. These territories had a weird and wonderful history that should not interest us for this story, but suffice to say that they came with the title of king of Torre and Gallura, titles Enzio picked up. And to simplify things, he would from now style himself as King of Sardinia.

As much as Adelasia may have cherished the idea of bagging the Prince Harry of his day, the marriage was a poke in the eye of more important Italian powers than can be counted. Sardinia was claimed by the papacy and formed part of the zone of influence of Genoa and Pisa. The sudden presence of an imperial general on Sardinia suddenly gelled these eternal rivals together. Pisa joined their archenemies Genoa and Venice in their alliance against Frederick, all that under the auspices of the pope.

By the beginning of 1239, Frederick knew that a papal move was coming. He sent his best negotiators – just not Hermann von Salza – promising renewed persecution of the heretics and efforts to bring about another crusade to calm the pope down, but that was no good. In parallel he wrote to the Cardinals and tried to splinter the church, pointing out to them that St. Peter had only been a primus inter Pares and that they, the cardinals were the true leaders of the church. But no, nothing worked.

Let’s end with Matthew Paris: (quote) “As the emperor, however, contumaciously refused his request, and excused his actions by arguments founded on reason, his holiness the pope, on Palm Sunday, in the presence of a great many of the cardinals, in the spirit of glowing anger, solemnly excommunicated the said emperor Frederick, as though he would at once have hurled him from his Imperial dignity, consigning him with terrible denunciations to the possession of Satan at his death; and making use of these  words, and, as it were, thundering forth the fury of his anger, he excited terror in all his hearers.” (unquote)

That same day Hermann von Salza, the only person bot Frederick and Gregory trusted, died.

Let’s leave it here. Frederick is excommunicated. His vassals are released from their oaths. He is not yet deposed though, that will come later. The first part of this battle will be fought not with swords and spears, but with quills, and ships – yes a naval battle. An absolute first for the history of the Germans. Brace yourselves. The stage is set for the last and final struggle between on one side the emperor with his offer of peace and justice and on the other side the pope brandishing spiritual power and the communes thirsting for independence. I hope you will join us again.

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The great (and only) victory of emperor Frederick II over Milan

This week we are back to action stations. We resume our narrative in 1235 when Frederick II gathered his vassals in Mainz to implement his grand plan to regain the imperial rights in Northern Italy. He picks up where his grandfather Barbarossa and his father Henry VI had to leave things, trying again, but this time with the resources of Southern Italy behind him….and it’s déjà vu all over again

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 85 – Cortenuova

This week we are back to action stations. We resume our narrative in 1235 when Frederick II gathered his vassals in Mainz to implement his grand plan to regain the imperial rights in Northern Italy. He picks up where his grandfather Barbarossa and his father Henry VI had to leave things, trying again, but this time with the resources of Southern Italy behind him….and it’s déjà vu all over again

Before we start just a reminder. The History of the Germans Podcast is advertising free thanks to the generous support from patrons. And you can become a patron too and enjoy exclusive bonus episodes and other privileges from the price of a latte per month. All you have to do is sign up at patreon.com/historyofthegermans or on my website historyofthegermans.com. You find all the links in the show notes. And thanks a lot to Jeff, Alan and Noah who have already signed up.

As I said we resume our narrative in 1235. Frederick has just apprehended and imprisoned his son Henry (VII) (in brackets) to regain the support of the imperial princes. He needs them to return imperial power to northern Italy. As this will be the last great struggle of the House of Hohenstaufen and in some ways the last attempt at an empire that is truly Holy, Roman and an Empire, let’s first take a look at the big big picture.

Up until the Investiture controversy that started in 1077, the emperors relied heavily on the imperial bishops to provide the administration of the realm and the resources they needed for war. The bishops had received a large chunk of what used to be the crown lands as well as rights and privileges to fund these activities.

Over the 145 years following Henry IV’s penance in Canossa, the crown’s access to these ecclesiastical resources had become less and less immediate until in 1220 Frederick II granted the Confoederatio cum Principibus ecclesiasticis which formally transferred all imperial rights and privileges within their territory to the bishops in perpetuity. From that point onwards the bishops were no longer obliged to support imperial military efforts beyond the standard duty as an imperial vassal. They still often did, but on their own volition, not because they had to.

The emperors tried fill the gap left by the disappearance of  the imperial church system with other sources of income and soldiers. Henry IV, Henry V, Lothar III and Konrad III tried to create a coherent imperial territory that was meant to do act as the nucleus of a centralised government. That policy put them into conflict with the imperial princes and resulted in endless civil war.

Barbarossa broke out of this gridlock by shifting his focus to Northern Italy. If he could make the rich cities of Lombardy pay for the cost of his administration and his military, he could use that to consolidate royal power as was happening in France and England around that same time. And he would avoid conflict with the imperial princes.

Northern Italy was an attractive target for a number of reasons, apart from the fact that it was rich.

1. The emperor held the regalia  as successor to the ancient Lombard kings and they had never been given these over to the cities, hence they were still his, and
2. The imperial princes were happy to support a campaign in Northern Italy in exchange for plunder, land and titles down south, and
3. The Lombard cities were disunited. There were two principles. #1: All my neighbours are my enemies and #2: My enemie‘s enemies are my friends. Hence my neighbours neighbour is my ally.  political landscape looked like a chessboard where all the White squares fought the black squares.

It is very unlikely that Barbarossa wrote this down as a grand strategic plan, so it just  is ex-post rationalisation, but it sort of helps getting your head around what happened.

Barbarossa’s initial campaign was successful. His army supplied by German princes and Italian allies, namely Cremona and Pavia besieged and ultimately defeated Milan and its allies. On the back of that success Barbarossa issued the Laws of Roncaglia that consolidated all the imperial rights, in particular jurisdiction, taxation and the selection of the city consuls in the hands of the emperor.

However, things went pear shaped fairy quickly. Barbarossa handed out brutal punishment to the defeated cities. Crema and Milan were both flattened, and their citizens were forced to live in the open countryside. The suppression of the Milanese in particular was a costly exercise and the broken communes delivered little if anything to the imperial coffers. As a consequence the tax burden shifted more and more on to the allied cities. Cremona, Lodi and the others had not expected that support for the imperial cause would put them into the same position as their defeated enemies.

The emperor had overstretched the patience of the communes. Led by Cremona, Barbarossa’s former ally, the citizens of Milan returned to the ruins of their old home. The northern Italian cities buried their conflicts and united into a league against Barbarossa. Moreover the papacy, worried about the presence of the emperor just north of Rome, threw its lot in with the league. And the king of Sicily as well as the Byzantine emperor, enemies for centuries, also ganged up on the king form the north.

In 1167 Barbarossa attempted to steal their thunder. He marched one of the largest medieval armies ever mustered down to Rome. He took the city and nearly caught pope Alexander III, but his forces succumbed to dysentery. The flower of German chivalry sank into the filthy mud. After that disaster support for southern adventures vanished. Barbarossa will make one last attempt in 1176 that fails before Alessandria, the city of straw and is followed up by the final defeat at Legnano.

In 1183 Barbarossa signs the peace of Constance that guaranteed the Lombard cities  complete autonomy within the empire in exchange for an annual payment.

The great fight for northern Italy and with it the fight for a sustained basis for imperial rule seems lost for good. But not so fast. As one of the last acts before his death on crusade, Barbarossa plants the seed for one last attempt to gain control of Northern Italy and build a central imperial monarchy, the marriage of his son Henry VI with Constance, the heiress of the kingdom of Sicily.

But for the four decades from 1189 to 1235 nothing comes of it as far as the Lombards are concerned. Philipp of Swabia, Otto IV and Frederick II in his first decades on the throne did not have the resources to make any inroads in Northern Italy. The communes are free to do as they like and what they like is fighting each other. The original Lombard League dissolves in 1208. Whatever payments were made under the peace of Constance seize completely. Lombardy reverts rapidly back into its old chessboard pattern, my neighbour is my enemy, my enemy’s neighbour is their enemy and therefore my friend.

History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes. Frederick II’s position in 1235 almost perfectly mirrors Barbarossa’s position in 1152, i.e.,

1. Frederick has  a legal basis to assert imperial rights in Italy as the league had broken the peace of Constance, disobeyed imperial orders and thereby forfeit its autonomy
2. The imperial princes were obliged to support his move into Italy after he had sacrificed his oldest son for the project and given them the same privileges the bishops had received, and
3. The Italian cities were again disunited. The Lombard League had reformed in 1226, but with fewer members and less coherence.

But not just that. He also had resources his grandfather could not call upon.

The first of those were the riches and military power of the kingdom of Sicily. Opinions vary about what Sicily could bring to the party, but you would not be laughed out of a history seminar if you guessed them to be similar to England at the time, if not more. We have a register of feudal obligations for the duchy of Puglia and the principality of Capua that adds up to an obligation to field 8,000 knights and 11,000 foot soldiers, for these two principalities alone. That would be larger than both armies fighting at Bouvines combined. However, there is a time element here. A vassal was only obliged to serve for 40 days. To have an army in the field all year round, you need to divide the total by factor 9. That would mean Puglia’s and Capua’s obligation was a more manageable 900 knights and 1,200 foot soldiers and the whole of the kingdom could field maybe 3,000 knights and 5,000 foot soldiers on a continuous basis. And then there were the Saracens of Lucera who were paid soldiers and came allegedly to 7,000. So very sizeable even in a pan-European context.

The other additional military advantage came from a man called Ezzelino da Romano, who is an entirely new type of power player. A type that would dominate Italian politics well into the early modern period. To explain his rise we need to take another look at the political set-up of the Italian communes.

Each of these cities wasp riven with discord. It is often abbreviated as the fight between Ghibellines, supporters of the emperor and guelfs, supporters of the papacy. But the realty was more complex. Socially Ghibellines were often aristocratic knights who happened to live in fortified houses in cities. The Guelphs often recruited amongst the rising merchant and banker class. But then there were all sorts of personal animosities and feuds going back decades. Think Montagues and Capulets. These disparate factions were simply unable to agree on any of their fellow citizens as military and administrative leader. The only solution was to bring in someone from outside who would be neutral, could keep the peace and lead the city’s military contingent in war. This was called a Podesta and he had often dictatorial powers. To stop him from actually becoming dictator, his term was usually limited to just one year.

Being a Podesta became a lucrative career for the nobility of Northern Italy. Some did it as a job, others did it whilst still loyal to their hometown. Venice for instance tried to control the cities on the mainland through Venetian podestas.

Ezzelino was one of these Northern Italian nobles based in what is now the Veneto. He had his first break when he became Podesta of the city of Verona in 1226 where he stayed with interruptions until he resigned in 1230. He returned in 1232 called in by his supporters within the city. Ezzelino was no Cincinnatus. Once he had obtained the role of Podesta, he showed no intentions to leave again after one year as was the law. He simply stayed put, in charge of the military and holding the city fortresses. He did become the city’s tyrant and ruler, ending its time as a self-governing commune.

Ezzelino would remain podesta of Verona until his death. As we will see, Ezzelino will gain more podesta positions over time, usually by force until he commanded almost the entirety of what is now the Italian region of Veneto, minus the city of Venice. Ezzellino was famous for the brutality of his rule. Stories of decapitated adversaries and children of once eminent citizens ending up destitute and begging for food were everywhere. Dante placed him into the 7^th circle of hell where murderers and thugs sink into rivers of blood and fire. Ezzelino was one of the first of the Italian city despots, the della Scala, Visconti, Gonzaga, Malatesta and so forth. Ezzelino had declared for Fredrick in 1232 and in 1237 marries Selvaggia, one of Frederick’s illegitimate daughters from a relationship with an unknown mother.

The alliance with Ezzelino would be an important support for his cause but it would also bring him into conflict with Venice. At this time Venice was usually neutral in the fights on the mainland. The city had no mainland territory yet and no intention of acquiring any. They were solely maritime in outlook and focused on the East. They were also formally not part of the Holy Roman empire but of the Empire of Byzantium, so a return of imperial regalia would not necessarily bother them. But that does not mean they would be tolerating a massive thug in the form of Ezzelino da Romano on their doorstep. With Ezzelino came the enmity of Venice.

In summary, we are on the verge of war in Northern Italy. On Frederick’s side are the Imperial princes, the Italian cities of Cremona, Pavia, Parma and a few more, the Kingdom of Sicily and Ezzelino da Romano. On the side of the League were, well the members of the League, that means Milan, but also Lodi, Crema, Bergamo, Brescia, Verona, Vicenza, Padova, Treviso, Mantua, Alessandria and Vercelli and support from Venice.

And what about the pope you ask? Well, technically the pope and Frederick were at peace. They had agreed to a mutual understanding in 1230 after Frederick had chased the papal troops all the way back to Rome and still granted his holiness a generous settlement instead of coming in and slapping him in the face, as the king of France will do so successfully in 1303. In the subsequent period Frederick would regularly support the pope, help him out with soldiers and generally maintain a good relationship. All the excommunication stuff was forgotten…

In light of that the pope could not take sides but had to act as peacemaker. Though in reality he did not want Frederick to succeed. Not at all. If Frederick had won Lombardy, the church would be completely encircled. And in that case, there would be no more kissing of feet and holding of the reins of horses for the successor of St. Peter. So the league had the tacit but not the formal support of Gregory IX.

So much about the lay of the land. Let’s get into the action.

In 1235 at the royal assembly at Mainz, Frederick declares an imperial sanction against the cities of the Lombard league and calls his vassals to go to war in Italy in 1236. He states the following demands:

• The cities have to swear an oath of fealty to their emperor
• The re-formed league of 1226 is to be dissolved
• The imperial regalia as laid out in the laws of Roncaglia to be returned to the emperor
• The cities provide satisfaction to the emperor to make up for the insults he had endured.

This last point refers to the blocking of the alpine passes that stopped the German vassals of the emperor from joining the crusade in 1226 and coming to his assembly at Ravenna in 1231.

The Lombard cities refused all that by referring to the peace of Constance without saying anything about the failure to make any payments for at least 30 years.

The pope suggested arbitration. An imperial assembly with papal participation was called for Piacenza in 1236 to discuss the fight against heresy, the disagreements in Lombardy and another crusade. Item 1 and 3 were clearly put in to placate the pope, which did not quite work.

The pope laid out the terms of his arbitration which said that whatever the pope decided the emperor was to follow to the letter without recourse, since “the verdict of the Holy see was supreme”. In a private letter Gregory IX came out with his most famous comment: “the necks of kings and princes bent underthe knee of the priest, and Christian Emperors must subject their actions not to the Roman Pontiff alone; they have not even the right to rank him above another priest” In other words, according to Gregory IX, the Emperor of the Romans ranks below a village parson.

This hyperbole of the papacy in the 13^th century  never ceases to amaze me. Gregory is writing this letter from Anghani, a small town in the papal lands, because for umpteenth time the pope had been thrown out of Rome by the city magistrate. The pope cannot even get a city bailiff to take his orders but commands an emperor to accept whatever his decision might be.

Frederick does not even respond to the letter. The negotiations which Hermann of Salza was still conducting with the Pope might drag on to the accompaniment of military campaigns. In this affair only deeds could decide.

Frederick II appeared in Verona in August 1236 with a thousand knights that joined another 500 sent ahead to secure this important city at the exit of the Brenner pass. The fact that Ezzelino da Romano, was podesta of Verona was certainly helpful.

The first objective was to link up with the troops gathered at the loyal city of Cremona. An army of the League tried to prevent this by blocking the road between Verona and Cremona. But the Ghibelline cities’ troops took a major detour north via Brescia and joined the emperor which allowed the united army to crack open the road to Cremona.

Ezzelino held the Verona end and Frederick II the Cremona side. And then nothing much happened until the end of October when the cities of Vicenza, Treviso, Padua and Mantua raised an army to take on Ezzelino down in Verona. Ezzelino called on Frederick for help and the emperor’ troops covered the 120km distance to a position east of Verona in 1 day and two nights. When he got there, quote “in the time it takes a man to eat a piece of bread”, he switched strategy and pushed on east to Vicenza.

That was a very smart move. The army of Vicenza was standing before Verona and when they realised the emperor was heading to their defenceless hometown, the Vicentini dropped everything and chased after him. The other contingent did the same for fear their city would be next and Ezzelino was free again. Frederick had half a day on his pursuers, arrived at the city of Vicenza, got in and bang, had conquered his first city. He made Ezzelino the Podesta of Vicenza.

The fall of Vicenza had a big impact on the other eastern cities. Ferrara, Treviso and Padua, the by far richest city of the Veneto safe for Venice itself, all fell to Frederick and his allies. Ezzelino was. Made podesta of all of them and imperial vicar kicking off his tyrannical reign in the Veneto that would last over 20 years.

In the first half of the next year, 1237 military activity in Lombardy itself slowed down. Frederick had to go back to Germany since the duke of Austria had refused to appear at the royal assembly and to support the Italian campaign which was seen and meant as a rebellion. We will talk about that in more detail in a later episode. For now it is enough to mention that Frederick was successful and in a deviation from typical pattern of behaviour north of the Alps, Frederick deposed the duke of Austria and attempted to incorporate the duchy into his personal domain. Now that has not happened for quite a while.

Another sign of how his power and prestige has risen was that the princes without any concessions elected Frederick’s second eldest legitimate son Conrad as king Konrad IV. However, Konrad was not crowned as his brother had been, presumably to keep him on a tighter leash – but then he was just 9 years old.

In the meantime good old Hermann von Salza still tried to negotiate a settlement involving the papacy. Positions had thawed a bit in light of the setbacks for the League. Gregory IX replaced his legate with one more amenable to the emperor. The Lombards as well were looking for some form of compromise. But the Venetians were refusing to back down. Ezzelino on their doorstep and a tighter imperial control over Lombardy made them nervous. They managed to scupper any solution by getting the podesta of Piacenza, who was a Venetian, to make the citizens swear never to accept an imperial podesta, which was one of Frederick’s key demands.

In late summer 1237 Frederick reappears in Italy. His next objective is Mantua, the strategically most important city in Northern Italy. Mantua sits right in the middle of all major road connections north south and east west. It is surrounded by marches and easy to defend. In the 18^th century the Habsburgs extend the fortifications and create three artificial lakes that turn it into the key to Italy. Napoleon will spend almost two years trying to break this fortress. Frederick was quicker, or luckier. After his army captured two castles on the way to the city, the political weights in the city councils shifted and Mantua declares for the empire.

Next on the list is Brescia. Frederick takes another fortress that protected its approaches from the south. The road to his target was now open, except for the trifling matter of a League army 10,000 strong standing between him and the city. As the leader of an army of knights, Frederick would have loved to take them on in open battle, but that is exactly what the League does not want to do.

The city contingents had no structural advantage over the armies of knights an emperor could field. What the cities had were two things, the great walls that were almost impossible to break with the technology available at the time, and the resources to pay soldiers to stay in the field almost permanently. Hence the strategic objective was to keep the pressure on the imperial side, prevent them from establishing a long siege, but mostly keeping them wondering about the countryside until the vassal’s allotted time was up and/or the emperor runs out of money. With that strategy the League was quite successful in the late summer and autumn of 1237.

For two months the two armies had lain facing each other near Pontevico, separated by a marshy little river which there flows into the Oglio River. Operations had come to a standstill. The emperor could not allow his heavy cavalry to attack across the marshy land, the Lombards accepted no challenge.  November was almost over.  Negotiations had been unsuccessful in spite of considerable concessions by the towns.  There seemed no hope of dealing a decisive blow to the Lombards before the year was out.

On November 24 Frederick orders his camp to be broken up. His men built bridges across the Oglio, which runs north to south from the alps to the Po River. From the other side of the Oglio it was about 3 to four hours ride south back to Cremona where Frederick had his winter quarters.

As the Lombards see Frederick setting off for home, they too decide the campaign is over for the year. They pack up and march north. The largest contingent of this army was from Milan. To get home, they too had to cross the Oglio. They decided to march about 50km north along the river. That, they thought would be far enough from Cremona and Frederick’s army to be safe from any attacks during the dangerous crossing.

And that is exactly what Frederick’s plan had been. He had only sent his foot soldiers and the train back to Cremona. His armoured knights on horseback and his Saracen bowmen he kept with him on a clandestine march following the Oglio river upstream shadowing the Milanese. They waited for the enemy to cross. On the 27^th of November1237 they spotted them near the town of Cortenuova. Immediately the vanguard of 500 knights fell on the unsuspecting Milanese. Shortly after Frederick himself arrived with several thousand knights. Finally he had the open battle he had craved. At this point it was a pure cavalry battle. The Saracens on foot had not yet arrived and the city forces tended to be dominated by riders. The Milanese fell back to their carroccio.

I know I have described the carroccios several times in the podcast but I am still amazed by these contraptions. A Carroccio is an ox-driven cart that carries the standards of the city. It is the rallying point for the army, similarly to the imperial eagles and the French Oriflamme. The difference is that the bannerman of a knightly army sits on a horse and if things turn nasty, he can turn around and run or he may be cut down and the flag disappears in the melee. Once the flag has fallen a knight can also leave the field of battle without much loss of honour as the case is clearly lost.

The concept that it was dishonourable to flee whilst the standards are still flying also apply to the communal armies of Northern Italy. However, an enormous ox-driven cart can neither run away nor is it easily overturned. Hence the knights in the city armies held out longer and fought harder than anyone else. The loss of the Carroccio was the biggest humiliation a city could endure and the capture of an enemy carroccio tends to be celebrated for centuries afterwards. 

Ok, there we are. The Milanese are gathered around their carroccio, determined to defend it to the last. They had done that at their great victory at Legnano where emperor Barbarossa could not break the defence, was unhorsed and trampled into the ground. For three days he had been presumed dead before he returned to Pavia broken and dissheveled.

But this was a different emperor, and it seems a different Milanese army. Frederick and his men attacked in wave after wave. Only when night fell did they have to stop. Frederick ordered his men to sleep in their armour as fighting was to resume at first light. Meanwhile the 7000 Saracenbowmen on foot had arrived, either towards the end of the fighting or in the night.

At sunrise Frederick’s army witnessed a most unusual sight. The Milanese, famed for their courage and ferocity had left. The carroccio stood, undefended. They could see their enemies running home as fast as their legs could carry them. Those who had taken refuge in the nearby town of Cortenuova surrendered. 1000 knights and 3000 foot soldiers were taken prisoner, including Pietro Tiepolo, the podesta of Milan, who was also the son of the doge of Venice.

Vert few medieval battles ended with such comprehensive defeat.

In the contemporary propaganda the battle and the narrative around it takes on a distinctly Roman tinge. Though most of the imperial knights had come from Germany their battle cry had allegedly not been German, but came out in the Latin of ancient Rome: Miles Roma, Miles Imperator they shouted – Roman soldiers, Imperial soldiers.

Frederick entered Cremona a few days later in the manner of a Caesar, Pompey or Trajan. As in the ancient Triumphs staged to honour successful generals, the spoils of war are paraded through the streets of Cremona. The great Carroccio of Milan is not pulled by oxen, but by one of Frederick’s elephants. On its platform, tied to the lowered mast that once flew the standard of proud Milan leans Pietro Tiepolo, podesta of the city and most noble of prisoners.

Frederick II has reached the absolute high point of his political career.

I finish with Ernst Kantorowicz interpretation of the event:

Quote: “The Emperor’s yellow banner with the Roman eagles floated aloft, while from a wooden tower on the elephant’s back trumpeters made known the triumph of the new Divus Caesar Augustus. The emperor himself told the Romans that his triumph was a reversion to the original Roman form.

The intoxication of this exotic, pagan-Roman, assuredly most unchristian, celebration of victory, marked a turning point in Frederick’s life. All the magnificent Roman titles which he, like his predecessors bore, were justified. The empty formula, meaninglessly used, “Imperator Invictus,” suddenly meant once more what it had meant of old. Without the need of transcendental interpretation he was now in the naked literal sense:

FELIX VICTOR AC TRIUMPHATOR.

The shades of Rome, of the Romans and their Caesars, had tasted blood: they began to stir again and to be visible in the flesh once more; a genuine breath of antiquity revivified by life itself.”

Yes, I too struggle with the weird pathos, but it isn’t that wide off the mark. Frederick at this stage of his life increasingly identifies with the emperors of ancient Rome and their practically unlimited power. It is this hybris that will stop him from turning an extremely rare complete victory into a sustainable political position. How that pans out we will discuss next week. I hope you will join us again.

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This is a whole episode about a book, a book called “De Arte Venandi cum Avibus” the Art of Hunting with Birds. Hunting books are similar to books about fishing, riveting for those who do it, crushingly boring to those who do not.

But this book is about hunting in the same way as the The Old Man and the Sea is about fishing. It is about nature, about the beginnings of science and the awakening of the critical mind. It is about someone who acts and thinks very differently to his contemporaries. Come and take a look…and listen to me getting into a rant.

Transcript

Hello and Welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 84 – The Art of Hunting with Birds

In the centre of the city of Heidelberg, former capital of the Palatinate rises the Heiliggeistkirche, the church of the Holy Spirit built between 1398 and 1515. Inside the church you will notice some unusual galleries on the upper floor. This is where the Bibliotheca Palatina, the greatest repository of books and manuscripts in renaissance Germany was once kept. Put together by the Counts Palatinate on the Rhine it contained 5,000 printed books and 3,524 manuscripts. It served as the library of the University of Heidelberg, then and still today one of the foremost places of learning in the country. In 1622 the Catholic league sacked the Calvinist Palatinate. Count Tilly, commander of the Bavarian troops seized the library and was initially ordered to send it to Munich. But the emperor insisted the library was so valuable and famous it was to be sent to the pope in Rome as a sign of his loyalty and esteem.

Amongst the books in the Bibliotheca Palatina, are three of the most famous medieval manuscripts ever made. The Evangeliar of Lorsch made  in around 810 at the court of Charlemagne. It was the blueprint for the great art of medieval illuminations that reached its peak under the Ottonians, many of which you may have seen on my social media posts these last years. One half of it ended up in the Vatican library in Rome, the other half was nicked by the cardinal in charge of packing up the books in 1622. That half is today in Alba Iulia in Transsylvania.

The second superlative manuscript is the Codex Manesse, the collection of medieval Minnesang decorated with colourful depictions of courtly life In the Highe Middle Ages. These I have also used extensively on my website and in the description of my Patreon tiers. The codex Manesse was taken along to England before the fall of Heidelberg by the Elisabeth Stuart, the wife of the Count Palatinate. Her descendants ran out of cash and had to sell it. In the 19^th century it was bought back by the University Library of Heidelberg where you can still see it in real life and in an excellent digital version.

The third book and possibly the one outshining even those two was an illuminated manuscript of De Arte venandi cum Avibus, The art of hunting with birds produced around 1260. It contains 111 folios with brilliantly coloured, extraordinarily lifelike, accurate and minute images of birds, their attendants, and the instruments of the art of falconry. This is the famous falconry book of Frederick II. It came back to Heidelberg one last time in 1986 and since I lived there, I managed to see it. I came almost every day since every day the curators would turn over one page to reveal one more of the fabulous images.

Yes, this is a book about hunting and quite frankly I normally put books about hunting in the same category as books about golf – extremely interesting to those who play golf, crushingly boring to everybody else. But this book is not about hunting, it is about nature about the beginnings of science and the awakening of the critical mind. Let’s take a look..

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Frederick II was a hunter. In the 13^th century every nobleman was a hunter. Hunting was one of the three things every knight needed to be able to do, riding, fighting and hunting. Maybe by 1230 he also needed to add a veneer of civilisation and gain skills in putting together some nice verses to the unattainable lady of his heart. Durig the crusades the European aristocracy encountered age-old middle-eastern hunting traditions. One was the hunting with cheetahs or as the European sources called them “hunting leopards”. Cheetahs are extremely fast but tire quickly. Hence, they were trained to ride on horseback to the hunting grounds where they would be released. Hunting with cheetahs was the most expensive and most environmentally destructive sport imaginable since the animals do not easily breed in captivity. We know from court records that Frederick was constantly ordering new cheetahs to be brought across from North Africa and the Middle East.

The other hunting tradition that came across from the Middle East was falconry, the hunting with birds of prey. Falconry is still the sport of the emirs, and it is almost as expensive as hunting with cheetahs would be if still allowed. In 2021 a white gyrfalcon was sold at auction in Riyad for $465,000. In Frederick’s time that was no different. A single Falcon could cost as much as small farm.

It seems Frederick was obsessed with falconry. Some argue that he moved the effective capital of his kingdom from Palermo to the small town of Foggia to be able to better hunt with his falcons. He most likely started this passion as a teenager and wherever he travels, he was always accompanied by his favourite birds.

For Frederick Falconry was not just a way to pass his time but became a scientific endeavour. The fruit of this endeavour was the book I saw in Heidelberg in 1986 – de arte venandi cum avibus – about the art of hunting with birds. Here is in his own words why he wrote it:

Quote: “We have investigated and studied with the greatest solicitude and in minute detail all that relates to this art, exercising both mind and body so that we might eventually be qualified to describe and interpret the fruits of knowledge acquired from our own experiences or gleaned from others. For example, we, at great expense, summoned from the four quarters of the earth masters in the practice of the art of falconry. We entertained these experts in our own domains, meantime seeking their opinions, weighing the importance of their knowledge, and endeavouring to retain in memory the more valuable of their words and deeds.

As the ruler of a large kingdom and an extensive empire we were very often hampered by arduous and intricate governmental duties, but despite these handicaps we did not lay aside our self-imposed task and were successful in committing to writing at the proper time the elements of the art.” (end quote)

So far so good. Frederick is an obsessive falconer who spends every minute he can spare to either. Hunt himself or hear other people talk about falconry and keeping it all in his head. But it is not. just that, he gets his scholars to collect all and everything ever written about birds and falconry. If it is in Arabic or Greek he has someone translate it into Latin. That is how Michael Scot, his astrologer and multipurpose genius comes to translate Aristotle, in particular “de Anima” – about the soul and “de Animalis”, about the Animals. These translations will make their way into the hands of Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinus who will make these books the bedrock of scholasticism. But that is not what he had them translated for. It was for the birds.

And as he was hunting, observing, listening to his falconry experts, going through his books and notes he comes to a set of conclusions that makes this book and its author so different from most things written in the 13^th century:

Quote: “Inter alia, we discovered by hard-won experience that the deductions of Aristotle, whom we followed whenthey appealed to our reason, were not entirely to be relied upon, more particularly in his descriptions of the characters of certain birds. There is another reason why we do not follow implicitly the Prince of Philosophers: he was ignorant of the practice of falconry— an art which to us has ever been a pleasing occupation, and with the details of which we are well acquainted. In his work, the Liber Animalium, we find many quotations from other authors whose statements he did not verify and who, in their turn, were not speaking from experience. Entire conviction of the truth never follows mere hearsay.” End quote

Frederick II says that Aristotle is sometimes wrong, that he paddles hearsay and does not check his sources. Not something you find very often, or ever before the 16^th century.

Dissing Aristotle flies into the face of any scholastic whose primary assumption was that the authorities, i.e., the bible, the church fathers and the great ancient philosophers were absolutely right. And where the great professors of Paris, Bologna or Oxford found the authorities might on the face of it diverge they strained every one of their synapses to find an interpretation that let both still be right. Finally if compromise cannot be found despite all these efforts, the decision which one was right was based on seniority, i.e., bible first, Aristotle. What played no role in a dispute was actual observations, proof that came bottom-up, not top down.

Frederick operates in the diametrically opposite way. As he says in his introduction: “Our purpose is to present the facts as we find them”. And he puts this into practice. His book consists in total of six chapters, the first is about “The general habits and structure of birds” and the other five about specific techniques of hunting with falcons. I am no biologist, but I understand that his observations were a mainstay of ornithology well into the 20^th century. Reading in it, it is clear that what he describes is based on observations. He tests Aristotle’s theories against his observations and where the theory falls short, he puts the prince of philosophers aside and develops his own hypothesis.

Then he tests his hypotheses. For instance he believed  ostrich eggs could be incubated in the sun, and found they could, at least in Puglia. Another concerned the habits of vultures specifically whether vultures exclusively eat carrion. For that he left some vultures without food for several days. Then he put live chicks into their cages. Despite being extremely hungry, the vultures did not attack and eat the chicks. That was proof that vultures only ever eat carrion. Then he wanted to find out whether they detect their food by sight or by smell. He took two vultures and had his men stitch the birds’ brows below its eyes, a long-standing technique applied to falcons that may be painful but not long term harmful to the animal. Then again, he left them hungry and presented them with carrion. The vultures could not see it and left the food untouched, which convinced him that vultures find food by sight, not smell.

He describes himself as an inquisitor, at that time not a laden word, but describing someone who seeks the truth by investigating the circumstances.

At his court other biological and medical sciences also flourished. His court doctor, Thomas of Antioch had studied medicine in Baghdad and brought the much more advanced medical knowledge of the east to the university of Salerno, the leading medical faculty in Christian Europe at the time. Thomas also helped design the criteria for the approbation of doctors and pharmacists, something unknown elsewhere. Jacobus Ruffus, nephew of Frederick’s marshal, wrote the very first book about veterinary medicine of the Middle Ages which includes a rudimentary notion of mendelian inheritance identifying recessive and dominant traits in horses.

His insistence that scientific proof was superior to the faith in established authorities added to the bewilderment that his contemporaries experienced in his presence. That came on top of all the other ways in which he deviated from the monarchical normcore of the 13^th century. He had an interest in other religions, he maintained regular exchanges with the court of Sultan Al Malik of Egypt and other Muslim rulers, he had turned his kingdom of Sicily into an absolutist regime and he was in constant conflict with the church.

As the latter conflict, the one with the popes intensified, this mixture gave rise to rumours and tall tales that have been repeated down the centuries. They paint Frederick as a gruesome and godless ruler. And as they keep getting repeated, we will repeat them here too.

One story was that he used men who had been convicted to death in his experiments. One he had put into a sealed wine barrel to find out whether his soul would leave via the bunghole as he suffocated. Another experiment involved two men, both were given the same food, one then ordered to rest and the other to go for a long walk. Once the second men returned, both were killed, and the content of their stomachs investigated to find out whose digestion had proceeded he furthest. And finally, he allegedly undertook an experiment I will not recount here. Google it under Frederick II Language experiment if you are so inclined.

All these allegations are from a book by Salimbene di Parma, a Franciscan Monk who wrote a treatise comparing Frederick II to the ten plagues 30 years after Frederick’s death. So not exactly an impartial eyewitness. Most historians hence dismiss these claims as outright phantasies. I would like to agree, but then if Frederick was indeed of a scientific disposition and – in line with the culture of the time – had little regard for the rights of convicted criminals, these first two experiments are not completely impossible to have happened. The language experiment however must be propaganda.

Falconry was Frederick’s total obsession, but not his only interest. He was as I said before a man of unquenchable curiosity. When he had a chance to meet the great mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci he took it. Whether he understood the Fibonacci retracement, a set of ratios to identify support and resistance levels in a trend, I very much doubt. These calculations are still used today by so=called technical analysts in the markets and drive billions of dollars of investments.

He also picked up another habit of life at the great Muslim courts. Rulers and their courts would send out letters to renowned scholars, seeking answers to questions they had been discussing. Sometimes the scholar would then publish the questions and answers in a book, thereby elevating both their own standing and that of the noble questioner.

The Arab philosopher Ibn Saib wrote a book he called the “Sicilian Questions” which included enquiries allegedly posed by Frederick and his court as well as his responses. Modern historical science has rejected the notion that these queries had indeed originated at Frederick’s court, but the fact remains that one of the most renowned eastern scholars thought it would elevate his standing to pretend the questions came from the emperor.

Even if the Sicilian questions were never posed, we know from multiple sources that Frederick did host and sometimes participated in philosophical and theological debates and posted problems to scholars in east and west . There were not only Christian scholars at his court but also Jewish and Arabic men of letters. A jewish member of his court Jakob ben Anatoli describes debates about the works of Maimonides and whether they could be brought in line with Aristotelian thought. Equally Juda ben Salomon who helped translate Arabic and Hebrew texts reports about discussions of the Talmud, a primary source of Jewish law and theology.

Frederick’s interest in Jewish culture and theology becomes very public during his stay in Germany in 1236 when he is called upon to adjudicate on a case of Blood Libel.

To explain this we have to go back to the year 1177 when Thomas of Monmouth, a monk at the Benedictine abbey of Norwich publishes a book entitled the life and miracles of St. William of Norfolk. According to Thomas of Monmouth, William was a 12-year-old boy of unusual innocence. One day – so Thomas tells us- young William was abducted by Jewish men he did not know who bound and gagged him. They then allegedly shaved the boy’s head, put a crown of thorns on him and fixed him to a cross in a mockery of the crucifixion. Afterwards disposed of the body in a well. In his treatise Thomas  quotes a convert from Judaism, brother Theobald of Cambridge who claimed that the Jewish faith required an annual sacrifice of a Christian child to ensure the return to the Holy Land and to punish the Christians for the persecution of the Jews.

The publication of this book led to copycat accusations of Jewish communities for this so-called Blood Libel. In total there may have been as many as 150 such accusations during the Middle Ages which almost inevitably ended with the lynching or burning of members of the Jewish community. I guess I do not have to tell you that not a single one of these accusations had any link to reality.

One such case was brought before Frederick in 1236. The citizens of Fulda had killed 34 of their Jewish neighbours after five children were found burned to death in their house at Christmas. The Jews were accused not just of the usual ritualistic murder but also of drinking the children’s blood and using it to bake matzos, the traditional bread to be eaten at Passover. The citizens of Fulda brought the bodies of the five children to Frederick’s Pfalz in Hagenau. Ever since Henry IV, all Jews were unfree serfs of the emperor and hence under direct imperial protection. The citizens of Fulda needed confirmation that they had acted legally in the destruction of imperial property.

Frederick was familiar with the Talmud and Jewish customs and hence did not believe that any such crime had been committed, well apart from the murder of the 34 Jews that is. But he also understood that if he just decided it on the back of his own knowledge, the general population may not come along with his judgement and Blood Libel would continue.

And so he staged a huge public trial. He invited theologians, scholars who could read Hebrew and also recent converts from Judaism who could credibly describe the Jewish law. They all pointed out not only that there is no requirement to sacrifice a Christian child every year but that their faith explicitly prohibits the ritual shedding of any blood, human or otherwise.

It was more than just a court decision it was an attempt to end this madness once and for all. Unfortunately this did not work out fully and persecution of Jews continued across Europe. The papacy and other monarchs too tried to stop the maltreatement of the Jews. Their approach tended to be a blunt, don’t do it by the order of the king. As far as I know, Frederick was the only one who tried to persuade the people by bringing proper evidence to the table, another sign of how his approach and thinking differs from other medieval rulers.

And that now gets me off to a rant. Over the last 40-50 years or so historians have worked hard to prove that Frederick was not unusual for the Middle Ages. They argue that he was not the first to bring Arabic and Jewish scholars to his court, his grandfather Roger II did so too, they argue Frederick did not write his book on Falconry himself, because it was common for monarchs to be ascribed authorship when in realty their scholars had written it all, his son Manfred is cited as the translator of a Hebrew text when he spoke no Hebrew, they tell us that negotiating possession of  Jerusalem for Christianity wasn’t a major achievement because Al Kamil was willing to hand it over anyway. I lost it when I read the Hans Martin Schaller, a highly respected scholar argued that Frederick was a very pious monarch, no different to other men in his position.

I really do not get this. I am not a proponent of the great man theory of history. I am the first to admit the Otto the Great or Frederick Barbarossa were very much a product of their times and one was lucky, the other less so. And I hope you noticed that I believe Frederick’s policy in Germany had a detrimental effect on the long-term development of the Holy Roman Empire.

But Frederick as a pious monarch, give me a break. The man built hundreds of castles and only one church, I repeat one, in a reign of nearly 50 years, one. Compare that to contemporary monarchs. Louis IX of France, admittedly, St. Louis, paid 100,000 livres for the large silver chest that housed the crown of thorns he had acquired from Constantinople and that he had brought barefoot and in a hare shirt into Paris himself. There he had built the Sainte Chapelle the most marvellous gothic treasure that cost him another 40,000 livres. Louis IX went on two crusades that achieved nothing but knightly tales, one of which he died on, he passed severe laws punishing blasphemy and targeted the Jews and had the Talmud burned. That is a pious king.

Meanwhile in England, king Henry III of England was almost equally pious, just less popular. He spent vast amounts on church ceremonies and tried to turn Westminster into a rival of the Sainte Chapelle.  Ah, and he had the Jews first robbed and then made to wear yellow badges.

None of these guys had spent time observing the flight of a swan and comparing it to what Aristotle or Pliny the elder or an Arab scholar had said about the flight of swans. None of them had questioned Aristotle’s idea of spontaneous generation that believed that crocodiles suddenly appeared from mud. None of them thought that facts are superior to dusty books.

Yes, I agree that Roger II and the whole Norman court in Sicily was a fascinating intellectual environment rivalling that of Frederick’s court in Foggia. The same goes for Alfonse X of Castile, but these guys are the exception. There is not much science and philosophy coming from Richard Lionheart, Philippe Auguste or any of Frederick II’s own predecessors, except maybe of Otto III.

Sometimes there are exceptional individuals, not superior in all and everything, just very different. Frederick was not the smartest political operator of his time, that was Philippe Auguste. He was not the best fighter, that may have been Richard Lionheart. But to say he was dull, that just is not true.

He grew up with a patchy education from some papal legates who were busy trying to keep a crumbling kingdom together. Maybe that need to make it up for himself is where he got his interests and his contrarian way of thinking from, who knows. But I am not going to believe for a moment that he was the same sort of ruler as Konrad II or Lothar III, two very much run-of-the mill medieval rulers, successful rulers and interesting in their own way, but not exceptional personalities.

o.k. rant over. Do not get me wrong, I am not dismissing modern scholarship. We certainly do not want to get back to the unfettered hero worship of Ernst Kantorowicz though I love quoting him and he is an amazing writer. Without recent publications in particular by Hubert Houben and Olaf Rader this podcast would be utterly lost. So thanks modern scholarship, could you. Just just stop trying to be controversial by making everyone samey!

And that gets us to the end of this episode. Next week we will resume the narrative. Time to go for another attempt at breaking these pesky northern Italian communes with an quick detour via Vienna and maybe we even get to the bit where young Enzo becomes king of Sardinia. I hope you will join us again next week.

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