This is the famous battle of Legnano, when we see towns, and townspeople, not dukes or counts, coming forth to fight for their freedom and their rights.
In July 1177, exactly a century since Henry iv. had humbled himself at Canossa before Hildebrand, Frederick threw himself at the feet of Alexander, in St. Mark’s, Venice, in a solemn ceremony of reconciliation. At Venice the Emperor gave up all claim to the patrimony and temporal power of St. Peter. In 1183, in his final treaty of Constance, with the Lombard League, he gave up his claim to rule Lombardy, and the cities were allowed to govern themselves.
But again, the Emperor was not as humble as he seemed. The Lombard cities quarrelled among themselves, and he soon obtained power among them. In 1186 he married his son Henry to Constance, heiress of the Norman kingdom of Sicily. Now, with the strong kingdom of Sicily and Naples added on to the empire, the Pope was caught on the flank. This is a new turn in the contest.
In 1189 the old Emperor set off on a crusade to Palestine. Next year he was drowned whilst bathing in a river in Asia Minor. Thus ended one of the greatest and most energetic Germans.
Henry vi., Barbarossa’s son, made terrible work in South Italy. He died, however, in 1197, leaving a baby son to succeed him. In 1198 Innocent III., the great pope of the Middle Ages, was elected to the papacy. Innocent was of a noble Italian family, and a lawyer. He believed, like Hildebrand, that the papacy should exercise a spiritual rule over all Europe. But he saw that to have spiritual rule, the Church must have power, and to have power she must have a kingdom of her own, a real kingdom, with its centre and capital at Rome. So he set himself to work to put kings and princes in their places, and virtually to rule all Europe as if it were one big country. He was a wise and good man. He did not like the cruelties and extravagance of war. He wanted to establish a good, moral rule. And he failed, as Hildebrand had failed; because in the end it is impossible to rule mankind, at least in any great region, without the sword.
In the turmoil that followed Henry vi.’s death, Innocent tried to interfere. He had interfered in England, trying to force on the chapters the bishops he had elected himself — as in the case of Stephen Langton. He had brought King John to his knees, and exacted much tribute from England. All the time he wanted to uphold the cause of the righteous and the poor, and yet he only succeeded in rousing the deepest antagonism in the people. It was the same in Germany. There the bishops and archbishops were powerful great princes, very German in their ways, very lordly and worldly in their living, caring for their own bishopric and their own German power, but very little for far-off Rome. They were the most un-Roman and independent of all the clergy. The Pope wanted to correct this, to make them more humble and Christianlike. They stood against him with all their might, and all the Germans, clergy, princes, poor alike detested the Pope for his interfering. The songs and ballads of the time curse the name of Innocent, and call the Pope a stirrer-up of strife and hate, a devil seeking his own power. Yet he only wanted to do what was right, strictly, according to the Catholic conception.
Innocent did great work. He tried to enforce a cosmopolitan authority over Europe, when people wanted to act separately and nationally. But he tried all the time to make nations and princes wiser, more just, better in their dealings. His great Lateran Council of 1215, which was attended by 400 bishops, 800 abbots, and ambassadors from every great power, was one of the most splendid councils Europe has ever seen. It reformed the Church, and brought in new church laws, or canons, all wise and broad, forbidding, for example, the cruel trials by ordeal, or by duel, substituting methods of true justice.
But in the young Frederick was growing up one who would bring both papacy and empire to the brink of destruction. Frederick was only three years old when his father, Henry vi., died. The little boy remained with his mother, Constance, in Sicily or South Italy, under the protection of the Pope. He was red-haired, a real Hohenstaufen, but rather small and puny looking. He had for his tutor Honorius, who became Pope later on.
Frederick was perhaps the cleverest man of the Middle Ages. He was King of Sicily and Naples from the time he was four years old, and had all advantages. At court he usually spoke the Romance language, a kind of early Italian or French. He loved the minstrels and jongleurs who made poetry and sang to the harp, the troubadours. So when he was quite young he too learned to sing and make poems; and he was a good poet. Italian was his native language. At the Sicilian court too were Moors or Arabs. The Moors had established powerful kingdoms in Spain and Sicily. They were on the whole more educated, more civilised than the Europeans. They were the best mathematicians, astronomists, physicians, and botanists in the world, besides that they had a beautiful literature and architecture. Sicily of that day was a wonderful island, the meeting-place of East and West, the flower of civilisation. And of all this Frederick had full advantage. He studied philosophy and religion, and understood more than the popes. He wrote a book on hawking, which remained for centuries the best book on the subject. He made a collection of wild animals at Palermo, established a school of medicine at Salerno, and founded the university of Naples. He was perhaps the most cultured man in Europe, but Italian, hardly a German any more. His contemporaries called him the Wonder of the World.
In his ambition, and his war-like activity, he was like Napoleon. Napoleon too was born on an Italian island, and was emperor of a strange people. But Frederick had not the stubborn heart and fixed purpose of Napoleon, though he had a much more brilliant personality.
Frederick’s mother died in 1198, when he was still a baby, and she left him under the guardianship of Pope Innocent III. In 1211, a group of princes in Germany, the King of Bohemia, the Duke of Austria, the Duke of Bavaria, and others, hating the Guelphs, elected the boy Frederick, who was away in Sicily, King of Germany. In 1212, Frederick, being only fifteen years old, made a bold dash into Germany, and soon raised a great following against the Guelph Emperor Otto. In 1214 he got the upper hand; Otto iv. was defeated, Frederick was solemnly crowned emperor in the portico of Charlemagne’s basilica at Aix- la-Chapelle. Soon after he departed to Italy again, and only paid two more visits to Germany, in 1235 and in 1236. They were not very important. Frederick was a thorough Italian, though German by blood.
Innocent III. had helped Frederick against Otto iv., hoping to get a humble, dependent emperor. There was peace between the two till Innocent died, in 1216. After Innocent came Honorius III., who had been Frederick’s tutor. He was a mild, learned man, and the two remained friendly. In 1220 Frederick was crowned emperor at Rome, and for once the Romans did not raise the disturbance they usually made at the crowning of the hated foreign emperors. Innocent’s desire had been that the northern empire and the kingdom of Sicily should not be joined, under the Emperor, for if they were the Papacy would be placed between them as between the two blades of a pair of scissors. Unfortunately Honorius agreed that Frederick should unite both domains. Now the Papacy was in the Emperor’s fist.
The popes were very anxious to make Crusades, and Frederick was urged to go. For a long time he refused, and was threatened with excommunication. He thought Crusades foolish. But Honorius died in 1227, and Gregory, who was Pope after him, drove Frederick II. into setting sail from Brindisi. After a day or two at sea the Emperor fell ill, and returned. He was promptly excommunicated. ‘ Very well,’ thought Frederick, ‘ I will now go to Palestine.’ In 1228 he was already in the Holy Land. The Pope, who saw Frederick’s mocking cleverness, excommunicated him again. It was no good. Frederick turned to the world, and said — ’ You see I am the champion of Christendom.’ And all Europe applauded him. The people of Rome rose and drove out Gregory. The Emperor was delighted. He did not care a straw about Palestine and the Holy Places, but he had made his point.
Then, in Palestine, instead of wasting time fighting and squabbling, having a strong force at his back he made a treaty with the Sultan of Cairo, by which Jerusalem, Bethelehem, Nazareth, were yielded to the Christians, and all necessary means of communic
ation with the coast. A campaign could not possibly have done so well. But the Pope was furious, and would have nothing to do with the success of an excommunicated man, declaring the whole treaty void. Frederick calmly had himself crowned King of Jerusalem, taking the crown himself from the altar, since no priest dared touch it. Then he wrote a friendly letter to the Pope, and Gregory was forced to agree to what had been done.
While Frederick was away, the Pope had stirred up Italy, and undone all the good work in Sicily. But in 1230 the two made friends, and the Emperor was relieved of the excommunication. Then Frederick set to work. lie loved his Sicilian kingdom, and determined to make it a model to the world. He established a pure autocracy, almost a tyranny, and set up a rigid system of government. But it was all excellent, for it kept the peace and the land prospered marvellously. The court was brilliant and intellectual; science, education, building flourished; no country was in such an admirable state. All this Frederick was able to build up upon the work of the great Normans who had preceded him.
Then he turned to Italy. He fought the strong cities of the League, capturing them one after the other. In 1237 he won a brilliant victory over Milan, thus wiping out his father’s disgrace at Legnano. By 1239 he had Italy in his hands, and began to organise it. Out of his Sicilian Court of Justice he made an Imperial Court for all Italy, and began to rule this southern empire, having crushed in Germany a revolt headed by his own son Henry, whom he imprisoned for life.
But there was bound to be perpetual war now, between the Emperor and the Pope, for the latter saw his kingdom, the States of the Church, encircled and ground down in the Italian grip of Frederick. In 1239 the Emperor was again excommunicated, and there began the final contest between the Papacy and the Hohenstaufen Empire.
‘ I will tear the mask from the face of this wolfish tyrant, and force him to lay aside worldly affairs and earthly pomp, and to tread in the holy footsteps of Christ,’ wrote Frederick of the Pope. The Pope replied that Frederick was a heretic, that he disbelieved in the immortality of the soul, that he spoke of Moses, Abraham, and Christ as the three great impostors.
The struggle was now to the death. Both sides tried to draw all Europe into the conflict. The Pope tried to turn Germany against its emperor, and failed. He summoned a great number of cardinals and bishops from every land, to make a universal solemn condemnation of Frederick. But Frederick was lucky enough to capture the twenty-two Genoese vessels that were conveying these prelates to the Tiber mouth, and he chuckled and kept them prisoners. All over Italy friars and wandering preachers went about stirring up the people against the infidel Emperor.
In 1241 Gregory died. Innocent iv. was elected. Some attempt was made at reconciliation, but it failed. Innocent iv. extorted money from the Church in every land, to keep up this vast struggle. In 1244 the Pope fled to Genoa, and cried to the world that he was a martyr to the violence of the evil Frederick. In 1245 he went to Lyons, called a great Council, declared the Emperor excommunicated and dethroned, deposed. He stirred up Germany, and had an anti-emperor elected, Henry Raspe. Then he declared a holy Crusade against the infidel Frederick. Innocent iv. determined to exterminate the Hoyse of Hohenstaufen, which had determined to exterminate the power of the Papacy. Frederick was declared to be a Pharaoh, a Herod, a Nero, who must be destroyed in Christ’s name.
The Emperor quickly replied. ‘ I hold my crown,’ he said, ‘ from God alone; neither the Pope, nor the Council of Lyons, nor the devil shall rend it from me.’ Then he went on: ‘ Shall the pride of a man of low birth degrade the Emperor, who has no superior nor equal on earth? ‘
Italy now became the scene of a hideous conflict. In the north, Eccelin da Romano, Frederick’s lieutenant, carried on a ruthless war which has given him a terrible name in history. Frederick was active in the south. But in 1247 Parma deserted to the Pope. Frederick hurried to recover it. He settled down to a siege, and built the city of Vittoria as a base of antagonism. But the Parmesans, after a long siege, made a sudden sortie, burnt Vittoria, utterly routed the Emperor, capturing even his crown. It was the death-blow to Frederick’s cause. He became more wild, suspicious of his nearest friends: a raving red beast, they called him. He was mad to destroy the Papacy. Like Napoleon in later days, he said how happy Asia was, that she need fear no intrigues of popes. He almost declared himself another Prophet of God, like Mahomet. He wanted the divine honours of the Augustan emperors of old to be paid to his person. He proclaimed bis own birthplace in Sicily sacred, and said that his great councillor Peter de la Vigne was the Peter, the Rock, on whom the Imperial Church was to be founded.
But all this was the frenzy of failure and mortal hatred of popes. In 1249 his Legate Enzio was defeated and imprisoned by the Bolognese. Frederick hurried north to relieve him. But on December 13, 1250, Frederick died, and the last hope of Hohenstaufen dominion in Italy vanished. Manfred, the Emperor’s illegitimate son, fought bravely on, more or less holding Italy for twelve years, till he was slain in battle in 1266. Frederick’s son Conrad had become emperor in Germany on his father’s death, but he too speedily died, in 1254, leaving a little son Con- radin. Conradin, who was a brave, capable youth, marched into Italy in 1268, two years after Manfred’s death. He was defeated and captured and beheaded by the help of the French, and so ended the ‘ viper brood ‘ of Hohenstaufen, as the Pope and the French called them.
The Pope would seem to be victorious. But in fact the papal power was shattered. From this time it fell into the hands of the French, who rose up as the greatest nation. There was no central papal power in Europe any more. For many years the popes lived at Avignon in South France, while little emperors rose and fell in Germany, unimportant. Nations, states, cities now became separate and strong; the great oneness of the power of the Church was gone. So we approach the divided Europe of later days, leaving the Christendom of the Middle Ages.
Chapter X. The Crusades
In the early Middle Ages Europe was one great realm as it has never been since. It was not strictly Europe, but Christendom. There were so many little states that they did not matter. A man counted himself first a Christian, then a Norman or a Saxon, and after that a Frenchman or an Englishman as might be.
The mass of the people were serfs, labouring on the land, without effort to change. They were full of strange fear, a fear of death, and of a curious excitement, expecting something wonderful to happen. The dark forests, the cold winters with flashing northern lights, the storms, the sudden plagues, the famines, the wild beasts, the seething of a changing world, all helped to fill men in those days with a dread of life, and a vision of something more beautiful, delightful, or more marvellous, more exciting. The clergy came and taught them of the life after death, Heaven which was so lovely to a sordid, wretched, frightened serf, and Hell which was so awful. In those days men believed passionately in Heaven and the angels, they longed for the grandeur of the angelic city, the living in the brightness, speaking beautifully with the noble and splendid angels, wearing delicate white clothes and looking on the face of God. They believed just as strongly in the Devil. Angels hovered among them as they toiled in fields or forests, devils tempted them from the bushes or out of the darkness of night, monstrous and wonderful things were semi-hidden everywhere.
It was the great Church which offered the supernatural terrors and beauty and hope and marvels to men whose soiled, heavy, imprisoned lives were not satisfying to them. Still, in places, peasants worshipped the dreadful old gods of fear, sacrificing to trees and springs of water. But alter so much fighting and gruesomeness, in the midst of so much hopelessness, the thought of Almighty Jesus and of Heaven was almost unspeakably wonderful to men. At the same time, they still loved their own wild, fierce, brutal ways. So that with one half of themselves they turned with ecstasy to the teachers of Heaven and love, the priests of the Church. With the other half, they still wanted the satisfaction of violence and lust, the bloody excitement of fighting and killing, and superstitious sacrifice.
There were only two great powers above the people — the barons and the clergy. The barons, seated in their castles, meant serfdom and war and the excitement of adventure. The clergy, with their Christian teaching, meant mystery, submissiveness, and humble labour, with the great glamour of an after-life beyond.
But to make war costs money, and the barons were always short of money. So we have the Jewish moneylender, a very important figure in those days, when money- lending was forbidden to Christians. And besides the money-lender the merchant rose up in the towns, under the protection of the barons. For the merchants paid heavily for the barons’ shelter and protection.
Lastly, among the clergy themselves, were the monks. The people of that day had two kinds of heroes: first, the great fighter who made himself renowned on earth; secondly, the great saint, who would have power in heaven. Men who were soldiers would suddenly put off their armour to enter a monastery, to find the eternal salvation. And men who were soldiers mocked at the folded hands and bowed, shaven heads of the monks, who, they said, were neither men, women, nor good cattle. Then again, in time of danger, monks would put on armour under their habits, and sally forth to fight, ferocious as any men-at- arms. Thus all Europe swayed between two passions — the passion of fighting and violence, and the passion for blissful holiness.
So we have the life: fierce castles on the rocks, great monasteries by the streams and ponds: and between the two, the villages of miserable huts, with a parish priest and perhaps a church or chapel, and a people full of fear, misery, superstition, delight, and excitement.
It was necessary for the Church to become more powerful, for the Church was the great civilising influence, teaching men the arts of peace and production. And yet in the hearts of men was an absolute necessity for fighting and adventure. How were the two to go together? The Church would have to satisfy the fighting instinct in her people, otherwise she would never hold them, would never succeed in quieting them and bringing them to order.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 904