Frederick the Second

by Ernst Kantorowicz

  We have written evidence of the Cistercians’ activities as the Emperor’s builders. It is clear from a statute of the General Chapter that lay brothers and monks were later told off in great numbers for the Emperor’s service. The Pope even complained that Frederick was using too many of them for his building projects. The evidence of the Apulian castles and palaces themselves is plainer still. As far as can still be traced they all have in common the new Gothic style of the Cistercians which was supplanting more and more the native Norman-Byzantine architecture. Not of course the “broken forms” of later Gothic, but the principle of utilising piers and buttresses to denote strength and striving—just what makes the magic of the transition period. The late-Roman forms are touched and penetrated by the young Gothic strength, so that for a few decades of conflict and exuberant wealth the two—both fruit and blossom—are found side by side. It was in such a “fulness of time” that Frederick was destined to rule.

  People have designated the whole Hohenstaufen culture of Germany as “knightly,” and knightly too the crude early-Gothic of the Cistercian monasteries. There was something of the knight in these monks, and indeed in the days of the knightly orders the antithesis between monk and knight was almost obliterated. The epic poet—by a slight anachronism—makes the monk Ilsan, who in the suite of Dietrich of Bern burst so devastatingly into the Rose Garden of Worms, a Cistercian. The connection between the Grey Monks and the spiritual knights goes back in fact to very early times. People even say that the first knightly Order of the West was founded by Spanish Cistercians who courageously flew to arms when Calatrava was threatened by the Moors. And the interplay of the two types of Order can be easily explained, for the spiritual knight, like the monk, loved to trace his origin back to St. Bernard. It may not be strictly true that—as the legend will have it—Bernard himself dictated the Rule of the Templars to the knights Hugo of Payens and Godfrey of St. Omer, but the original spirit of the Templars was closely akin to the spirit of romantic devotion and stern sobriety which animated St. Bernard and his Order. It was Bernard who, in the time of the second Crusade, recruited with zeal and eloquence for the Templars, and who wrote a tract, “In Praise of the New Chivalry of Christ”: “These warriors are gentler than lambs and fiercer than lions, wedding the mildness of the monk to the valour of the knight, so that it is difficult to decide which to call them: men who adorn the Temple of Solomon with weapons instead of gems, with shields instead of crowns of gold, with saddles and bridles instead of candelabra; eager for victory not for fame; for battle not for pomp; who abhor useless speech, unnecessary action, unmeasured laughter, gossip and chatter as they despise all vain things: who in spite of their being many live in one house according to one rule, with one soul and one heart.”

  St. Bernard, when he pointed the Templars to a spiritual life, as he had the Cistercians to an active life, had really the same, or a very similar picture of an ideal community in mind, but while he recommended to the monks the honourable and self-denying service of the Queen of Heaven, the Order of Templars was dedicated to the service of Christ himself, for whom the brothers bore in common their strife and suffering; the Saviour himself was the spiritual head of their State.

  People have often exalted St. Bernard because of his miracles. Not the least of these was the foundation of the first knightly Order. What a revolution was there! The restless, vacillating secular knight errant, who flew from adventure to adventure, or sacrificed himself in the service of his lady-love, leading his own individual life and entirely destructive to the firm fabric of the State, was thus induced to fit himself into the strict bonds of the Order, to give a social value, instead of a personal value, to his battles, to seek the inspiration of his noblest deeds not from his mistress but from God himself, under whose law and in whose service the Order fought.

  For the first time in post-Christian days warriors and men of the vita activa, not merely monks, banded themselves together for an idea, and for a spiritual Lord, and assimilated themselves to each other. Uniformitas was the principle, the final keynote of the German knightly orders, emphasised again and again, and extending far beyond the mere question of dress—the mantle with the cross. The Templar, serving like the monks a common master, evolved that virile, knightly, rigorous constitution which later statesmen inevitably took as their model, developing it each in his own way for his own material advantage and placing himself in the place of the transcendental Master. One of such earthly state knighthoods is the Teutonic Order, founded a bare century after the Templars, which devoted its powers solely to the terrestrial state.

  The feeling for spiritual knighthood was almost extinct in the East, when at the turn of the twelfth-thirteenth century in Acre the nursing community of the German Knights of St. Mary bound themselves into a third spiritual Order beside the Templars. The Templars were mainly French, and the Knights of St. John were largely English and Italian. Pope Innocent III gave to the Teutonic Knights the Rule of the Templars, whom they were to emulate in everything spiritual and knightly as they were to emulate the Knights of St. John in care for the poor and the sick. The Order was to be strictly national; only knights of German birth were to enter it.

  The story of the new Order is much tamer than that of the Templars. Its origin, lacking the blessing of St. Bernard, lacks fire and inevitability; its battles lack the glamour of the distant East; its end the mystery of early death which always overtakes the heroes of myth. The German Knights never enjoyed such lavish wealth, their temptations were not so great, they never sank into the same corruption, but never did they inspire tale or legend with the glory and mystery that surround the heroes of the Temple, the secret guardians of the Grail. The history of the Teutonic Order, however, is all the more real because it was neither born in myth nor buried in mystery, and because its battles were fought on familiar fields near home. When Frederick II came to Germany the Teutonic Order was still an insignificant body. Henry VI had turned his attention to them while he was planning the Crusade, but, in spite of many benefactions, the confusion that followed his death hampered this purely German movement in its development.

  The Church and older rivals looked at it with no friendly eye, and its real prosperity began with Frederick II. After he had taken his crusading vow a definite opportunity presented itself for the employment of the Teutonic Knights, and Frederick at once got into touch with them. Numerous gifts in this and the ensuing years bear witness to Frederick’s determination to strengthen the Order by every means in his power. He even granted its members privileges which encroached on his own imperial rights, or which robbed him of considerable royal revenues. He was here even more open-handed than towards the princes. He had at first primarily the Crusade in view, but beyond the needs of the moment Frederick sought to enlist their enthusiasm and their strength for other tasks. He created out of them a little corps d’élite, free from feudal fetters and extraneous influences whether of temporal or spiritual lords, independent, reliable, unconditionally loyal to himself—a small body, but one immediately at the service of the Empire as sword and weapon, and in spiritual matters subject to the Pope alone. To increase the authority of the Order in Church affairs Frederick applied personally to the Pope, with the result that the notaries in the papal Chancery were busy night and day preparing nothing but charters for the—hitherto sorely neglected—Order of Teutonic Knights.

  In other ways, too, Frederick always showed a great affection for the Teutonic Knights. He encouraged and assisted young noblemen like the three Hohenlohe brothers who were seeking admission to the Order, just as later he did his best to dissuade young noblemen from joining the Mendicant Orders. In the early days especially, when he wanted probity and trustworthiness, he turned to the Teutonic Knights: whether to oversee the building of his ships or to carry important despatches. In the Holy Land he hardly employed any others, and in later years he entrusted the administration of Alsace to Berthold of Tannenrode, one of the brethren, and even placed the German regent for a whi
le to a large extent under the influence of the Teutonic Knights, so that a chronicler was not unjustified in exclaiming that the whole Empire is ruled according to the counsels of the Order. He was overstating the case of course, but it is remarkable how much attention Frederick devoted to attaching the Order to himself. One of the first privileges accorded to them was that the Grand Master of the day, whoever he might be, when attending court, should form part of the royal household and belong to the familia, while his escort also should enjoy the hospitality of the court. Further, two brethren of the Order were to be in permanent attendance on the royal person. The Spanish king Alfonso VIII had shown similar favours to the Order of Calatrava, but this only goes to show that these knightly orders, in proportion as they became national institutions, tended to become “courtly.” It is common knowledge that the knightly orders of the late Middle Ages, the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, were purely court affairs, and preserved an aristocratic form of life that had perished elsewhere.

  Frederick liked to attribute to the earlier Hohenstaufen, indeed to Barbarossa himself, the founding of the Teutonic Order, so as to lend age and dignity to the institution. He also liked to talk of it as his own creation. It was in fact the work of his own hands, his and the first great Grand Master’s: Hermann of Salza. For over twenty years Hermann of Salza was always to be met in Frederick’s court and camp, his most trusted counsellor, his most valued intimate, not in virtue of his office as Master, but on account of personal qualities which made him practically indispensable.

  It seems probable that Hermann of Salza was a Thuringian and there is something Thuringian in his whole personality. He was dignified and thoughtful by nature, and he possessed in every department of life that manliness, righteousness and good faith which distinguished the Order that he ruled. His faithfulness had become proverbial; it was with him no passive virtue but—as from the dawn of time you find it only in Germans—a positive driving force. There is something almost tragic in this great man’s fate. For Hermann of Salza had two masters; he had sworn an oath of fealty to both Pope and Emperor, and every conflict between them exposed him to an intolerable strain. So we see him, bent on keeping faith with both, flying hither and thither from court to Curia, and from Curia to court, again and again during those years of incessant quarrelling seeking to keep or to restore the peace. He once described his life work as “to strive for the honour of Church and Empire,” and when the breach between the two powers became final and complete, life became for him impossible. On Palm Sunday 1239 Frederick II was excommunicated for ever, and on the same day the great Grand Master, Hermann of Salza, breathed his last.

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  Amongst Frederick’s courtiers the distinctly older Master represented at all times the calm, practical wisdom which more than once deterred the hot-headed young monarch from wantonly provoking his foes. Hermann of Salza’s long experience had made him acquainted with the state of affairs in the East no less than in Italy, in the papal Curia no less than in the German court, and this experience combined with most unusual diplomatic and political skill gave him a unique value in every branch of imperial policy. The collaboration of Frederick with the Grand Master, whom he met for the first time in the Nuremberg court of 1216, had most significance for north-east Germany.

  Frederick had been—to quote a Livonian chronicler—“so deeply preoccupied with the varied and lofty duties of the Empire” that, truth to tell, he had felt scant interest in the affairs of north-east Germany. With Hermann of Salza it was different. The politics of his Order had a very lively concern with the north-east, and so it came about that all important matters concerning regions round the Baltic Sea from Denmark to Livonia passed through his hands or were confirmed by him.

  Waldemar, King of the Danes, was a man of some importance; he had extended his rule—at the expense of the Empire—along the Baltic towards Livonia and Esthonia, as far as the mouth of the Dvina. Finally he was taken prisoner by a vassal of the Empire, and the envoy whom Frederick sent to treat with him was Hermann of Salza. He concluded peace with the Danish king, and in 1226—probably at the Grand Master’s instance—Frederick created Lübeck, the most important port on the Baltic, an imperial town, thus putting an end to all Danish rights over the Elbe country and to all claims of the Roman Curia which stood behind Denmark. Hermann of Salza called the Emperor’s attention to Prussia also, where the Roman Curia with the aid of the Cistercians had been founding colonies and missions.

  We may here anticipate the events of the ensuing year. In the winter of 1225–26 Conrad of Masovia, Duke of Poland, finding himself unable to repulse the Prussian heathen, applied to the Teutonic Knights for help, and provisionally gave a verbal promise—not yet confirmed in writing—to hand over his territories of Kulm to the Order in return for their services. This offer came at an opportune moment, for the Order had just been unsuccessful in a somewhat similar enterprise in the Burzen country of Hungary.

  The Birth of Prussia, 1226

  With wisdom and foresight and a fortunate appreciation of the whole situation the Grand Master took up the scheme, talked it over with Kaiser Frederick, who at once gave it firm and final shape by granting weighty privileges to the undertaking. So thoroughly had they thought matters out that the memorable Golden Bull of Rimini of 1226 lays down the future tasks and aims of the Teutonic Order, draws up the constitution of the future State in a scheme complete down to minutest details. All this is in order before negotiations have begun, before an agreement has been reached with the Polish Duke, before a single Teutonic knight has set foot or eye upon the land of Kulm. This great charter that founded the Prussian State under the Order of the Teutonic Knights has justly been called a “plan of campaign,” for the territories granted by it to the Order had still to be won, and the Order therefore knew for years ahead just where its duty lay. This Charter indeed secured the future of the Teutonic Order: it was so comprehensive that whatever the Order did was done under the special aegis of the Emperor and was covered by imperial privilege. It is expressly laid down in this document that “all gifts and conquests are to be the free property of the Order, which is to exercise full territorial rights and be responsible to none. The Grand Master is to enjoy all the privileges that pertain to a prince of the Empire, including all royal privileges, and the Order shall be in Prussia free from all imperial taxes, burdens and services.” Thus Frederick permitted the Order to found an autonomous State, owning no territorial master save the Order itself, “to be an integral part of the monarchy of the Empire” as the Charter says. This position of the Order was assured not only by earlier privileges granted under the immediate protection of the Empire, but by a most remarkable attitude taken up by Frederick.

  Since the days of Charlemagne the warfare against the heathen had been one of the tasks of a Roman Emperor, and Charlemagne had demonstrated that it must be waged in two directions: first, against Islam, as in his Spanish campaign, and, secondly, against the heathen of eastern Europe as in his Saxon wars. The Crusades had concentrated attention on the war with Islam, but the other task had lost its full importance after the time of Barbarossa but was not yet quite forgotten. Frederick II revived this East European mission.

  The Empire had been chosen by God to preach the gospel. This was Frederick’s conviction, frequently reiterated; he found room to incorporate it in the Charter of the Order: “For this end has God uplifted our Empire above the kingdoms of the earth, and extended the limits of our power beyond the various zones, that our care may be to glorify his name and diligently to spread his faith among the peoples, for he hath chosen the Roman Empire for the preaching of his gospel: let us therefore bend our minds to the conquest, no less than the conversion, of the heathen peoples…”

  These sentences contain an unmistakable challenge to the Pope. For the Church, with the help of the Cistercians, had already begun to christianise Prussia, and there was a very real danger that Prussia might become a feudal appanage of the Roman Curia as Sicily had done,
though it was the Normans who had won it from the infidel. The Pope indeed had signalised his intentions, styling the conversion of the heathen as “emancipation,” since the new converts were to “owe obedience to none save Christ and the Roman Church”—not, therefore, to the Empire. As a counter-move Frederick now came on the scene with his theory of an imperial mission and spoke expressly of “conquest” as the goal—indicating an intention of ruling the heathen peoples. He incorporated the land belonging to the Teutonic Order in the “monarchy of the Empire,” and supported this line of action by reference to an old royal right. Heathen land was lordless land and thus belonged, not to the conqueror, but to the ruler, to the Emperor who, like the Pope, was here the vicegerent of Christ. Thus Frederick planned to save Prussia for the Empire.

  The importance of this plantation of the Teutonic Knights in Prussia needs no emphasis. The spiritual Order had thereby acquired, as it were, a physical body; it had exchanged landless ubiquity for territorial possession, and it quickly metamorphosed itself into a real state which preserved the standards and ideals of chivalry through days when these elsewhere were being degraded or urbanised. It is highly characteristic of Frederick that he thus founded the Prussian State more or less fortuitously. We shall observe again and again, what we here note for the first time, that his hand possessed some magic, as people later contended, that brought life into whatever he happened even accidentally to touch. Things forthwith assumed an importance he could not possibly have foreseen, out of all proportion to the slight effort he had expended. The Charter of the Order, the Golden Bull of Rimini, which was drawn up more or less casually in a busy moment when the Emperor was occupied with innumerable more important questions, is a proof of his happy touch. The godfather of the Hapsburg was the godfather also of Prussia.