The Order of the Cistercians and the Order of the Teutonic Knights were the two most weighty allies that Frederick won during his German years; nothing else approaches them in importance. The power of the German towns was still slight; moreover, the princely towns and the episcopal towns were wholly outside his influence, and privileges which he granted now and then to one or another—Cambrai and Basel for instance—might have to be revoked if the imperial princes so decided. For the body of princes were swift to resent any encroachment and acted together as one man to resist any interference with their rights. Only the Swabian towns and those immediately under the Empire were under Frederick’s care, and here he bestirred himself to improve communications, to secure safe convoy for the merchants throughout the Roman Empire, and to protect the highways against robbers, measures which were much appreciated.
Apart from what he actually did for them, Frederick contrived to inspire his towns with the faith that he had their interests peculiarly at heart, and he strengthened this belief by gifts and privileges. He turned villages into towns, presented towns with market-places, gathered scattered rights and privileges into one charter which formed a code of justice for the town. Later, when the days of tribulation came, it was the towns who rallied to the cause of the Hohenstaufen and of the Empire against the princes.
The laborious methods of natural cultivation practised in Germany made it an unsuitable sphere for the wonderful experiments in state agriculture which Frederick later made so brilliant a success in Sicily, and the German feudal system permitted no direct interference in administration. Frederick’s strength was frittered away in handling all the various minor internal affairs of Germany without any visible advantage to the whole, and soon after his coronation at Aix he seems to have aimed at evolving some scheme for delegating minor German business to others, retaining the decision only in major matters. “Wherever the Roman Empire and some of the princes meet—there is Germany” became the dictum, showing that the whole Imperium—not only the countries north of the Alps—could be German through the German Imperator.
Many adjustments were gradually made to organise a subsidiary government for internal German affairs so as to set the Emperor free for larger issues. Frederick never hustled. All his big undertakings can be traced back through years of quiet preparation, and he never sought to conceal what he was aiming at. What he did, he did coram publico, and he always announced beforehand what his intentions were. Yet his actions always contained an element of suddenness and surprise, either because no one had taken him seriously, or because he carried out his intention at a moment when people had ceased to expect it. His first great diplomatic victory over the Church exemplifies this.
Honorius III had been since 1216 the occupant of the papal throne. Whoever had succeeded Innocent III would necessarily have appeared something of a pigmy by comparison; certainly Honorius did. He was a jurist, primarily an administrative official. Cencio Savelli had been, before his elevation, the Pope’s Chamberlain, and had edited the famous “liber censuum,” the tax-book of the Roman Church. Later, when the battle between the Emperor and Pope had become an economic one, the fact that the Church could take the field as a first-class financial power was due in no small measure to Honorius. For the rest he was old and frail, and inclined therefore to be placable and gentle rather than bellicose, though he asserted on occasion the lofty claims which were nowadays part and parcel of the Papacy. If the peace of the world were to depend on a balance between these two great forces Honorius was the very best make-weight for Frederick, and for a good ten years the two held the balance fairly even. The most absorbing affair which in those days engrossed the two heads of Christendom was unquestionably the Crusade, and Honorius regarded the recapture of Jerusalem as the loftiest and most personal ambition of his pontificate.
Frederick’s assumption of the Cross had at first awakened little enthusiasm in Rome. Innocent, who had been planning to march into the Holy Land at the head of the peoples, completely ignored Frederick’s action, and without consulting his youthful rival fixed the day of the start of the Crusaders for 1st July, 1217—a date which completely ruled Frederick out, for Otto IV was still alive and the Hohenstaufen could not possibly leave Germany.
Honorius III seemed at first oblivious of Frederick’s existence as a Crusader, and a legate of the Pope’s directed the arrangements for the Crusade as an exclusively papal affair. The first rendezvous of the warriors was not to be the Holy Land but Egypt, by the conquest of which it was hoped to engineer the fall of Jerusalem. The whole undertaking was badly organised and sorely mismanaged. Damietta fell at the first onslaught, but an ill-advised penetration into the interior brought the entire crusading army into the greatest danger. When the Crusaders began to feel the pinch they spontaneously turned for help to Kaiser Frederick, and the Roman Curia suddenly bethought itself that he too was a Crusader. Pope Honorius took up the general cry and painted in the most glowing colours the opportunity that now opened for Frederick to fulfil his vow, and addressed him prophetically as “the victorious king before whose countenance the heathen fly and who in fighting God’s battles wins his own eternal salvation.”
Frederick, however, had not awaited the summons from the Pope. He had already declared himself ready to promote the cause of the Crusade in Germany, and to arrange the date of departure at the Diet he was immediately about to hold. He requested Honorius kindly to excommunicate dilatory Crusaders, for if any delay occurred it would be due to the Roman Curia and not to him. Further, would the Pope be so good as to take the Empire under his protection during Frederick’s absence, and with it the imperial regent whom he was about to appoint.
In the days of Innocent, Frederick had almost always styled himself “King by the Grace of God and of the Pope.” He dropped the phrase in writing to Honorius; it no longer fitted the facts. He adopted in other ways also an entirely new tone towards the Curia; the note though perfectly courteous had in it a ring of decision that must have quickened many an ear in Rome. The Pope’s need, however, was great. In spite of reinforcements the position of the Crusaders before Damietta grew daily more critical, and Pope Honorius’s one anxiety was to send Frederick to their assistance with all speed. Francis of Assisi had accompanied the forces to preach Christianity to the Egyptian Sultan. Before finally setting out on the Crusade the Staufen was to receive the imperial crown from the hands of the Pope in Rome. And Honorius impatiently awaited the moment. Though Frederick was no less eager, circumstances compelled him to postpone his Roman journey and with it his Crusade: from the Feast of St. John in 1219 the date was changed to Michaelmas, and then to March 1220, then to May, and finally adjourned sine die. The vow could not be wholly cancelled without a dispensation from the Pope.
What was detaining Frederick in Germany? Apart from trifles he had much to arrange before he could leave Germany. First, it was imperative to come to some understanding with the Pope on the “Sicilian question”; secondly, to arrange for the administration during his absence; thirdly, to secure the election of his son Henry as King of the Romans. In defiance of the Pope’s impatience Frederick made his Roman journey and his Crusade contingent on these questions.
Pope Innocent III had strenuously sought to guard against the danger of a union of the Empire and Sicily, and in pursuance of this policy had demanded securities: Frederick’s son Henry had been crowned King of Sicily at the express request of Innocent. In several documents Frederick had recognised the Church’s feudal rights over Sicily, had solemnly undertaken not to unite the kingdom with the Empire, had promised, on the day of his coronation as Emperor, to waive his rights over Sicily in favour of his son. During King Henry’s minority a regent jointly appointed by Pope and Emperor would rule the south Italian kingdom.
The day of the Crusade and of the imperial coronation was drawing on, and therewith the day on which Frederick must formally renounce all claims to the government of Sicily… but the Emperor, who had very definite views about his hereditary
kingdom, made no attempt to disguise from the Pope that while recognising his own earlier renunciation of Sicily as valid he intended to take over the regency himself. The Curia was anything but satisfied. Frederick must renew all his earlier promises—this he did willingly enough. But he did not give up his intention of ruling Sicily. His hereditary kingdom was going to mean for him the beginning and the end of his Imperium. He must achieve his goal by an indirect route, and the Curia in its excessive foresight had pointed out the way when it had demanded the coronation of his infant son as King of Sicily.
The other important matter that Frederick had to arrange was the administration of Germany during his absence. A complicated system was elaborated, but it was soon perfectly clear what Frederick had in mind and was determined to accomplish. Immediately after his coronation in Aix he had, most naturally, sent for his Queen, Constance, and his little son Henry to join him in Germany. In 1217 he installed the boy, who was already King of Sicily, as Duke of Swabia; in 1219 he entrusted to him the regency over the Kingdom of Burgundy, and since then he had been busily winning over the German princes to the idea of electing Henry King of the Romans. There was nothing unprecedented in all this, and the dangers of a Crusade to which he was now about to expose himself gave a sufficient colour to Frederick’s desire. He wished during his own lifetime to secure the succession to his house, as many an Emperor before him had done. Technically, however, Frederick was not yet Emperor, and difficulties confronted him on every side. The important thing was first to get the princes to agree to his plan, and his immediate efforts were directed to that end.
Negotiations were being carried on at the turn of the year 1219–20: first about the Crusade, then about the Roman journey, thirdly about the Sicilian question, fourthly about the German regency, fifthly about the election of the infant Staufen, negotiations that were all interdependent and ought all to be concluded in the shortest possible time. For matters were nearing a crisis; the Pope urged Frederick to hasten his departure and began to show ill-humour over his procrastinations, while the longer the negotiations were drawn out the more hopelessly the skein became entangled. All possibility of a solution seemed past when Frederick finally succeeded with one stroke in cutting all the knots. By weighty concessions and a fresh abandonment of many royal prerogatives he purchased the acquiescence of the princes, and at the farewell Diet which he held in Frankfurt on his departure for Rome in the spring of 1220 the Sicilian King Henry was elected King of the Romans. Frederick had won the game. The Hohenstaufen dynasty was established, the regency arranged for, and the Sicilian question solved exactly as he had planned. Sicily had of course not been legally incorporated in the Empire, the feudal overlordship of the Church over Sicily still stood, but that personal union of the two crowns which Frederick had had to renounce on his coronation as Emperor became suddenly an accomplished fact, when Henry, long since the crowned King of Sicily, was elected King of the Romans by the German princes. The personal union had come to life again without any breach of all the treaties with the Pope, for they were all made in the name of Frederick II, and contained not a syllable about Henry. All the rights and powers which Frederick was debarred by treaty and agreement from claiming for himself he had now passed on boldly to his son. The one flaw in the treaties had been exploited. For even if the Curia had insisted on Henry taking the reins himself—at eight years old—his father’s “advisership” could not be prevented, which meant that Frederick was himself the de facto ruler of the two realms of Sicily and Germany. In short, from the papal point of view, there would have been a perfectly futile insistence on mere appearances if they had attempted to exclude Frederick from Sicily.
The Roman Curia, though gravely annoyed, at once recognised the real state of affairs, and finally had to accept the fact that the cherished parchments which Frederick had so recently confirmed, and even added to, had become so much waste paper. Frederick meantime had won his first great victory over curial diplomacy. He had succeeded in uniting Sicily and the Empire—in however roundabout a way. That union, to avoid which Pope Innocent had literally set the whole world in motion, had exalted and had debased the Welf, was now restored; the States of the Church were again shut in on north and south. The only difference was that Henry VI had never acknowledged Sicily’s feudal dependence on Rome, which Frederick II for the moment at least upheld, and once more confirmed in writing. Nothing now stood in Frederick’s way, and a few months later he set out for Rome.
It was one of the most characteristic gifts of Frederick to win a whole series of positions with one skilful move. He raised it to a high art. His taking of the Cross at Aix was prophetic, he now gave his first serious demonstration of this typical procedure. Apart from the advantages already mentioned, King Henry’s election gave Frederick just the opportunity he wanted to set up at the court of the young King of the Romans a subordinate government which could deal with all the minor questions of German internal administration. This was arranged provisionally with a view to the Crusade and was afterwards made permanent, so that henceforth Germany was ruled by King Henry while the Emperor himself had his headquarters in Italy, the centre of the world. All this followed from the one well-judged manoeuvre.
The taking of the Cross in Aix had had far-reaching consequences in many directions, but it had been the outcome of an almost delirious enthusiasm and it had nothing of the usual transparency of the air of Frederick II’s court, in which men far superior to their spiritual opponents played a subtle game with gentle irony. The election of the Sicilian king was more typical and showed the unstudied ease with which Frederick met even the most complicated situations.
Frederick kept this light and happy touch in similar delicate situations for years to come, and in spite of occasional ruthlessness, of occasional severe violence, he succeeded on the whole with a minimum of actual force. To sever Gordian knots with the sword was not his way—nor did he think it his mission; his great skill lay in allowing the loose threads to twist themselves into a seemingly inextricable tangle, and then at the decisive moment with firm hand and unerring eye to seize the whole and secure it in a knot which only Alexander could have cut in two. And in his day there was no Alexander.
In this connection Frederick’s first victory over the Curia may serve as something more than a sample, though he had not yet reached the heights of later years. The Roman Curia had seen plainly enough what he was aiming at. He had made no secret of the fact that he would have liked to retain Sicily. The Curia knew that Frederick’s son was to be chosen King in Germany and had at once perceived all that this implied. None the less they were entangled in Frederick’s skilful web and were not able to extricate themselves.
Frederick was able to preserve throughout an air of childlike innocence, for it was not he but the princes who were responsible for this election of King Henry. The better to keep up this convenient fiction the election was arranged to take place in Frankfurt at a moment when Frederick happened to be absent, so that he was able to maintain with perfect truth that everything had taken place “without his knowledge and actually during his absence.” The Curia had probably foreseen the issue, but had to confess that this German royal election was none of her business. In the background Honorius had done his best with the help of the spiritual princes to prevent the election, and this accounted for the initial opposition Frederick had met with. The Pope could not plausibly complain that there had been any breach of previous agreements; he could only hope that the threatened fate might in some way be averted after all.
Fate itself seemed to walk the earth incarnate in this Hohenstaufen, not sinister or menacing but smiling, innocently playful, with buoyant dancing step. In later years this fateful quality assumed terrifying proportions, the smile became a cynical witticism, the dance a dance of death. An atmosphere of magic played round this Hohenstaufen, some wholly-German Germanic emanation which Napoleon for instance conspicuously lacked, an immeasurably dangerous emanation, as of a Mephisto free of horn and cloven h
oof, who moves among men disguised as a golden-haired Apulian boy, winning his bloodless victories with weapons stolen from the Gods. Already without effort of his own the Puer Apuliae had played Nemesis to a giant like Innocent III, till the most mighty opponent of a Hohenstaufen dynasty became so mysteriously entangled in the coils of fate that he had no option but to elevate to the throne of the Roman Empire the Sicilian king whom he had failed to crush.
It rounds off the picture of Frederick’s German years that he paid for his victory over the Curia and for his Sicilian inheritance with a number of royal prerogatives and rights which he lightheartedly abandoned to the German princes. The spiritual princes had at first stood out against the election of Henry, but when Frederick offered them the free testamentary disposal of their wealth, rights of custom and coinage in the bishops’ lands, even the free disposal of the feudal fiefs in their domains; when, finally, he limited in their favour his own freedom by promising that henceforth the ban of the Empire should automatically follow the ban of the Church, they could resist no longer. For such a bait they were ready to throw over the Pope and his Sicilian policy. The royal rights were already subject to many exceptional grants of privilege, so that Frederick’s actual surrenders were not so very serious. The gravity of the “Constitution in favour of the spiritual princes” was, that what had been the exception now became the rule. Frederick has often been reproached on account of these concessions, but the possession of Sicily weighed more with him, and most rightly, than sundry royal prerogatives.
It might with equal or greater justice be cast in the princes’ teeth that their support for any cause, however great, could only be won by bribes, and that they for the sake of a brewing tax would follow their Emperor or betray him.
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