Frederick the Second

by Ernst Kantorowicz

  “But, O marvel of unheard-of arrogance! The Sun would fain steal from the Moon her colour and rob her of her light! The priest would bait Augustus, and with his apostolic greatness would obscure the radiance of our majesty whom God has set upon the pinnacles of Empire!” Thus the Pope has brought confusion into the world: instead of loving the peace which the Emperor seeks, Peter becomes a rock of offence and Paul turns again into Saul and corrupts the world. “And there he sits in the seat of the Pharisees and of false doctrines, anointed by his comrades with the oil of evil unrighteousness, the Roman priest of our day. Insolently he tries to stultify the order of things decreed by heaven, and perchance believes that the laws of nature will be governed by his heated will. He seeks to darken the radiance of our majesty by perverting truth to lies. … He, who is the Pope in name alone, has said that we are the Beast who rises from the sea full of the names of blasphemy and spotted like the pard. And we maintain that he is the monster whereof it is written: another horse rose from the sea, a red horse, and he who sat thereon stole peace from the earth, so that the living slaughtered one another.” The Pope himself was the great dragon. The Pope himself was Antichrist, whose forerunner he had called the Emperor, a prince among the princes of darkness, who abused the gifts of the prophets, a false vicegerent of Christ who transformed his priesthood into a beasthood.

  Thus Frederick stamped the Pope as a heretic. A heretical Pope was a much more revolutionary thought than a heretical Emperor. This new insight suddenly metamorphoses all the relationships in the world. For without more ado the “true believer” is the friend of the Emperor, and the “infidel” is like the Lombard heretics, a follower and comrade of the Pope. The Pope can no longer protect the Church. It is the Emperor who upholds his credit as her God-appointed protector, since the High Priest “acts against the faith, the false vicar of him who though he was cursed yet answered not again.” It is the Pope who brings discord into the world and snatches peace away which it was the Empire’s mission of salvation to bring. The cardinals as Roman Senators will no longer find it their duty to help the Pope but will be helpers of the protecting, rescuing Emperor. They will even have to act as opposing forces “as the planets circle in opposite directions to temper the speed of the firmament.” The Emperor writes to the cardinals, “Call ye back our roaring lion from his purpose, the beginning of which was abhorred.” In similar strain to the kings of Europe: they also as defenders of the true faith should rise as one man for the sake of the world’s peace against this Pope and stand shoulder to shoulder with the Emperor. “Ye princes, ye beloved princes, reproach not us alone, reproach also the Church which is the community of the faithful: for her head is weak, the leader in her midst is as a roaring lion, her prophet is a madman, her bridegroom an infidel, her priest a defiler of the Most High, who acts unrighteously and contemns the law. In the sight of the other princes of the world we must mourn as is due the failure of such an High Priest, we who enjoy honour and bear burdens and who in space are as it were nearer to him and in office more akin.” The fact that Pope Gregory had protected the Empire’s rebels should also be a warning to them: “Urgently and without ceasing, we exhort you, Beloved, to see in this outrage to us an injustice likewise to yourselves. Haste ye to your houses with water when the fire flames in the house of your neighbour!” There was no ordinance of the Church, no word of Scripture, no legend from which Frederick failed to draw new strength, seeing everything from new standpoints, till, finally, the Donation of Constantine itself was turned to account for the Empire’s behoof. This dangerous document was a monument of the gratitude which was owed to the Empire by the Papacy.

  It has often been remarked that in this duel of the Chanceries the genuinely productive side was the Emperor’s. The Curia exhausted itself in biblical turns of thought and speech that had been worn threadbare for centuries, while the manifestos of the Emperor sparkled with new ideas, some of which ripened after centuries. One reason was, that whereas Pope Gregory was solely negative and destructive, aiming at the annihilation of his foe, Frederick had a constructive aim. Without so expressing it, Frederick countered each negation of the Pope’s by pointing to himself, the Emperor of Justitia, the Rescuer, the Bringer of Salvation in a day of chaos. Frederick II, whose very name spelt a gospel of peace,* might well seem by his deeds as by his power the long-awaited Prince of Peace: he who had worn the royal crown of David in Jerusalem, he to whom men had long applied promise and prophecy—as they had not to Pope Gregory. Men looked for a messianic Pope as they looked for a messianic Emperor, but he would come in the guise of Peter the Fisherman, or the simple beggar Francis, the Bridegroom of Poverty, not as an Emperor-Priest like Gregory or Innocent.

  What Frederick had only indicated was explicitly claimed by a pamphlet which represented the Emperor as the Saviour. “The High Priests and Pharisees assembled a Council and came together against the prince and Imperator of the Romans, ‘What shall we do,’ said they, ‘since this man thus triumphs over his enemies? If we do not prevent him he will overthrow the whole fame of Lombardy, and coming like a Caesar he will not stay till he have driven us from out our land and have exterminated our people. …’” Thus the pamphlet opened, verbally recalling the words of scripture where the High Priests and Pharisees decide on the Saviour’s condemnation. The parallel is pushed far: the Pope is compared to Pilate because what he has written he has written, and is reproached with his breach of the peace since he “as a friend of discord… against the honour and the right of the Roman prince protects heretics who are the enemies of God and of all believing Christians.” As for the Pope’s pious pretext: his protection of the Lombards is to serve the cause of the Holy Land. This is scornfully turned against Gregory himself. His ban has so sorely damaged the cause of the Holy Land that Jerusalem might well fall again a prey to the infidel: “And thou, the vicegerent of Christ sleepest the while and carest naught that our inheritance has passed to others! For the city which once was full of people and beautiful among cities lieth waste… she who was wont to flow with milk and honey floweth now with the waters of bitterness.” The guilt lies with the Pope. Jerusalem, the city of Christ, uncomforted by the Pope, is awaiting another Lord, “Without ceasing she waits for him, the Roman prince, the comforter of her captivity, the redeemer of her destruction. But thou on the other hand, thou foe, thou Godless Herod, thou fearest to go thither… thou stone of stumbling, thou rock of offence, thou hast thrown into confusion the ways by sea and land that this Caesar, this wondrous light of the World, this mirror without flaw, might be unable to hasten after the manner of the Caesars to the help of the land of God.” Let the Pope, concludes the pamphlet, receive the Emperor again, the “true born son,” once more into the bosom of the Church, “for otherwise our great-hearted lion which now feigneth sleep, will with his dread roaring draw unto himself the fatted kine from all the furthest corners of the earth, tearing out and breaking asunder the horns of the proud. He shall establish justice and bring the Church into the right way.”

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  Visions of the Last Day are thus associated with Frederick. His figure was destined to live on in myth through the centuries as this pamphlet pictures him, in the saga of the messianic Emperor, in his mountain fastness, who will one day return, establish the reign of Justice, castigate the Church and lead the people of Christ into Jerusalem. Herein lay something positive, above and beyond accusations against the Pope. While the Emperor’s partisans saw in Gregory the High Priest and the Pharisee, the Pilate who condemned the Christ, the Emperor stood before them as the true Redeemer, promised by the Sibyls, praise-deserving, “the wondrous light of the world, the mirror without flaw,” the Saviour chosen by God to renew the peace and order of the world. The more he felt compelled to deny the worth of this individual Pope the more insistently the Emperor pointed to the sacred and exalted mission of his own Empire and the sanctity of his own Caesar-majesty.

  Frederick found the rôle easy to sustain. Not only his friends and adheren
ts but many of the orthodox recognised in him the long-awaited messenger of God who had come to chastise a corrupt priesthood. They trembled before the face of this “Hammer of the World,” but well they knew from the sayings of the prophets that a MAN was needed who should smite with iron fist both papacy and priesthood, to lead the world again into the state of peace and of salvation which had blessed mankind in the reign of Augustus when Christ himself had walked the earth. In the mystic circles of the Franciscans, amongst whom Abbot Joachim’s teachings were still alive, these fears and hopes were centred more and more in the person of the Hohenstaufen Emperor who as the Pope’s bitter foe threatened to fulfil the prophecies. In these Franciscan convents, which in apostolic purity were awaiting the reform of the Church, the belief soon found credence (in spite of their hostility to the Emperor) that Frederick II was in very deed the herald of the End, and that no man, but only God himself, could remove or slay God’s messenger. … In Frederick’s circle the legend later grew that God’s own hand had shaped him.

  The most various dreamings were here blended: the Church visions which dreamed of a Scourge of the peoples which should restore the primitive Church of apostolic times; the imperial visions which dreamed of the revival of the Augustan Empire under a new Caesar Augustus; and, lastly, the more human cravings which dreamed of a return to the primitive innocence of man before the Fall under the rule of a Justitia Emperor. These mystic dreams flourished in more and more riotous luxuriance, and year by year Frederick II became more and more the centre of the hopes of every camp. Judge of the World, Justitia Emperor, Redeemer of the Holy Sepulchre and Messianic Prince of Peace, all blent into the figure of Caesar Augustus who himself expressed the ideal of a rex justus.

  By the minting of his Augustales Frederick II had already shown that his Caesar gestures had a deeper significance than the merely personal or political. The more he resembled the Roman Caesars and Augusti in triumph and word and deed the greater grew his similitude to the Saviour Vergil had foretold, with whom Roman Empire and Christian epoch were to begin: and end. Seeds of the Renaissance lurk in this eschatological faith: the Rebirth of the World both by the cosmic rebirth of the natural man and by the return to the origins of Church and Empire. Even for Dante these, however, lay in Roman antiquity in the time of the apostles and the golden age of Rome.

  From all the inextricable confusion of vague, mysterious, terrifying or idyllic visions of the time Frederick II had hitherto seized only on those features which could be baldly and clearly represented in the State: first, the establishment of his imperial world-redeeming Justitia in all his domains, even in Italy, and then the demeanour of a Roman Caesar Augustus, both of which things were without ulterior motive, instinctive in his blood, inherent in his office. The interpretation was left mainly to others. Now all was changed. The Pope made inevitable that religious speculations should play a part in his life. If Frederick was to take the field against the Pope as the Saviour of the Church, it was not enough to oppose the Reason of the State to the Faith of the Church. Frederick II must win for himself the transfiguring halo of God’s messenger which must surround the head of a Ruler of the Faithful. Unexplored mysteries lay to the hand both of Empire and Papacy. Caesar could look for his divine nimbus to the great peace movement of these days of crisis with their expectation of a Messiah-Emperor, days filled with peace-services, hallelujahs and flagellation. … The great movement bore Frederick on its crest. He made himself its hero and became its God. So it was said that the French took the Revolution for their religion, and for their God, Napoleon.

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  When Frederick left Lombardy at the beginning of 1239 he had months of intensive activity behind him. The more manifold the tasks, the more comprehensive the demands, the swifter the progress of events, the better it suited the Emperor’s mood and the more certain was his success. Frederick had fought the rebels in the Romagna and in Lombardy; from his camp before Piacenza and Milan had issued the orders that transformed Sicily into a fortress; from Lodi had radically recast the Sicilian constitution and set in motion the most elaborate shipping transactions; had sent orders to outlaw these, hang those, exile others, and deprive yet others of their goods. With it all he had kept leisure enough to make daily minute enquiry about the game, the baiting of cranes, the breeding of horses, the destruction of vermin, to occupy himself with horses, hawks and hounds, to draft and superintend drawings for one of the most beautiful and luxurious castles of the Middle Ages, for the first Renaissance gateway, for a triumphal arch whose detached figures mark the beginnings of secular plastic art. He has not lost the taste for costly purchases: a dish of onyx, curios, precious stones. He sends antique statues home to his Sicilian castles by porter: he issues instructions for the University of Naples. Within a few months his Italian Seignory stands as a monument of creative genius and of organising skill, and he is able to write to a friendly prince that he is rejoicing in the best of health, everything is succeeding just as he wishes and he is now planning something new. This new project was the resolve, after the many challenging pamphlets, to assume the offensive against the Pope and to invade the States of the Church.

  Coming from Lombardy the Emperor marched by way of Parma and crossed the Tuscan Alps by the La Cisa Pass. Here he was joined, it is said, by the Minister General of the Franciscan order, Brother Elias of Cortona, to the further confusion of parties. This was a clear proof of the change in relationships that had taken place, and the first indication of that secret sympathy which united the Franciscans and the Ghibellines, and which is so strongly characteristic of Dante and the first century of the Renaissance. Brother Elias had been one of the earliest and most intimate disciples of St. Francis, who had named him as his successor. His stern piety was entirely free from weakness or sentimentality. He was not strictly a mendicant friar in the original meaning of the term, rather: a statesman, prince and scholar, with a touch of genius leavening his haughtiness and love of pomp. The general held somewhat aloof from the brethren and rarely ate with them. He took his meals in his private room, and that not only because he relished better fare than the brothers were accustomed to. He lived either in his handsome house in Cortona or in the papal palace at Assisi, for he was an intimate friend of Gregory IX. He was never seen save on horseback, even though he had only a few steps to go, and then escorted by a handsomely-dressed page. Like a true autocrat he repudiated the suggestion that such magnificence was contrary to the Rule of the Order: the Minister General was above the Rule. As befitted a spiritual noble, Brother Elias was a great builder, and the magnificent Lower Church in Assisi which he erected to his Master was his work. He was said to have got the money for this through his knowledge of alchemy, about which he had written a treatise. If this had been the case it might have silenced the religious murmurings of many of the brothers, although the horror of money was still vivid amongst them. But since, in fact, he raised the money by provincial taxes on the Order itself they began to grow restive under him. He was hated as a despot and a tyrant: the brothers partly yearned for the simple freedom of the early years, partly feared his harshness, for to their great indignation Elias had appointed stern “visitors” to stiffen the discipline of the order.

  At this point they rebelled. The inclination of the Minister General to consider only the worldly aims of the Order as a State—a point of view akin to Gregory’s—finally brought about his fall. Delegates were sent from all the provinces to Pope Gregory to compel Brother Elias’s removal from office. The messenger from the Order’s province of Saxony particularly distinguished himself by excess of zeal. Brother Jordan, on his arrival in Rome in a state of high excitement, contrived by some means or other to force his way into the Pope’s bedroom; he paid no heed to the command to leave the room, but joyfully hastened to the bed and fetched out from under the bedclothes the aged Gregory’s naked foot to apply the necessary kiss, remarking to his companion, “We have no sacred relics like this in Saxony!” Brother Jordan himself tells the tale. T
his same brother must have taken part in the great assembly held in the Spring of 1239 which removed Brother Elias from the post of Minister General of the Brothers Minor, though Pope Gregory strove to retain him.

  The fall of the well-known Minister General of the Minorites naturally caused a stir throughout the world. What amazement when Brother Elias, who after his deposition at first remained in Assisi doing penance, suddenly appeared in the train of the excommunicate Emperor! The inevitable result was to draw on him the papal ban. The Franciscan was for Frederick a most welcome recruit. The Brother’s intimate knowledge of Gregory IX was invaluable, and his presence amongst Frederick’s followers demonstrated to all that the closest disciples of St. Francis were turning from the heretic Pope. As a chronicler said: Frederick loosed those whom the Pope had bound, and sons of the Church became through the papal behaviour the Church’s step-children.

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  Under such auspices Frederick embarked on his new, perhaps fantastic adventure. It began with a short stay in Pisa. Here Frederick proclaimed himself the Peacemaker his name implied, and succeeded in effecting a reconciliation between the wildly warring Pisan parties of the Gherardeschi and the Visconti. A remarkable scene followed. Christmas was at hand, and his own birthday followed hard on that of the Saviour. To celebrate the season, he, the excommunicate, whose mere presence brought an interdict upon the town, not only caused a service to be held and the mysteries of the mass consummated, but himself mounted the cathedral pulpit on Christmas Day and preached to the assembled people. He promised peace and the reign of peace to the astonished worshippers. This sermon brought down on him the papalists’ accusations of blackest blasphemy. A few days later he invaded the Pope’s dominion as the Prince of Peace.