Frederick the Second

by Ernst Kantorowicz

  A slight weakening might, however, have been observed in quite another quarter: on the Rhine. The great archbishop of Cologne, Conrad of Plochstaden, is famous as the founder and builder of the great cathedral, whose foundation-stone he laid in 1248. In those days he was no less famous as a warrior, a wild quarrelsome fellow who, like all the German princes, bent his whole mind to his territorial policy and lived in perpetual conflict with his neighbours on the lower Rhine. Through these quarrels he presently fell foul of the imperial government, which lent an ear to the complaints of the princes, and the Archbishop of Cologne was declared an enemy of the Empire. Finding himself single-handed Conrad of Hochstaden ultimately found an ally in the scarcely less powerful Sigfrid, archbishop of Mainz, whom Frederick had appointed Regent in Germany. The archbishop of Mainz had long been at odds with the Duke of Bavaria about the Abbey of Lorsch, which Mainz had hopes of retaining as long as Bavaria was hostile to the Emperor. When, however, the Duke of Bavaria began veering towards friendship with the Emperor the archbishop of Mainz saw his Abbey of Lorsch imperilled. Weighed against this he recked little of the regency. He and Cologne could both be certain of papal support if they deserted the Emperor, and so the two formed an alliance. Henceforth they both proclaimed the ban against Frederick and invaded the Hohenstaufen territory of Wetterau with fire and sword. Thus Innocent IV found a German group hostile to Frederick among the Rhine archbishops and their suffragans. It was now one of the chief aims of papal politics to increase their adherents. Innocent systematically began trying to seduce the German Church in every rank from its loyalty to the Hohenstaufen. The papal methods were forceful. The imperialist bishops were deposed where possible, and in the cathedrals the imperialist canons degraded. After the Council of Lyons the following dignitaries were involved in deposition proceedings: the archbishops of Salzburg and Bremen; the bishops of Passau, Freising, Brixen, Utrecht, Prague, Worms, Constance, Augsburg, Paderborn and Hildesheim; the abbots of St. Gall, Ellwangen, Reichenau, Kempten and Weissenburg. Further proceedings were pending against the bishops of Magdeburg, Chur and Trent, and against innumerable priests. Many, like the bishops of Olmütz and Passau, were deposed, and many voluntarily resigned so as not to turn traitor. Their places were filled by creatures of the Pope. Others went over to Innocent and were duly rewarded. The German clergy speedily became wholly dependent on the Curia, as the great Innocent had once intended. Any free election by convent or chapter was expressly forbidden, and the bishops were nominated by the Pope just as were Vicars General and podestas by Frederick. The Emperor exercised his right of appointment down to the lowest ranks, and now Innocent also supervised the appointment of the meanest clergy. Even before a benefice was vacant its next incumbent was frequently designated.

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  These reversions to posts in the Church were often granted in exchange for payment of a tax, a procedure not far removed from simony. Other measures again led to the infamous traffic in indulgences. Masses of mendicant monks were carefully instructed and despatched to spread the news of the excommunication and deposition far and wide, for which purpose they were to make use of every convenient opportunity: processions, fairs, markets and the like. They were to follow each sermon by a summons to all to take the cross against Frederick. In order not to stultify the crusade against Frederick and his sons Pope Innocent most strictly but secretly enjoined on them not by any chance to preach a crusade to the Holy Land: and this at the very juncture when Louis of France was preparing to set out on the sixth Crusade. An indulgence of forty to fifty days was earned by merely listening to a crusading sermon against Frederick, and those who took the cross received the same indulgences as those who fought the Saracens. If they later chose to redeem their vow by a money payment the indulgence for sin still held good, and many took the cross solely with the intention of acquiring the indulgence and then repurchasing their freedom. This procedure was not an entirely novel device. It had long been possible to purchase absolution from a crusading vow. Hitherto, however, the moneys thus amassed had been devoted to the prosecution of the crusade, whereas now they simply spelt a new source of revenue for the Church and a new weapon against the Emperor. The moment the fiction of a crusade was at an end, and indulgences were simply bartered for money, that traffic was in full swing which ultimately gave the impetus to the great schism of the sixteenth century, the Reformation.

  The Pope’s activities extended far beyond Germany. He had at his command the highly-ramified organisation of the Roman Church extending through the whole Christian world, and, between promises for this world and threatenings for the next, all kinds of hitherto unexploited sources of supply could be tapped and new partisans be won. There was no command in the Canon from which Innocent would not grant dispensation, no Church law which could not be circumvented, no ecclesiastical crime which could not be condoned if it seemed profitable for the campaign against the Hohenstaufen brood. To procure adherents the Pope began to distribute the property of the church as a feudal prince his fiefs: whoever performed a service for him received a “promissory note” so to speak on the next vacant benefice or see wherever situate. Spaniards might thus acquire a church in England or Germany, or the revenues thereof. Needless to say most of these foreign benefices fell to Italians whom the Pope himself required for the immediate war against the Emperor. These Italians frequently never even saw their cures, they were concerned only to collect the revenues, and the multiplication of benefices, which was an ancient abuse sternly condemned by canon law, became a favourite device of the Pope’s to attract new or to fortify old loyalties. The fifths, tenths and twentieths which the Pope issued were endless. These creatures of the Pope were strangers and entirely indifferent to the fate of the flocks allotted to them; they found no fault with the principle. They acquiesced readily enough in the demands made on them for money, for by such levies they could reap advantage for themselves.

  These interferences of the Pope aroused acute bitterness in England and in France. Innocent, however, had not so free a hand in those countries as in Germany, where the spiritual princes were “pillars of the State” to a degree unknown elsewhere in Christendom, and where, therefore, systematic resistance was scarcely conceivable. In Germany, therefore, the papal rod was severely felt. In dioceses whose incumbent was not a papalist, all divine service ceased for years together, and no baptism, no marriage, no confirmation and no burial service could take place. No member of an imperialist family could take holy orders, and all supporters of the Hohenstaufen were cut off from Church fiefs and leases. In such circumstances everything fell far more seriously into decay in Germany than in Italy, where interdicts were frequently in force for years, but where people took a more commonsense view of religious matters. Similar conditions produced, therefore, very different consequences north and south of the Alps.

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  All these arrangements were made on a uniform system by the Curia from the base of Lyons, which was now the centre of the ecclesiastical web, whose threads Pope Innocent manipulated with consummate mastery. The Pope, indeed, showed himself an expert; he also was a transformer of energies, skilled in utilising intangible forces, in translating spiritual into temporal advantage: into political, military and financial power. One thing was needful: an unscrupulous readiness to turn every available force to account. If we conceive the Church as a purely political power which was face to face with unprecedented political and military tasks, we must reckon the Genoese as one of the most brilliant politicians who ever occupied the papal throne. Without a shadow of misgiving he put out his spiritual talent to usury and opened for the moment innumerable and unexhausted sources of revenue. There is something truly great in the way Pope Innocent silenced every scruple, stifled every sentimental qualm in pursuit of his one goal: the annihilation of the Hohenstaufen. He was no hypocrite; he did not even seek to keep up appearances; he did not even trouble to mask his features, which expressed frank scorn for every rule of canon law. He broke or evaded or altered every can
on at will, introducing into the Papacy a “macchiavellian” trait which placed immediate expediency before all law, human or divine. This was a new type of pope, who had little in common with his warlike Caesar predecessors. The various reactions of the world at large to this new tendency are characteristic. In Germany this betrayal of ideals awakened bitterness, sorrow, detestation. The materialisation of the Church provoked by contrast the more intensive spiritualisation of religion and led ultimately to the Reformation and the renewal of Christendom. Whereas in Italy this conduct of the Popes gave birth to an unfathomable cynicism which brought with it the rebirth of paganism: the Renaissance.

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  Meanwhile the main theatre of war was Italy, where after the Pope’s flight the mighty figure of the Emperor Frederick held the field and fought the fight for life and empire. North of the Alps Pope Innocent’s efforts aimed at undermining the Emperor’s sovereignty, south of the Alps his covert attacks were directed against the Emperor’s person. In Italy the papal machinations were secret and difficult to counter, and the personal danger necessitated the most terrible severity. It was hard enough at any time to impose internal order on Italian party strife, and the Pope’s myrmidons had no difficult task to stir up opposition. All the forces of disorder which had at such cost been calmed and quelled were released again by the papal agitators. Every political, social, religious, economic discontent was fostered and exploited by the Church, which distributed gold and promises without stint. In these circumstances the Emperor could keep up any semblance of control in the State only by extreme harshness and even cruelty. Discipline became more and more difficult to maintain; treachery and defection were rife, and murder instigated by the Pope threatened the Emperor’s life.

  All the communes with few exceptions were untrustworthy. Even in the Ghibelline towns the opposition party was strong, and if the Guelfs gained the upper hand in one town a whole series of friendly and related towns forthwith fell away also. Conversely, of course, the accession of an important town to the Emperor’s cause exercised widespread influence. Yet when one town was with difficulty reduced to allegiance, rebellion fanned by the Pope flamed up in three others, and no sooner had the Emperor gathered a stronger force than usual for some big undertaking than an unforeseen revolt broke out in another quarter, and his efforts were frittered in fruitless fighting. He made oath “never shall we sheathe the sword we have un-scabbarded till the hydra of rebellion whose reborn heads are charged with overflowing ruin, challenging the very existence of the Imperium, shall have been visited with mighty punishment…”, but nevertheless he could not alter the fact that for long periods whole provinces like the Romagna or the Marches were lost to him. At moments during the last five years the general situation in Italy seemed more favourable to the Emperor than ever before. But such conjunctions of the stars were dearly bought!

  The repressive measures of the Emperor grew severer year by year. The mistrust of a naturally mistrustful monarch was nourished by one ugly occurrence after another. Any town that he entered had immediately to give hostages, and these were carried off to Apulian prisons to be slaughtered at the first symptom of revolt. Anyone who showed letters from the Pope lost hands and feet. The Emperor recognised rebels only, not enemies; hence every non-imperialist found armed was hanged. Places that were suspect might expect any fate. Occasional miscarriage of justice was not unknown: a pair of knights from the March were caught and hanged—they had been on their way to join the Emperor’s army. It is said that a tiny mark was sometimes put on a suspect’s back without his knowledge so that the imperial spies might keep their eye on him. One nobleman fell under suspicion because when his native town went over to the enemy his tower was left standing. Frederick sardonically opined that both he and the tower-owner must be much beloved since the imperial palace was also spared. The noble smiled a forced smile but disregarded his friends’ warnings, and on the next breath of suspicion found himself at the bottom of the sea with a millstone round his neck. Even the good faith of loyal towns like Pisa and Lucca had to be purchased. The Emperor handed over to them the territories of the Lunigiana and Garfagnana which King Enzio had promised them. He even promised the Cremonese to make their town the capital of Italy in place of Rome. His treatment of prisoners was ruthless. In his manifestos he boasted, for instance, that he had had three hundred Mantuans hanged along the banks of the Po, or again that he had prevented the defection of Reggio by publicly beheading a hundred revolutionaries. Before the end the word “mercy” had been deleted from his vocabulary. Some noble Florentine Guelfs defended themselves in the Tuscan fortress of Capraio and surrendered after a short siege. Some were hanged on the spot; some were taken in chains to Naples, blinded, mutilated and flung into the sea. Only one of the most distinguished was blinded and released and sent to the barren island of Monte Christo to end his days as a monk.

  Frederick thus sought to defend himself by terror against the host of minor foes. Since the Pope’s flight he had no “big enemy” in Italy and the struggle had changed its character. He was no longer fighting as in the days of Gregory IX as Emperor against the Pope in person. Frederick II and the House of Hohenstaufen were now fighting with tangible weapons against intangible opponents: Papacy and Church. Formerly the Italian continent had been too narrow for the two world powers, now Frederick II filled the space alone, while Innocent had vacated the scene of battle and from Lyons was driving his subterranean tunnels, mining the very ground beneath the Emperor’s feet, instead of meeting him in the open field. Frederick lacked a visible enemy and a definite point of attack. He could no longer cross swords with the Pope; the fight now raged to and fro between the Emperor and his own subjects whom the Pope seduced. Whenever Frederick attempted a march towards Lyons or into Germany, so as to be again face to face with the foe and to escape the almost intolerable tension—“would that our hand had someone to conquer!”—some insurrection or another drew him back into the vortex of Italian strife. He remained for ever chained to the Apennines. Never again was he able to try his strength in the more distant spaces of the Empire. Whether or not he groaned “O felix Asia!” the worm gnawed remorselessly at his vitals.

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  Under this strain, in the hampering conditions of this ignoble struggle against the plots and intrigues of rebels and priests, a craving suddenly flashed out to bid the west good-bye and to seek again the alluring spaces of the east. The later Napoleon felt it too: “I should have been wiser to have stayed in Egypt. By now I should have been Emperor of the whole East,” he exclaimed at the sight of St. Helena. In a letter to the Nicaean Emperor Vatatzes, after various complaints against revolutionaries and deceitful priests who dared to depose a king, Frederick wrote: “But such things happen more easily in our western lands! O happy Asia! O happy rulers of the Orient! who fear neither the dagger of the rebel nor the superstitions invented by the priest!” Such an outburst of personal feeling was rare in Frederick’s state correspondence. It tallies with the legend that he had contemplated abdication and dreamt of betaking himself for ever to the east, promising to conquer the whole of Syria. A new Empire in the Orient, now that he had exhausted what the narrow west could offer; intercourse with Muslim friends; subjects whose only thought was blind obedience even unto death—these were the Emperor’s castles in the air. Such a journey to the east as he desired was not to be. In another fashion, more bitter than the resignation of a throne, than a gradual retreat towards the east, he was to be gradually weaned from the men and things and states of this world.

  Within a few weeks of the Council of Lyons Frederick saw in what quarter the danger-clouds were gathering. Treacherous documents, including plans for the assassination of the Emperor and of King Enzio, were discovered in the monastery of Fontevivo near Parma. Parma was implicated, and when Frederick hastily repaired thither to prevent the defection of this important town he made the further discovery that Bernardo Orlando di Rossi, the Pope’s brother-in-law, with a number of Guelf knights had fled from P
arma in the direction of Piacenza and Milan.

  Orlando di Rossi had been hitherto one of the professed supporters of Frederick II. He was an important personality, well known throughout upper Italy, for he had frequently held the office of podesta in imperial towns. His countryman, Fra Salimbene, the mendicant of Parma, describes him thus: “I never saw a man who looked so perfectly the part of an illustrious prince.” Orlando had a most impressive exterior which his courage did not belie. When he appeared, armed, in the battle, and laid about him right and left, felling the foe with a heavy iron club, men fled as from the devil incarnate, and Fra Salimbene was fain to recall the exploits of Charles the Great: “according to what is recorded of Charlemagne and what I with mine own eyes saw of Orlando.” Orlando di Rossi belonged to the cultured men of his time. As podesta of Siena he instituted a sort of town history in which he proposed to record: “the victories and triumphs for undying memory,” as the Scipios had painted the deeds of their forefathers upon their doorposts to be inspired thereby to the conquest of the earth. Orlando has taken this anecdote with misunderstandings from Sallust. With such style and bearing and mentality it was natural that Orlando should be one of Frederick’s more intimate circle—they were, moreover, related—and it was one of the contributory considerations influencing the choice of Sinibaldo Fiesco as Pope that Orlando di Rossi was his brother-in-law. Soon after the papal flight a breath of distrust towards the Pope’s friends in Parma must have crept over Frederick. He certainly despatched Piero della Vigna to Parma at the time to ensure the town’s allegiance. But in spite of misgivings Frederick acquiesced in the choice of Orlando di Rossi as podesta of Florence for 1244. It could only produce a reassuring impression during the progress of the peace negotiations if the Pope’s brother-in-law was holding office in one of the most important of the imperial towns. But this time the game went wrong. Instead of Orlando’s winning the Pope over to the Emperor’s side the Pope converted his brother-in-law to the Guelfs. Orlando di Rossi openly betrayed the Emperor. Frederick felt the blow severely, but this was only the prelude to the great conspiracy amongst his intimates which followed a few months later.