CHAP. XI. DISASTROUS NEWS FROM THE EAST. Sept. 8. 295 trifling differences, parted in perfect amity. "Never," writes Honorius, "did Pope love Emperor as he loved his son Frederick." Each had obtained some great objects: the Pope the peaceable surrender of the Mathildine territories, and the solemn oath that Frederick would speedily set forth on the Crusade. The Emperor retired in peace and joy to the beloved land of his youth. The perilous question of his right to the kingdom of Sicily had been intentionally or happily avoided; he had been recognised by the Pope as Emperor and King of Sicily. There were still brooding causes of mutual suspicion and dissatisfaction. Frederick pursued with vigour his determination of repressing the turbulent nobles of Apulia; the castles of the partisans of Otho were seized; they fled, and, he bitterly complained, were received with more than hospitality in the Papal dominions. He spared not the inimical bishops; they were driven from their sees; some imprisoned. The Pope loudly protested against this audacious violation of the immunities of Churchmen. Frederick refused them entrance into the kingdom; he had rather forfeit his crown. than the inalienable right of the sovereign, of which he had been defrauded by Innocent III., of visiting treason on all his subjects." n Loss of Then in the next year came the fatal news from the East-the capture, the disasters which followed A.D. 1221. the capture of Damietta. The Pope and the Damietta. Emperor expressed their common grief: the Pope was bowed with dismay and sorrow; the tidings pierced as a sword to the heart of Frederick." Frederick had sent forty triremes, under the Bishop of Catania and the Count of Malta; they had arrived too late. But this dire reverse showed that nothing less than an overwhelming force could restore the Christian cause in the East; and in those days of colder religious zeal, even the Emperor and King of Sicily could not at once summon such overwhelming force. Dec. 1120 to Frederick was fully occupied in the Sicilian dominions : during his minority, and during his absence, the powerful Germans, Normans, Italians, even Churchmen, had usurped fiefs, castles, cities :P he had to resume by force rights unlawfully obtained, to dispossess men whose only title had been open or secret leanings to the Emperor Otho; to punish arbitrary oppression of the people; to destroy strong castles built without licence; to settle ancient feuds and suppress private wars: it needed all his power, his popularity, his firmness, to avert insurrection during these vigorous but necessary measures. Two great May, 1121. assizes held at Capua and Messina showed the confusion in the affairs of both kingdoms. But from such nobles he could expect no ready obedience to assemble around his banner for an expedition to the Holy Land. Instead of a great fleet, suddenly raised, as by the wand of an enchanter, as the Pope seemed to expect, and a powerful army, in April in the year 1222 the Pope and the Emperor met at Veroli to deliberate on the Crusade. They agreed to proclaim a great assembly at Verona in the November of that year, at which the Pope and the Emperor were to be present. All princes, prelates, knights, and vassals were to be summoned to unite in one irresistible effort for the relief of the East. The assembly at Verona did not take place; the illness of the Pope, the occupations of the Emperor, were alleged as excuses for the further delay. A second time the Pope and the Emperor met at Ferentino; with At Ferentino, them King John of Jerusalem, the Patriarch, the March, 1223. Grand Master of the Knights Templars. Frederick explained the difficulties which had impeded his movements, first in Germany, now in Sicily. To the opposition of his turbulent barons was now added the danger of an insurrection of the Saracens in Sicily. Frederick himself was engaged in a short but obstinate war.¶ Even the King of Jerusalem deprecated the Meeting at P Letter of Frederick to the Pope from Trani, March 3, 1221. The two following passages show that this was no feigned excuse :Imperator in Sicilia de Mirabello triumphavit, et de ipso et suis fecit 66 "Do quod eorum meruerat exigentia com- CHAP. XI. INDIFFERENCE ABOUT CRUSADE. 297 despatch of an insufficient force. Two full years were to be employed, by deliberate agreement, in awakening the dormant zeal of Christendom; but Frederick, now a widower, bound himself, it might seem, in the inextricable fetters of his own personal interest and ambition, by engaging to marry Iolante, the beautiful daughter of King John. Two years passed away; King John of Jerusalem travelled over Western Christendom, to England, France, Germany, to represent in all lands the state of extreme peril and distress to which his kingdom was reduced. Everywhere he met with the most courteous and royal reception; but the days of Peter the Hermit and St. Bernard were gone by. France, England, Germany, Spain, were involved in their own affairs; a few took the Cross, and offered sums of money to no great amount; and this was all which was done by the royal preacher of the Crusade. Tuscany and Lombardy were almost as indifferent to the expostulations of Cardinal Ugolino, who had for some years received full power from the Emperor to awaken, if possible, the sluggish ardour of those provinces. King John and the Patriarch, after visiting Apulia, reported to the Pope the absolute impossibility of raising any powerful armament by the time appointed in the treaty of Ferentino. mano. Honorius was compelled to submit; at St. Germano was framed a new agreement, by two Cardinals At San Gercommissioned by the Pope, which deferred for July, 1225. two years longer (till August, 1227) the final departure of the Crusade. Frederick permitted himself to be bound by stringent articles. In that month of that year he would proceed on the Crusade, and maintain one thousand knights at his own cost for two years: for each knight who was deficient, he was to pay the penalty of fifty marks, to be at the disposal of the King, the Patriarch, and the Master of the Knights Templars, for the benefit afterwards transplanted many of them to Lucera. So far was Frederick as yet from any suspicious dealings with the Saracens. The Parliament at Messina had passed persecuting laws against the Jews. A law of the same year protected the churches and the clergy from the burthens laid upon them by the nobles. Ric, San Germ., sub ann. [ of the Holy Land. He was to have a fleet of 150 ships to transport 2000 knights, without cost, to Palestine. If so many knights were not ready to embark, the money saved was to be devoted to those pious interests. He was to place in the hands of the same persons 100,000 ounces of gold, at four several periods, to be forfeited for the same uses, if in two years he did not embark on the Crusade. His successors were bound to fulfil these covenants in case of his death. If he failed to perform any one of these covenants, if at the appointed time he did not embark for the Holy Land; if he did not maintain the stipulated number of knights; if he did not pay the stipulated sums of money; he fell at once under the interdict of the Church: if he left unfulfilled any other point, the Church, by his own free admission, had the power to pronounce the interdict. Personal ambition, as well as religious zeal, or the policy of keeping on good terms with the spiritual power, might seem to mingle with the aspirations of the Emperor Frederick for the Holy Land; to his great Empire Frederick mar- he would add the dominions of the East. ries Iolante. A.D. 1225. In the November of the same year, after the signature of the treaty in St. Germano, he celebrated his marriage with Iolante, daughter of the King of Jerusalem. No sooner had he done this, than he assumed to himself the title of King of Jerusalem: he caused a new great seal to be made, in which he styled himself Emperor, King of Jerusalem and Sicily. John of Jerusalem was King, he asserted, only by right of his wife; on her death, the crown descended to her daughter; as the husband of Iolante he was the lawful Sovereign." King John by temperament a wrathful man, burst into a paroxysm of fury; high words ensued; he called the Emperor the son of a butcher; he accused him of neglecting his daughter, of diverting those embraces due to his bride to one of her attendants. He retired in anger to Bologna. "Desponsatâ puellâ Imperator patrem requisivit; ut regna et regalia jura resignet stupefactus ille obedit."Jord. apud Raynald. Yet if we are to believe the Chronicle of Tours, he just at that time threw Iolante into prison, and ravished her cousin, the daughter of Walter of Brienne. Was this one of the tales told by the King of Jerusalem? CHAP. XI. DIFFICULTIES OF FREDERICK. 299 Frederick had other causes for suspecting the enmity of his father-in-law. He was the brother of Walter of Brienne; and rumours had prevailed, that he intended to claim the inheritance of his brother's wife, the daughter of the Norman Tancred. But John filled Italy with dark stories of the dissoluteness of the gallant Frederick: that he abstained altogether from the bed of Iolante is refuted by the fact, that two years after she bore him a son, which Frederick acknowledged as his own. They appeared even during that year, at least with all outward signs of perfect harmony. t Nor was this the only event which crossed the designs of Frederick, if he ever seriously determined to fulfil his vow (where is the evidence, but that of his bitter enemies, that he had not so determined?) Throughout all his dominions, instead of that profound peace and established order which might enable him, at the head of the united knighthood of the Empire and of Italy to break with irresistible forces upon the East; in Germany the assassination of the wise and good Engelbert, Archbishop of Cologne, to whom Frederick had entrusted the tutelage of his son Henry, and the administration of the Empire, threatened the peace of the realm. In Lombardy, Guelf and Ghibelline warred, intrigued ; princes against princes, Bonifazio of Monferrat and the house of Este against the Salinguerra, and that cruel race of which Eccelin di Romano was the head. Venice and Genoa, Genoa and Pisa, Genoa and Milan, Asti and State of Alexandria, Ravenna and Ferrara, Mantua and Italy. Cremona, even Rome and Viterbo, were now involved in fierce hostility, or pausing to take advantage each of the other; and each city had usually a friendly faction within the walls of its rival. Frederick, who held the high Swabian notion as to the prerogative of the Emperor, had determined with a high hand to assert the Imperial rights. He hoped, with his Ghibelline allies, to become again the Sovereign of the north of Italy. He was prepared to march at the head of his Southern forces; a Diet had been summoned at Verona. Milan again set herself at Godfred. Monach. apud Boehmer Fontes, Nov. 7, 1225. |