The Glory of the Crusades

by Steve Weidenkopf

  The failed expedition to Mansourah had dangerously drained the effective fighting force of the Crusaders. This situation, coupled with the prospect of a long stalemate and uncertainty about when or if Frederick II’s German army would arrive, forced Cardinal Pelagius to realize the only viable solution was diplomacy, so he sued for peace. Terms were reached on August 29, 1221: If the Crusaders would surrender Damietta and leave Egypt, al-Kamil offered an eight-year truce, a prisoner exchange, and a promise to return the True Cross. Pelagius agreed to the terms and the army left in September.

  The failure of the Fifth Crusade was especially disheartening since it had been so close to succeeding. Unlike the failure of previous Crusades, however, which demoralized Christendom and negatively impacted the Crusading movement, the disappointment of the Fifth Crusade provided a learning experience that the Church and secular rulers took to heart. They learned “the lesson that their efforts needed to be more sharply focused in terms of logistic preparations, military organization, and religious commitments. The Fifth Crusade met military defeat for itself while securing institutional success for its cause.”478

  The Crusade of Frederick II

  One of the factors that significantly contributed to the failure of the Fifth Crusade was the absence of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II’s army. Christendom and the warriors of the Fifth Crusade eagerly awaited the fulfillment of Frederick’s vow, first taken in 1215. When these warriors returned home, the wait for Frederick II continued.

  The son of Henry VI (d. 1197) and Constance of Sicily (d. 1198) was something of a spectacle. Described as a “polymath, intellectual, linguist, scholar, falconry expert, and politician of imagination, arrogance, ambition, and energy,” Frederick had been raised as a ward of the Church after his parents died when he was four years old. Innocent III was his guardian.479 Frederick’s curious affinity for Islam and insatiable personal aspirations prompted contemporaries to refer to him as stupor mundi, the “wonder of the world.” Indeed, his political policies, individualistic demeanor, and spurious religious convictions were ahead of their time in the medieval period. His upbringing in Sicily exposed him to Islamic culture, and he seemed to find himself more at ease in the company of Muslims than Christians. He spoke and wrote Arabic and traveled with a Muslim bodyguard.480 After the death of his second wife, Isabella II, he instituted a harem stocked with Muslim women.

  In 1221, Frederick met with his former tutor, Cencio Savelli, who had been elected pope five years before, taking the name Honorius III. He once again renewed his Crusader vow and set a departure date of the Feast of St. John the Baptist, June 24, 1225. Frederick was a “serial crucesignati” whose first vow was taken in 1215 during his coronation as King of the Germans at Aachen.481 His second vow came five years later during his coronation as holy Roman emperor in Rome. His meeting with Honorius III came after the Fifth Crusade’s retreat from Egypt, and he later publicly promised to go to the Holy Land in 1225 and 1227.

  In the summer of 1225, as the departure date approached, Frederick was concerned by the lack of response from the German nobility. He asked Honorius to grant him another extension. The pope agreed to one final delay, but it came with stipulations. This time Frederick agreed to leave on the Feast of the Assumption, August 15, 1227, twelve years after his first Crusade vow. He also agreed to pay to maintain one thousand knights in the Holy Land for two years and provide earnest money of 100,000 ounces of gold that would be returned to him upon his arrival in Acre. Frederick acknowledged, too, that failure to keep these promises would lead to excommunication. Honorius was willing to grant leniency to Frederick due to their longstanding relationship, but his successor was not as patient with the emperor.

  Pope Gregory IX

  In the spring of 1227, Honorius III died and the fifty-seven-year-old Ugolino Cardinal Conti was elected as his successor, taking the name Gregory IX. He was the grandnephew of Pope Innocent III and a personal friend and supporter of Francis of Assisi. Gregory was a canon lawyer, Scripture scholar, and diplomat who reigned for fourteen years as “one of the greatest popes in the history of the Church, though curiously neglected by posterity (particularly post-medieval posterity).”482

  Like his great uncle, Gregory IX was intensely supportive of the Crusading movement. While a cardinal in Italy he spent time preaching the Fifth Crusade, viewing the Crusades as a “unique instrument of ecclesiastical and specifically papal authority with wide application.”483 Consequently, he did not have the patience to wait for a preeminent Crusader like Frederick II to delay fulfillment of his vow, a point he mentioned to the emperor in his first letter to him. Their relationship was stormy and bitter and has been described as “one of the most dramatic stories of all time.”484

  The “Crusader without Faith”485

  As Frederick II made preparations to embark on his journey to Outrémer, al-Kamil sent an envoy, Emir Fakhr al-Din, to the emperor in 1226 bearing rich gifts. Al-Din was tasked by al-Kamil to offer Frederick a peace treaty that included relinquishing Jerusalem in exchange for Frederick’s military aid in the war against al-Kamil’s brother in Damascus.

  Frederick needed time to consider the offer, so he sent al-Din back to al-Kamil with a noncommittal reply. While the negotiations were ongoing, Frederick and his army made preparations for their promised departure in August of 1227. Frederick planned his campaign to be limited in scope. The army was not large and the focus of the expedition had more to do with asserting Frederick’s royal and imperial rights by exploiting the diplomatic opportunity presented by al-Kamil while at the same time fulfilling his political obligations to the papacy.486

  As the troops assembled in Brindisi, the heat of the summer and squalid conditions in the camp produced a disease that ravaged the Crusader force. Many warriors died, including the husband of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, Louis IV of Thuringia.

  Frederick arrived in the camp and was dismayed by the outbreak of the illness, yet he finalized preparations to depart. After setting sail on the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, September 8, 1227, the emperor and his retinue soon became ill. The fleet was directed to stop at Otranto on the Adriatic only fifty-four miles away. There the sick emperor decided to cancel his journey to Outrémer.

  But, as with Philip II Augustus during the Third Crusade, illness was not an acceptable reason for failure to fulfill one’s Crusade vow. This latest failure of Frederick II to fulfill his vow, now twelve years old, prompted Pope Gregory IX to issue the promised excommunication.

  Frederick was undeterred by the ecclesiastical censure, and made preparations to travel east once healthy. Gregory IX then used the excommunication to engage in an armed contest to wrest control of Frederick’s Italian land holdings. The situation was a “remarkable spectacle” wherein Christendom witnessed “an excommunicated Crusader sailing to restore Jerusalem, while the pope was organizing armies, one of which was led by the former king of Jerusalem [John of Brienne], to secure the Crusader’s political overthrow in the west.”487

  In June of 1228 the excommunicated emperor left Italy despite the warnings of Pope Gregory IX. The “Crusader without faith” arrived in the Holy Land in September. Technically, this journey was not a Crusade since one who was excommunicated was not allowed to participate in Crusading but, true to form, Frederick II did not care what others imposed upon him.

  Once in Outrémer, Frederick II was in a difficult situation. He insisted on taking the throne of the kingdom although he was only regent for his son Conrad, and al-Kamil’s previous offer, although still on the table, was less palatable to the Muslim ruler since his brother, al-Mu ‘azzam, the ruler of Damascus, had died in November 1227. Al-Kamil’s need for Frederick had ceased, but the presence of Frederick in the Holy Land led both men to find a face-saving arrangement. Al-Kamil needed to settle with Frederick in order to free up his forces for use elsewhere, but he could not look weak in fulfilling his promises. Appearing to surrender to an inferior foe would place al-Kamil in a perilous political situati
on. The excommunicated emperor could not return west empty-handed, and he needed to avoid the appearance of being a supplicant to al-Kamil. The precarious position of both men provided for a delicate political process that Freidank, a poet and member of Frederick’s army described as “watching two misers trying to divide evenly three gold pieces.”488

  On February 8, 1229, Fredrick and al-Kamil agreed to the division of the “gold pieces” and entered into the compromise Treaty of Jaffa. The ten year truce called for the return of warriors from the Fifth Crusade languishing in Muslim prisons and gave Frederick the Holy City in exchange for Frederick’s military aid to al-Kamil. Frederick agreed to not support any Christian war against al-Kamil, and even to assist him should Christian forces break the treaty. Jerusalem was recognized as a holy city for both faiths, though Christians were given control of most of it. The temple area, including the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa mosque, remained in Muslim control, although Christians were allowed access. Bethlehem and Nazareth were also given to Frederick so that all the major Christian holy cities were once more in the hands of the followers of Christ.

  The treaty was remarkable in its extent and in terms of how little it cost the emperor. As during the Fifth Crusade, al-Kamil proved himself to be generous in diplomacy. Jerusalem would remain in Christian control the next fifteen years. Frederick’s unofficial Crusade had reaped significant dividends.

  Now that Jerusalem was in his control, Frederick decided to travel to the Holy City to claim the throne of the kingdom. He arrived on March 17, 1229 and toured the holy sites in the company of local Muslim authorities, displaying his disdain for the Catholic Faith when he said he had come to Jerusalem “to hear the Muslims, at the hour of prayer, call upon Allah by night.”489

  This shocking admission was overshadowed by an even more outrageous comment to Fakhr al-Din concerning his reasons for negotiating for control of Jerusalem: “If I had not been afraid of losing my prestige in the eyes of the Franks, I would have never made the sultan yield up Jerusalem.”490 Perhaps the statement can be viewed as diplomatic small talk, but given Frederick’s affinity for Islam and conflict with the Church, the comment provides insight into the man and validates the charge that he was the “Crusader without faith.”

  On March 18, 1229, Frederick entered the Church of the Holy Sepulchre for his coronation as king of Jerusalem. If not for his excommunication, this act would have fulfilled his Crusader vow. Because of his ecclesiastical censure, however, the crowd was sparse and no representative of the Church was present, so the emperor crowned himself king. In a sign he knew his actions were inappropriate, Frederick had Hermann von Salza read a statement justifying his actions and attacking his critics while the ceremony proceeded.491

  Two days later, his “Crusade” complete with the accomplishment of his personal political goals, Emperor Frederick II returned to Acre where he stayed for the next several months until leaving for home on May 1, 1229. His departure was less than regal as recorded by the chronicler of the Gestes des Chyprois:

  His departure was a shabby affair. The emperor made the preparations for his passage in secret, and on the first day of May, without telling anyone, he set out before dawn, going through the butcher’s quarter to reach his galley. Now, it came about that the butchers in these streets ran after him and pelted him shamefully with tripe and entrails. And in this way the emperor left Acre, hated, accursed, and reviled.492

  Frederick’s adventure in the Holy Land was a strange one. The sight of an excommunicated emperor going on Crusade, negotiating with a Muslim sultan for control of the Holy City and crowning himself king of Jerusalem was most assuredly one of the greatest spectacles of the medieval period. Yet despite his unorthodox behavior and methods, Frederick II’s journey to Outrémer proved oddly successful, for “what Richard I had failed to win by force and the Fifth Crusade had rejected as unworthy or unworkable, Frederick achieved through dogged negotiation … The three holiest sites, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Nazareth, were restored to Christian hands.”493

  The excommunicated holy Roman emperor’s expedition to the Holy Land indeed resulted in the return of Jerusalem to Christian control—but only for a decade. The Egyptian ruler, al-Salih Ayyub, the great-nephew of Saladin, desired to conquer Palestine to restore Saladin’s empire and bring unity among the Muslim people. For help, he hired Khwarazmians, a Muslim people who in the 1220s had been driven from their lands in modern-day Iran by the arrival of the Mongols from the Asian steppe. Al-Salih Ayyub sent his new mercenary army to attack Jerusalem on August 23, 1244. The Khwarazmians captured the city, killed significant numbers of Christians, and desecrated the holy places. The loss of Jerusalem prompted the calling of another Crusade and motivated the king of France to take the cross.

  433 Arnaldo Fortini, Nova Vita di San Francesco (Roma: Carucci Editore, 1981), 14, in Frank M. Rega, St. Francis of Assisi and the Conversion of the Muslims With a Concise Biography of the Saint (Rockford, IL: TAN Books and Publishers, Inc., 2007, 130).

  434 Ibn al-Djusi was a contemporary of Frederick II’s living in Jerusalem when the emperor visited in 1229. Thomas C. Van Cleve, The Emperor Frederick II of Hohenstaufen (Oxford: 1972), 225. Cited in Carroll, The Glory of Christendom, 214.

  435 “Francesco” was a nickname meaning “the Frenchman” since the boy’s mother was French and his merchant father spent time in France on business. Rega, St. Francis of Assisi, 3.

  436 Thomas of Celano, The Second Life of St. Francis, Book One, trans. Placid Hermann, O.F.M., Chapter 7, no. 12, 372, (included in Omnibus, in Rega, St. Francis of Assisi, 10.)

  437 Gary Dickson, The Children’s Crusade—Medieval History, Modern Mythistory (New York: Palgrave Macmillian, 2010), xi.

  438 Ibid., 127.

  439 Tyerman, God’s War, 609.

  440 Ibid., 610.

  441 Dickson, The Children’s Crusade, 55.

  442 Auctarium Mortui Maris (to 1234) ed. D.L.C. Bethmann, MGH. SS. 6:467, in Dickson, The Children’s Crusade, 55.

  443 The story of Stephen’s receiving a divine mandate and the number of participants (more than likely an exaggerated number; Dickson cites an English chronicler that puts the number at 15,000, which may be closer to the actual number. Dickson, The Children’s Crusade, 71) is from the Laon Anonymous chronicle. Chronicon Universal Anonymi Laudunensis 1154–1219, ed. A. Cartellieri and W. Stechele (Leipzig: 1909), 70–71. Translation from J.F.C. Hecker, The Epidemics of the Middle Ages (trans. B.G. Babington) 3rd ed. (Trübner & Co.: London: 1859), 354. Quoted in Dickson, The Children’s Crusade, 65.

  444 Dickson, The Children’s Crusade, 109.

  445 Ibid., 124.

  446 Annales Marbacenses (to 1220) ed. H. Bloch in MGH. SS. Rerum Germ. In usum scholar. 9:82, in Dickson, The Children’s Crusade, 113.

  447 Dickson, The Children’s Crusade, 118–119.

  448 Iacopo da Varagine e la sua chronica di Genova (to 1297) ed. G. Monleone Ist. Stor. Ital., Fonti, 85, 2 (Rome: 1941), 374. J.F.C. Hecker, The Epidemics of the Middle Ages (trans. B.G. Babington) 3rd ed. (Trübner & Co.: London, 1859), 358. Quoted in Dickson, The Children’s Crusade, 2.

  449 Annales s. Medardi Suessionensibus (to 1249) ed. G. Waitz, MGH. SS. 26: 521. Hecker, 359, in Dickson, The Children’s Crusade, 2.

  450 Ibid., 165.

  451 Ibid., 166.

  452 Voltaire, Le Micromégas avec une historie des croisades, in Dickson, The Children’s Crusade, 171.

  453 Tyerman, God’s War, 606.

  454 Ibid., 612

  455 Ibid., 614.

  456 Ibid., 622.

  457 Ibid., 621.

  458 Patrologia cursus complètes. Series Latina, ed. J.P. Migne (Paris: 1844–1864), 216, col. 830, no. xxxv, in Tyerman, God’s War, 615.

  459 Pernoud, The Crusaders, 166.

  460 René Grousset, The Epic of the Crusades, trans. Noel Lindsay (New York: Orion Press, 1970), 207.

  461 Tyerman, God’s War, 629.

  462 High number of Crusaders in Tyerm
an, God’s War, 637. Numbers of those who marched to Cairo from Oliver of Paderborn, Capture of Damietta, trans. E. Peters, Christian Society and the Crusades 1198–1229 (Philadephia: 1971), 114, in Tyerman, God’s War, 638.

  463 Madden, The New Concise History of the Crusades, 148.

  464 Tyerman, God’s War, 626.

  465 Madden, New Concise History of the Crusades, 150.

  466 Oliver of Paderborn, Capture of Damietta, 124, in Tyerman, God’s War, 633.

  467 Tyerman, God’s War, 643.

  468 Ibid., 638.

  469 Omar Englebert, St. Francis of Assisi (Chicago: 1965), 236, in Carroll, The Glory of Christendom, 197.

  470 Pernoud, The Crusaders, 267.

  471 Rega, St. Francis of Assisi, 61.

  472 Englebert, St. Francis of Assisi, 236–240 in Carroll, The Glory of Christendom, 197.

  473 Pernoud, The Crusaders, 269.

  474 Rega, St. Francis of Assisi, chs. 13 & 14.

  475 From a total population of 60,000. Madden, The New Concise History of the Crusades, 151.

  476 Oliver of Paderborn, The Capture of Damietta, 94, in Madden, The New Concise History of the Crusades, 151.

  477 Seward, The Monks of War, 66.

  478 Tyerman, God’s War, 649.

  479 Ibid., 739.

  480 Maalouf, The Crusades Through Arab Eyes, 226.

  481 Tyerman, God’s War, 740.

  482 Carroll, The Glory of Christendom, 210.

  483 Tyerman, God’s War, 756.

  484 Carroll, The Glory of Christendom, 210.

  485 The term is Régine Pernoud’s. See The Crusaders, 274.