God's War: A New History of the Crusades

by Tyerman, Christopher

  Like many thirteenth-century rulers, Frederick II was a serial crucesignatus. He first took the cross at his coronation as king of Germany at Aachen in July 1215. There, probably deliberately, he aped his father Henry VI’s ceremony at Worms in December 1195 by personally presiding over the mass distribution of crosses to his new subjects.15 The problems encountered in establishing his rule prevented Frederick honouring this vow, yet the obligation remained indelible. At his imperial coronation in Rome in November 1220, he again received the cross, this time from Cardinal Ugolino, a personal confrontation that bore bitter fruit when the cardinal, as Pope Gregory IX, excommunicated Frederick seven years later. Frederick publicly vowed to help the Holy Land twice more, at conferences at Ferentino in March 1223 and San Germano in July 1225, ten years to the day (25 July) since he had first taken the cross. This proliferation of commitment reflected the reverse of empty bombast. Just as taking the cross in 1215 had associated the young King Frederick with papal approval, and that of 1220 with joint leadership of Christendom, so the vows of 1223 and 1225 marked stages of the development of a detailed crusade plan in response to acerbic criticism of his inaction during the Damietta campaign.

  Frederick’s problem lay in his eagerness or insouciance in setting himself precise deadlines for action. In 1220, he promised to go east in August 1221. Instead he merely despatched a fleet and an army under the duke of Bavaria, which reached Damietta just in time for the final debacle. In 1223 Frederick guaranteed departure in 1225; domestic politics intruded. In 1225 the date for his crusade was pushed back to 1227, but this time with the agreed additional sanction of excommunication if he failed to honour his pledge. Given that at Ferentino and San Germano Frederick had committed himself to providing large numbers of paid troops, a fleet and large reserves of cash for the expedition, the precision of the dates may have been designed to convince potential followers, tax payers and bankers of his sincerity. They also helped counter charges of dishonour levelled since 1221. Most important, the promises of 1223 and 1225 appeased the well-inclined but suspicious Pope Honorius III. Frederick needed papal support to consolidate his authority in Germany, Italy and Sicily. Yet these negotiations constituted no imperial surrender. By recognizing Frederick’s command of the crusade, even on the tough, restrictive terms reached at San Germano, the pope was affording him the position in Christendom the emperor had chosen for himself, that of the foremost secular authority under God.

  At the same time as he began to raise money, troops and allies for the expedition, Frederick developed his wider eastern strategy. In 1223 it was agreed with John of Brienne that the emperor would marry his daughter, Isabella II, giving Frederick direct claim to jurisdiction in mainland Outremer. The marriage took place in 1225. Frederick promptly relieved his new father-in-law, John of Brienne, of his role as regent, thereby, rather characteristically, making an enemy for life. Despite King John’s bruised feelings, the Jerusalem barons, many of whom attended the wedding in Brindisi in November 1225, accepted the new arrangements even where they harboured reservations on the actual extent and exercise of royal power in Jerusalem. At least on campaign, as king of Jerusalem in the right of his wife, Frederick would hope to avoid the disputes over authority and sovereignty that marred the Fifth Crusade. More widely, the king of Jerusalem being present at the head of a western crusading force rather than acting as a more or less reluctant or enthusiastic local host promised to resolve a tension inherent in all expeditions launched to the Holy Land since 1099. Frederick’s plan offered a new departure for eastern crusading, a unitary model that a century later became very fashionable in circles trying to revive the idea of the recovery of the Holy Land, even though by then Frederick’s pioneering scheme was denied any credit. The crown would allow Frederick to fight the war, acquire conquests and negotiate peace with full, unchallenged legitimacy. Perhaps as early as 1226, Frederick had begun direct and detailed negotiations with Sultan al-Kamil of Egypt (1218–38) over the return of Jerusalem, although he needed the prospect of his appearance in the Levant to persuade the sultan to consider accepting him as an ally.16 The royal title also complemented the claim to authority over Cyprus as an imperial fief, Frederick’s father Henry VI having granted Aimery of Lusignan a crown in 1197. The tentacles of Hohenstaufen power were expansive. Henry VI had also granted a crown to Cilician Armenia. Frederick’s new bride was the granddaughter of Conrad of Montferrat, an imperial vassal and a member of a house loyal to the Hohenstaufen in the years of civil war in the western empire after 1197. As heir of the Hauteville kings of Sicily (Roger II was his maternal grandfather), Frederick possessed a wider strategic and commercial interest in Mediterranean politics. The 1225 marriage seemed to bring a step closer the realization of the ambition of a cross-Mediterranean empire of the sort envisaged by Henry VI. It also fed the grander universalist imperial policy and rhetoric inherited from Frederick Barbarossa; his propaganda and acts showed Frederick II was well aware of both. However, the Treaty of San Germano could also be seen as encompassing the cooperation of church and state in the recovery by a Christian monarch, the king of Jerusalem, of his lost territories. Despite his later reputation as a sort of elemental political force, stupor mundi, and despite some of his own posturing, Frederick’s grand designs were founded on often prosaic traditional, immediate and sustainable rights and claims.

  Rhetoric did not win wars. Money, men and ships could. At the heart of negotiations with the papacy in 1223 and 1225 lay finance, logistics and recruitment. Frederick’s commitments to subsidize the expedition served to reassure the pope, encourage his own subjects and attract followers beyond his territories. They also guaranteed a measure of imperial control over the whole project, another lesson learnt from the events of 1217–21. After the agreement at Ferentino in 1223, Frederick had agreed to prepare a fleet to carry 10,000 infantry and 1,000 knights east. The treaty of San Germano specified his own military entourage would number 1,000 knights to be maintained for two years, with transport to be provided for a further 2,000 knights, each with three horses, as well as their familia, squires and valets. The muster was fixed for 15 August 1227.17 To underwrite the expenses of this force once in Outremer, Frederick agreed to deposit 100,000 gold ounces for withdrawal at Acre. Over the following two years Frederick extended his commitment by offering free transport and supplies to all crucesignati, however grand. It was clear that his campaign was not going to match the scale of those recruited in 1188, 1202 or 1217, a point reflected in the absence of a general clerical tax, as well as the concurrent distractions of the Languedoc war, campaigns against the Moors in Spain by Ferdinand III of Castile and James I of Aragon and in 1227 a crusade authorizing the king of Hungary to attack dissident Bosnians. Frederick fell back largely on the resources within his Italian and Sicilian kingdom, although he received John of Brienne’s share (50,000 marks) of Philip II of France’s crusade legacy in a moment of rare rapprochement with his father-in-law. Local sources suggest monasteries bore the brunt of a heavy clerical tax, calculated, levied or soon converted into gold, the currency of the eastern Mediterranean. Throughout the 1220s, Frederick appeared eager to increase his gold reserves, insisting that visiting merchants to the kingdom use gold for all financial transactions. While this policy may have been designed to build up stocks preparatory to his bold scheme of producing a gold currency in 1231–2, it may also have been instituted with the crusade in mind. As well as being the currency of the east, the relative value of gold made it far less bulky to transport than the same value of silver. Other crusaders, such as the bishop of Winchester, seemed to share Frederick’s appreciation of gold in financing the journey east.18

  The effect of the treaty of San Germano was almost immediate. Earlier attempts after 1223 to raise forces in Germany and elsewhere by John of Brienne and the Master of the Teutonic Knights, Frederick’s close friend and adviser Hermann von Salza, had met with a very cool response. Now the reaction was very different, especially in Germany, Italy and England. Freder
ick’s commitments were broadcast across western Europe. In England, for instance, a papal nuncio, Otho, circulated copies of the San Germano agreement to each diocese.19 Papal orders to preach the cross were similarly distributed. The promise of imperial aid secured the support of important German magnates, such as the dukes of Thuringia and Limburg, the count of Urach, numbers of imperial ministeriales and contingents from traditional crusade centres such as the Netherlands, and the cities of Worms, Cologne and Lübeck. Frederick could also rely on his network of officials and supporters in southern Italy and Sicily, such as Thomas of Aquino count of Acerra. Independent crucesignati were encouraged to associate themselves with the muster fixed at Brinsidi for August 1227.20

  One of the more distinct contributions, from England, demonstrated the narrowness of recruitment for the 1227 crusade in comparison with more generally popular expeditions.21 The leading figure was the recently disgraced former Justiciar bishop of Winchester, Peter des Roches, through his support for King John and the ideals and practices of authoritarian kingship, one of the most controversial politicians in England of the first third of the thirteenth century. He had taken the cross in 1221 amid rumours that he had been nominated as archbishop of Damietta. News of Frederick’s plans in 1225 seems to have stimulated des Roches’s preparations. From 1226, he was in direct contact with the emperor, coordinating plans, and probably booking his passage in the imperial fleet. The timing was convenient for the bishop personally, as he had recently been excluded from power. However, the young King Henry III and his advisers were looking to reconquer Angevin ancestral lands in France rather than help the Holy Land or the disgraced former minister. Apart from releasing his debts at the Exchequer, forcing payment of loans owed to him and defending some property rights, perhaps in recognition of his crusader status, the government made no financial contribution to des Roches’s expedition, although the pope allowed him to raise money from his diocese. As the see of Winchester was one of the wealthiest in western Europe and des Roches was privately a very rich man, the absence of official subsidy may have made little difference. On crusade, he appeared amply supplied with funds. However, not a single English magnate accompanied him to Syria. The only fellow crusader of substance was William Brewer bishop of Exeter. Taking the cross in 1226–7, Brewer stood proxy for his uncle and namesake, a veteran civil servant who had taken the cross as long ago as 1188 but had been allowed to postpone fulfilling his vow by the pope. To pay for his nephew’s crusade, the older Brewer deposited 4,000 marks with the Templars at Acre.22

  As the bishops had not previously been linked socially or politically, the coincidence of their crusades did not indicate any great enthusiasm among the ruling classes in England. In 1227, des Roches was accompanied by a suitable clerical and military entourage and acquired a small army, probably mercenaries from England or the Continent. A smattering of other traceable English crusaders accompanied them. A year later Philip of Aubigny, a survivor of the Damietta campaign, took the cross. Yet the figure of 40,000 crucesignati given by the St Albans monk Roger of Wendover appears a gross exaggeration.23 However, in the reduced army that embarked from Brindisi in August 1227, the English contingent assumed some prominence, which was confirmed during the crusade’s stay in Outremer. Des Roches became a confidant of the German leadership, and the English force played a major role in the refortification of coastal towns, especially Sidon and Jaffa. The bishops witnessed the Treaty of Jaffa in 1229, which restored Jerusalem, and des Roches supervised the reconstruction of St Stephen’s Gate and the Tower of David. While widely praised in English sources, the bishops’ cooperation with the excommunicated emperor earned them papal censure. This hardly seemed to affect them. At Acre, des Roches transformed an existing English hospital dedicated to St Thomas Becket, which possibly dated from the Third Crusade, into a military order. Within a few years the order had adopted the rule of the Teutonic Knights; it continued as a military corporation for a century and as a religious order for a further two.24 On their return to their dioceses, Brewer in 1229 and des Roches in 1231, they were greeted as heroes. Yet their, and the crusade’s, achievements, while diplomatically startling and politically controversial, were, compared with earlier campaigns, modest.

  Until the summer of 1227, Frederick’s preparations had gone smoothly. Recruiting hardly seemed designed to produce a mass response. The context for Frederick’s campaign was limited and precise, focused on the assertion of his royal and imperial rights in Outremer; fulfilling political obligations to the papacy as part of consolidating his power in Italy and Germany; and exploiting the diplomatic opportunity presented by al-Kamil of Egypt. Aware of the emperor’s plan to come east, in 1226 the sultan had sent Emir Fakhr al-Din to Frederick offering an alliance against his brother al-Mu ‘azzam emir of Damascus. Al-Mu ‘azzam was challenging for supremacy in the Ayyubid empire and had recently allied with Jelal al-Din, the ruler of the Khwarazmians, a Turkish federation from the steppes between the river Oxus and the Caspian Sea. Khwarazmian raiders could tip the balance of power in Syria decisively against al-Kamil.25 As a lure, the Egyptian sultan proposed the return of Jerusalem and other towns to the Christians, in effect reviving his offers to the crusaders in 1219–21. Frederick evidently got on well with Fakhr al-Din, apparently even knighting him; in 1249 the emir still bore the emperor’s arms on his banner.26 An imperial embassy travelled to Egypt in 1227 and went on to Damascus, where they were rebuffed by al-Mu ‘azzam. For the treaty with al-Kamil to be realized, Frederick needed to appear in Outremer with an army. However, as the abortive talks in Damascus suggested, Frederick probably wondered how far al-Kamil was in a position to deliver on his promises. The death of al-Mu ‘azzam in November 1227 reconfigured the political map. With al-Kamil and another brother, al-Ashraf, concentrating on trying to annexe Damascus, their need for Frederick ceased. According to Ibn Wasil, a well-informed Ayyubid official of the next generation, Frederick had become ‘an embarrassment’.27 Yet the sultan could not afford to fight him either, as this would deflect from his aim of subduing Damascus. Yet, by honouring his promise to Frederick, al-Kamil risked hardening opposition to his rule from the Damascenes, who regarded Palestine as part of their sphere of influence. When news of the 1229 treaty reached Damascus, it provided al-Kamil’s enemies with a fine propaganda weapon as the city went into public mourning, with preachers and poets fanning a sense of Islamic outrage.28 Thus Fredrick’s Egyptian diplomacy required a far more delicate use of military strength than had initially seemed in prospect.

  This was not apparent in the summer of 1227, when the roads from Germany to Apulia were clogged with crusaders.29 The muster at Brindisi attracted many thousands, although the core comprised a force of over 1,000 knights in the emperor’s pay. The crowding and summer heat took their toll as plague broke out in the crusader camps. As victims mounted, some abandoned the journey. The main German fleet sailed in mid-August, probably including the English bishops. Frederick and the landgrave of Thuringia embarked with Sicilian levies on 8 September. Within days, probably from the effects of plague, the landgrave was dead and Frederick incapacitated, forcing him to put in at Otranto to recuperate. As a token of his continuing commitment, he despatched Hermann von Salza and the patriarch of Jerusalem to Syria with twenty galleys to join the main force, whose command he entrusted to Henry, the new duke of Limburg. What in other circumstances would have seemed an unfortunate but unavoidable setback became the pivot around which the crusade was transformed from an enterprise of Christian solidarity into one of confrontation and division. Despite being told the reasons for this further delay, on 29 September Pope Gregory IX excommunicated Frederick for having broken the terms of the Treaty of San Germano.30

  The unreasonable vehemence of Gregory’s condemnation and his refusal to accept Frederick’s subsequent restrained defence suggested that the pope had been waiting for a chance to strike against the emperor. Unlike his predecessor, Honorius III, whom he had succeeded only in March 1227, Gregory was not
by nature a conciliator. A nephew of Innocent III, an early patron of the friars, a canon lawyer and papal diplomat of wide and long experience, Gregory had come to mistrust Frederick personally and politically. Fearing an extension of Hohenstaufen power across all Italy and suspicious of Frederick’s imperious attitude to ecclesiastical independence within his kingdom, Gregory presumably hoped excommunication would force Frederick into a new submission or overt disobedience. Frederick thought Gregory’s stance a form of papal monarchic extremism that ran counter to and undermined the traditional just order of Christendom. Within a year, the remarkable spectacle arose of an excommunicated crusader sailing to restore Jerusalem, while the pope was organizing armies, one of which was led by the former king of Jerusalem, to secure the crusader’s political overthrow in the west.