Frederick the Second

by Ernst Kantorowicz

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  The Emperor’s position had grown less favourable since the defection of Ravenna in the preceding year. The imperial cause was gravely endangered in the Romagna. The papal legate, Gregory of Montelongo, had rallied Venetians, Bolognese and others and conquered Ferrara, while Bologna and Faënza had throughout belonged to the League. The Emperor now marched north along the Adriatic through the March of Ancona. It was summer and he was attacked by a slight fever in the swampy country which, however, “we so overcame by the might of the spirit that it did not presume to stay our victorious progress after the end of the critical day.” By the middle of August he lay with a modest force of Germans, Tuscans and Apulians before Ravenna. He had originally intended to march on Bologna, but hearing that Paulus Traversarius was dead, who had been the leader of the anti-imperial party in Ravenna, and that feeling in the town was veering round, he changed his plan and appeared before Ravenna. The water supply was cut off, and the town after a six-day siege surrendered and gave hostages. It was then received into favour.

  Frederick was now free to turn to Bologna. If he had invested Bologna, however, Faënza lying further to the south would have threatened his rear. It, therefore, seemed prudent first to take Faënza. Frederick counted no doubt on succeeding as quickly here as at Ravenna. But a mere siege effected nothing. The town offered an unexpectedly strong resistance, the garrison having been heavily reinforced by Venetians and Bolognese, and the defence was conducted by a young Florentine of twenty-three, Count Guido Guerra. The Counts Palatine of the Guidi family were usually staunch imperialists, but this one grandson of “the chaste Guldrada” (whom Dante praises as a fine soldier though a sodomite) had broken with the tradition of his house. He plays an important part in the anti-Hohenstaufen campaigns as one of the bravest Florentine leaders on the Guelf side.

  The Emperor soon got into difficulties at Faënza. September had slipped by without a decision. October came and still the end was not in sight. Frederick now decided to blockade Faënza completely and spend the winter before the town. He struck his tents and to everyone’s amazement built strong wooden huts. Before long a complete wooden town, protected by trenches, stretched in a wide circle round the beleaguered fortress. Winter undertakings of this sort were unprecedented. It had not hitherto been Frederick’s way to show this bulldog tenacity. He had usually achieved success at the first onslaught with comparatively little trouble, and if that did not succeed he preferred to withdraw as he had done from Brescia. At this juncture a spectacular failure would have been fateful, and in spite of innumerable obstacles he must carry the siege through to the end.

  The Emperor’s aversion from long-drawn military enterprises which involved large numbers of troops had a very practical basis: the cost was enormous. The imperial army was largely a mercenary one. The only unpaid troops were the Saracens, who were probably indemnified by grants of land. All the other Sicilian troops were paid either from the very first, or after a certain number of days. The feudal system had been almost wholly superseded in Sicily. At best the vassals served within the kingdom for a short time at their own expense. If this period was exceeded, or if they were employed outside Sicily, they received pay, and that at a very high rate. The difference between vassals drawing pay and ordinary mercenaries was slight. The Italian towns gave the Emperor troops on somewhat more favourable terms. The infantry militia and the knights received pay from their commune for the first four or six weeks. If this was exceeded, which it almost always was, then the payment fell on the imperial Treasury, and this question naturally was of prime importance in waging war. The storming of a town was often fixed for a certain day, say November 10th, not with reference to the military situation but because November 12th was the day on which several thousand men ended their term of service, and a prolongation of the siege would mean expense. Considerations of this sort probably accounted for the speedy abandonment of the siege of Brescia by the immense army.

  Want began to be felt outside Faënza. In order to make the blockade complete it was necessary to call up large forces, especially infantry, which the Italian State had to find. The surrounding towns, Imola, Forli, Forlimpopolo, Ravenna, Rimini, were first drawn upon, then Florence and Tuscany in general, where King Enzio was in charge of recruitment; finally, troops were even brought from Western Lombardy, from Lodi, Vercelli, and Novara. As the blockade grew more and more protracted money grew scarcer than it had ever been. At the beginning of the campaign the Emperor had had recourse to the expedient of collecting the taxes from the Italian towns in advance for the coming year, remitting one-fifth as interest. He next helped himself to the treasuries of the Church in Sicily, as the leaders of the papal troops had done on a previous occasion. Gold, silver, precious stones, costly brocades, silken garments, were taken over against a receipt and stored in the imperial Treasury. Then the ingenious Emperor—perhaps on the credit of this large treasure—hit on the expedient of issuing leather money showing the head and the eagle of the golden Augustales. This leather money was everywhere accepted without protest, and was later redeemed by the imperial Treasury.

  On the other hand there was no shortage of provisions, for the routes to Sicily were open to the Emperor. The favourite sea-route from the Apulian harbours to Ravenna was not wholly safe. The Emperor’s siege of Faënza involved Bologna and Venice also, and the Venetians had succeeded in plundering and burning to the ground the two Apulian coast towns of Termola and Vasto and in capturing an imperial galley near Brindisi which was returning from Jerusalem. Frederick at once instituted reprisals; he requested the Emperor John Vatatzes of Nicaea to raid any Venetian possessions within his reach and the Sultan of Tunis to break off all commerce with Venice for the moment. He also subsidised the Dalmatian pirates of Zara and despatched ships from Ancona against the Venetians. His Apulian fortresses and dungeons were, moreover, full of hostages from almost all Italian towns, on whom he could wreak his vengeance. It was at this period that Pietro Tiepolo was hanged, the son of the Doge of Venice, who had been taken prisoner at Cortenuova. These measures put a stop to the attacks of Venice.

  The Emperor lay for eight months before Faënza in enforced idleness while his troops constructed underground tunnels to the beleaguered town, and the provisions of the besieged began gradually to be exhausted. He occupied himself by reading and correcting the translation of an Arabic treatise on hawking which Master Theodore had made. Weightier matters than his falcons, however, claimed his attention in this winter camp. Pope Gregory had schemes afoot that Frederick could not ignore.

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  Immediately after his excommunication Frederick had written to the cardinals and conjured them, “the coadjutors of Peter, the Senators of the City, the hinges of the World,” to invite the whole Christian world, kings and princes, bishops and church dignitaries alike, to send their delegates to a General Council. He himself would be prepared to submit his case to this council, even to appear before it in person to prove his complaints against Pope Gregory, who had in the most serious manner infringed imperial law in Italy. He might himself have had recourse to the age-old imperial right to summon such a council. To preserve the impartiality of this tribunal, however, which was to judge between him and the Pope, it seemed to him right that neither he nor Pope Gregory should approach the world in his own cause; the College of Roman Cardinals should issue the invitations.

  This eagerly-desired Council never met. Pope Gregory had sound reasons for preventing it: no Council should sit in judgment on the Vicar of Christ. He notified instead a Church Council to be held a year later. His letters of invitation suggest a commonplace agenda: certain affairs of Church and State are to be discussed: as if one of the usual, not-infrequent synods was in question. The Pope’s real intentions, however, were not to be misunderstood. The Council was to be summoned by the Pope and to be his instrument, and its first duty would be the deposition of the Emperor. Pope Gregory had already been canvassing for a successor to the Hohenstaufen: without success. He f
irst sounded a Danish prince; when this candidate refused the Pope tried to win France over by playing on her historic yearning to fill the imperial throne: a dream that had not slept since the days of Charlemagne, which lived in Louis XIV and was realised by Napoleon. Pope Gregory suggested Count Robert of Artois, brother of Louis IX of France, as Frederick II’s successor. France declined with the proud remark that a man in whose veins ran the royal blood of France was greater than any Emperor whose throne depended on election. Further, that the Count of Artois had informed his friend the Hohenstaufen Emperor, a man whom France beyond measure respected, of the Pope’s proposal, and that the Emperor Frederick had called on the God of Vengeance to requite His Holiness.

  No one could for a moment mistake the intention of this Council, summoned by Frederick’s personal enemy, the Pope, to which Milan and the other rebel towns were invited to pass sentence on the Emperor. This Council, usurping the place of the Council which Frederick desired, must not take place. Immediately on learning of the Pope’s design Frederick started his counter-measures. He addressed innumerable letters to bishops, princes and kings, declaring that this Council summoned by his personal enemy had only one aim: to decide the Lombard question. He would, however, never concede the principle that a spiritual power should adjudicate in state affairs. He had no quarrel with the Most Holy Church of Rome, but a grave one with the existing Pope, and as long as Gregory IX acted as a foe of the Empire he, Frederick, as Emperor, would take steps to prevent any Council of the High Priest. He would refuse safe conduct to all delegates attending the Council, and he warned the whole world against sending representatives thereto. He had secured all routes by sea and land and no one would reach Rome against his wishes. Simultaneously with these warnings he issued stringent orders to his supporters in all countries of the Empire to refuse passage to any seeking to attend the Council, and offered rewards for each delegate captured. No one could question the possibility of this blockade, for it was well known that remittances of money to the Pope merely swelled the imperial coffers.

  Frederick II cannot be accused of having made a secret of his intentions. He always made a practice of making his plans known beforehand down to the minutest details. He was not believed; no one credited him with the serious intention of carrying his threats into execution, and the world was immensely surprised when he did so. The Emperor’s strict command deterred the prelates of Germany, Italy and Sicily from attending. The western powers, however: England, France and Spain could scarcely turn a deaf ear to the papal summons, and proposed to send the heads of their churches to Rome. Since the Emperor at Faënza could block most of the land routes Pope Gregory recommended the sea routes to these western travellers. He put himself in touch with Genoa. A fleet composed of cargo-boats and war-galleys was to await the prelates in Nice and Genoa and conduct them to the Tiber mouth. Corresponding recommendations were made to the prelates: they would find sea-travel the safer, and might confidently trust themselves to the Genoese, with whom the Pope had made all arrangements and had concluded the necessary agreements. The sea-republic was to profit by three thousand five hundred pounds, of which one thousand was to be paid at once. The papal legate to whom the negotiations had been confided had to raise the money from Genoese merchants who demanded two hundred pounds as interest. The balance was to fall due for payment a month before the departure of the fleet, and if Pope Gregory broke the contract he was to pay five hundred pounds as penalty. The property of the Roman Church was pledged as security. Genoa was not giving her assistance for love. Gregory IX accepted all the terms proposed, but begged that the preparations might be secret, so that no hint of them might reach the Emperor.

  Frederick II, however, had, as it happened, more adherents in Genoa than in any other enemy town. The upper nobility like the Spinola, Doria, Grilli and de Mari were almost exclusively Ghibelline (the Margrave Caretto was later to be the Emperor’s son-in-law), so that Frederick was in constant communication with the town. One letter of the Emperor’s which had been hidden in an imitation loaf made of wax was intercepted by the enemy, and created great excitement in the town, but other despatches safely reached their destination. However it was achieved, the Emperor in his winter quarters before Faënza learned exactly what the Pope had planned.

  Quietly he made his counter-preparations. First Sicily was instructed to mobilise and man the fleet. The Emperor was now to reap the benefit of the sea-power he had so steadily built up. For years past ship after ship had left the royal wharves, and Frederick was now in a position to command at need a fleet of sixty-five galleys. For comparison’s sake it should be mentioned that Genoa could, with difficulty, man a contingent of fifty boats of war. The Sicilian crews were brought up to strength by levies on the maritime peoples who were compelled to serve as sailors, but in return were relieved from other obligations. The ships’ captains were sea-counts, feudal vassals. Frederick II’s whole organisation of the fleet was so admirable that the Aragonese in Sicily later exactly repeated his decrees and re-issued his instructions about the duties of the Admiral, which included regulations for every branch of the service. The previous Admiral, Nicolas Spinola, a Genoese, had recently died. From Faënza Frederick II appointed in March 1241 another Genoese, Ansaldus de Mari, first as Admiral of the Kingdom of Sicily. Shortly after, the Emperor sent him an imperial banner and his warrant as Admiral of the Roman Empire, an office which Frederick created. The strength and equipment of the squadron which was destined for the transport of the prelates was known in its minutest details to the new Commander of the Fleet, who, being an imperialist, had thought it discreet to escape secretly from Genoa in February 1241. His powers as Admiral left him completely free to take what measures he deemed best. He immediately assumed command of the Sicilian fleet, which was in readiness to put to sea, and sailed that same March with twenty-seven galleys to Pisa to join forces with an equal number of Pisan ships.

  Frederick II had been instant in warning the invited guests to refrain from attending the Council. The Pisans even sought to dissuade their rivals, the Genoese, from the undertaking, and other voices also made themselves heard, pointing out the grave danger of visiting Rome against the Emperor’s wishes. One pamphlet—a product perhaps of the imperial Chancery—purporting to be addressed by a well-meaning cleric to his friends the prelates was particularly urgent. The author dwelt at length, with evident glee, on the general miseries of a sea-voyage, describing sea-sickness in its minutest consequences with the satanic pleasure of a non-sufferer, and, finally, demonstrating that Frederick II, “a second Nero, a second Herod,” was “miserly in mercy, prodigal in punishment, full moreover of wrath, and entirely lacking in piety.” He was in command of all harbours from sea to sea with the sole exception of Genoa; from Pisa, Corneto, Naples or Gaëta, he could lie in wait for all vessels sailing the Ligurian Sea, and who could tell but that this man of pre-eminent acuteness and cunning might have bought over the sailors of Genoa! “Ye are no gods or saints,” cried the author, “to have power over his powers.” The Pope, moreover, had embarked on this quarrel without the prelates, let him conclude it also without them. “But since the Pope sees that his undertaking against this mightiest of Tyrants has been unsuccessful he is now anxious further to sharpen the sentence pronounced against him, or to threaten him with deposition and to instal another Emperor in his room, and ye forsooth are to give your advice and concurrence whether it seemeth to you good or ill, ye are to be the organ pipes which echo to the touch and at the good pleasure of the organist.”

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  The town chronicler of Genoa opens his entries for 1241 with the remark “In this year it pleased the Lord that great misfortunes should overtake the town.” The Sicilian fleet set out for Pisa at the end of March, and the prelates were to sail from Genoa at the end of April. The intervening weeks saw the fall of Faënza. Several times during the winter Frederick had foretold the certainty of its capitulation in the spring. The heroic town had defended itself with the courage of despair
, and its resistance was strengthened rather than weakened by fear of the Emperor’s wrath and the Emperor’s vengeance. In the extremity of famine the Faëntines tried to send away the women and girls. Frederick ordered them to return at once and to remind the besieged of the unforgotten insult that Faënza had done him of old: half a century before they had mortally offended the Empress Constance, his imperial mother, and fifteen years before they had sought to assassinate him as he entered Lombardy on his way to the Diet, though they had in fact mistakenly slain a knight in his stead who had been wearing the imperial clothes.

  This was the voice of the World Judge who, if he is to be just in the day of judgment cannot and must not forget, and for whom Time is naught in face of his own Eternity. Since Faënza hoped for no mercy it had resisted to the utmost. The siege had lasted eight months, food was completely exhausted, the walls were destroyed, and the imperial forces had entered the city by underground tunnels, then—and not till then—the valiant town surrendered without awaiting the Emperor’s coup de grâce. Their lives had been promised to the podesta and the foreigners in the town, but not to the citizens themselves, who now awaited their fate with natural anxiety. Frederick, smiling, showed his magnanimity: “Thus we enter the town in our overflowing gentleness and with the outstretched arms of inexhaustible clemency we greet the conversion of the believers… that they may know that nothing is juster and lighter and easier to take on them than the yoke of the Empire.”