The Crusade Of Frederick Ii
A remarkable career was that of Frederick II. of Germany, grandson of
the great Barbarossa, crowned in 1215 under the immediate auspices of
the papacy, yet during all the remainder of his life in constant and
bitter conflict with the popes. He was, we are told, of striking
personal beauty, his form being of the greatest symmetry, his face
unusually handsome, and marked by intelligence, benevolence, and
nobility. Born i
own. Son of an era in which poetry was scarcely known, he cultivated the
gay science, and was one of the earliest producers of the afterwards
favorite form known as the sonnet. An emperor of Germany, nearly his
whole life was spent in Sicily. Though ruler of a Christian realm, he
lived surrounded by Saracens, studying diligently the Arabian learning,
dwelling in what was almost a harem of Arabian beauties, and hesitating
not to give expression to the most infidel sentiments. The leader of a
crusade, he converted what was ordinarily a tragedy into a comedy,
obtained possession of Jerusalem without striking a blow or shedding a
drop of blood, and found himself excommunicated in the holy city which
he had thus easily restored to Christendom. Altogether we may repeat
that the career of Frederick II. was an extraordinary one, and amply
worthy our attention.
The young monarch had grown up in Sicily, of which charming island he
became guardian after the death of his mother, Constanza. He was crowned
at Aix-la-Chapelle, having defeated his rival, Otho IV.; but spent the
greater part of his life in the south, holding his pleasure-loving court
at Naples and Palermo, where he surrounded himself with all the
refinements of life then possessed by the Saracens, but of which the
Christians of Europe were lamentably deficient.
It was in 1220 that Frederick returned from Germany to Italy, leaving
his northern kingdom in the hands of the Archbishop of Cologne, as
regent. At Rome he received the imperial crown from the hands of the
pope, and, his first wife dying, married Yolinda de Lusignan, daughter
of John, ex-king of Jerusalem, in right of whom he claimed the kingdom
of the East.
Shortly afterwards a new pope came to the papal chair, the gloomy
Gregory IX., whose first act was to order a crusade, which he desired
the emperor to lead. Despite the fact that he had married the heiress of
Jerusalem, Frederick was very reluctant to seek an enforcement of his
claim upon the holy city. He had pledged himself when crowned at
Aix-la-Chapelle, and afterwards on his coronation at Rome, to undertake
a crusade, but Honorius III., the pope at that time, readily granted him
delay. Such was not the case with Gregory, who sternly insisted on an
immediate compliance with his pledge, and whose rigid sense of decorum
was scandalized by the frivolities of the emperor, no less than was his
religious austerity by Frederick's open intercourse with the Sicilian
Saracens.
The old contest between emperor and pope threatened to be opened again
with all its former virulence. It was deferred for a time by Frederick,
who, after exhausting all excuses for delay, at length yielded to the
exhortations of the pope and set sail for the Holy Land. The crusade
thus entered upon proved, however, to be simply a farce. In three days
the fleet returned, Frederick pleading illness as his excuse, and the
whole expedition came to an end.
Gregory was no longer to be trifled with. He declared that the illness
was but a pretext, that Frederick had openly broken his word to the
church, and at once proceeded to launch upon the emperor the thunders of
the papacy, in a bull of excommunication.
Frederick treated this fulmination with contempt, and appealed from the
pope to Christendom, accusing Rome of avarice, and declaring that her
envoys were marching in all directions, not to preach the word of God,
but to extort money from the people.
"The primitive church," he said, "founded on poverty and simplicity,
brought forth numberless saints. The Romans are now rolling in wealth.
What wonder that the walls of the church are undermined to the base, and
threaten utter ruin."
For this saying the pope launched against him a more tremendous
excommunication. In return the partisans of Frederick in Rome, raising
an insurrection, expelled the pope from that city. And now the
free-thinking emperor, to convince the world that he was not trifling
with his word, set sail of his own accord for the East, with as numerous
an army as he was able to raise.
A remarkable state of affairs followed, justifying us in speaking of
this crusade as a comedy, in contrast with the tragic character of those
which had preceded it. Frederick had shrewdly prepared for success, by
negotiations, through his Saracen friends, with the Sultan of Egypt. On
reaching the Holy Land he was received with joy by the German knights
and pilgrims there assembled, but the clergy and the Knight Templars and
Hospitallers carefully kept aloof from him, for Gregory had despatched a
swift-sailing ship to Palestine, giving orders that no intercourse
should be held with the imperial enemy of the church.
It was certainly a strange spectacle, for a man under the ban of the
church to be the leader in an expedition to recover the holy city. Its
progress was as strange as its inception. Had Frederick been the leader
of a Mohammedan army to recover Jerusalem from the Christians, his camp
could have been little more crowded with infidel delegates. He wore a
Saracen dress. He discussed questions of philosophy with Saracen
visitors. He received presents of elephants and of dancing-girls from
his friend the sultan, to whom he appealed: "Out of your goodness, and
your friendship for me, surrender to me Jerusalem as it is, that I may
be able to lift up my head among the kings of Christendom."
Camel, the sultan, consented, agreeing to deliver up Jerusalem and its
adjacent territory to the emperor, on the sole condition that Mohammedan
pilgrims might have the privilege of visiting a mosque within the city.
These terms Frederick gladly accepted, and soon after marched into the
holy city at the head of his armed followers (not unarmed, as in the
case of Coeur de Lion), took possession of it with formal ceremony,
allowed the Mohammedan population to withdraw in peace, and repeopled
the city with Christians, A.D. 1229.
He found himself in the presence of an extraordinary condition of
affairs. The excommunication against him was not only maintained, but
the pope actually went so far as to place Jerusalem and the Holy
Sepulchre under interdict. So far did the virulence of priestly
antipathy go that the Templars even plotted against Frederick's life.
Emissaries sent by them gave secret information to the sultan of where
he might easily capture the emperor. The sultan, with a noble
friendliness, sent the letter to Frederick, cautioning him to beware of
his foes.
The break between emperor and pope had now reached its highest pitch of
hostility. Frederick proclaimed his signal success to Europe. Gregory
retorted with bitter accusations. The emperor, he said, had presented to
the sultan of Babylon the sword given him for the defence of the faith;
he had permitted the Koran to be preached in the Holy Temple itself; he
had even bound himself to join the Saracens, in case a Christian army
should attempt to cleanse the city and temple from Mohammedan
defilements.
In addition to these charges, accusations of murder and other crimes
were circulated against him, and a false report of his death was
industriously circulated. Frederick found it necessary to return home
without delay. He crowned himself at Jerusalem, as no ecclesiastic could
be found who would perform the ceremony, and then set sail for Italy,
leaving Richard, his master of the horse, in charge of affairs in
Palestine.
Reaching Italy, he soon brought his affairs into order. He had under his
command an army of thirty thousand Saracen soldiers, with whom it was
impossible for his enemies to tamper. A bitter recrimination took place
with the pope, in which the emperor managed to bring the general
sentiment of Europe to his side, offering to convict Gregory of himself
entering into negotiations with the infidels. Gregory, finding that he
was getting the worst of the controversy with his powerful and alert
enemy, now prudently gave way, having a horror of the shedding of blood.
Peace was made in 1230, the excommunication removed from the emperor,
and for nine years the conflict between him and the papacy was at an
end.
We have told the story of Frederick's crusade, but the remainder of his
life is of sufficient interest to be given in epitome. In his government
of Sicily he showed himself strikingly in advance of the political
opinions of his period. He enacted a system of wise laws, instituted
representative parliaments, asserted the principle of equal rights and
equal duties, and the supremacy of the law over high and low alike. All
religions were tolerated, Jews and Mohammedans having equal freedom of
worship with Christians. All the serfs of his domain were emancipated,
private war was forbidden, commerce was regulated, cheap justice for the
poor was instituted, markets and fairs were established, large libraries
collected, and other progressive institutions organized. He established
menageries for the study of natural history, founded in Naples a great
university, patronized medical study, provided cheap schools, aided the
development of the arts, and in every respect displayed a remarkable
public spirit and political foresight.
Yet splendid as was his career of development in secular affairs, his
private life, as well as his public conduct, was stained with flagrant
faults, and there was much in his doings that was frowned upon by the
pope. New quarrels arose; new wars broke out; the emperor was again
excommunicated; the unfortunate closing years of Frederick's career
began. Again there were appeals to Christendom; again Frederick's
Saracens marched through Italy; such was their success that the pope
only escaped by death from falling into the hands of his foe. But with a
new pope the old quarrel was resumed, Innocent IV. flying to France to
get out of reach of the emperor's hands, and desperately combating him
from this haven of refuge.
The incessant conflict at length bowed down the spirit of the emperor,
now growing old. His good fortune began to desert him. In 1249 his son
Enzio, whom he had made king of Sicily, and who was the most chivalrous
and handsome of his children, was taken prisoner by the Bolognese, who
refused to accept ransom for him, although his father offered in return
for his freedom a silver ring equal in circumference to their city. In
the following year his long-tried friend and councillor, Peter de
Vincis, who had been the most trusted man in the empire, was accused of
having joined the papal party and of attempting to poison the emperor.
He offered Frederick a beverage, which he, growing suspicious, did not
drink, but had it administered to a criminal, who instantly expired.
Whether Peter was guilty or not, his seeming defection was a sore blow
to his imperial patron. "Alas!" moaned Frederick, "I am abandoned by my
most faithful friends; Peter, the friend of my heart, on whom I leaned
for support, has deserted me and sought my destruction. Whom can I
trust? My days are henceforth doomed to pass in sorrow and suspicion."
His days were near their end. Not long after the events narrated, while
again in the field at the head of a fresh army of Saracens, he was
suddenly seized with a mortal illness at Firenzuola, and died there on
the 13th of December, 1250, becoming reconciled with the church on his
deathbed. He was buried at Palermo.
Thus died one of the most intellectual, progressive, free-thinking, and
pleasure-loving emperors of Germany, after a long reign over a realm in
which he seldom appeared, and an almost incessant period of warfare
against the head of a church of which he was supposed to be the imperial
protector. Seven crowns were his,--those of the kingdom of Germany and
of the Roman empire, the iron diadem of Lombardy, and those of Burgundy,
Sicily, Sardinia, and Jerusalem. But of all the realms under his rule
the smiling lands of Sicily and southern Italy were most to his liking,
and the scene of his most constant abode. Charming palaces were built by
him at Naples, Palermo, Messina, and several other places, and in these
he surrounded himself with the noblest bards and most beautiful women of
the empire, and by all that was attractive in the art, science, and
poetry of his times. Moorish dancing-girls and the arts and learning of
the East abounded in his court. The Sultan Camel presented him with a
rare tent, in which, by means of artfully contrived mechanism, the
movements of the heavenly bodies were represented. Michael Scott, his
astrologer, translated Aristotle's "History of Animals." Frederick
studied ornithology, on which he wrote a treatise, and possessed a
menagerie of rare animals, including a giraffe, and other strange
creatures. The popular dialect of Italy owed much to him, being elevated
into a written language by his use of it in his love-sonnets. Of the
poems written by himself, his son Enzio, and his friends, several have
been preserved, while his chancellor, Peter de Vincis, is said to have
originated the sonnet.
We have already spoken of his reforms in his southern kingdom. It was
his purpose to introduce similar reforms into the government of Germany,
abolishing the feudal system, and creating a centralized and organized
state, with a well-regulated system of finance. But ideas such as these
were much too far in advance of the age. State and church alike opposed
them, and Frederick's intelligent views did not long survive him.
History must have its evolution, political systems their growth, and the
development of institutions has never been much hastened or checked by
any man's whip or curb.
In 1781, when the tomb of Frederick was opened, centuries after his
death, the institutions he had advocated were but in process of being
adopted in Europe. The body of the great emperor was found within the
mausoleum, wrapped in embroidered robes, the feet booted and spurred,
the imperial crown on its head, in its hand the ball and sceptre, on its
finger a costly emerald. For five centuries and more Frederick had
slept in state, awaiting the verdict of time on the ideas in defence of
which his life had been passed in battle. The verdict had been given,
the ideas had grown into institutions, time had vouchsafed the
far-seeing emperor his revenge.
More
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It was in November, 1520, that Christian II. of Denmark was crowned king of Sweden. Norway was his as well and he was monarch of the whole Scandinavian world. He had reached the highest point in his career, but so great had been his cruelty and trea... The Fall Of Novgorod The Great
The Czar of Russia is the one political deity in Europe, the sole absolute autocrat. More than a hundred millions of people have delivered themselves over, fettered hand and foot, almost body and soul, to the ownership of one man, without a voice ... The Fall Of Sebastopol
The history of Russia has been largely a history of wars,--which indeed might be said with equal justice of most of the nations of Europe. In truth, history as written gives such prominence to warlike deeds, and glosses over so hastily the events ... The Fall Of The Bastille
"To the Bastille! to the Bastille!" was the cry. Paris surged with an ungovernable mob. Month by month, week by week, day by day, since the meeting of the States-General,--called into being chiefly to provide money for the king and kept in being to ... The Fall Of The Ghibellines
The death of Frederick II., in 1250, was followed by a series of misfortunes to his descendants, so tragical as to form a story full of pathetic interest. His son Enzio, a man of remarkable beauty and valor, celebrated as a Minnesinger, and of unu...