MEDIEVAL HISTORY LIBRARY

BOOK IV

CHAPTER X. FREDERIC II.   [1239—1241.

Conflict between Gregory and Frederic. War in Italy —Siege of Ferrara — of Ravenna —of Faenza —Affairs of Germany

The Pope did not sink to rest after hurling the Church thunderbolt at the Emperor. He next declared that a sentence of excommunication included forfeiture of the Empire; and directed the German Princes to proceed to a new election, that of Conrad being, by the deposal of his father, virtually annulled. He further endeavoured to facilitate the task thus assigned them, by providing a candidate for the high station which he pronounced vacant; and invited Abel Duke of Schleswick, a younger son of Waldemar of Denmark, to come forward in that capacity, trusting to Papal support. Against such a competitor for that station, as Frederic II, the invitation was not irresistibly tempting; and the Duke, or his royal father for him, prudently declined the proffered crown. Gregory thereupon transferred the tender to the Duke of Brunswick,  who, as prudently, answered, that he felt no inclination to involve himself in such troubles, as had been the lot of his uncle, the late Emperor Otho.

If these refusals painfully surprised and disappointed Gregory, so did the general resistance, that his anti-imperialist measures encountered in Germany; for this, he might, indeed, have been prepared, by the earnestly respectful remonstrance upon his unpaternal treatment of the Emperor, which the first tidings of the excommunication had produced from the Princes, spiritual and temporal, sitting in Diet at Eger. In fact, Frederic's abilities, energy, and power, appear to have, for the moment, vanquished the restless ambition usually actuating that body. Robbers of all grades, and extortioners rejoiced, indeed, at the news of his deposal; but they were the only class that did so. If a few princes of the Empire shrank from acknowledging an excommunicated sovereign, the great majority resented this Papal invasion of their rights. In answer to the Pope's command to elect a new emperor, they wrote, that the right of placing the Imperial crown upon the head of the elected German monarch, could not empower his Holiness to depose the lawfully elected monarch; observing, in regard to his alleged grounds for the deposal, that the relation of the Lombard cities to the Empire, being a subject, only by the Emperor and the Estates of the Empire, in Diet assembled, to be decided, or even considered, could not possibly be submitted to arbitration; Frederic II’s yieldingness, upon that point, appeared to them his sole fault.

Discomfited in Germany by these, unexpectedly refractory, princes, Gregory turned his thoughts to France, with the new idea, seemingly, of dissevering the Empire from Germany. He commissioned the Cardinal Bishop of Palestrina, his Legate at the French Court, to inform Lewis IX, that, having, with the concurrence of the College of Cardinals, for notorious heresy and other sins, deposed the Emperor Frederic, he had—not recommended to the choice of the electors, but—appointed the King’s brother, Robert Comte d’Artois, Emperor in his stead; and expected so magnificent a spontaneous gift, to be accepted with joyful gratitude. But again, his offers met with a reception disappointing to the irascible pontiff. However disposed Earl Robert might be to accept the Imperial crown, Lewis IX, despite his piety, despite even his devotion to the Roman See, did not like the Pope’s assumption of a right to depose sovereigns. His nobility appears to have sympathized with him upon the subject; and the Legate had alienated the body that might have favoured pontifical views, the clergy of France, by a demand of one fifth of their income towards defraying the expense which his quarrel with the Emperor had brought upon the Pope: with those expenses, they alleged they had no concern, because temporal weapons were not to be employed in spiritual disputes. Accordingly, a Council, held by the King to deliberate upon the Pope’s offers, declared that, even if the Emperor were guilty of crimes for which he deserved to lose his crown, the Pope, singly, could not, and only in an Ecumenic Council could, pronounce his doom and exact the forfeiture. It was resolved further, that no man was to be condemned upon the mere accusation of his enemy; and that the Pope had shown himself an enemy to the Emperor, of whom no evil was known; who had been a good neighbour to France, and whose Crusade went far towards proving him a good Christian. Still, out of respect for the Holy Father, his offer was not at once declined, but, in the first instance, an embassy was sent to the Emperor, for the purpose—strangely anomalous, if not impertinent, as in these days it must appear—of investigating the orthodoxy or heterodoxy of his religious opinions.

The proceedings of this singular embassy were as undiplomatic, in the ordinary acceptation of the word, as its object. The chief ambassador, the Bishop of Langres, frankly informed Frederic of the Pope’s offer, the accusation upon which it was based, and the consequent inquiry as to the truth of that accusation, committed to him. Frederic, though necessarily aware of Gregory’s previous attempts, seems not to have anticipated this additional instance of restless animosity. For the Bishop’s official report states, that he lifted up his hands in amazement, tears of mingled indignation and sorrow running down his cheeks, whilst he said: “My dear friends and neighbours, God be judge betwixt me and him, who undermines my honour, slanders my character, and thirsts for my blood! From that Faith, which so many admirable Fathers of the Church have taught, which all my ancestors have professed, never have I deviated, to tread in the steps of the accursed. I heartily thank you, for having sought my answer upon so momentous a point, ere coming to any decision. Nevertheless, should you attack me, marvel not at my defending myself, for I am constantly resolved to maintain all my rights and dignities unimpaired. God, the protector of innocence, will be my stay in this just endeavour”. The Bishop adds, that, with deep emotion, he rejoined; “God forbid that, without just cause, we should wage war upon a Christian prince! Neither can we be moved by ambition, holding our hereditary king far superior to an elected emperor. Prince Robert may rest content with his dignity, as son to such an one and Comte d’Artois.” Lewis, in his brother’s name, upon receiving this report, declined the Pope’s offer.

This third refusal appears to have convinced the implacable pontiff of the impossibility, for the moment at least, of disposing of the Empire at his pleasure; and, temporarily abandoning that scheme, he applied himself to depriving Frederic of his southern kingdom, which, through his suzerainty, he held to be more feasible. To the Venetian government, he now proposed the division of the Sicilian realms, between the Roman See and the Republic; and the Republic, unscrupulous as ambitious, and confident in her strength, at once closed with the proposal. A treaty, regulating both the mode of effecting the conquest and the subsequent allotment of the spoils, was signed by the Pope and the Doge, in September, 1239.

Gregory is said to have disposed of yet other provinces that were not his to bestow; viz. to have offered the sovereignty of Lombardy to James King of Aragon, who eagerly accepted it; but was deterred, by apprehensions both of the Emperor’s power and of the Lombards’ turbulence, from visiting Italy to take possession of the gift.

Frederic, on the other hand, if he now appeared resolute to defy the enmity which he had so sedulously endeavoured to avert, still confined himself to defensive measures. Refusing to acknowledge an excommunication, which, because unjust, he deemed invalid, he commanded all the rites of the Church to be celebrated as usual throughout his dominions; imposing fines upon priests who left their regular professional duty unperformed. He forbade his subjects to visit the Papal Court without express permission, recalling, with few exceptions, all then at Rome; and he forbade, under pain of death, the introduction of papal bulls into his realms. As a further guard, against the modes of exciting sedition, employed by Gregory in their former war, he banished the Mendicant Orders from Sicily and Apulia, suffering only two friars to remain as care-takers in each cloister; and, to the Dominican Professors in the Neapolitan University, he substituted Benedictines of Montecassino, whom he required, with all monks in his dominions, to give security for their loyalty. The severity of the Emperor’s measures, against the Mendicant Orders, was approved, as, under the circumstances, indispensable, by the Father-Guardian of the Franciscans—the title of General seems as yet not taken—the before-named Elias of Cortona, who now pronounced the Emperor’s complaints of the Pope’s conduct well-founded, and his excommunication, as unjust, invalid. Gregory, thereupon, excommunicated him also; the Franciscans, thus sanctioned, deposed their Superior anew; and Elias, as ex-Father-Guardian, thenceforward attached himself wholly to Frederic.

But the value of the deposed Father-Guardian, as a faithful friend, was moral, not military; lying mainly in his judgment as a Counsellor, and in the weight, which his character and former position gave to his sanction of Frederic’s self-vindication from the charges of heresy and atheism. The active support wanted, was to be sought amongst the Ghibelines of northern Italy. In their ranks, to the surprise as well as satisfaction of Frederic, appeared the Marquess of Este, who declared himself cordially reconciled to the Signori di Romano, and consequently loyal. But neither reconciliation nor loyalty were long-lived, though, upon which party rests the blame of the new rupture, may seem questionable. Azzo paid a visit to the Conte di San Bonifazio, averred that the Emperor had, to his certain knowledge, projected his assassination,—for which, if the Marquess were faithful, he could have no motive—and again deserting a sovereign, whom he had, he said, found so unworthy of his services, he once more joined the Lombard League. The visit to San Bonifazio had probably awakened doubts of the Marquess’s steadiness to his newly professed Ghibelinism; for Frederic had thereupon ordered his son, Riqaldo de Este, with his Romano wife, to be seized and carried to Apulia; as hostages for the fidelity of the house of Este. In those days, parental affection, however potent as an incentive to revenge, appears so inadequate to induce any sacrifice for the preservation of children, that holding a son as a hostage was little security for the father’s fidelity. The only notice, taken by Marchese Azzo of this measure of precaution, was renewing his prohibition, under pain of death, to utter the Emperor’s name: and Alberico di Romano, professedly in resentment of his daughter’s captivity, deserted the Sovereign upon whose pleasure her life depended, surprised Treviso, expelled that Sovereign’s garrison, and held it, in defiance of his authority. Frederic, without present means of recovering the city, made a present of it to Padua, as a valuable possession, easy to be conquered; and denounced the ban of the Empire against Azzo, Alberico, San Bonifazio, and some others.

The ban of the Empire and the Papal excommunication were, for the moment, alike disregarded by their intended victims. The Ghibeline clergy performed, as usual, all the rites of religion in the Emperor’s presence; and hostilities proceeded without any decisive result. Frederic made himself master of divers Bolognese castles, and Ezzelino, occupying the Tyrol, kept the communication with Germany open. But Venetian fleets, conformably with the treaty with the Pope, menaced and ravaged the Apulian coasts, though attempting no conquest there; the Guelphs triumphed over the Ghibelines at Ravenna: and, at Milan, where a Cardinal-Legate and a Minorite Friar, with infectious violence, preached a crusade against the excommunicated Emperor, calling upon even ecclesiastics to take the cross and bear arms in the cause of the Church against her matricidal son, enthusiasm rose to fever heat. Intelligence of the movements, there preparing, drew Frederic towards Milan; but, not having numbers to master so strong a city by assault, he merely took up a strong position in the immediate vicinage, whence the attack might at any moment be made. The citizens, trusting to the protection of their walls, declined encountering the Imperial forces in the field; and thus the autumn passed unprofitably, if not without incidents characteristic of the times and of the parties.

Of this kind, was the banding themselves, by Milanese warriors, into confraternities; one, self-entitled The Strong (I Forti), bound by oath not to leave an individual of the hostile army alive; and another, of only six knights, sworn to seek out the Emperor in the midst of his host, and there slay him. But none of these pledged champions had yet found an opportunity of putting their sanguinary designs in execution, when a German knight challenged any pugnaciously disposed Milanese to meet him in single combat. The challenge was accepted, and the German, victorious, presently drove his fugitive antagonist into the camp, even into close proximity with the imperial tent. Frederic came forth and questioned the Milanese: “Didst thou voluntarily undertake this duel?” The republican, though conquered, unbroken in spirit, replied: “As a favour, I obtained the preference over a thousand competitors.” The Emperor observed, “I trust, nevertheless, to subdue you.”—“Never!” was the undismayed rejoinder of the Milanese. “Patriotism, and love of liberty will insure our victory over thee!” Frederic smiled, presented the bold, if unskilful, citizen-warrior with a fine horse, and dismissed him.

The Emperor found his most efficient assistant in his gallant son Enzio, whom he had named his Vicar, or Lieutenant in Italy ; with authority, alike civil and military, to appoint judges and commandants, to decide appeals from inferior tribunals—a very few cases, that he reserved for his own consideration, excepted—in short, had empowered to supply his own place wherever he was not. Enzio, whilst his father was menacing, rather than besieging, Milan, had invaded the March of Ancona, and, notwithstanding the exertions of Cardinal Colonna, had mastered nearly the whole. Ghibeline Modena and Ferrara about the same time triumphed over the Bolognese army; and the attempts of the Pope’s troops upon the Apulian territories were repulsed. And now the Emperor, having, by the renunciation of some disputed claim in right of his deceased wife, Yolanthe, recalled the Marquess of Montferrat to the usual loyalty of his race, withdrew from his camp before Milan, and leaving Lombardy to the care of Ezzelino, and of Marquesses Palavicino and Lancia, visited Tuscany.

At Pisa “he kept his Christmas,” not only “with mirth and princely cheer;” but likewise, despite his excommunication, with all the rites, and ceremonial observances, with which the Roman-Catholic Church, celebrates this high Christian festival. He gained over Lucca, Sienna, and Arezzo. He is said to have appointed another of his illegitimate sons, Frederic of Antioch, Vicar of Tuscany; but Frederic of Antioch, the son of a noble lady—if not a princess—of Antioch, whose acquaintance the Emperor only made during his Crusade, was younger even than Conrad, and could bear the name only of an office, exercised through a governor.

The Emperor then left the maintenance of the Imperial authority in Tuscany, nominally, to the boy-Vicar; and, in January, 1240, entered the territories of the Roman See, where, conjointly with the King of Sardinia, he attacked and took several towns. At one of these, Foligno, he convened an assembly of deputies from the others, and also from as many, still unsubdued Papal cities, as should please to participate therein. This assembly Pietro delle Vigne rhetorically admonished to be loyal to their true Lord and Sovereign, the Emperor, and to cultivate peace amongst themselves. The conquered towns, of course, promised compliance, and, to Gregory’s bitter mortification, so did some of the unconquered; even that esteemed most faithful, Viterbo, declaring for the Emperor; less indeed from loyalty or Ghibelinism, than from enmity to the Romans, who at that moment professed attachment to the Pope. Gregory had alarmed them, by representations of the great power of the Lombards; had worked upon their superstition and their love of exhibitions, with threats of an interdict; and had lured them with concessions, such as administration of justice by municipal tribunals, the election of senators—there now were two—right of coining, exemption from excommunication, with others less important; all which, though confined to the precincts of the Eternal City, must have sorely galled his pride. By these means, he had obtained possession, if not of Rome, yet of one of his Roman palaces, the Transteverine Vatican; whence he again fulminated anathemas against the invaders of the Estates of the Church, Frederic, Enzio, and their accomplices.

This reinstallation of Gregory had been achieved prior to Frederic’s last triumph at Foligno; strong in which, he now, by letter, addressed the language of rebuke and exhortation to the Romans. He reproached them with such degeneracy from their glorious ancestors, conquerors and lords of the world, as tame submission to an usurping and tyrannical old priest. He reminded them of the intimate connexion that ought to subsist between them and their Emperor; called upon them to assist in reuniting to the Empire all territories stolen or torn away; announced the progress he had made in recovering those formerly granted in vassalage to more loyal popes, which their disloyal successors pretended to hold in independent sovereignty. In conclusion, he bade them send their most distinguished citizens to his court or camp, there, in accordance with ancient custom, to be appointed proconsuls over provinces and cities. He gave his reprimands and exhortations weight, partly by a profuse distribution of gifts, as e.g. a valuable fief and a considerable ecclesiastical benefice to two of the influential Frangipani, and partly by requesting a loan of money, from wealthy Romans, upon such usurious terms, as made lending the money and supporting him, for their advantage.

These measures were successful. The Romans again professed ardent imperialism, and the Pope, through fear of the ill-usage hourly threatening, was a prisoner in his own palace. But his spirit was indomitable, and he knew the Romans. He one day issued, quite unexpectedly, from the gates of the Vatican, or rather of the adjoining Basilica, St. Peter’s, attended by cardinals, archbishops, bishops, abbots, and the whole body of Roman clergy, bearing croziers, crosses, crucifixes, and preceded by the most venerated of the holy relics, namely, the heads of St. Peter and St. Paul. In solemn procession, amidst waving of censers, with uninterrupted chaunting of psalms and litanies, he paraded this visible Church through the streets of Rome, traversing the city’s whole length, to the Lateran. Vainly did the Ghibelines, dreading the effect of this show, endeavour to turn the performance into ridicule, and excite the populace to execute their previous threats against the detested, usurping pontiff. The susceptible, and fickle, Romans, deeply impressed by the solemn procedure, followed, awe-stricken, to the Lateran. There, upon the steps of the mother-church, or Cathedral of Rome, the Basilica of St. John—averred to have been built by the first Christian Emperor, Constantine—the nonagenarian Pope addressed the multitude. With dignified mien, impressive from his great age, and in emphatic strain, he enumerated the offences of which he accused Frederic, and painted the sufferings of the Church. As he concluded his oration, the erst passionately Imperialist Romans took the cross against the Emperor.

Only in words, could Frederic, for the moment, give vent to his indignation, at the levity of these would-be masters of the world; the necessity of checking the mischief, wrought by papal intrigue suddenly recalling him to Apulia. There, the ex-Duke of Spoleto, who had originally embroiled him with Gregory, now, seduced by emissary friars, deserted him to head the rebellion that the Clergy had excited. Frederic hastened to the scene of danger; summoned the Estates of the realm to assemble at Foggia, in order to supply him with the funds which the emergency required; caused all suspected persons to be incarcerated; denounced pain of death against all partisans of Duke Reginald; and banished the Bishop of Cephaludia, with his kindred, as partisans of the Pope. He surprised the revolted city of St. Angelo, razed the walls, and burnt the houses of the ringleaders; some of whom he executed, branding those who bore the Cross upon their garments, as Crusaders against himself, with a cross upon the forehead; and he gave command that the place should, as a warning to others, remain permanently in ruins. He next laid siege to Benevento, the possession of which by the Roman See, was a constant vexation and source of annoyance to the government. This, Gregory and the Guelph? represented as a sacrilegious attempt to rob the Church, such as only Atheists or Mohammedans could venture upon.

But Gregory’s wrath was unavailing; he gained as yet few partisans either in Germany or in Italy; and the treacherously achieved triumph of his allies at Ferrara— the first reverse suffered by the Emperor after this second rupture with the Pope—was due rather to commercial rivalry, than to zeal for the popedom, or even to Guelph passion. That reverse is now to be narrated.

Ferrara, under the wise and lenient government of Salinguerra, —who seems to have ruled by his influence over his fellow-citizens, without the positively acknowledged title of Signore,—had risen to an extraordinary degree of prosperity. Her Easter and Martinmas fairs were attended by merchants from all parts, not only of Italy, but of Europe; and this thriving trade had enriched the citizens without hardening or narrowing their hearts; so that, whilst the overflowing coffers of the State afforded a monthly distribution of money to the indigent, the affluent, in every season of scarcity, following the example of Salinguerra, opened their granaries, if not giving away their corn, selling it so freely and cheaply, as to keep the price down within the reach of the working classes. It may here be observed, by the way, that, not only was the science of political economy then undreamt of, but no one had yet discovered that half a loaf daily, till the next harvest,— the economical result of high price—was better than a whole loaf daily for one half the year, and no bread at all for the other. And, perhaps, in an age of very limited intercommunication, so local might plenty and scarcity be— supplies, possibly, attainable almost from the next province —as to prevent this form of benevolence from converting scarcity into actual famine, by quickening the consumption of the deficient supply. The only cause of complaint the Ferrarese could find, was, in the tolls, dues, indeed the whole system of imposts being, disgracefully low, and utterly disproportionate to the dignity of the town. Meanwhile, this growing prosperity and consequent importance awoke envy in the neighbouring commercial cities; in Ferrara herself, impatience at the degree of sovereignty claimed over her by Venice and Ravenna. No attempt at breaking the yoke was, however, in the first instance, made, beyond demanding the free navigation of the Po for Ferrarese vessels. Even this demand was treated by Venice as an act of insurrection; a war ensued, in which four Lombard cities and Marchese Azzo eagerly joined, against the hated, because Ghibeline, Ferrara. Venice equipped an army, with the best battering train then in existence, and placed it, reinforced by Lombard auxiliaries, under the command of one of her nobles, Stefano Badoero, to form the siege of the presumptuous city; at which military operation, Cardinal Montelonga attended, as Legate, to assert the pretensions of the Roman See to Ferrara, when taken.

But Salinguerra, like Gregory IX, retained, at eighty years of age, all the energetic activity of manhood’s summer strength. He had foreseen the impending storm, and, by strenuous exertion, had abundantly provided the city with every requisite for standing a long siege. Frederic sent him 500 horsemen, and an ample pecuniary supply; he obtained auxiliaries from Modena and Reggio, and conducted, as vigorously as he had prepared, the defence. Two attempts to storm were gallantly repulsed, and the confederates saw no prospect of early success.

Tiepolo, Doge of Venice, now repaired in person to the camp of the besiegers, to remedy the neglect or the blunders of Badoero, which alone, the Venetian government concluded, could have disappointed the well-founded expectations of prompt triumph. The Doge himself proved, however, as unfortunate as his reprimanded officer, and the siege threatened to be of spirit-wearying length, if not ultimately a failure. But Tiepolo had taken Philip of Macedon for his master in the besieger’s art; he managed to send, if not a loaded ass, yet offers of gold, into Ferrara, and found a traitor there to accept them. Ugo Ramperti, next to Salinguerra in authority over his fellow citizens, but envious of the superior influence of his aged rival, and filled with a very unholy hunger for gold, grasped at the proffered bribe, which he amply earned. In the Great Council he now declared for peace at any and every price, proposing to make overtures to the Doge or the Cardinal. Salinguerra represented the danger of betraying despondency by seeking to negotiate, and the impossibility of obtaining security for the observance of terms when granted. In vain ! Ramperti frightened the timid, bribed the venal, excited in the merchants impatience of the interruption to trade, and carried the day. Salinguerra finally yielded, with the words: “A capitulation will, to me, be a sentence of nullity, to you a brand of infamy. Mine will be the easier doom.” Proposals of capitulation were thereupon sent to the besiegers, who promised immunity of person and property to all; to Salinguerra, protection from injustice, together with a safe conduct to his home.

The Council having agreed to these terms, Salinguerra went forth to surrender the city to the Doge. Tiepolo received him courteously in his tent, but refused to accept the keys, saying: “Not to me! Venice fights but in the cause of the Church. To the Pope’s Legate must Ferrara surrender, and in his hand swear fealty.” The Doge’s sole object, it should seem, was to crush a possible rival to Venice, which he might think effected by subjection to the Pope, who probably furnished the gold for Ramperti’s bribe. To the Cardinal, therefore, Salinguerra delivered the key8; and on Whit-Sunday conducted the leaders of the besieging army into the city, where a splendid banquet was prepared for their reception. Amidst the festivity, Traversario, the main instigator of Ravenna’s revolt from the Emperor, advanced some complaint against Salinguerra. The venerable nobleman attempted to justify himself, but his words were drowned in a general clamour. Some of the victors, stimulated, it is said, by the Legate, asserted that the promise of a safe conduct had been fully redeemed by his return, free and unharmed, from the camp to his own house in Ferrara; whence it followed that there was no longer any impediment to punishing him as he deserved. Azzo di Este, the hereditary enemy of Salinguerra, honourably opposed such gross equivocation, but was overborne; and the Legate openly vindicated this shameful paltering “in a double sense.” Fortunately for the aged subject of this treachery, his enemies retained so much sense of the ignominy they were incurring, as sufficed to prevent their delivering him to his virulent accuser, Traversario, or to the Cardinal. Salinguerra was committed to the Doge’s custody, and conveyed to Venice; where, although a prisoner, he was treated with respectful kindness, during the four years that he survived; and where, in July, 1244, he tranquilly expired.

His prediction was as literally fulfilled in regard to Ramperti and Ferrara as to himself. The traitor was, as usual, loathed even by those who had purchased his treachery, and yet more by his fellow-citizens, when taught to repent of their dastardly surrender. He fell into poverty and died a despised beggar. The folly of trusting to a conqueror’s promises was a lesson early taught the Ferrarese. Badoero, the first Podestà given them, subjected their trade to oppressive restrictions for the benefit of the Venetians. Marchese Azzo, the next, extorted heavy pecuniary contributions, seizing the goods, cattle, &c., of those w⁷ho would not or could not pay his demands; and exacted the continuance of his salary after he had laid down his office; whilst the Pope was deterred, by the fear of alienating valuable allies, from interfering to protect the helpless town, now his own. Ferrara sank into insignificance, and, some twenty years later, was obtained by Azzo’s son, in vassalage of the Pope. He banished 1,500 Ghibeline families, whose property he confiscated, and divided amongst his Guelph partisans.

Ezzelino was earnestly preparing to relieve his brother-in-law, when Ramperti forestalled his projected operations. Various circumstances had prevented his undertaking them earlier, even had he conceived, which he could not, Salinguerra’s need to be urgent. When Ferrara was attacked, he was engaged in defending his own dominions against the Guelphs; and succeeded in preserving Padua, but lost Mantua, which remained subject to San Bonifazio. Ferrara being surrendered, and Salinguerra a prisoner, Ezzelino besieged Agna, took Giacomo di Carrara prisoner in a sally, and executed him as a traitor. Upon the loss of the Commandant, Agna opened its gates; but the women of the captured city sought to escape the consequent outrages that they dreaded, by crossing the adjacent lake. Crowding for this purpose into a sloop, they unhappily so overloaded the little vessel that she foundered, and all were lost. A calamity apparently as much laid to Ezzelino’s charge, as the execution of Carrara.

Whilst these things were passing in central and northern Italy, Frederic had re-established tranquillity in the south, and raised a new Apulian army, with which he hastened back to the chief theatre of the war. He encamped before Ravenna, where Traversario had died since his triumph at Ferrara. The citizens, no longer stimulated by him, were alarmed at the vigorous preparations making to assail their walls, and repented of having given ear to his Guelph seductions. They flocked into the Imperial camp, to surrender at discretion, and implore their pardon, which Frederic, in consideration of their past loyalty and present penitence, freely granted. Upon the 22nd of August, he again took possession of Ravenna.

If the gain of this town did not counterbalance the loss of Ferrara and Mantua, the difference sufficed not to make the Pope’s position satisfactory. The Estates of the Church were ravaged; the impression made upon the Romans had naturally been but ephemeral; he was in daily apprehension of a new revolt, and utterly destitute of the sinews of war. He was, therefore, very desirous of a suspension of hostilities, and upon one point he made up his mind to yield. From the time of his excommunication, the Emperor had been constantly demanding the convocation of an (Ecumenic Council, which should reform all abuses in the Church, and judge between him and the Pope. Gregory, to whose despotic temper a deliberative, legislative assembly, was most repugnant, had as constantly refused or eluded compliance. But he well knew that his refusal was generally condemned, was disapproved even by, the devout, as unquestionably orthodox, Lewis IX; and now, in bis difficulties, he resolved to give way. He summoned a Council to meet at Easter of the next year, 1241; and, for the intermediate six months, he commissioned Cardinal Colonna to negotiate a truce with the Emperor.

Frederic, sensible how detrimental to his interest was a war with the Holy See, earnestly desired peace, and readily listened to the Cardinal’s proposals. The six months’ truce was promptly concluded; but with respect to the Council he was far from satisfied. It seems to have been previously customary, though not invariably so, to give the Fathers of the Church a year’s notice of their intended assembling; whether simply as due to the solemnity of an (Ecumenic Council, and of the topics upon which they were to deliberate and decide; or whether, according to the means of mediaeval international communication and locomotion, a year was not much more than the time required for bringing together prelates from the more distant regions of Christendom. Six months’ notice might seem a limitation devised in order to compose a Council, falsely called Ecumenic, wholly of prelates within easy reach of Rome; who, being mostly creatures of the Pope, would, at his bidding, snatch from the Emperor the power, now almost within his grasp, of controlling the ambitious and implacable pontiff. Frederic, though expecting more justice from a Council than from Gregory, could not be without fears of his influence over ecclesiastics; and appears to have caught at this irregularity, as an escape from pledging himself to be bound by the Council’s decision.

With this view, probably, he addressed letters to the Kings and Princes of Europe, representing the necessary unfairness of a Council convoked in this manner. Others he addressed to the Cardinals, reminding them that they, who by their very name, were the hinges (cardines) upon which the business of the world turned, should not suffer the reverence, justly claimed by the occupant of the Holy See, to degenerate into subserviency to the passion or the prejudices of an unreasonably violent and ambitious Pope, or injustice towards a wronged Sovereign. With less dignity, he employed Pietro delle Vigne’s pen, to dissuade, in a very whimsical circular, the European Clergy from obeying the papal summons. In this strange document, the Sicilian Grand-Justiciary and Protonotario dwells upon the perils by sea, from winter storms, and the Imperial fleets; by land, from the Imperial troops; at Rome, from malaria, venomous reptiles, the catacombs, and the character of the treacherous and sanguinary Romans. He concluded in a more diplomatic style, by pointing out to the intended members of the Council, that the unscrupulously ambitious Pope, even if he should employ bribes and promises rather than violence, to obtain a decision in his own favour, would, having obtained it, indubitably extort immense contributions from them, as necessary to carry out that decision. To this circular Gregory opposed another, rebutting every argument of Pietro delle Vigne, loading the Emperor with obloquy, and insisting upon obedience to his summons. The Emperor retaliated by calling upon all his faithful lieges to prevent the repair of prelates to the Council.

A favourable change, in one respect, had, meanwhile, occurred in Gregory’s condition. In England, Henry III, professing a vassal’s obedience to the Pope, had assisted the Legate to wring from his reluctant clergy the fifth of their income, demanded for the purpose of despoiling his sister’s husband, and prospectively, her children, of the Imperial dignity. The sum thus obtained, together with a profuse sale of indulgences, had replenished Gregory’s coffers; and no sooner were his pecuniary embarrassments relieved, than the truce he had solicited became odious to him; and, upon the plea that it did not include the Lombards, he disowned it. The negotiator, Cardinal Colonna, incensed at this disavowal of his authorized act, is reported to have thus remonstrated: “Holy Father, I will have no appearance of perfidy thrown upon me by such a violation of my plighted word; and better befitted it your Holiness to make peace, than to send a reverend Cardinal back to a great monarch with so unseemly a message”. Gregory wrathfully exclaimed: “If thou obey me not. I will no longer acknowledge thee as a Cardinal!"—“Nor I you as Pope!" Colonna abruptly retorted; and with an immense train of relations, connexions, dependants, and followers, quitting the Papal Court, he thenceforward attached himself to the Emperor. Other Cardinals began, about the same time, to complain of the Pope’s obstinacy, and Ghibeline murmurs were again heard in the streets of Rome.

Cardinal Colonna, when, with purpose thus changed, he again sought the Emperor, found him before Faenza, which, upon the surrender of Ravenna, he had proceeded to besiege. But before narrating the course of the siege, the assistance, however small, received from Germany for forming or conducting it, deserves specific mention, as coming solely from the three Swiss Cantons, since so celebrated for their love of liberty—which was not disloyalty—Schwitz, Uri, and Unterwalden. Their faithful services upon this occasion were rewarded with a charter that secured them, permanently, against transfer from immediate vassalage to mesne vassalage under any Prince of the Empire. To withstand the violation of this charter, by such a transfer of their vassalage from the Empire to Austria, these Cantons, under Tell and his confederates, rose in arms, within the century.

Faenza had expelled all those of her children who discovered any Ghibeline predilections, and now boasted a population of 36,000 Guelphs, with the bold Venetian, Michele Morosini, for their Podestà. Their defence was as gallant and almost as pertinaciously persevering as the siege, which continued through eight months. The besieged were long encouraged by the pecuniary straits of the Emperor, who only at such cruelly usurious interest could obtain a loan, that the transaction has been adduced in proof of his profligate extravagance and general maladministration. This is the occasion upon which he was driven to coin leather; an expedient successful beyond his hopes. For when the Faenzans, relying upon his want of money, saw this intrinsically worthless substitute, received, upon his word, as a satisfactory representative of the gold augustale, their courage fell with their confidence. Overtures for a negotiation were made, and the citizens would probably have at once surrendered at discretion, as required by the Emperor, had not Gregory’s usual emissaries, Mendicant Friars, stolen into the town, and by assurances that the Milanese and the Bolognese were hastening to their relief, persuaded them to renew their resistance.

These assurances proved fallacious. Direct assistance Faenza received from none; and indirect, only from Venice, through her prosecution of her own schemes. The Doge, resuming the execution of his treaty with Gregory, for the division of Frederic’s Norman heritage, between the Popedom and the Republic, led a Venetian fleet again to ravage the Apulian coast. Several towns, easily accessible from the sea, were burnt, and the inhabitants carried off to be sold as slaves—probably, in defiance of papal prohibition, to Mohammedans—several Apulian ships perished in the flames, and their crews with them. But no diversion was thus wrought for Faenza. The Emperor took such measures as he judged necessary for the protection of his own dominions, but kept his army in his camp, as though leaving the defence of Apulia to the Apulians. In divers ways he retaliated the aggression; to compel a different employment of the Venetian fleet, he stimulated other mercantile cities to send out cruizers, harassing the trade of Venice; he instigated Zara to revolt, again exchanging Venetian, for Hungarian sovereignty; he requested his ally, the King of Tunis, to break off all commerce with the republic, and desired his son-in-law, Vatazes, to attack her Oriental factories. Finally, he ordered the son of the Doge, who had been hitherto kept in honourable captivity, to be taken to the sea-shore, there exhibited to his countrymen, to his father, as imperilled by their hostility; and, should the menace prove unavailing, to be executed before their eyes. To the policy of his country and his father, the unfortunate prisoner was thus sacrificed.

Faenza’s last hope now rested upon the approaching winter. But Frederic ordered his men to make themselves huts in which they might brave the inclemency of the season, and this hope vanished. Hunger, in those days of unscientific war, the wonted conqueror of beleaguered towns, now began to be felt within the walls; and the citizens sought to lighten its pressure by sending away the women and children, with all non-combatants. But, piteous as were the supplications of these outcasts, the Emperor refused their petition for a passage through his lines; he would not, by relieving the helpless, enable the strong to hold out the longer, shedding more of his faithful warriors’ blood. Reduced to the last extremity, the Faenzans now offered to surrender, merely soliciting permission to evacuate the town in personal safety, leaving all their property to the victors. But Frederic, sternly enumerating their offences against himself, including an attempt at assassination, and an insult formerly offered to his mother, ended with these words: “In their arrogance they have, to the utmost of their ability, sinned against me, and with me must it rest to inflict what chastisement I will.’’ The walls were in many places breached, mines were ready to be opened into the very heart of the city, where famine now reigned. Resource there was none, and, upon the 14th of April, 1241, Faenza surrendered at discretion. In gloomy resignation the citizens went forth, as to certain death. What words can express the general revulsion of feeling, when Frederic pronounced their unconditional pardon? He could freely forgive, but would be neither bullied, nor bargained with, by rebels. Can it be doubted that this had been his purpose towards Milan? 

Almost simultaneously with Faenza, Benevento surrendered to the Apulian army; and there, by his orders, the walls were razed, and the citizens disarmed. Frederic, confident of immediate powerful reinforcements from Germany, now directed his march towards Rome, deeming the war well-nigh ended, and even the obdurate pride of Gregory subdued. But a fearful storm was gathering in the north, ere describing the progress of which, a retrospect of the state of Germany, during the Emperor’s absence, will be necessary.

Conrad had, like his elder brother before him, been left there, that the name and presence of the King of the Romans —child as he was—might strengthen the hands, to which the government of Germany was really committed. But, whilst the imperial father, influenced by political motives, thus severed his child from his own superintendence, the bitter recollection of the crimes into which he had seen his first-born seduced, redoubled his anxiety in regard to the education of the younger: and amidst the multifarious cares, toils, and dangers besetting him, during his conflict with the Pope, he never lost sight of this parental duty. He ordered Conrad to be early inured to the fatigues of a campaign, and the terrors of the battle-field. At one time, being led to fear that the royal boy, even at his early age, was acquiring the German vice of hard drinking, he indignantly sorrowful, ordered all, who could be suspected of thus degrading the young King’s childish innocence, to be separated from him, and sent to Naples, there to suffer condign punishment; directing his future associates to be selected amongst persons distinguished for virtue and wisdom, who, both by precept and example, would lead him in a right course. He himself constantly wrote the boy letters inculcating the purest virtue, and breathing a high moral sense of kingly duty; warning him against flattery and calumny, by the sad example of his unfortunate elder brother—unfortunate only because criminal—and also against over indulgence and idly neglecting his studies, to which offence, whether or not to drinking, an eleven or twelve years old King may fairly be supposed prone.

Conrad does not appear to have benefited, as might have been hoped, by such tuition. But, even had he more closely resembled his ancestors in intellect and energy, he could at the period in question have no share in the government, being a mere schoolboy; although historians, forgetting his age, habitually write: Conrad held Diets, Conrad led an army, &c. All power was vested in his guardians, who, by the Emperor’s commands, took him to the scene of business, whether pacific or sanguinary. But this vicarious government was, as usual, inadequate to repress feuds among the princes of the Empire: of which the most material were the Duke of Austria’s with his neighbours. Frederic the Combative began his operations for recovering his forfeited duchy, more dexterously than might have been anticipated from his character. Whilst the conflict with the Pope insured the Emperor’s absence, he won the loyal Duke of Bavaria’s favour, by assisting him, to the utmost of his reduced means, against his enemies, the Archbishop of Mainz and the Bishop of Freising; and then induced him to unite with the Legate, in mediating his own reconciliation to the King of Bohemia; which was effected by affiancing his niece Gertrude, the daughter of his deceased brother, with a promise of the districts north of the Danube for her portion, to Pribislaf, or Wladislas, eldest son and heir of King Wenceslas. But the Bohemian succours, that were to be the first fruit of this marriage, fell short of Duke Frederic’s expectations; he reinstalled himself more by his own exertions than by their aid, and, upon this ground, withheld, according to custom, the promised portion. Hence he was again at war with Wenceslas. Other feuds, then troublesome, were those of the Margraves of Brandenburg with the Archbishop of Mainz and the Margrave of Misnia; of the Duke of Brabant with the Countess of Flanders, concerning the double election of a Bishop of Liege; and of the flourishing city of Lubeck, with her neighbours, the Earl of Holstein and the King of Denmark.

But far more annoying to Conrad’s government than these ever-recurring broils, were the incessant intrigues of Gregory and his emissaries, to procure among the princes a candidate for the Empire, and to induce the others to elect him. The pontifical efforts thus to supplant both Frederic and Conrad were unchecked by either disappointment in the search for an Emperor, or the remonstrances of the German princes, ecclesiastical and lay, who adhered to their chosen sovereign. A candidate for the crown was indeed found in the person of Frederic of Austria, to whom, holding his duchy in contravention to a decree of the Diet, a chance of empire was ample inducement to incur additional risk; but, entangled in his quarrel with Wenceslas, he was unable immediately to come forward. The Emperor, availing himself of this circumstance, commissioned the Archbishop of Salzburg to negotiate a reconciliation with the Duke of Austria; authorizing him, of course, to cancel the confiscation of the duchy. The prelate easily persuaded Frederic, despite his surname of the Combative, to purchase the imperial sanction to his recovery of his principality, by renouncing his more ambitious aspirations. The Duke never again forfeited his allegiance.

Gregory was again without a candidate; but, exasperated by disappointment, he was only the more immutably determined to triumph over the Emperor. He now selected, as his chief agent in seducing the German princes, one Albert Beham, Archdeacon of Passau; a man of reckless audacity, unprincipled and crafty. By intrigues, bold, clever, and varying, as required by the character of the individual attacked, Beham succeeded in luring many to the pontifical side, and when he saw himself supported by a party, respectable in point of numbers, he, in Gregory’s name, threatened, that if the whole body would not, in obedience to the papal mandate, elect a new King of the Romans, the Pope would, by his own sole authority, appoint a new Emperor, transferring the imperial crown to another nation. Although his having already vainly attempted so to do was known, this menace appears to have literally frightened some of the most loyal princes out of their senses. Even the Duke of Bavaria, terrified by the very idea of such a catastrophe, is reported to have exclaimed: “Let him then choose his Emperor from amongst ourselves!” Bitterly did Frederic feel the ungrateful desertion of Otho, who owed the ducal rank to Frederic Barbarossa’s gift of the Bavarian duchy to a Bavarian Palsgrave. But remonstrance and representation were powerless, as was the prospect of seeing the imperial crown upon his daughter’s brow, by her nuptials with the juvenile King of the Romans, to recall him to his allegiance. Gregory now anticipated a complete revolt, as certain; but his own wrongheaded pertinacity and sanction of violence, in his agents, disappointed his hopes.

The Pope, pleased with Beham’s successful adroitness in intrigue, ventured to confer upon him spiritual power, interfering with that of the Archdeacon’s ecclesiastical superiors. This, as a general rule, pontifical policy avoided; habitually, as before stated, conferring the legatine authority in every realm upon a national prelate; except when, especial occasion requiring more direct intervention, a Cardinal, a Prince of the Church, superior in dignity to all prelates, was sent, as Legate, a latere, from Rome. But now, Gregory, if he did not actually give Archdeacon Beham the title, invested him with the full authority of a Legate; which the insolently bold Archdeacon exercised, as though intoxicated with the possession of such power over his superiors. For refusing to elect a second King of the Romans, he excommunicated bishops, and archbishops, who, naturally enough, treated their excommunication by an inferior, as an idle insult. The Pope, as if further to alienate and exasperate the prelate-princes of Germany, allowed his Legate in France, a Cardinal, to summon them to Paris, there, in a country with which they had no connexion, to give an explanation of their conduct. Upon their disregarding the summons, the Cardinal both excommunicated them, and sentenced them to discharge the debts he himself had contracted, with some merchants of Sienna.

These proceedings fired the whole ecclesiastical body throughout Germany with indignation. Their usual antiimperialist propensities were forgotten, and at Beham’s repeated excommunications of the Emperor, in which he now included all who should dare to pray for him, they only laughed. Incensed at this disregard of his legatine authority, the Archdeacon next deposed the Bishops, whom he accused of imperialism, commanding the Abbots of Germany to publish and repeat his sentences. Almost to a man the Abbots refused; and he now deposed them also, ordering the monks to elect new abbots. Again, almost everywhere, the monks, either sympathizing with their superiors, or fearing their power more than that of the distant Pope, in their turn refused obedience. Only some few prelates upon the banks of the Rhine professed willingness to comply with the papal mandate; for the most part adding, that their flocks forcibly prevented their obeying; the cities, as usual, adhered steadily to the Emperor, notwithstanding the decrees, adverse to their wishes, that he had deemed it necessary to ratify. At Passau, the Chapter proved its loyalty, by expelling the arrogant Archdeacon, whether spontaneously, or upon a hint from the Emperor’s representatives. The incensed Beham hurried to the spot, to protest against such a deprivation of his right, and there presumed to interrupt the Bishop, whilst celebrating mass; when he was corporally ejected from the altar and the church, by the athletic prowess of the episcopal arm.

The anti-papal excitement, thus produced by the irrational violence of Gregory’s agent, could not but be shared by the lay Princes of the Empire; and Wenceslas of Bohemia, renouncing the factious disposition he had betrayed, again declared himself loyal. In the autumn of 1240, he, together with the Saxon, Brandenburg, and Misnian Princes, attended a Diet held by the Archbishop of Mainz at Eger; before which the Duke of Bavaria, whom two prelates, the Archbishop of Salzburg and the Bishop of Ratisbon, had vainly endeavoured to win back to loyalty, was summoned, to answer the charge of treason. Otho, in great alarm, hastened to Bohemia, not to present himself before the Diet, but to claim the protection of his kinsman, Wenceslas. During his absence, the young King of the Romans visited his kinswoman, the Duchess of Bavaria, to remonstrate with her upon the Duke’s ingratitude, and point out to her, that the same power which had raised the Wittelsbachs to ducal rank, could throw them back into their pristine inferiority. And here Conrad may be presumed to have actually performed the part assigned him by chroniclers; this remonstrance being no more than what a clever, carefully educated boy, of twelve years old, yet earlier initiated into public business, might feel, think, and say. Duchess Agnes, though weak and bigoted, is believed to have been much impressed by the words of her young cousin and affianced son-in-law; but her influence with her husband was not what, from the splended portion—the palatinate—that she had brought him, had been hoped. Otho was obdurate; and being disappointed in his expectations from the King of Bohemia, applied to the Pope for support, avowing that he could not, single-handed, maintain the papal cause against united Germany. And, in April 1241, at the very moment when Faenza and Benevento were surrendering to the Emperor, Albert Beham wrote to Gregory, to the same effect. Apparently sacrificing his own pride and ambition to promote the success of his patron’s projects, he declared that unless Duke Otho received effectual support, such as sending a Cardinal-Legate to Germany, armed with power and authority to coerce the princes into electing a new sovereign, the majority of them would assuredly cross the Alps, to reinforce their Emperor.

One of Frederic’s steadiest, as well as most active and valuable friends, will have been missed in this retrospect of German affairs. Hermann von Salza was no more; having died at Rome in 1240, whilst zealously, but ineffectually, striving to soften the inveterate obstinacy of the Pope, and reconcile him to the Emperor. As Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights, he was succeeded by Landgrave Conrad; who, though firmly attached to Frederic, residing at Rome and engrossed by the missionary war, and other concerns of his Order, took little part in German politics. The main body of the Marians, under the Landmeister, Hermann Balk, was domiciliated in the Polish province of Kulm, and in Prussia; where, assisted by the Crusaders whom, in 1231, Gregory had called forth, and by those whom the Knights’ high reputation, and the prospect of booty, attracted, they had conquered and converted half the natives. The war they carried on —no easy one, the Heathen Prussians fighting stoutly for their idols and their liberty—was characterized by traits of chivalrous gallantry and self-sacrifice that the historian of the Order may well delight to record. The temptation to share his privilege may, perhaps, even in a more general history, be so far indulged, as to allow mention of two instances. Upon one occasion, a small party of these warrior-missionaries being defeated by the Prussians, two Marians, taking post in a narrow defile, held it against the host of pursuers, covering the retreat of their comrades, till these had reached a place of safety; and they themselves, riddled with wounds, lay dead in the pass they had defended. Upon another, when the provisions in a castle besieged by swarms of Heathen were consumed, the garrison, much too small to confront the enemy without the walls, retreated silently by night, to make their way, unobserved if possible, to another fortress. An old blind knight, as the only way in which he was still able to serve his Order, remained behind, to avert discovery of his comrades’ departure, by ringing an alarm bell and signal bells, as though the ordinary garrison business were proceeding. So he rang; his comrades effected their escape unsuspected, to prosecute the war of conversion ; and he rang on, until the Prussians, perceiving at dawn the walls to be unoccupied, scaled them and cut him down at his post.

But on all sides the Marians were embroiled. The Polish Dukes, who now felt themselves safe from Prussian aggression, fell out with both the Pope and the Emperor, touching the suzerainty over Prussia, claimed the restitution of Kulm, and refused the Order further assistance. The Polish bishops wanted back the lands ceded to procure defenders. The very clergy, followers of the Knights’ career of conquest, denied and resisted the Order’s ecclesiastical privileges; Bishop Christian, intoxicated apparently by his early success, taking the lead in opposition to the champions, whose aid he had so earnestly solicited. The scene of their operations became moreover exceedingly extended. In Livonia, the Sword-bearers, having proved unequal to contend with the Heathen natives on the one hand, and the schismatic Russians on the other, invited the Teutonic Knights to assist them. They sent a detachment thither accordingly, who soon became all powerful; and, in 1237, the Brothers of the Sword gladly merged in the more important Order. A body of Marians, under a separate, but subordinate Landmaster, was thenceforward established in Livonia; where, whilst the Bishop of Riga contested their rights, privileges, and exemptions, they waged war, “never ending, still beginning,” with the natives and with Russians; occasionally battling with Swedes and Danes.

CHAPTER XI.

FREDERIC II.   [1241—1242.

Mongol Invasion — Russia subjugated—Poland overrun — Battle of Liegnitz—Devastation of Hungary—Affairs of Italy—Council foiled—Death of Gregory—of Celestin IV —Conclave—Mongols in Austria.