CHAPTER XIV
THE FALL OF THE EMPIRE (1216-1250)
The Church seized the Franciscan Order as a man in danger grasps at a means of safety, and shaped it to her needs; for, in spite of her brilliant triumphs under Innocent, her needs were great. The Papacy and the Empire approached their final struggle; both felt instinctively that the issue must be decisive. Their fundamental incompatibility had been aggravated by the union of the crowns of Sicily and Germany. Innocent had been pushed by circumstances into supporting Frederick's claim to Germany, and though he had striven to prevent the natural consequences by extorting oaths from Frederick, yet as time went on the danger became clearer. Under Innocent's successor, Pope Honorius, the Papacy lay like a cherry between an upper and lower jaw, which watered to close and crunch it; and this extreme peril is the excuse for the bitterness of the Popes in the contest which followed. The Papacy fought for its life.
The contest affected all Italy. Milan and many cities of the valley of the Po were Guelf; but Pavia and some others were Ghibelline, not that they loved the Emperor, but hated Milan; Florence and the other Tuscan cities, except Ghibelline Pisa and Siena, which hated Florence, were Guelf; Rome was split in two; the Colonna, the Frangipani, and other great families were generally Ghibelline, though permanent allegiance was unfashionable, while the Orsini and others were Guelf. The Gray Friars, who swarmed from the Alps to the Strait of Messina, were steadfast Guelfs, and even carried their loyalty so far, their enemies said, as to subordinate religion to political ends. On the other hand, the aristocracy, which was chiefly of Teutonic descent, held for the Empire.
Frederick himself is the central figure of the period. In his lifetime he excited love and hate to extravagance, and he still excites the enthusiasm of scholars. His is the most interesting Italian personality between St. Francis and Dante. I say Italian, for though Frederick inherited the Hohenstaufen vigour and energy, he got his chief traits from his Sicilian mother. Poet, lawgiver, soldier, statesman, he was the wonder of the world, stupor mundi, as an English chronicler called him. Impetuous, terrible, voluptuous, refined, he was a kind of Cæsarian Byron. In most ways he outstripped contemporary thought; in many ways he outstripped contemporary sympathy. He was sceptical of the Athanasian Creed, of communal freedom, and of other things which his Italian countrymen believed devoutly; while they were sceptical of the divine right of the Empire, of the blessing of a strong central government, and of other matters which he believed devoutly.
Between a stubborn Emperor, a stiff-necked Papacy, and obstinate communes, relations strained taut. The first break occurred between Emperor and Papacy. The Popes honestly desired to reconquer Jerusalem, which had fallen back into infidel hands, and incessantly urged a crusade; but perhaps at this juncture their zeal was heightened by a notion that the most effective defensive measure against the Emperor would be to keep him busy in Palestine. Frederick had solemnly promised to go. He had also solemnly promised to keep the crowns of Germany and of the Two Sicilies separate, by putting the latter on his son's head; but instead of this separation he kept both crowns on his own head, and secured both for his son as his successor. In spite of this violated promise, Pope Honorius, a gentle soul, devoutly eager for the crusade, crowned Frederick Emperor (1220), upon Frederick's renewed promise that he would start on the crusade within a year. The year passed, then another and another, and Frederick, with his crowns safe on his head, did not move a foot towards Jerusalem. The gentle Honorius remonstrated; Frederick made vows, excuses, protestations, but did not go. Finally the mild Pope died, and was succeeded by the venerable Cardinal Ugolino, Gregory IX, (1227-1241). Ugolino was a member of the Conti family of Latium (so preëminently counts that they took their name from their title), and a near relation to Innocent III. His indomitable character proved his kinship. Blameless in private life, a warm friend to St. Francis, deeply versed in ecclesiastical affairs, he had a benign face and noble presence; in fact, to quote the gentle Pope Honorius, he was "a Cedar of Lebanon in the Park of the Church." But, in spite of his virtue, his training, and his fourscore years, he was a very Hotspur, fiery, impatient, and headstrong. It was he who had put the crusader's cross into Frederick's hands and had received his crusader's vow; and now, having bottled up his wrath during the pontificate of Honorius, he could brook no further delay. Frederick made ready to go. Ships and men were gathered at Brindisi, and, in spite of a pestilence which killed many soldiers, the fleet set sail. A few days later word was brought that Frederick had put about and disembarked in Italy.
Gregory was furiously angry, and despatched an encyclical letter to certain bishops in Frederick's kingdom, which sets forth the papal side of the matter: "Out in the spacious amplitude of the sea, the little bark of Peter, placed or rather displaced by whirlwinds and tempests, is so continuously tossed about by storms and waves, that its pilot and rowers under the stress of inundating rains can hardly breathe. Four special tempests shake our ship: the perfidy of infidels, the madness of tyrants, the insanity of heretics, the perverse fraud of false sons. There are wars without and fears within, and it frequently happens that the distressed Church of Christ, while she thinks she cherishes children, nourishes at her breast fires, serpents, and vipers, who by poisonous breath, by bite and conflagration, strive to ruin all. Now, in this time when there is need to destroy monsters of this sort, to rout hostile armies, to still disturbing tempests, the Apostolic See with great diligence has cherished a certain child, to wit, the Emperor Frederick, whom from his mother's womb she received upon her knees, nursed him at her breasts, carried him on her back, rescued him often from the hands of them that sought his life, with great pains and cost studied to educate him until she had brought him to manhood, and led him to a kingly crown and even to the height of the Imperial dignity, believing that he would be a rod of defence, and a staff for her old age."
The encyclical then proceeds to recount Frederick's promises, his delays, evasions, excuses, and the false start from Brindisi, and adds, "Hearken and see if there be any sorrow like the sorrow of your mother the Apostolic See, so cruelly, so totally deceived by a son whom she had nursed, in whom she had placed the trust of her hope in this matter. But we put our hope in the compassion of God that He will show to us a way by which we shall advance prosperously in this affair, and that He will point out men, who in purity of heart and with cleanness of hand shall lead the Christian army. Yet lest, like dumb dogs who cannot bark, we should seem to defer to man against God, and take no vengeance upon him, the Emperor Frederick, who has wrought such ruin on God's people. We, though unwilling, do publicly pronounce him excommunicated, and command that he be by all completely shunned, and that you and other prelates who shall hear of this, publicly publish his excommunication. And, if his contumacy shall demand, more grave proceeding shall be taken."
This ban of excommunication was published over the world; bishops gave it out in their dioceses, priests in their parishes; Gray Friars told of it from Sicily to Scotland. Frederick in answer wrote letters to the kings of Europe, saying that the Roman Church was so consumed with avarice and greed, that, not satisfied with her own Church property, she was not ashamed to disinherit emperors, kings, and princes, and make them tributary. To the King of England he wrote:—
"Of these premises the King of England has an example, for the Church excommunicated his father, King John, and kept him excommunicated till he and his kingdom became tributary to her. Likewise all have the example of many other princes, whose lands and persons she squeezed under an interdict till she had reduced them to similar servitude. We pass over her simony, her unheard-of exactions, her open usury, and her new-fangled tricks, which infect the whole world. We pass over her speeches, sweeter than honey, smoother than oil,—insatiable bloodsuckers! They say that the Roman Curia is the Church, our mother and nurse, when that Curia is the root and origin of all evils. She does not act like a mother, but like a stepmother. By her fruits which we know she gives sure proof.
"Let the famous barons of England think of this. Pope Innocent instigated them to rise in revolt against King John as a stubborn enemy of the Church, but after that abnormally celebrated King made obeisance and, like a woman, delivered up himself and his kingdom to the Roman Church, that Pope, putting behind him his respect for man and fear of God, trampled down the nobles, whom he had first supported and pricked on, and left them exposed to death and disinheritance, so that he, after the Roman fashion, should gulp down his impudent throat the fatter morsels. In this way, under the incitement of Roman avarice, England, fairest of countries, was made a tributary. Behold the ways of the Romans; behold how they seek to snare all and each, how they get money by fraud, how they subjugate the free and disturb the peaceable, clad in sheep's clothing but inwardly ravening wolves. They send legates hither and thither, to excommunicate, to reprimand, to punish,—not to save the fruitful seed of God's word, but to extort money, to bind and reap where they have never sown.
"Against us also, as He who sees all things knows, they have raged like bacchantes, wrongfully, saying that we would not cross the sea according to terms fixed, when much unavoidable and arduous business about the going, and about the Church and about the Empire, detained us, not counting sickness. First there were the insolent Sicilian rebels: and it did not seem to us a good plan nor expedient for Christianity to go to the Holy Land," etc. And he ended, so the chronicler says, with an exhortation to all the princes of the world to beware against such avarice and wickedness, because "you are concerned when your neighbour's house is on fire."
These letters show the temper on both sides. Outwardly, however, peace was observed, and Frederick really went on the promised crusade; and, though in Syria he found Patriarch, Templars, Hospitallers, and Franciscans all turned against him, he succeeded in making a treaty by which Jerusalem, Nazareth, and Bethlehem were ceded to him, and he crowned himself king in Jerusalem. In the mean time hostilities had broken out in Italy. Frederick incited the Roman barons to drive the Pope from Rome, and the Pope preached a crusade against Frederick. But both sides, having many cares within their respective jurisdictions, at length made peace, and Frederick was enabled to go back to his consuetas delicias, his wonted delights.
This phrase, which was used by the Pope, probably contained an innuendo, for gossip busied itself with Frederick's christianity and morals. He tolerated Saracens in his kingdom, lived on friendly terms with them, and preferred them in his army, for they were indifferent to excommunication; and gossip added that he liked Saracen ladies, hinted at a harem, and alleged that in Syria he had accepted the present of a troop of Moslem dancers. Gossip, spread by the glib tongues of mendicant friars, charged him with saying, "If God had seen my beautiful Sicily, he would not have chosen that beggarly Palestine for His Kingdom," "There have been three great impostors who invented religions, and one of them was crucified." Frederick's real offence in ecclesiastical eyes was that he wished to subordinate the spiritual to the secular power. It was natural, however, that pious folk should look askance at a prince who, while Christendom was fighting Islam, hobnobbed with Mohammedans and seemed to find them more sympathetic than Christians.
Frederick's real consuetæ deliciæ were of another kind. In his Sicilian court we catch the first streaks of the dawn that was destined to brighten into the day of the Renaissance. He himself was a highly accomplished man, spoke Italian, German, Arabic, and Greek, and took an interest in mathematics, philosophy, and in general learning. But poetry was his favourite pleasure. The Italian language, recently emerged from dog Latin, had just begun to serve literary uses, and Frederick's court had the honour of producing the first school of Italian poetry. He, his sons Manfred and Enzio, his chief counsellor Pier della Vigna, and many poets and troubadours drawn thither by his fame, so far outstripped the rest of Italy that all Italian poetry, wherever written, was called Sicilian.
Sicily was the most civilized place in Europe, now that Southern France had been crushed by the Albigensian persecution. The old Greek stock kept some trace of their inheritance; the Arabs had brought their culture; the Normans had added chivalric ideas; the Crusades and commerce had enlarged the intellectual boundaries; and Frederick himself had extraordinary versatility. Mathematicians from Granada, philosophers from Alexandria, were as welcome as the troubadours from Provence. Frederick looked after his own royal estates, managed his stud farm in Apulia, decided when brood mares should be fed on barley and when kept to grass. He was a great sportsman, too, and wrote a book on falconry. He enacted a famous code of laws, far superior in many respects to existing legislation, which was conceived with the definite plan of exalting royal authority over feudal prerogatives and communal customs. He deprived the barons of criminal jurisdiction; forbade private war, carrying weapons, etc; he limited trial by ordeal so far as he could, calling it "a species of divination;" he made minute regulations in matters of business and behaviour, and maintained a paternal authority.
In fact, Sicily, with its culture, poetry, Moslems, and its unorthodox king, succeeded to the heretical position of Southern France. The Papacy felt instinctively that a civilization so happy in the good things of this world, so lax on many points of morality, so careless of the Roman ecclesiastical system, was a perpetual menace to it. In the nature of things, the peace that had been made with Frederick could not last long.
The breach happened in the North. The Lombard cities revolted. Frederick marched against them and won a victory (1237). Then was the zenith of his power; his very triumph was the cause of his undoing. All the Guelfs of Italy roused themselves for the struggle. The Pope took part, and a second time excommunicated Frederick, enumerating a score of sins. A later Pope held a council at Lyons (a place of safety), excommunicated Frederick again, and deposed him from his Imperial throne (1245). Then an anti-emperor was set up. Blow on blow fell upon Frederick. He was terribly routed at Parma, through carelessness. His gallant son Enzio, the poet, was captured by the Bolognese, who would not release him, though Frederick offered to put a rim of gold round the walls of their city. Enzio spent twenty-three years in prison and there died. Pier della Vigna, who "kept both the keys of Frederick's heart," was suspected of high treason and condemned to death. Frederick himself died in 1250, and the Pope shouted for joy at the news, "Be glad ye Heavens, and let the Earth rejoice!" He had good reason, for the Church had lost its most dangerous enemy.
With the death of Frederick the Empire came to its end. The name of Holy Roman Empire continued till 1806, and from time to time for several hundred years German kings came down across the Alps to receive the Imperial crown, but on Frederick's death the old mediæval Empire practically ceased; and Italy, instead of being an Imperial province, became a series of independent states.
The end of the Hohenstaufens themselves reads like the last act of a bloody Elizabethan tragedy. Within a few years the only survivors among Frederick's descendants were his lawful heir, a baby, Conradin, and an illegitimate son, Manfred. Manfred, who had inherited the charm, the address, the energy and brilliance of his father, succeeded in establishing himself in the Two Sicilies, at first as regent for his nephew, and afterwards, for in those troubled times a regency was precarious, as king in his own right. But the Popes were resolved not to undergo a repetition of the danger they had experienced from Frederick, and laid their plans to destroy the last of the "viper's brood," as they called Frederick's family. They followed the old precedent, set in the days when the Papacy had been in danger from the Lombards, and invited a French prince, Charles of Anjou, brother to St. Louis, to come and depose Manfred, and offered him the crown of the Two Sicilies. The crafty, capable, deep-scheming Charles accepted, and came amid great rejoicing among the Guelfs. Rome made him Senator. Florence made him podestà; in fact, all Guelf Italy was at his feet. The Pope proclaimed a crusade against Manfred, collected tithes and taxes for the holy purpose, and provided Charles with an army. Manfred was defeated and killed (1266), and two years later, the valiant Conradin, a lad of sixteen, who came down in the mad hope of regaining his kingdom, was also defeated, taken prisoner, and, after a mock trial for treason, put to death. Thus the Papacy prevented the union of the Two Sicilies with the Empire, and thus the House of Anjou supplanted the last of the Hohenstaufens at Palermo and Naples.