Gregory had celebrated the departure of Frederick as a triumph of the Church; he considered his return as an absolute revolt against the Holy See. The little city of Agnani, to which the pope had retired, witnessed the rage of the pontiff, and beheld the birth of that formidable storm which so long disturbed the Christian world. Accompanied by the cardinals and several bishops, Gregory repaired to the principal church, and having mounted the pulpit, before the assembled people, he pronounced a sermon which had for its text, “It is necessary that scandals should arise.” After having called upon the prophets, and spoken of the triumph of St. Michael over the dragon, he launched against Frederick all the anathemas of the Church.
The emperor at first sent messengers to the pope to explain and justify his conduct; but the inexorable Gregory refused to listen to them, and complained to all the sovereigns of Europe, representing Frederick as a faithless and perjured prince. He accused him of having consigned his wife Yolande to close imprisonment, in which she died of grief; of having left the Crusaders to perish with hunger, thirst, and heat in the plains of Apulia; and of having, at last, under the frivolous pretext of sickness, violated his oath and deserted the banners of Christ, in order to return to the customary enjoyments of his kingdom. He made him many other reproaches; and in his anger called down upon him the maledictions of all Christians.
Frederick, exceedingly irritated, replied to the accusations of Gregory with much bitterness. In his apology, which he sent to all the princes of Christendom, he complained strongly of the usurpations of the Holy See, and exposed, in the most odious colours, the policy and ambitious designs of the court of Rome. “The Church of Rome,” said he, “sends legates everywhere, with power to punish, to suspend, and excommunicate, not with the designs of spreading the word of God, but to heap up money, and reap that which they have not sown.” The emperor reminded the princes, in his letters, of the violences which the pope had exercised against the count of Thoulouse and the king of England; he said that the domains of the clergy did not now satisfy the ambition of the Holy See, and that the sovereign pontiffs wished to lay their hands upon every kingdom. From that moment open war was declared between the pope and the emperor; neither of them possessed a pacific character or a love of quiet; both were animated by boundless ambition, jealous to excess of their power, implacable in their revenge, and always ready to employ the arms which the Church or fortune placed in their hands. Gregory displayed an indefatigable activity, leaving his enemies no repose, but pursuing them at the same time with the thunders of religion and war. In addition to the arms of eloquence, the pontiff did not disdain to employ satire; the manifestoes which he published against his adversaries constantly recalled the spirit of the denunciations made by the prophets. These denunciations, mixed with obscure allegories, gave to his words a dark and mysterious tone, which caused him to be considered as the interpreter of angry Heaven. Frederick was neither a less able prince nor a less redoubtable enemy: the art of war contained no stratagems or secrets with which he was unacquainted; policy dictated no means that he scrupled to employ. Endowed with all the gifts of mind, and with a keen spirit of raillery, he was as competent to confound his enemies in a discussion, as to conquer them in the field of battle. Descended, on the female side, from those famous Normans who had conquered Sicily and the kingdom of Naples, he united, as they had done, courage with subtlety, and audacity with dissimulation: to please the court of Rome, he had made barbarous laws against heretics; and, now become the enemy of the popes, he did not fear to arm heretics or Saracens against the court of Rome. When the kingdom of Jerusalem was offered to him, he set no great value upon the acquisition; but he accepted it with joy, in order to increase his popularity in the Christian world, and to arm himself, one day, against the sovereign pontiff with a title, which was then held in universal veneration.
A war between such enemies must necessarily prove terrible, and spread desolation and confusion throughout Christendom. Gregory, on his return to Rome, repeated his excommunications in the church of St. Peter; Frederick, in order to revenge himself, seduced into his party most of the Roman nobles, who took up arms, insulted the sovereign pontiff at the very foot of the altar, and compelled him to abandon the capital of the Christian world. The pope, driven from his states, pursued his enemy with more fury than ever; and, availing himself of the formidable authority of the Church, he released the subjects of Frederick from their oath of fidelity, by reminding them that they could owe no obedience to those who opposed themselves to God and his saints. On his side, Frederick drove the Templars and Hospitallers from the kingdom of Naples, plundered the churches, and ill-treated all ecclesiastics whom he suspected of being attached to the party of the Holy See. He sent troops to ravage the patrimony of St. Peter, and enlisted the Saracens established in Sicily, under the banners of a Christian prince, to combat the head of the Christian church. The Roman states were ravaged, and given up to the horrors of war. The eyes of all Europe were fixed upon these deplorable scenes, and every one seemed to have forgotten the holy war.
The Christians of Palestine, however, never ceased to implore aid from the West. A letter to the pope from the patriarch of Jerusalem, the bishops of Cæsarea and Bethlehem, and the grand masters of the three military orders, painted in strong colours the despair into which the Christians of the East had fallen, when they learnt that Frederick had deferred his departure. The pope received their complaints with expressions of sorrow and kindness, and communicated them to the faithful with greater zeal, from their furnishing him with a fresh opportunity of accusing the emperor of Germany. But the nations of the West, occupied with their own dangers, and terrified at the sight of the violent storms that had recently burst forth, were not in the least moved by either the lamentations from Palestine or the pressing exhortations of Gregory. In this unfortunate position of European affairs, the Christian colonies, abandoned to themselves and their own feeble resources, and a prey to the greatest disorders, must have been invaded and entirely destroyed, if Providence had not stirred up fresh discords among their enemies.
During the siege of Damietta, the common danger had united the children of Malek-Adel; after victory, ambition resumed the place of fear; and the Ayoubite princes quarrelled for the provinces which their union had wrested from the power, or saved from the invasion of the Christians. Conraddin, sultan of Damascus, dreading the views of Melik-Kamel, called Gelaleddin, prince of the vast empire of Carismia, to his aid. The sultan of Cairo, in great apprehension of the consequences of this alliance, turned his eyes towards the princes of the West. During several years, the report alone of the preparations of Frederick had been a source of terror to the Mussulman powers. The emperor of Germany was considered, in the East, as the head of all the nations of Europe. The sultan of Egypt attached the greatest importance to the disarming of a formidable enemy; and as the complaints of the pope, and the report of the discords that had broken out among the Christians, had reached his ears, he conceived a hope of finding in Frederick a sincere ally and a powerful auxiliary.[235]
Melik-Kamel sent presents and ambassadors to the emperor of Germany; he invited Frederick to come into the East, and promised to deliver Jerusalem up to him. This proposition gave the emperor as much surprise as joy; and he, in reply, sent an ambassador into Egypt, to ascertain the exact intentions of the sultan of Cairo, and offer him his friendship. The envoy of Frederick was received at the court of the sultan with the greatest honours, and returned to announce to his master that Melik-Kamel was ready to favour his expedition to Palestine.
This negotiation, with which the pope and the Christians of the West were perfectly unacquainted, made Frederick determine to follow up the project of the crusade: he had, besides, several other motives for not renouncing the Eastern enterprise. He knew that John of Brienne was on the point of returning to Palestine, and resuming possession of the kingdom of Jerusalem. The pope continued to represent him as the enemy of Christ, and the scourge of Christians. To secure the failure of the plan of John of Brienne, and, at the same time, reply to the sovereign pontiff in a victorious manner, Frederick resolved to embark for the Holy Land. He was desirous of proclaiming his intention with the greatest pomp; and caused a magnificent throne to be erected in the plain of Barletta, which he ascended in the presence of an immense crowd of spectators. In all the splendour of imperial magnificence, he presented himself invested with the pilgrim’s cross, and announced to the assembled people that he was about to set out for Syria. In order to give more solemnity to this pompous ceremony, and affect the hearts of the multitude, the emperor caused his will to be read with a loud voice; and the barons and nobles swore at the foot of the throne, to see that his last commands should be executed, if he should chance to lose his life, either in the perils of the sea or the wars of the East.
When the pope learnt this determination of Frederick’s, he sent ecclesiastics to forbid him to embark. The sovereign pontiff reproached the emperor with presenting to the Christian world the scandal of a crusade directed by a prince reproved of God: as the fleet of Frederick consisted of only twenty galleys, and as he took with him only six hundred knights, Gregory reproached him with not having fulfilled his promises, and compared his imprudent attempts to the expedition of a captain of pirates. The emperor did not condescend to make any reply to the messengers of the pope; the more opposition the head of the Church gave to his departure, the more impatient Frederick appeared to set out and accomplish his design: in his indignation, he congratulated himself at having to brave the anger of the Church and the arms of the Saracens at the same time. He left the greater part of his army in Sicily; charging his lieutenant, the duke of Spoleto, to negotiate for peace with the pope, but at the same time to carry on the war commenced against the Roman states with unabated vigour.