Frederick II: A Man Apart

The nature of crusading changed greatly from its violent and stunning explosion onto the world in 1095 until its spirit petered out in the 13^th century. One of the greatest examples of this fundamental transformation lies in the curious crusade of Emperor Frederick II. There is still debate as to whether Frederick's adventures in the Holy Land can actually be described as a crusade. His expedition certainly did not resemble in any way the vastly popular First Crusade, though it achieved many of the same objectives. Perhaps the most important success of the 6^th crusade was that Jerusalem, along with much of Galilee, and the Holy Sepulcher were once again in Christian hands. So why was Frederick not praised by his contemporaries as a hero of Christendom?

Certainly a great deal of the disapproval heaped upon Frederick stems from his feud with the Papacy. Even before he ever took his crusading vow in 1215, and in fact since his birth, Frederick was in a unique position relative to the Church. After the death of his mother in 1198 the young heir to the thrones of both the Holy Roman Empire and the Kingdom of Sicily was placed in the protective custody of the Church, under the dynamic Innocent III. The Holy See did not take custody of Frederick simply out of compassion. Innocent had a vested interest in keeping the powers of Germany and Sicily separate, as had been promised by Frederick's mother.[1] Of course Frederick ignored this promise, famously stating that it didn't apply to him as it had been made by a woman. This was simply one battle in the Emperor's cold war against the Papacy.

Frederick II was in many ways a man ahead of his times. He strongly believed that the Church did not hold the primary authority of Christendom, and he long fought for his own monarchical power. This struggle was mirrored by the ambitious Innocent's battle for the primacy of the Papacy over the kings of Europe. That these two legendary figures would come into conflict was inevitable. Frederick's most famous feud with Innocent III and his successors began when the young Emperor inexplicably took the cross upon his coronation in 1215.[2]

It is not certain why this young Emperor, with so much at stake in his native lands, would swear to venture beyond them in a costly and taxing venture. He does not seem to have been a terribly religious individual. Having grown up among Muslims and being one of the few westerners able to read and write Arabic, Frederick does not seem like the type to be filled with a religious zeal that necessitates the murder of infidels. This is likely part of the reason for his unique (for a westerner) method of crusading.

Whatever possessed Frederick at the time, he had promised before God[3] to liberate the Holy Lands from the infidel. It would be 12 years, however, before the Emperor set sail from Brisindi towards Syria. During that time he played a delicate game first with Innocent III, and then with Honorius III, after Innocent's death in 1216. Frederick was treading a fine line of papal support counterbalanced with his constant requests for delays and extensions upon his vow.

Honorius pleaded in particular for Frederick's leadership in the Fifth Crusade, which had been delayed a year due to Innocent's death. Frederick declined, citing (correctly) the unstable situation in Germany, and fearing the inability of the mild Honorius to protect the Empire in his absence. In his place he sent a token number of knights under the prince of Bavaira. Many of Frederick's contemporaries blamed the failure of the Fifth Crusade on the Emperor's truancy. This assumption is not unfounded. Neither Innocent in his planning, nor Honorius in his preparation, appointed a general leader of the Crusade, which left the papal legate Pelagius to muddle through in coordination with John of Brienne. It is possible that the Holy See was leaving the position of commander open to entice Frederick to join and take charge. The crusaders waited in Damietta for a yeah before setting out on their disastrous attempt at capturing Cairo, possibly for the same reason.

It would take the death of Honorius, ten years later, to bring to the throne of St. Peter a man with the forceful drive to coerce Frederick to fulfill his vows. The methods of Gregory IX were certainly far less gentle than his predecessor's. In lieu of kindly but stern letters, Gregory used one of the most powerful tools within the power of the Papacy. On September 30^th 1227 Pope Gregory IX excommunicated Emperor Frederick II, declaring him an enemy of the Church and in league with the Devil.[4]

It is telling of Frederick's unique character that his reaction seems to have been one of indifference. This was a time when a man's focus was on the Afterlife, and the security he sought was the security of his soul. The Church had ultimate authority on a man's soul, and for the spiritual leader of all Christendom to cast out a man was to consign him to the eternal flames of Hell. Kings in the past had groveled in the snow to return to the Pope's good graces. Frederick, however, calmly continued his preparations for carrying out his crusading vow in his own time. Gregory's actions had finally achieved genuine crusading efforts from the Emperor.[5]

Frederick's reaction to his castigation was not that of a man desperate to attain spiritual redemption, but rather one desiring to remove a dangerous sword hanging over his head. His crusading army set out under the taint of Papal disapproval. Any success or glory Frederick was to achieve was likely to be diminished by his feud with the most powerful man in Christendom. In addition, along with excommunication came Gregory's requests that no man aid the Emperor in any way. This is partially the reason Frederick received such a cold reception upon arriving in the Holy Land. The fact that the Templars and Hospitalars refused to assist Frederick is due in no small part to his reviled status. Only the Teutonic Knights, with their close ties to German lands, marched with him into Jerusalem.

Certainly one reason for the Christian world's cool reception to Frederick's actions in the East was his feud with the Catholic Church. Another was reason was the very nature of his crusade. Because of their unusual nature, some historians have even debated whether Frederick's accomplishments in the Holy Land could actually be considered a crusade at all. This confusion is due to a fundamental change in the nature of Crusading over the century or so between the First Crusade and Frederick's.

When Urban II preached the Crusade in 1095 he had one primary goal: the recovery of Jerusalem, Christ's legacy. This was a very concrete objective, with success or defeat implicitly spelled out: either the armies took the physical city of Jerusalem, or they failed. The strongest condemning factor of this type of crusade was its success. Once Jerusalem was in Christian hands, it couldn't exactly be conquered a second time. In order to continue as a practice, Crusading had to adapt. More emphasis was placed on Urban's second talking point, spiritual redemption. Gradually it came to be accepted that a Holy War could be called down upon any enemy of Christendom. The nature of crusading became about achieving spiritual rewards including the absolution of sin. In this it came to closely resemble pilgrimage, with the benefits being about the self, and not about achieving a goal.

This is partially the reason that during the Fifth Crusade the offer to trade the newly captured city of Damietta for Jerusalem was refused by the Papal Legate Pelagius and most of the Western Crusaders.[6][7] In essence it wasn't about the having, but the getting. Frederick's successful acquisition of Jerusalem in the Sixth Crusade by means of peaceful negotiation instead of by force of arms did not offer the same prospect of spiritual redemption to his army. Obtaining Jerusalem as a physical location simply was not a goal of Christendom anymore.

Soon it was made clear to all exactly what Frederick's personal goals were when he crowned himself King of Jerusalem in the Holy Sepulcher, despite his claim to the throne technically being only that of a regent for his young son Conrad. He was forced to crown himself in the style of Charlemagne due to the fact that Gerold, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, would have nothing to do with him, as he was an excommunicated man.[8]

It was painfully clear to the local Barons that the Emperor simply wanted another crown to add to his collection, and that he would not be distracted from his more important holdings of Sicily and Germany any more than he had to be. The Kingdom of Jerusalem had been without a strong king for some time, and the Barons had grown quite used to their position of primacy within the kingdom. Frederick had already trampled their self-proclaimed rights and egos by attempting to strip John d'Ibilin of his fief of Beirut as punishment for the dishonest ruling, and extortion of a healthy income from Cyprus (so claimed by Frederick).[9] John disputed this based on the grounds that his claims to Beirut were sound and were not under the authority of the Holy Roman Emperor, or the Lord of Cyprus. Frederick was forced to yield his charges with the agreement that in exchange for hostages, he would make his claim to the court of the King of Jerusalem.[10]

The Baron's opinion of Frederick was not bettered by his conduct while he was actually in the Holy Land. During his negotiation with Al-Kamil, according at least to the Patriarch of Jerusalem, the Emperor consulted with no Eastern Christian.[11] Naturally, the Barons were displeased with the treaty Frederick negotiated. One of their main points of contention was that the Temple of Solomon was to remain a Muslim mosque. They also questioned the wisdom of only treating with one of their two potentially hostile Muslim neighbors. The Baron's worst fears of overbearing absentee kingship were confirmed when Frederick remained in Jerusalem a total of only three days, not even staying long enough to oversee the reconstruction of the walls.

In contrast, many Westerners were angered that Frederick, not that he had made a bad treaty, but that he had treated with Muslims at all. Such contact with infidels was not seen as appropriate by many in the West. A much graver sin of Frederick's was religious tolerance. That Muslims were to be allowed equal access to Jerusalem and to be allowed to call out their daily prayers was unacceptable to his contemporaries.

Frederick was hated by the Barons, despised by the Patriarch, and dismissed by the Muslims who thought him the weak leader of a small and disunited army. One of the only friends the Emperor managed to make in the East was the order of the Teutonic Knights. Their loyalty no doubt had to do with the massive sections of Acre given to them by Frederick in his traditional method of rewarding his underlings. The other military orders suffered for the Teutonic Knight's gains, which in no way endeared them to the Emperor.

Certainly there have been figures throughout crusading history who have been more reviled, and a few who have been as dynamic. None however achieved what Frederick II managed alone and opposed by the most powerful institution in medieval Europe. Frederick's acquisition through negotiation of Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth, and the surrounding territories was monumental especially as it occurred without bloodshed. However, for the Emperor, it was simply a means of loosening the Church's hold over him through the fulfillment of his Crusading vow. Frederick II was a man out of sync with his times, an anachronism, not of the past, but of the future. His quest for the secular leadership of Europe was the hallmark of a much later generation. The method with which he approached the notion of the Crusades was novel, something to be seen later, in the age of colonization.

The majority of his actions, especially those in regard to the Crusade (as they were so unnatural to his age) were unsurprisingly misunderstood and rejected by his contemporaries. When Frederick left for the Holy Land in 1227 he was not seeking spiritual glory, or the redemption of his many sins, but was instead utilizing a political tool, a weapon against his enemies and a stepping stone to greater power. That part of his quest at least was understood by his critics. Though Frederick gave Christendom that which it had prized, the City of Jerusalem was no longer the ultimate goal, and its glory was no longer enough to erase from the minds of his peers decades of conflict.

Works Cited:

Einstein, David G. Emperor Frederick II. Philosophical Library. 1949

Jotischky, Dr. Andrew, Lecture notes from History 219 'The Crusades: Conquest, Colonization and Religious Enthusiasm

Masson, Georgina. Frederick II of Hohenstaufen, A Life. Seckler & Warburg. 1957

Trans in Dana C. Munro, "Letters of the Crusaders", Translations and Reprints from the Original Sources of European History, Vol 1:4, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1896)

Philip de Novare: Les Gestes des Ciprois, No. 126-28, ed. Gaston Reynaud, (Geneva: Jules-Guillaumefick, 1887), 37-43, translated by James Brundage, The Crusades: A Documentary History, (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 1962) http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/1228frederick2.html

[1] Einstien, David G. Emperor Frederick II. P68

[2] Georgina Masson, Frederick II of Hohenstaufen, A Life, p57

[3] Frederick happened to take the cross from none other than a certain Cardinal Ugolino, who would later play a much greater role in Frederick's affairs under the name of His Holiness, Pope Gregory IX.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Frederick's efforts were apparently not speedy enough for Gregory, who preformed a second excommunication on him during Holy Week.

[6] There were other reasons the offer was turned down. Primarily it was not certain that Al-Kamil could legitimately offer Jerusalem. The deal also did not include several important fortifications, such as Kerak.

[7] Lecture Notes, "Egypt: the 5^th Crusade and St. Louis' Crusade." Andrew Jotischky, Thursday, Week 5

[8] Gerold to all the Faithfull. 1229. http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/fred2cdelets.html

[9]Les Gestes des Ciprois, No. 126-28, translated by James Brundage, The Crusades: A Documentary History

[10] Frederick was able to express a claim on Cyprus due to an odd set of circumstances. Richard the Lion Hearted had conquered Cyprus on the Third Crusade. Upon his return overland, Richard was captured by the German king, Henry IV, Frederick's Father. Henry held Richard ransom until he was granted Cyprus.

[11] Gerold to all the Faithfull. 1229. http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/fred2cdelets.html