toward the church among the crusaders. Hermann also explained that Frederick “complained publicly before all of the bishops that the holy places, under the power of the Saracens for so long and now free by divine aid, placed under interdict, had been enslaved by the patriarch and restored to their earlier misery by the prohibition of the divine office.” Addressing the pope directly, Frederick passed over these events in silence, except for the sardonic comment, “some other time and place, we will take care to explain fully just how much counsel and aid we received from the patriarch of Jerusalem, and the masters and brothers of the religious houses.”50
Even Hermann of Salza advised Frederick to forego mass during his coronation ceremony in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, despite the fact that others in the army advocated such a celebration. On Easter Sunday, speaking before a crowd of prelates and magnates, before the rich and poor, the master general of the Teutonic Order delivered an address in Latin and German. Speaking on Frederick’s behalf, he declared that the emperor had fulfilled his crusade vow. He even made excuses for the pope, who had excommunicated Frederick and hounded him with letters sent across the sea after hearing that Frederick was gathering an army “against the church.” If the pope had known the emperor’s true intentions, he never would have written such things. Likewise, Hermann relayed, Frederick lamented the fact that complaints made against him by some of the crusaders had displeased the pope, causing “harm to the entire Christian people.”51
The day after his coronation, Frederick began his return to Acre. A second letter attributed to the patriarch of Jerusalem, found only in the Major Chronicle of the English monk and historian Matthew Paris, describes more troubles after the emperor arrived there.52 When Gerold and the leaders of the military orders objected to his “treacherous” and “fraudulent” treaty with the sultan, Frederick sent out a “public herald” to summon the crusaders for a gathering outside of the city. In a personal address to the crowd, he publicly denounced those opposing him, forbidding the soldiers on pain of death from staying in the Holy Land any longer. The letter also claims that he posted guards at the city gates, denying the Templars permission to enter; seized and fortified churches around the city; and sent his followers to harass the Dominican and Franciscan friars preaching on Palm Sunday. The streets of Acre erupted into chaos. Gathering the bishops and pilgrims on hand, the patriarch excommunicated anyone attacking church persons and property, passing a sentence of interdict over the city. Finally, after some half-hearted attempts to make peace with Gerold and the others, Frederick headed to the port by a hidden side street and on the third of May “secretly” set sail for Cyprus.53
Matthew observes that the patriarch’s letter, which was written to defame the emperor and reached “audiences around the west,” did considerable damage to Frederick’s reputation. Commencing his chronicle seven or eight years later, the English monk—whose colorful and opinionated historical works will feature throughout the rest of this book—offers another provocative story about the hatred that developed between the military orders and the emperor.54 According to Matthew, the Templars and Hospitallers sent a letter bearing their seals to al-Kamil, informing him that the emperor would soon be visiting the spot of Christ’s baptism at the Jordan, the perfect place to ambush and kill him. Repelled by this treachery and hoping to create confusion among the Christians, the sultan forwarded the letter to Frederick, complete with the identifying seals, and foiled the plot.55
Other chroniclers, however, celebrated the emperor’s remarkable achievement during this “year that will be long remembered by future generations.” Burchard of Ursburg writes that the pope “cast aside and despised” Frederick’s letters announcing the miraculous capture of Jerusalem to Christendom at large, while Richard of San Germano declares that things would have gone far better for the “business of the Holy Land” if the emperor had crossed over “with the grace and peace of the Roman church.” He added that al-Kamil almost hesitated to negotiate with Frederick at all, knowing about the great “hatred” that the church held for him. The anonymous author of the Brief Chronicle of Sicily, proclaiming “I who write this, I was there personally, and do not diverge from the path of truth,” layered his description of Jerusalem’s liberation with references to the Book of Revelation, lending an apocalyptic resonance to Frederick’s deeds. Even Roger of Wendover, who was not especially sympathetic toward the emperor in his chronicle, describes messages from God, marvelous signs, prophecies, and astrological predictions that foretold the holy city’s restoration “to the Christian people generally, specifically to Frederick the Roman emperor.”56
As for Pope Gregory, in still more letters sent to bishops, princes, kings, and communes around Europe during the summer of 1229, he made his perspective on Frederick’s crusade unmistakably clear. Referring to the letters written by Gerold of Lausanne and Hermann of Salza, the pope seemed especially concerned that false rumors and misinformation would reach Christian ears about the emperor’s actions overseas. He accused Frederick of four particular crimes, among others.57 First, Frederick had surrendered his armor and weapons to the sultan of Babylon, the “adversary of Christ,” renouncing the “arms of the Christian soldiers, the power of the sword taken from the altar of Saint Peter, assigned to him by Christ through his vicar for taking vengeance against malefactors and honoring the good, for defending and preserving the peace of Christ and the faith of the church.”58 By doing so, Frederick had effectively abdicated the imperial office. Second, his pact allowed the followers of “Machomet” to “preach and proclaim” their nefarious law in the city while it simultaneously imposed “silence on the herald of evangelical truth.” Third, he had left critical crusader castles and fortifications exposed to assault by the “pagans.” Fourth, he had bound himself under oath to fight on the sultan’s behalf against his enemies, including other Christians, meaning that he would have to take up arms against a future Christian army seeking to avenge Christ and cleanse the Holy Land of the nonbelievers. Frederick had committed nothing less than treason against the Lord, rendering him “infamous,” subject to spiritual and temporal judgment, and unworthy of any honor or sacraments. Far from bolstering his reign by going on crusade, the emperor had publicly disqualified himself from ruling at all.59
Battle for the Regno
During the period leading up to Frederick’s departure for Syria, Gregory’s confrontation with him had expanded into a new theater of accusations and counter-accusations over conditions in the Regno, that is, the kingdom of Sicily, Calabria, and Apulia. The emperor nominally held these territories as a “vassal” of Saint Peter, making the pope his direct temporal lord with regard to their holding. This legal dimension enabled Gregory to bring a different kind of public pressure to bear on Frederick, accusing him of being a malfeasant vassal, not just an emperor who had abdicated his Christian duties. As time passed, this battle for the Regno would eclipse the emperor’s unorthodox crusade as the primary site of contest between the two leaders.
Gregory’s general complaints about the Regno echoed earlier ones made by Honorius III during the closing year of his papacy about disturbances in the region that had revealed Frederick’s “ingratitude” toward the Roman church for the past and present benefits bestowed upon him. A “clamor” and “murmurs” had reached Gregory’s ears about injustices in the kingdom, about how the emperor had denied bishops access to their sees, assaulted the clergy, despoiled widows and orphans, and violated papal vassals and other nobles in the region who enjoyed the protection of the Apostolic See. People now mocked those securities, seeing the rich and powerful reduced to beggary and exile. As seen above, the pope also denounced Frederick for forcing clergy to celebrate the divine office despite the interdict, making him a “despiser of the keys” and possible heretic. Under these circumstances, Gregory threatened in the spring of 1228 that Frederick should rightly fear the possibility that the pope would deprive him of his “feudal right” to the kingdom of Sicily, which he held as a vassal of the Roman church.60
The tense situation in the Regno continued to escalate after the emperor left for the holy places. In August, consulting with a provincial synod in Perugia, Gregory followed through
