in addition to violating his crusade vow and “sneaking” off to Syria, was guilty of abusing the Roman church and its territorial patrimony, “usurping the spiritual and temporal rights” of the Apostolic See, and attempting to subvert the church’s vassals through threats, lies, and bribes. The pope also accused him and his officials of allowing “Saracens”—in this case, meaning Muslim auxiliaries forcibly relocated to southern Italy and settled in Lucera after their rebellion in Sicily years earlier—to despoil churches and assault Christian clergy.61 Aware of Frederick’s efforts to counter papal messages, Gregory warned his audience not to believe any falsehoods they heard to the contrary, either sent in writing or told to them by the emperor’s messengers. In addition, Gregory excommunicated and anathematized anyone who “shows him help and favor against the Roman church, either attacking its patrimony or illicitly usurping the spiritual and temporal rights of the Apostolic See.” As always in such communications, instructions followed for the clerical recipients of these letters to publicize the contents in their cities and dioceses and enforce such papal judgments.62
Over the course of the fall, Gregory identified Raynald of Urslingen, Frederick’s vicar in the Regno, as a particular culprit in the effort to subvert the papal patrimony in Ancona, where the church’s enemies conspired “secretly” (occulte) and agitated “publicly” (publice) to corrupt papal vassals.63 In a letter sent to Raynald on 7 November, Gregory denounced his destruction, burning, and occupation of various places that belonged by right to the Roman church. Even worse, according to what “people were saying,” Raynald and his troops mutilated priests with unheard of sacrilege, allowing Saracens to crucify some clergy, blinding others. Now he had invaded Ancona, showing himself an “open enemy of the Apostolic See.” Gregory gave him eight days from receiving this letter to withdraw; otherwise, the pope had given firm commands for his papal chaplain Cinthius to excommunicate him and all of his followers publicly, passing a sentence of ecclesiastical interdict over his lands.64 In a letter written to the Genoese podesta and commune that same month, Gregory repeated his accusations about Raynald and the atrocities committed by his Saracen soldiers. When Raynald did not withdraw, Gregory excommunicated him, his brother Berthold, and his other supporters. Anyone supporting them would be excommunicated and deprived of their ecclesiastical fiefs or benefices. Only a year’s service in the Holy Land would be considered a sufficient form penance for absolution.65 Perhaps in response, Raynald ordered the expulsion of the Franciscans from the Regno, accusing them of bearing “apostolic letters” to the region’s bishops. Just how much Gregory relied on the peripatetic friars to convey messages in the region is unclear, although no one could mistake his ongoing devotion to their order. A year earlier, at Assisi in July 1228, the pope had formally canonized Saint Francis.66
By this time, Gregory had begun to look beyond such epistolary denunciations, legal threats, and “spiritual” weapons, extending papal sanctions into the realm of armed conflict with Frederick’s supporters on the Italian peninsula. Over the course of the winter, he started to coordinate the assembly of what chroniclers called a “papal army,” or the “army of the lord pope.” As the pope’s biographer describes his decision, “since the punishment of the spiritual sword did not chasten the sinner, overcome by necessity, the successor of Peter took the step of wielding the temporal sword.”67 Acting in his capacity as the lord of the Papal States, Gregory fielded this force with the help of John of Brienne, Frederick’s former father-in-law and a papal rector since 1227, along with John de Colonna, cardinal priest of Santa Prassede; Pelagius of Albano; and the papal chaplain Pandulf, who was “experienced” in military affairs. By the spring of 1229, this army, deployed as three smaller units, had pushed the emperor’s vassals and allies from Ancona, Spoleto, and Campagna and began advancing into the Regno.68
When they talk about it at all, historians typically call this conflict the War of the Keys, named after the symbol featured on the papal army’s banner. Discussions about this campaign typically revolve around the question of where it fits in the trajectory of so-called political crusades, in other words crusading campaigns called for the primary purpose of defending papal territories or subduing papal enemies within Europe.69 The general consensus seems to be that the War of the Keys was a kind of “half” or “quasi” crusade authorized by the pope, promoted much like a genuine crusade but lacking important elements of “true” crusading, including the promised remission of sins for combatants—at least not until the closing stages of the conflict—and the actual use of the cross as a martial sign.
Clearly, the difference between symbols such as the cross and the keys made an impression on contemporaries like Richard of San Germano, who describes in his chronicle a pitched battle between a “crusader army” (crucesignatorum exercitus), a designation for supporters of the emperor who had recently returned from Syria while still bearing their crosses, and the pope’s “keysader host” (clavigeros hostes).70 For contemporaries, however, the controversy caused by the War of the Keys did not revolve around the question of whether the battle against the emperor constituted a crusade or not. It centered on a different issue—whether the pope possessed the legitimate right to wield the “material sword” (gladius materialis), as well as the “spiritual sword” (gladius spiritualis). Recent generations of theologians and canon lawyers had debated the exegesis of the “two swords” (Lk 22:38): Did God bestow each sword directly to its bearer, the emperor and the pope, the principal representatives of the two powers? Or did God grant both swords to the pope, who then delegated the material sword to the emperor to wield in defense of the church? Canon lawyers, in their glosses, offered a wide variety of opinions on the matter. Regardless, in either scenario the pope did not wield the material sword directly—the power of armed force, coercion, and punishment—but delegated its use to secular rulers, lay people who were not constrained by the clerical prohibition of bloodshed.71
When Gregory called for the raising of a papal army, the political theology of the two swords moved from canon law commentaries into the public eye as the pope sought to secure material support for his campaign. Deploying the material sword in defense of the church did not come cheaply. Facing an insufficient supply of local troops from the papal patrimony, Gregory appealed for aid from communities, clergy, and rulers around Europe, including the king of Sweden, the rectors of the Lombard League, and the Portuguese prince, Peter. In his Flowers of History, Roger of Wendover describes how Gregory’s legate Master Stephen arrived in England to collect one-tenth of the kingdom’s “moveable property,” clerical and lay, “for his war undertaken against the Roman emperor.” Gregory’s “apostolic letters sent through various part of the world” enumerated the many reasons why he took this action, including all of Frederick’s misdeeds while on crusade, his plunder of the military orders’ properties in the Regno and overseas, his disregard for the church’s interdict, and more. “For these causes,” Roger writes, “the lord pope went to war against him, asserting it was just and necessary for the Christian faith for such a mighty persecutor of the church to be cast down from the imperial dignity.” During an assembly called by King Henry III at Westminster, Stephen, bearing Gregory’s “written authorization,” read the pope’s letters aloud, spelling out the papal demand for a special tax to sustain his war against the emperor.72 Some of these written appeals survive in a register of letters, charters, and other documents from Salisbury, revealing how the pope pitched his war against Frederick as the response to a “common danger,” insisting that a threat to the “head” of the church represented one to the “entire body.” For these reasons, Gregory wrote, “we have begun to exercise the temporal power, gathering many armies with ample stipends for this purpose, for such possessions ought not to be spared, when the church is universally and bitterly assailed.”73
These letters provide a striking example of the pope’s unique public standing as the figure who could call for armed Christian action on behalf of the entire church as a “common” enterprise and a shared responsibility, summoning leaders to defend “the papacy and Saint Peter’s regalia” and to fight “for the Lord under his commander Saint Peter” against the excommunicate emperor, who was a predator of churches, abuser of
