to the pope’s actual reach. Assembling such armies always represented an ad hoc logistical affair that was constrained by financial limits, insufficient numbers, and uneven enthusiasm from the vassals, friends, and family members who comprised a typical medieval army. Gregory’s papal army was no exception.75 Judging by the pope’s calls for the Lombards to fulfill their obligations to the church, the rectors of the league did not provide as much assistance as the pope would have liked. They did send troops, but not enough. Gregory also complained about their late arrival, about their lack of funds, arms, and horses, and about the fact that some of the levies were already planning to head home. He even forwarded them dispatches from the front lines, written by John of Brienne and John de Colonna and affixed with the papal bull, testifying to the desperate need for help.76
According to Roger of Wendover, the Apostolic See’s demands for a direct tax to pay for the papal army—the first of its kind—met with reluctance and public protest. Realizing that Henry III would not prevent the pope’s exactions, the English earls and barons emphatically refused to pay the tithe. After debating among themselves, the clergy decided to pay the demanded one-tenth, in part anxious about the legate Stephen’s express power to excommunicate those who refused to render the funds or colluded to commit fraud in their collection. The pope’s representative also had the right to demand that clerics swear an oath on the Gospels to make their payments, that they record the amounts on their “rolls” with seals affixed in testimony, and that they agree to censure anyone caught impeding the payments. Roger writes that the clerics in question had to pawn all sorts of sacred vessels and liturgical objects to meet the demands of such an unprecedented exaction. In this regard, the English clergy seemed less concerned with the pope’s right to fight a Christian emperor in defense of the church than they were with how he planned to pay for it.77
Others challenged and denounced Gregory’s decision to authorize armed force against the emperor. In a letter sent to Frederick during his stay in Syria, his bailiff Thomas of Acerra expressed astonishment that the pope, the emperor’s “public enemy,” had “decreed contrary to Christian law to vanquish you with the material sword, since, he says, he is unable to cast you down by the spiritual sword.” Thomas asserts that Frederick’s allies, especially among the clergy, could not believe that the “Roman pontiff could do such things, taking up arms against Christians, especially since the Lord said to Peter ‘put your sword in its scabbard, for all those who strike with the sword, shall perish by it.’ ” They wondered by what right the pope acted, excommunicating thieves, arsonists, and murders on the one hand and then turning his authority to such ends on the other.78 Chroniclers expressing sympathy for the emperor accused the pope’s army, in turn, of committing atrocities, unlawfully invading the Regno, causing fearful locals to desert their homes, attacking crusaders or forcing those bound for the holy places via Italy to turn back, despoiling churches, and generally creating chaos in the region.79
Troubadours, some with close ties to the imperial court and others already critical of the Rome’s aggressive attacks on supposed heretics in Provence, penned and presumably recited their own critiques of the papal war in the Regno. In a Provençal poem lamenting the general corruption of the church, Pierre Cardenal denounced the clergy for trying to expel Frederick from his “refuge” and emboldening the infidels, as “pastors” became “killers.” Cardenal lamented a world turned upside down, because “kings and emperors used to rule the world, now the clergy possess such dominion.” Guilhem Figueira lambasted the Roman church for shedding Christian blood, wrestling with Frederick over his crown, calling him a heretic, and offering false “pardons” for the sins of those who did the fighting. Yet others found the pope’s actions justified. Responding to Figueira’s poem, Gormonda di Montpellier celebrated Rome’s battles against heretics, “worse than Saracens,” defending the church’s struggle against figures like the heretical Count of Toulouse and the emperor.80 The Guelf Annals of Piacenza likewise valorized Gregory’s decision to deploy the material sword. Seeing that Frederick intended the destruction of the Roman church and desolation of Italy, the pope first sent his envoys through the empire, announcing the emperor’s excommunication, labeling him a heretic, and absolving his followers of their fidelity to him. When he saw that the “spiritual sword” lacked effectiveness, after taking counsel with others Gregory called upon the faithful of the Roman church to defend by force its rights and possessions.81 Gregory’s biographer, not surprisingly, struck a similar tone in his presentation of the pope’s decision to gather an army, celebrating its victories at places like Monte Cassino, where “by God’s judgment” papal forces expelled the imperial justiciar and a group of “Arabs” occupying the monastery.82
The pope himself recognized that his recourse to armed force in the Regno might raise particular problems for the church’s reputation. As he wrote to his legate and military commander Pelagius on 19 May 1229, sometimes the church, rarely and unwillingly, had to “turn to the aid of the material sword” against tyrants and persecutors. It must do so, Gregory qualified, in the proper way, not thirsting for blood or to seize another’s riches but to recall those in error to the path of the truth. The pope expressed dismay that some in the “army of Christ”—as he called the papal army in this instance—slaughtered the “lost sheep” that they were intended to find and restore to the flock, mutilating and killing prisoners who had freely surrendered. He denounced this behavior, including chopping off limbs and beheadings, and instructed Pelagius to protect those who fell into the “hands of the army of Christ.” Such captives should enjoy more “liberty” as prisoners of the church than they previously enjoyed while ostensibly free, when they were really in bondage to the “pharaoh,” Frederick. Thus, calling for mercy in the face of violence, the pope intended to protect his public reputation and that of the church from its detractors and the “deceitful stain of false opinion.”83
Making Peace Public
By the summer of 1229, papal forces had made considerable advances, pushing back Frederick’s vassals and allies on all fronts. Rumors of the emperor’s demise circulated, demoralizing his allies. In June, however, Frederick returned from Syria, landing at Brindisi and quickly gathering his supporters to repulse the pope’s forces. By the following summer, Gregory and the emperor had come to terms of peace, the Treaty of San Germano. Modern historians have puzzled over the apparently quick reversals that led to this agreement, wondering why Frederick—holding the upper hand in military terms—agreed to a negotiated peace rather than invade the Papal States. He generally receives high marks for restraining himself, or at least recognizing that he could not effectively rule while laboring under the “embarrassing” sentence of excommunication. For those who view the pope as utterly determined to destroy Frederick, the compromise reached at San Germano seems like a defeat for the “irascible” Gregory’s hierocratic designs, a “deep humiliation” for the Roman pontiff who had wanted to “ruin the hated emperor.” Exhausted from their struggle, then, both sides agreed to settle their differences, biding their time until they might resume their conflict.84
Such evaluations of the peace achieved in 1230 miss their mark. Peacemaking in the Middle Ages, as Jenny Benham observes, was about “public perception.”85 Gregory and Frederick, and their respective proxies and representatives, had fought their political battles in public for three years. Their peace took shape in a similar way: transcending individual attitudes and uncompromising ideologies, it was negotiated with a marked sensitivity to the difference between private and open discussions. When all of the relevant communications, letters, revised texts, and verbal exchanges are taken into consideration, Gregory, rather than humiliating Frederick or imposing unreasonable terms on him, emerges as a counter to centrifugal forces, trying to find a balance between sets of private interests involving members of the curia, papal vassals, the military orders, the citizens of Rome, and the Lombards, among others.
As Frederick no doubt intended, his military successes after his return from Syria clearly played a role in forcing Gregory to the bargaining table. Some returning German crusaders joined him, still bearing their crosses, although others apparently refused to fight
