oversee the next round of negotiations. Representatives from both sides met at the Lateran basilica on 24 May, submitting their written propositions for peace for review. Soon after, the pope and cardinals announced their decision. They undeniably gave the Lombards much of what they asked for: the pope called upon Frederick to “remit all rancor” against them, revoking all the judgments and bans issued against the members of the league, forgiving any of their past offenses, and receiving them in his grace. The Lombards likewise had to revoke any bans or edicts against the emperor or his loyal supporters and had to provide five hundred soldiers for assistance in the Holy Land over the course of two years. Both parties had to keep the peace and avoid further conflict. In closing, the pope instructed Frederick to send “patent letters” affixed with his golden seal confirming his commitment to these terms by Michaelmas the following September.24
Like most compromises, this agreement did not entirely satisfy anyone. On 7 June 1233, the Lombard representatives again met with the pope, taking issue with some of the specific wording in terms of peace and requesting clarifications. In a record of the meeting kept by a notary from Milan, the pope gave his responses, observing, for example, that the Lombard League could defend themselves against attacks without violating the terms of peace treaty.25 When news of the decision reached Frederick, he delayed returning the patent letters that the pope had requested, telling Gregory in July that he would not send them until Hermann of Salza returned to the imperial court with a more detailed report of the proceedings at the papal curia.26 He also wrote “in confidence” to the cardinal-bishop-elect of Ostia e Velletri, Raynald da Jenne, complaining about the pope’s judgment that had let the Lombards off the hook, given the many injuries he had suffered from them. Frederick lodged a particular complaint about the Lombards’ promise to provide five hundred soldiers for service in the holy places, when they still owed four hundred soldiers from their previous agreement with the emperor.27 Intentionally or not, this “private” letter did not remain confined to Raynald’s hands but was brought to the attention of the pope. On 12 August, Gregory sent a strongly worded response to the emperor, stressing all of his previous goodwill and efforts on Frederick’s behalf and taking him to task for complaining to Raynald and the cardinals rather than writing to him directly. As for the four hundred soldiers previously promised by the league, that commitment had expired when Frederick embarked on his contentious crusade years earlier. In case he had forgotten the terms of that voided agreement, the pope sent him copies of the original documents taken from the papal archives.28
At this point, the logistical limitations of thirteenth-century epistolary communications made themselves felt. Soon after the pope sent this rebuke, Frederick’s written ratification of the peace agreement arrived at the papal curia, before the pope’s most recent complaints would have reached him. The reasons for the emperor’s change of position are not entirely clear. Whatever misgivings he had, he apparently decided that an imperfect settlement remained better than no settlement at all, allowing him to turn his attention elsewhere, including to the Regno, where he faced an insurrection from rebellious barons. The representatives of the Lombard League likewise ratified the terms of the agreement.29 Through papal intervention, the mediation of cardinal legates, the circulation of documents, oaths and sworn promises, the threat of fines and ecclesiastical censure, and solemn face-to-face meetings, peace between the emperor and the Lombards—messy, imperfect, incomplete—had been established, or at least, their open discord was settled until another day. In later years, the pope, emperor, and representatives of the league would accuse each other of acting in bad faith, of pretending to seek reconciliation while secretly conspiring to undermine their foes. At the moment, however, as one English monastic chronicler observed about the news, “thus peace was made between them.”30
The Great Devotion of 1233
During those same summer months of 1233, the war-torn communes and communities of northern Italy experienced an unexpected movement of what we might now call religious revival: processions and sermons, miracles and other charismatic displays in the name of peace, all organized by itinerant preachers before crowds in churchyards, piazzas, markets, and fields on the edge of towns. Looking back at this Great Halleluiah, or Great Devotion, as he finished his Chronicle decades later, the well-traveled Franciscan writer Salimbene of Adam—who will reappear throughout the rest of this book—described it as a “time of tranquility and peace, when martial weapons were entirely laid aside, of happiness and joy, of gladness and celebration, of praise and jubilation.”31 Modern scholars have described the Great Devotion of 1233 as a “peace movement” that emerged from the particular mix of religious piety, social unrest, and endemic violence that characterized the urban landscape of northern Italy in the early decades of the thirteenth century. Opinions are mixed on whether the Great Devotion favored Gregory’s or Frederick’s interests in northern Italy. In his landmark work on Frederick II, Ernst Kantorowicz observed that for the emperor, “the Great Allelujah had the most inconvenient political consequences. The only person who profited was Pope Gregory.” Others more recently see the pope as incidental to the Great Devotion, arriving “late and out of breath,” showing “opportunistic” support for the charismatic preachers that led the revival.32
Neither of these appraisals captures the public complexities of the Great Devotion for the two powers. Its preachers did not uniformly favor the interests of either the pope or the emperor. Rather, their peacemaking initiatives presented opportunities and posed challenges for all sides in Lombardy, adding a new layer to an already complicated landscape of conflict and peacemaking. The Great Devotion cut across the supposed divides between the pro-imperial Ghibellines and the pro-papal Guelfs, convenient labels that mask a far more fluid set of shifting alliances and interested parties whose alignment with the party of the empire or that of the church formed a strategic choice, and not an irrevocable one. The charismatic peace movement of 1233 filled the public spaces left by the failure of established institutions to reconcile the warring factions of the strife-ridden Italian cities, rewiring the political and spiritual landscape of Lombardy and neighboring regions in the name of peace.33
Many of the Great Halleluiah’s impresarios hailed from the mendicant orders, yet another demonstration of the rapidly expanding, highly visible role played by the relatively new friars in the public life of thirteenth-century Europe. They included Franciscans like Leo de Valvassori, who would later become archbishop of Milan. Leo arrived in Piacenza in the spring of 1233, after a year of street fighting between the city’s militia and the popular party led by their captain, William de Andito. The two sides gave a commission for Leo to resolve their conflicts: he gathered them in the piazza before the city’s cathedral church, where members from the various factions gave the ceremonial kiss of peace. The friar also arranged for the election of a new podesta, Lantelmo Mainerio.34 Another Franciscan, named Gerard of Modena, along with a “simple and unlearned man” named Benedict de Cornetta, who was not a Franciscan but a “very good friend” of the friars, brought their version of peace to Parma. According to Salimbene, who saw both men with his own eyes, Gerard acted as podesta of the city, wielding “total lordship” over the Parmese so he might “bring peace to those warring against each other.” Wherever Benedict went, dressed in his black sackcloth and blowing his small copper horn, large crowds would gather, waving palms, bearing candles, and singing hymns. Salimbene listened to him preach on the wall of the bishop’s palace in Parma, then under construction.35
The Dominican friar John of Vicenza emerged as perhaps the most noteworthy of the Great Devotion’s revivalist preachers, bringing his sermons of peace and miracles first to Bologna before touring around the Marches of Treviso and Verona in the summer of 1233. Verona represented a typical hot spot for armed conflict that involved all sorts of different individuals and groups but centered on Count Richard of San Bonifacio, a prominent magnate in the region, and his rivals, the Montecchi. Unrest in and around the city also demonstrated the limits of peacemaking through conventional means. In June 1230, Richard’s enemies had seized him and his followers, imprisoning them in Verona. In response, Richard’s allies from Mantua, joined by Azzo VII d’Este, jumped into the conflict. The powerful Romano brothers, Ezzelino and Alberic,
