such malefactors. On more than one occasion, Gregory enjoined Frederick by the “remission of sins” to aid the Roman church.81 In one of his replies to the pope, Frederick expressed similar sentiments, remarkably describing the ultimate unity of the “two swords,” the spiritual power of priests and the temporal power of emperors, formed from one substance and joined in the “sheath” of the church.82
Despite these promises, actual military aid from the emperor was not forthcoming. Facing an uprising in Sicily, Frederick returned to the Regno with his forces in the late fall of 1232, leaving the pope to make peace with the Romans as best as he could. In letters sent to Frederick the following February, the pope described his earlier satisfaction when the emperor’s envoys had informed him that Frederick was “manfully preparing to fight in defense of the faith, for the preservation of ecclesiastical liberty, and for the preservation of Saint Peter’s Patrimony.” Subsequently, Gregory heard rumors that Frederick planned to return to the Regno, abandoning his obligations as the defender of the church. In closing, the pope called upon him to fulfill his duties with “deeds, not just words.”83 Gregory’s biographer, looking back at these events after 1239, when the pope excommunicated Frederick for the second time, claims that the emperor never really intended to help the church but instead secretly conspired with the Romans against the pope.84 Through a series of negotiations led by the cardinals Thomas and Raynald, who smoothed things over by cash payments to the Romans, the pope nevertheless helped to forestall the assault on Campania. In March 1233, representatives from Rome approached the pontiff while he was staying at Anagni and begged him to return to the city. A few months after that, the pope helped to broker a truce between Rome and Viterbo in which the Romans forgave any damages caused by the Viterbans during the recent fighting and the Viterbans swore fealty to the Romans, both sides releasing their captives.85
By the spring of 1234, however, this peace between the pope and the Romans began to deteriorate again. According to Gregory’s biographer, a new senator named Luke Savelli renewed the city’s military push into the surrounding regions and issued statutes “damaging the liberty of the church and causing enormous harm to the Apostolic See,” trying to enslave the papal patrimony and overturn its privileges that dated back to the days of Emperor Constantine.86 By this time, news of the discord between the pope and the Romans had begun to make an impression on wider audiences around Christian Europe. Roger of Wendover, for example, describes how the Romans tried to “usurp” ancient rights in Rome, seeking among other things immunity from excommunication and interdict, a demand that the pope refused. While lesser than God, as Saint Peter’s heir and their spiritual father he possessed the right to stand in judgment over them. By May, the pope again left Rome for Rieti, where he passed a sentence of excommunication against Luke Savelli and several other leading Roman citizens due to their seizure and fortification of Monte Alto, a town belonging to the Patrimony of Saint Peter; their taking hostages from that same community; and their extraction of oaths from papal vassals, all actions contrary to the interests of the Roman church.87
At Rieti, Gregory also began to make plans for a coordinated assault on the “rebellious Romans,” assisted by the emperor, who placed himself “at the service of the church” against the citizens of the city.88 Neither the pope nor the emperor dissembled the fact that Frederick expected help against his rebellious son, who was allied with some of the Lombard cities in resisting Frederick’s rights. In July, Gregory wrote to the archbishop of Trier and other German prelates, denouncing Henry for violating his promises of fealty to his father and instructing the bishops to publicize Henry’s excommunication throughout the kingdom. He specified that the prince’s actions triggered the suspension of any oaths rendered to him by ecclesiastical and secular magnates.89 The anonymous author of the Life of Gregory IX, writing after 1239 with retrospective disapproval of the emperor’s every action, claims that Frederick arrived uninvited at Rieti, offering his son Conrad as a hostage and pledge of his commitment to the understandably suspicious pope—a commitment he never intended to keep after getting what he wanted. Fortified with such “papal letters,” Gregory’s biographer claims, the emperor acted like “new legate of the Roman church,” taking advantage of the pope’s written support to turn the German magnates supporting his son against him.90
Although Frederick indeed left for Germany to confront his rebellious son, other sources claim that he left a sizable force of troops behind at Viterbo to support the pope. Over the summer, Gregory began to widen his appeals for armed help against the Romans well beyond those he made to the emperor. In July, he wrote to the cities of the Lombard League, stressing this need to employ the “ministry of the imperial arm” in defense of the church and calling upon them not to impede the transit of Frederick’s forces. At the same time, still in the middle of peace negotiations between the Lombards and the emperor, he assured them that he would not abandon their interests.91 The following month, the pope informed the cities and leaders of Tuscany about the appointment of Rainier of Viterbo, cardinal deacon of Santa Maria in Cosmedin, as the leader of the assembling papal army, which was intended for the defense of the papal patrimony and the liberty of the church. A few months after that, Gregory directed a letter to Siegfried, archbishop of Mainz, reminding him about an oath he took to protect the Patrimony of Saint Peter, instructing him to come with or send troops by the following March.92
Around this time, the “pope’s army” and the “emperor’s army,” as Roger of Wendover describes the two forces, coordinated their assaults on the outskirts of Rome, destroying a number of surrounding villages. Roger tells us that Gregory also gave Peter, bishop of Winchester, a leadership role in the papal army, valuing him for his military skills and riches, not to mention the contingent of English foot soldiers and bowmen he brought with him. Later in October, when a large body of Roman troops made an undisciplined sally against Viterbo, the pope’s combined troops delivered a crushing blow against them, killing thousands and taking many more captive. As Matthew Paris adds in his History of the English, elaborating on Roger’s account, the slaughter was so great that “the hearts of Pagans rejoiced, far and wide.”93 The Romans never recovered from these defeats, although they sent a defiant message by passing a series of edicts that condemned Rainier of Viterbo and banned the pope from returning to Rome until he paid a large indemnity for damages caused during the war.94
During the following months, Gregory continued to solicit armed support from every corner of the Christian world, calling upon Eberhard, archbishop of Salzburg, and thirty-two other German bishops to provide troops with stipends for three months of service. He made a similar request to the archbishop of Rouen and nineteen other prelates in France and Spain, denouncing the Romans, who “ought to be special sons of the church, but, degenerating from sons into stepsons, are showing themselves to be disloyal and ungrateful, so that scarcely a spark of loyalty or gratitude remains among them.” In this letter, the pope identified the rebellious Romans’ desire to “enslave the Roman church,” not only by seizing its temporal goods but also by abusing its spiritual persons and offices, as a “public not private” problem.95 Closer to home, Gregory summoned the citizens of Velletri to the service of the Roman church, promising “the full remission of sins for those who made confession with a contrite heart.”96 The pope also took specific measures to raise funds for his campaign against the Romans while depriving the city of its own financial resources. In December 1234, citing the “malice of the Romans,” he instructed bishops in the kingdom of France to retain all revenues from benefices belonging to absentee Roman clergy, excepting papal chaplains, and to send the proceeds to Master Simon, an official from the papal chancery. In a similar letter to the archbishops of Canterbury and York, Gregory instructed them to forward such funds to the Templar master at Paris. The Tewksbury Annals record that some Romans were in fact deprived of their benefices, the revenues of which were forwarded to Canterbury.97
Whether the money in question ever reached the pope is unclear. There is little evidence that bishops besides the opportunistic Peter of Winchester provided serious logistical support, in terms of either troops, funds, or supplies. Nevertheless, by the spring of 1235, Gregory’s overall efforts had
