The Two Powers. Brett Edward Whalen
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 on his behalf, given his excommunicate status. Richard of San Germano describes how the papal army began to dissolve almost immediately after Frederick landed, reporting that John de Colonna fled the battlefield, pretending he needed to return to the curia to secure pay for his troops. In August 1229, keeping up his own forms of public pressure on Frederick, Gregory again renewed his sentence of excommunication, circulating a written version of the sentence that revisited the now long list of sins and crimes committed by him and his agents, including Raynald of Spoleto. Suggesting the gravity of Frederick’s crimes, the pope opened the sentence by excommunicating a stock list of supposed heretics, ironically the same list featured at the emperor’s coronation. Frederick continued to send out “excusatory letters” to the “princes of the world” about his successes in the Holy Land, denouncing the patriarch of Jerusalem’s defamatory letters and calling upon figures like the crusading bishop of Winchester and the master general of the Teutonic Order as his witnesses.86
While these dueling letters circulated and the fighting in the Regno continued, however, negotiations for an end to the discord between church and empire had already begun. Over the winter and spring, representatives including Frederick’s envoys Hermann of Salza, Lando, archbishop of Reggio in Calabria, and Marinus, archbishop of Bari, joined by the pope’s legates Thomas of Capua and John de Colonna, traveled back and forth between the papal curia and imperial court. In July 1230, a gathering of prelates, princes, and imperial officials met at San Germano and nearby Ceprano to negotiate the final terms of peace between the pope and emperor, leading to Frederick’s absolution by the end of August. After three years of scandal and war, peace had returned to the Christian community.87
Scholars rarely seem to consider the full range of evidence available for the negotiations leading up to the Peace of San Germano, including a series of letters and documents exchanged between the pope, the curia, and Thomas of Capua during the months leading up to Frederick’s absolution.88 Written in a plainer style than papal encyclicals, the cardinal’s letters reveal behind-the-scenes details, such as when Thomas commented on the heavy rains and flooding that impeded his travels in the Regno, or when he described how he found the cardinal bishop of Albano “more dead than alive” after spending months besieged by the emperor’s forces in the monastery of Monte Cassino.89 His on-the-road communications also suggest the limits of his willingness to commit things to writing during such challenging negotiations, since his letters contain frequent references to information that would be shared “verbally” (viva voce) by the bearer or writer of the letter at a later date. The written word possessed a permanence that could become a disadvantage, potentially exposing things that were meant only for certain ears—conversations that are now lost to the historian.90
What remains nevertheless reveals a great deal, exposing the conflicting interests, points of contention, and collective mediation that lay behind the Peace of San Germano. The “form of peace” provided