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BOOK IV. CHAPTER VII.
FREDERIC II. [1232—1235.
Affairs of Italy— Gregory and the Lombards—Fra
Giovanni— Affairs of Germany—Magister Conrad and Heresy—Henry’s
Rebellion—Crushed—Henry’s Conduct—and Doom.
Frederic now addressed himself to effecting such an
arrangement of Italian dissensions, as might admit of his safely crossing the
Alps. To reduce the Lombards by force, was an enterprise that, under all
circumstances—even had he wished to run back from the agreement to abide by the
Pope’s decision between them—was out of the question. The only step he could,
therefore, take, was to press for that decision; which he long did in vain.
Gregory had accepted the office of umpire reluctantly, as alike unwilling to
strengthen the Imperial power by the subjection of the Lombards, or to offend
the Emperor by pronouncing them independent; and he suffered a year to elapse
before he pronounced his verdict. This delay was, in itself, prejudicial to the
Emperor; but the Pope, during its continuance, shewed so much disposition to
befriend him, that it awoke no mistrust of the sentence. Gregory had expressed
great dissatisfaction with the Lombards, for obstructing the Alpine passes,
contrary to his injunctions; and, above all, for their toleration of heresy. He
had even forbidden his own cities to enter into alliance with any member of the
Lombard League; and the conduct of the respective parties during the period of
expectation, seemed adapted to confirm his good-will to the Emperor, and his
wrath against the Lombards. They, as though they had wished to provoke their
condemnation, displayed nearly as much refractoriness towards the Pope, whom they
confessed themselves bound to obey in spiritual concerns, as against the
Emperor, whom they still acknowledged to be their sovereign. Frederic, on the
other hand, strove to conciliate the stern old Pope, by compliance with his
desires, in everything short of revoking the rights and indulgences, granted
to his, now loyal and trusty, Saracen subjects, whose value he had learned in
the late war with the pontiff. But he readily agreed to send Dominican
missionaries, both to Luceria and into the Sicilian mountains, to convert the
Mohammedans. He hoped further to gratify the Pope, by his patronage of the
religious Order of St. Lazarus, devoted to the care of the poor and the sick,
especially of lepers. To this Order—paralysed, if not extinguished, by the fall
of Jerusalem, but revived by Innocent III—he gave ample estates upon both sides
of the Strait. Finally, at Gregory’s urgent remonstrance, he renewed and
sharpened his edicts against heresy and heretics, whilst affording him armed
assistance against the unruly Romans.
Such being the attitude of either party, Frederic
confidently anticipated a verdict, that should, by enjoining loyalty, and the
very small portion of allegiance and obedience stipulated in the peace of
Constance, support the Imperial authority in Lombardy. He was disappointed.
Upon the 5th of June, 1233, Gregory, re-installed, thanks to Frederic, in the
Lateran, pronounced his decision; and the Emperor, with no little surprise,
again found himself treated upon a footing of complete equality with those,
whom he regarded as his insurgent vassals. The sentence was, that the Emperor,
conjointly with his son King Henry, should cancel the ban of the Empire,
denounced against the members of the Lombard League, whether communities or individuals,
revoke the sentences of punishment and penalties supposed to have been by them
incurred, and make compensation for all injuries inflicted upon any of those
members; that the Lombard League should do the like, in respect of the Emperor
and the Imperialists; and should, moreover, equip, despatch, and for a year support,
a body of 500 horsemen for the defence of the Holy Land—the time of such
equipment and despatch remaining at the discretion of the Church. This
requisition of 500 horsemen for Palestine, even if admitted to be an aid, rather to the King of Jerusalem
personally, than to the cause of Christendom, and especially of the Church,
could not be considered as either a penalty for disobedient hostility, or even
a demonstration of loyalty to the Emperor; it could be received only as the
making good of a previous criminal breach of engagement, relative to the 400
ordered by Honorius. The Emperor-King was offended as well as disappointed; but
his dissatisfaction did not assume an active form. He took no step beyond
complaining to the Pope of the unfairness of his sentence; whilst the Lombards
appear to have expressed, at least equal displeasure, at such equality with the
sovereign they acknowledged. The relations between the Pope and the Emperor
remained, for the moment, apparently, unaltered; the latter still hoping that
the ungraciousness of the Lombards must, in the end, alienate their nearly as
ungracious protector.
In order to allow time for this desirable change, the
Emperor was anxious to avoid present hostilities, and earnestly recommended
forbearance to the Ghibelines, most earnestly to the ambitious Romano brothers.
But the recommendation was fruitless. The Pope had offended them anew, by a
summons to answer the charge of heresy, grounded upon their toleration of
heretics, before his tribunal. The summons merely angered them, but encouraged
their Guelph neighbours to aggressive measures; and, the Romano family never
being distinguished for longanimity, broils and feuds again ravaged the
Trevisan march.
The Emperor’s annoyance at this renewal of warfare was
presently alleviated, by an apparent general lull in the pugnacious spirit of
Italy, wrought by the eloquence of a Dominican friar. This friar was one
Giovanni Schio, better known as Fra Giovanni da Vicenza, from the place of his
birth; another of the phenomena of the Middle Ages. He was a man evidently of
the best intentions, and endowed with very considerable talents, but not with a
head of strength to bear the intoxication, of such success, with its consequent
fame and power, as crowned his meritorious exertions. Fra Giovanni was early
distinguished for the sound doctrine, powerful language, and immense moral
influence of his sermons. He inculcated forgiveness of injuries and of debts,
together with reconciliation of enemies; he preached against usury, against the
flowers and other ornaments with which women then, as since, used to decorate
their hair. He visited divers towns for the purpose of so preaching, and
everywhere was followed by crowds; the men and children singing hymns and
burning incense, the women discarding their finery at his word, to wrap their
heads in linen veils; whilst hereditary enemies wept and embraced. At Bologna
the triumphs of his eloquence became yet more striking, although one in its
result transcended the limits of what was desirable. His vehement denunciations
of the guilt incurred by hard-hearted creditors, and especially by usurers,
kindled such a flame of virtuous indignation against offenders of this description,
that his congregation rushed from the church to the house of a noted
money-lender, which they instantly demolished. More satisfactorily he effected
reconciliations, not only between adversaries in divers private quarrels, but
between the Bishop and the Municipality, who had long been at variance about
conflicting rights and pretensions. He further prevailed upon the governing
Council of Bologna, to release a number of prisoners from durance, and intrust
him with authority, to alter and modify whatever he deemed objectionable in the
laws of Bologna.
For much of this extraordinary influence at Bologna,
Fra Giovanni was, according to report, indebted to the sudden appearance of the
sign of the cross upon his forehead, whilst one day declaiming against
opponents in the Council chamber. This appearance, how extraordinary soever, is
far from the most incredible point of his history. It is conceivable that in
some anomalous configuration of veins, the turgidity produced by great
excitement, should, to prepossessed eyes, present the sign of man’s redemption.
Indeed such an appearance is recorded as borne, even in the first half of the
seventeenth century, by an individual very unlike our friar. Graf Pappenheim—whose
heroic feats of valour during the Thirty Years’ War were so deeply dyed in
atrocity, that, even in his co-religionists’ estimation, hardly could they
entitle him to any especial mark of divine favour—bore upon his forehead, when
enraged, the same appearance of a cross, formed, in his case, by two bloody
swords. But in regard, to Fra Giovanni, the historical student is perplexed
with the same, hardly-soluble problem, that has troubled him relative to St.
Bernard—though intelligible enough when speaking of St. Elizabeth, a woman
evidently of more sensibility than judgment, born for a dupe. Fra Giovanni was
positively asserted to work miracles, and, unlike the Abbot of Clairvaux, seems
to have believed himself so gifted. Nor are the miracles ascribed to him wholly
of the species explicable by the delusions of strongly excited imagination;
besides many such, he is explicitly stated to have recalled the dead to life,
also to have forded rivers dryshod, with other such
idle marvels, the truth or falsehood of which he could not help knowing. And
yet, perhaps, the most remarkable fact is, that these miracles do not rest
solely upon the testimony of the Friar’s zealous votaries, or even of his
brother-Dominicans. They are gravely and distinctly recorded (his resuscitation
of the dead included) by a nearly contemporary chronicler of the rival, early
hostile, order of Franciscans; nor does either their truth, or their
supernatural character, appear to have been questioned by any of the Friar’s
contemporaries, friendly or hostile, except two individuals. Of these, the one,
Guido Bonatti, an astrologer in the service of Ezzelino di Romano, provoked by
Fra Giovanni’s having called him a hypocrite, endeavoured to discredit his
miracles, and was nearly torn to pieces by the people, as an impious heretic,
or atheist. The other, did not come forward to impugn them, until Fra
Giovanni’s star had set. Then, Buoncompagno, a
Bolognese, whether a professor of the University seems doubtful, but termed by
the Franciscan Salimbeni the greatest of cheats,
prepared to turn the Dominican’s miracles into ridicule. He invited the whole
population of Bologna to see him fly down from the summit of a lofty
church-tower; presented himself upon the appointed spot, fluttered an immense
pair of wings with which he had equipped himself, and then, saying, “The
miracle is wrought after Fra Giovanni’s fashion,” retired from the sight of the
disappointed spectators. But this practical joke was, as before said, unattempted till after the close of Fra Giovanni’s
triumphant career.
With respect to the miracles themselves, actual fraud
is so thoroughly incompatible with enthusiasm, such as Fra Giovanni’s, that the
wish to think him, like the sainted Landgravine, the first dupe, almost becomes
father to the belief.
The attention of Gregory was attracted by the Dominican’s
reputation. Whether he had actual faith in the miraculous powers attributed to
him, does not clearly appear; but he was, both from natural bigotry and from
his great partiality to the mendicant Orders, at least as likely as the
Franciscan Salimbeni, to be easily convinced of their
reality. Be this as it may, the Pope judged the impressive and successful
preacher, a proper instrument for the double purpose, of pacifying Tuscany and
Lombardy, and of extirpating heresy there. In those days, to see hermits, or
any member of the clerical body enjoying great celebrity for ascetic piety,
interpose between belligerents, attempting and achieving the restoration of
peace, was not altogether unusual. St. Francis had, in the year 1212, so
appeased internal factious broils at Sienna; and Gregory IX commissioned Fra
Giovanni, to mediate peace in Tuscany, between Florence and Sienna. In this he
succeeded; and Gregory, well pleased, next ordered him to visit Lombardy,
there, in like manner, to reconcile all enemies, public and private, Guelphs to
Ghibelines, and towns to each other; and, when he should thus have established
tranquillity throughout central and northern Italy, he bade him extirpate the
heresy there prevalent. To facilitate his accomplishment of these great
objects, he invested him with authority to relieve from excommunication, and to
grant certain limited indulgences, to all who should devoutly listen to his
sermons.
Fra Giovanni proceeded on his mission, still successfully,
every where reconciling city with city, and the factious within cities, with
each other. Such was the enthusiasm he excited, that in some of the towns where
his visit had proved thus beneficial, the inhabitants, declaring that they
could not submit to the loss of his presence and instructions, forcibly
detained him; only when admonished by the Pope of the guilt they were
incurring, by their selfish endeavour to monopolize the advantages of a
ministry, in which all Lombardy was entitled to share, suffering him to depart.
When the Friar reached the Trevisan march, the especial theatre of his mission,
the Paduans, taking their standard with them, as though for the reception of a
sovereign, poured forth to meet him. They seated him, when met, upon the
carroccio, and thus conducted him, in triumph, into the city. Thence he issued
summonses fora general assembly of the north-eastern provinces, to meet upon
the 29th of August, in a convenient locality, not far from Verona.
The Dominican’s call was obeyed, by the Patriarch of
Aquileia, by the Bishops of Treviso, Brescia, Verona, Vicenza, Padua, Mantua,
Modena, Reggio, and Bologna; by the Marquess of Este, San Bonifazio,
the Romano brothers, and other nobles of the district; by Podestàs and other magistrates, as representatives of many towns, all with their
respective carroccios; and by individuals of
both sexes, in such throngs, that some contemporary authorities have estimated
the numbers there congregated at 400,000, whilst others pronounce them to have
been innumerable. This multitude, for the most part, knelt or stood barefoot,
in testimony of their reverent attention to the preacher.
Fra Giovanni ascended a lofty pulpit, here, in the
open air, prepared for him whence he
harangued this immense congregation upon his usual topics, and, as writers who
formed part of the throng aver, was distinctly heard by the whole. He dwelt
pathetically upon the sinfulness of war, bloodshed, and violence; upon the duty
of Christians to abstain from everything of the kind, seeking redress of
injuries from the legal tribunals, or from negotiation. His earnest eloquence
produced its accustomed effect, only rendered, upon the present occasion, the
more striking, by the numbers and the dignity of his hearers. The whole of this
multitude wept, and the bitterest enemies embraced; Azzo di Este and Ezzelino
di Romano, eminent above the rest, setting the example. The office of general
pacificator and arbitrator of all existing feuds was unanimously offered to the
zealous preacher, and by him joyfully accepted. He appeased the quarrels of
many factions, many cities, and many nobles; but the only one worth
particularizing is the reconciliation he effected, to all appearance more
permanently than by the embrace, betwixt the houses of Este and Romano. In
proof, and as the seal of which reconciliation, he ordered Rinaldo d’Este,
Azzo’s eldest son, to be forthwith united in marriage to Alberico di Romano’s
daughter, Adelasia; further, as a taming measure, he required both Azzo and
Ezzelino to enrol themselves citizens of Padua, and build family mansions
within the town walls, wherein to dwell during their indispensable six months
of city residence. These commands were implicitly obeyed; and Ezzelino, in compliance
with another injunction of the Friar’s, restored to the Paduans a portion of
their territory which he had conquered. Upon any violator of the peace thus
authoritatively and holily established, Fra Giovanni prospectively imprecated
maledictions in the style of the age, (of which a specimen has been given) including,
besides all imaginable woes, evils, and annoyances to the criminal in person,
contagious diseases to his flocks and herds, sterility to his vineyards, and
orchards, &c., &c.
After such a scene, that Vicenza, the native city of
the triumphant preacher, and Verona, severally invited him to visit them,
investing him, whether spontaneously or upon his demand, with authority yet
more unlimited than had Bologna, to regulate their government, altering and
amending their laws and institutions, cannot be matter of surprise. This office
likewise, with unhesitating confidence in his own capacity, he joyfully
accepted. The first use he made of his power, was, to enter upon the discharge
of the second portion of the mission assigned him by the Pope; to wit, the
extirpation of heresy. This. he seems to have judged best done by extirpating
its professors; to which end, at Vicenza, he burnt, as heretics, sixty persons
of both sexes and of all degrees, though mostly of high station. And if the
act, seemingly so inconsistent with the goodness and benevolence of the
enthusiast, pained his heart, that pain would be the part of the transaction
awakening remorse. Such horrors are the reproach of the times, not of the
individual, or of the sect. In the same year more than threefold the holocaust
offered up by Fra Giovanni, actually one hundred and eighty-three heretics,
were burnt in France, in Champagne, under the canonized Lewis IX, then about
eighteen years old, and his much eulogized maternal adviser, if no longer
Regent, Queen Blanche; and Oldrado di Tressano, a Lodesan Podestà of
Milan, glad to conciliate Gregory IX by means so easy as burning heretics,
recorded his auto da fe upon the walls of a
palace in which the archives of the duchy are still kept; and where the words, Catharos, ut debuit, uxit, inscribed under
his own effigy, may still be read. The Albigenses have been seen paying in kind
when able; and in this same year 1233, another Dominican, preaching at
Piacenza, was attacked by heretics, and with a second friar, stoned to death.
The assailants were sent to Rome for punishment.
But if the awful sacrifice of sixty human beings for
an opinion, supposed erroneous, by a benevolent man, were in those days no
proof of insanity, that the head of this strangely exalted Dominican was more
than half turned, is nevertheless certain. In affairs of government he was
alike unstudied and inexperienced; whence, meddling with what he did not
understand, his attempts at reform were simply mischievous innovations, in both
cities provoking opposition and enmity. At Vicenza, the Podestà, virtually
deposed by the authority conferred upon Fra Giovanni, endeavoured to resist his
violent measures; whereupon a sedition ensued, houses were plundered, legal
records destroyed, and the Podestà, with his official establishment,
imprisoned. But assistance was sent from Padua—so lately idolizing Fra
Giovanni—the sedition was quelled, order restored, and the usually ruling
powers were re-installed; Fra Giovanni being, in his turn, thrown into prison.
He was not, indeed, long held in durance, the authoritative intervention of the
Pope procuring his early release; but the period, how short soever, had given
time for the taunts and sneers of the rival Franciscans, and of the
Benedictines—who regarded both mendicant Orders as upstart intruders—to take
effect. The charm was broken. Fra Giovanni, upon recovering his liberty,
instead of issuing from prison to an ovation, found his power completely gone
at Verona, as at Vicenza. He visited other places, where he had been almost
worshipped, and was, at best, neglected. It was now that Buoncompagno derided his miracles; and, in the same strain, at Florence he was refused
admittance into the city, lest he should overcrowed it by raising all the dead. From the stage, that he had for a moment so
brilliantly occupied, Fra Giovanni disappears yet more suddenly than he had
arisen; and if his name once again recurs, as will be seen, the apparition was
no resuscitation.
The peace, established in north-eastern Italy, as had
been hoped, to perpetuity, scarcely outlived the influence of the pacificator.
The offspring of impulse, it fell before a more habitual impulse; and, ere the
end of the year, feuds and broils were rife as ever throughout the country.
Amidst these, their internal hostilities, the Lombards, highly favoured as they
were by the Pope’s sentence, still murmured and objected, refusing to comply
with its requisitions. Their obstinacy irritating Gregory, the Emperor’s hope
grew strong that, in the end, his own views in regard to them would be adopted;
a hope invigorated by some incidents of the following year, 1234. Frederic was
well aware that amongst the aged Pope’s causes of dissatisfaction with him,
next, perhaps, to the gaiety and somewhat Oriental character of his court,
which, since Yolanthe’s death may, perhaps, have been objectionably enhanced,
ranked the publication of his Code. But being also aw are that ever since its
appearance the Pope had been preparing to give him battle upon this ground,
with equal arms, he had never anticipated serious consequences from that
offence. The papal chaplain Peñaforte had now
completed his task; and Frederic flattered himself that the pontifical displeasure
would be forgotten, when, in the year 1234, the antidote to the Sicilian Code
appeared in the form of the new Decretals. The publication was justified by a proemium which stated, as one reason for thus superseding
the former collection, that the said former collection contained contradictions.
A reason that might seem inconsistent with the papal claim to infallibility,
but for the recollection that, for the Pope in Council only, does the Roman
Church advance this claim. Considering the publication of the rival code, as
the blow Gregory meant to deal in the matter, Frederic, who saw the pontiff
devoting his attention to concerns unconnected with the Empire or the Sicilies,
hoped that this cause of dissatisfaction was sinking into oblivion, and no new
incentive to dissension likely to arise between them. Concerns appertaining
solely to the Head of the Church, such as the canonization of Dominic de
Guzman—St. Francis had been canonized some three or four years earlier—and of
Elizabeth of Hungary, and the contest with heresy, seemed to engross Gregory.
Of this Pope’s views upon the latter subject something
has been seen; but it will still be proper to turn a few years back, reverting
for a moment to the south of France. The detailed narrative, which the origin
and early conduct of the Crusade against the Albigenses—from their involvement
with such a Pope as Innocent III, and their bearing upon his theory of the
papacy—required, being no longer necessary, Gregory’s less refined schemes for
the conversion of heretics may be more succinctly despatched.
The Crusade had not succeeded in clearing Languedoc
and Provence of heresy, or of those republican tendencies, which, yet more
repugnant to kings and princes, seem to be the almost habitual concomitants of
dissent from an established creed. The measures designed to effect this object,
were therefore rendered more and more stringent. Innocent, although he had been
misled into promulgating a Crusade against the Albigenses, had, in his Lateran
Council, decreed that every possible facility for defence before the appointed
tribunal, must be afforded to persons accused of heresy—a law never abrogated,
but easily evaded. Honorius III, in order to stimulate the zeal of the orthodox
against heretics, ordered the property, forfeited by their conviction, to be
divided between the tribunal that tried the misbelievers, the informers, and
witnesses against them, and the community in which they had been apprehended.
But Gregory IX was the Pope who stamped upon these more and more inquisitorial
proceedings the fearful character of the Tribunal of the Holy Inquisition, in
which they, before long, eventuated. The Synod that, under his auspices, sat at
Toulouse, A.D. 1229, first authorized the use of torture for extorting
confession, and the admission, against suspected heretics, of testimony
rejected by ordinary tribunals as undeserving credit, with concealment of
witnesses’ names; and forbade physicians to afford suspected heretics their
help, under any circumstances. Finally, this Synod interdicted the reading of
the Bible to the laity. To superintend the execution of these tyrannical
measures, Gregory uniformly made the business of the Dominicans, in whom his
confidence was unbounded, and who was trained for converting heretics, he
deemed the best adapted for inquiries into heresy; the influence of these harsh
laws upon the mind of those charged with their execution, has been apparent in
their exaggeration by Magister Conrad. But remotely only can even Gregory be
called the founder of the Inquisition, since the idea of a regularly organized
tribunal of universal inquisition, does not appear to have occurred to him.
This Synod of Toulouse, it also was, that made the
non-employment of Jews in any fiscal or magisterial office, an indispensable
condition of Raymond VII’s release from inherited excommunication, and
readmission into the pale of the Church ; as also into the undisputed
possession of his cruelly reduced principality. And glad might he have been had
this restriction been the whole price. But after his complete submission and
supposed complete reconciliation, he was further compelled to give his only
daughter to Lewis IX’s brother, Alfonse Comte de Poitou, so settling his
patrimony upon her and her husband, to the exclusion of any son he himself,
then a widower, might subsequently have; that, in default of issue of this
marriage, the King, as the natural heir of his own brother, should inherit the
whole. A treaty of marriage was, at this moment, actually pending, between
Raymond VII and Beatrice, youngest daughter of Raymond Berenger, Comte de
Provence. But lest a son, the fruit of this marriage, should dispute the right
of the Countess of Poitou to succeed to her father, or of the King to succeed
to her, Lewis asked, and of course obtained, the hand of Beatrice for another
of his brothers, Charles Comte d’Anjou. Thus if
heresy were not extirpated, the princes who had tolerated it, were. But Gregory
was less successful in his efforts to organize a new crusade against the still
unextinguished spirit of the Albigenses, though he offered the spiritual and
temporal guerdons, of absolution from all sins, and exemption from payment of
debts to Jews, during its continuance. There was now no principality to be
conquered with the heretics.
But Gregory’s intolerance had limits. If thus keen in
the prosecution of known heretics, in the persons of the Albigenses, he did not
sanction the proceedings of Magister Conrad against Germans merely suspected of
heterodox notions. Those really insane persecutions had excited universal
horror in Germany. The Archbishops of Mainz, Treves, and Cologne, so far
interfered to check the Inquisitor’s headlong course, that they admonished him
to adopt some rational means of ascertaining, whether accused persons were or
were not guilty. But in vain; Conrad changed not his practise. Equally in vain
did Dominicans remonstrate with him, upon the odium that his violence was
bringing upon the Order to which he was attached, as upon all investigation
touching religious opinions. He went his way unheeding. And now, a Diet held by
King Henry at Mainz took upon itself, with the approbation and concurrence of
the above-named three chief prelate-princes of the Empire, to examine into
these inquisitorial operations. There, before the assembled Princes of the
Empire, one of their number, Graf von Sayn, who has been named, as, only by a
mendacious confession of heresy, penances, and the sacrifice of his hair,
escaping death at the stake, presented himself in this degraded plight, stated
his case, one amongst many, averred his innocence of heresy, and declaimed,
with the vivid rhetoric of passion, against the crimes daily perpetrated in the
name of religion. His accusers, without making any attempt to substantiate
their accusations, slunk away, and the Earl was unanimously acquitted, as were
many other persons charged with heresy. The Bishop of Hildesheim was, moreover,
reprimanded for his precipitation in preaching a crusade against heretics.
The decrees of the Diet were immediately communicated
to the Pope, together with a report by the prelates, of the irrational method,
or rather absence, of investigation, in Magister Conrad’s proceedings, and a
prayer that his Holiness would be pleased to revoke the much-abused powers,
intrusted to that injudicious fanatic. Gregory, who, in his inexorable
severity, desired to be, and doubtless, believed himself, strictly just, at
once complied with this prayer. He despatched to Germany a bull revoking
Conrad’s powers; and, as though he had, upon this occasion first perceived,
both the danger of intrusting such power to fallible mortals, and the
inefficiency of such means for influencing opinion, he ordered another to be
prepared, enjoining leniency towards suspected heretics, and the use of
argument rather than violence to convince them that they were in error.
It is difficult to repress a regret, that the arrogant
as obstinately furious, persecutor, Conrad, lived not to know himself
condemned, by the only authority he acknowledged; but the very fate he had
provoked, spared him this well-deserved mortification. Regardless of the censures
of the Diet, and confident in the favourable event of the appeal to Rome, he
not only went on, burning or disgracing every individual accused of heresy, but
actually preached a crusade against the reproving Archbishops, as hypocritical
priests, or cowardly renegades. Amidst his atrocious triumphs, his presence was
required at Marburg; and, still confident of the Pope’s approbation, he set
out, with his escort of executioners, for that place. Upon his journey, he was
waylaid by the relations and vassals of those, whom he had given to the flames
for denying their heresy, with the noblemen, whom, like Graf von Sayn, he had
disgraced, accompanied by their relations and vassals. This exasperated band,
upon the 20th of July, 1233, attacked and slew him and his companions and, far
from repenting of the crimes, thus lawlessly punished, he died, it is to be
feared, in proud confidence of falling a martyr to religion.
So highly was this deed of vengeance approved throughout
Germany, that, in the next Diet, a proposal was seriously made, to complete it
by exhuming the dead Inquisitor, and burning his corpse as that of a heretic.
Happily, this extravagant mark of reprobation was negatived; and the reaction
of Conrad’s monomaniac bigotry upon compatriot ecclesiastical policy, was
purely beneficial. A law was now passed assuring to persons accused of entertaining
erroneous opinions upon questions of religion, a regular, legal trial: so that,
even to the absurd atrocity of this persecution, may Germany be mainly indebted
for her exemption from the Tribunal of the Holy Inquisition.
Very different was the effect upon Gregory. The
slaughter of a Priest, how criminally unclerical soever, the conduct provoking
the lawless deed, was a sacrilegious outrage, not to be overlooked or forgiven.
That the provocation had been great, he, indeed, tacitly acknowledged by not
insisting upon the avengers’ death at the stake, or even upon the scaffold; but
simply sentencing them to perform a tolerably severe penance. This was a
pedestrian pilgrimage to Jerusalem, barefoot and barebacked,
with ropes about their necks, and rods in their hands; which rods they were to
offer every priest they met, inviting him, whilst confessing their crime, to
scourge them. Unfortunately this expiatory pilgrimage, and the sudden stoppage
of the Landgravine’s canonization,—with which, prior to this burst of rage
against everything German, he was about gratifying Landgrave Conrad, the
Teutonic Knight,—were not the only effects, apparent in Gregory’s conduct, of
the lawless justice executed upon the persecutor, whom he himself condemned. It
at once, and permanently, overclouded the faint dawn,
of clemency in the heart, or of good sense in the head, of the aged pontiff.
Not only did he indignantly tear in pieces the bull, ordering the substitution
of argument for the flames, he likewise presently sanctioned a new crusade
against German heretics of a different description.
These pseudo-heretics,—they do not appear to have
dissented from any dogma of the Church of Rome, or to have objected to any
rite, or indeed, to anything except the payment of tithes—were a tribe of Frieselanders, named the Stedinger.
They inhabited some lowlands of the Westphalian sea-coast, between Bremen and
Oldenburg; recovered from the sea, and preserved from inundation, by dykes,
laboriously constructed and maintained. Amongst these Stedinger,
as amongst the Frieselanders in general, much of the
original liberty and moral equality of the German forests was retained;
feudalism, with its services, burthens, and distinctions of ranks, being scarcely
known. All were freeholders, living each upon his own land, paying no tithes,
and owning no superior but the Emperor, as head of the Empire. The Earls of
Oldenburg had long striven to reduce them to vassalage; the Archbishops of
Bremen had, as long, meditated their subjection to the usual church claims;
whilst they sturdily withstood every invasion of their hereditary rights and
exemptions. Amongst these freemen, a petty but revolting incident, about this
time, produced a sudden explosion of the antagonistic elements.
A priest of the district, offended at the very small
offering made at the altar, by a female communicant, put the piece of coin she
had presented into her mouth, instead of the consecrated wafer; and the
religious terror caused by her inability to swallow the supposed host, was
succeeded by a burst of rage, on the part of her friends as well as herself,
when the substitution was discovered. The whole tribe rose against the clergy.
And now these rude, but hitherto inoffensive people, were accused of worshipping
frogs and waxen idols, as of all the indecent absurdities, then habitually laid
to the charge of heretics and witches. Gregory believed the incredible
accusations, and commissioned the Archbishop of Bremen to preach a Crusade
against the Stedinger. The Duke of Brabant, the Earls
of Oldenburg, Holland, Guelders, Cleves, and Lippe, took the Cross, and at the
head of 40,000 men, invaded the province. The Stedinger defended themselves resolutely, but they were too few permanently to resist
such an army; and, after losing 4000 of their small number in battle, were
compelled to acknowledge the Earl of Oldenburg as their feudal Lord, and to pay
tithes to the Archbishop, or his clerical deputies. Those who still refused to
submit to such a change in their condition, fled southwards to the home of the
great body of Frieselanders, whose numbers enabled
them to maintain their old institutions.
In Italy, meanwhile, Frederic’s prospects were brightening.
The Pope, still dependent upon his vigorous support for keeping his ground at
Rome, when the paroxysm of fury, caused by the murder of Magister Conrad, had
subsided, resumed his previous spiritual avocations. The canonization of St.
Dominic being completed, the affairs of the Franciscans, then tenfold the
numbers of the Dominicans, engaged much of his time and thoughts. They had
elected, as the second Father-Guardian, or General of the Order, Elias of
Cortona, a very superior man, who cannot without some surprise be found
enrolled amongst them, and so approved by them, as to have been chosen their
Superior. The piety of Father Elias, though fervent, was free, seemingly, from
fanaticism; his mind was highly cultivated, and his manners were polished,
according to the notions of the age. He invited a German architect, named
Jacob, to Assisi, there to build the beautiful church dedicated to the sainted
founder of the Order; and, as might be anticipated, he endeavoured to introduce
learning, and some little refinement amongst the Minorites. As might also be
anticipated, the Order at large revolted against such an innovation upon, or
rather such a contradiction to, the very spirit of their Rule, and deposed
their too-gentlemanly Father-Guardian. He appealed to the Pope, and, what was
less to. be anticipated, the austere Gregory favoured the polished innovator,
reinstalling him in his office. Conjointly with the Emperor, the Pope was now
eagerly engaged in planning a new Crusade, to take place at the approaching end
of the truce with the Sultan of Egypt; and the Patriarchs of Jerusalem and
Antioch had been summoned to assist the deliberations with their local
knowledge. The discussion was abruptly terminated by the arrival from Germany,
in lieu of the reinforcements which—the Lombards having at length freed the
passes— were expected by the Pope and the Emperor, of tidings, grievous to
Frederic both as a father and as a sovereign.
Whether the paternal remonstrances at Aquileia made
any impression upon the young King, may be questioned; but if they did, it was
quickly effaced by a return to the exercise of authority, and to the dulcet
sounds of flattery. Henry, disappointed in his hopes from the princes, now
addressed himself to courting the cities; but in this effort he yet more
signally failed. The loyalty of the German cities, well satisfied with the
steady, if slow, progress they were making in wealth and civil liberty, under the
Swabian Emperors—determinately as the dynasty has been accused of hatred,
rather than chivalrous contempt, for the industrial classes—was not to be
shaken or seduced. This second failure was insufficient to damp Henry’s sanguine
hopes. The year immediately following his interview with his father, as if in
the very wantonness of defiance, he attacked Duke Otho of Bavaria; and persisted
in hostilities, despite the Emperor’s positive commands to make peace, despite
the interposition of the Archbishop of Salzburg to inforce,
or by mediation to facilitate, the execution of those commands. The disobedient
son, perhaps, laid “the flattering unction to his soul,” that his conduct was
justified by success; for, in the end, he compelled the Duke to submit to his
terms, giving his eldest son as a hostage.
Henry is supposed to have been completely intoxicated
by this triumph, coming upon his exasperation at the renewed attempt to place
an imperial check upon his follies. He has likewise been supposed really
apprehensive, from Frederic’s taking the six-year-old Conrad with him, when
invited to visit the Pope at Rieti, of a design to substitute this younger
brother for himself. Whichever were his motive, Henry, in 1234, put forth a
manifesto justifying his own actions; and convoked a Diet, from which he hoped
to obtain a sanction of his pretensions, to meet at Boppart upon the Rhine.
There, he boldly asserted that, as King of Germany, he was wholly independent
of the Emperor-King of Sicily, and employed arguments, prayers, bribes, and
threats, to induce the assembled Estates of the Empire to acknowledge and
support these asserted rights. But although there were present Guelph
partisans, always glad to weaken, by dividing, the sovereign authority, and
dissatisfied spirits, athirst for change, the young King’s unfilial revolt
appears to have shocked the moral sense of all. Even the Duke of Brunswick,
upon whom he had probably reckoned, as ready to join in any rebellion that
might help him to keep possession of the territories, claimed by the Emperor,
in right of Palsgrave Henry’s daughters, was too prudent to risk irritating his
antagonist and judge, by taking part in a rash and ill- organized insurrection.
Henry’s only ally, amongst the more powerful princes,
was his brother-in-law, the Duke of Austria, who—still withholding the portion
of his sister, Queen Margaret—was, in consequence, already on bad terms with
the Emperor whilst Henry would have forgiven the debt, in consideration of
active support upon the present occasion. But such support Frederic the
Combative was then little able to afford him. This valiant, talented, and
active prince might, perhaps, have proved a better ruler, had he not, at his
accession, when not yet twenty, been exasperated by an attempt to take
advantage of his youthful inexperience. His father, Leopold, having died at San
Germano, whilst mediating between the Pope and the Emperor, the Regent, to
whom, when obeying his Sovereign’s summons to Italy, he ’had committed the
government of his duchy, endeavoured, at his death, to seize the principality.
The rebel seems to have been very generally supported, some of the heir’s
faults having, probably, already become apparent. Duke Frederic quelled, but
never forgot or forgave the rebellion. His reign was characterized by tyranny,
violence, and licentiousness, that, keeping him constantly embroiled with his
vassals and his neighbours, deprived him of the influence his predecessors had
enjoyed in the Empire. He was thus entangled, at the moment when his royal
brother-in law called upon him for energetic assistance. His Duchess, a
daughter of Theodore Lascaris, not having brought him
a child in four years of marriage, he divorced her to wed a daughter of the
Duke of Meran. But the repudiated Duchess was sister to the Queen of Hungary;
and Bela IV naturally resented such treatment of his imperial sister-in-law. He
invaded Austria, and compelled the Duke to purchase peace by considerable
sacrifices; a humiliation, which the angry prince justly imputed to the
lukewarmness of his own vassals and people in his cause. How, indeed, could he
hope for glowing loyalty, he who, in addition to oppression and extortion, was
guilty of outrages upon female purity, such as seem proper only to the tyrants
of antiquity. One recorded instance of his style of love-making, when seduction
failed, must be given. His amorous solicitations being repulsed by the virtuous
and beautiful wife of a Vienna citizen, he apparently submitted to his defeat,
and desisted from the pursuit. Then, when her mistrust was completely lulled,
he gave a banquet to the citizens of Vienna—he affected preference of townsmen
over the nobility—to which she and her husband were, of course, invited with
the rest. And at this banquet, before the face of her husband and his fellow
citizens, she was, by his armed servants, dragged away to his chamber, whither
he followed her. An immediate insurrection was hardly prevented;—and shame to
Vienna that prevented it could be!
Thus, though the Duke of Austria declared for King
Henry, so very few princes or great nobles followed his example, that the royal
son really stood all but alone in his rebellion. The Margrave of Baden hurried
off to southern Italy, to acquaint the Emperor with the urgent necessity for
his presence in Germany, consequent upon his son’s revolt.
Henry’s next Diet was attended by scarce any prince or
noble of consequence, except the Bishops of Wurzburg and Worms; yet,
undismayed, he persevered in his criminal course. With the help of what may
best be termed his faction, he endeavoured to coerce the cities into neutrality
at least, by forcing them to give him hostages. He successfully invaded the
margraviate of Baden, and punished the Margrave’s fidelity to his liege Lord
and benefactor, by transferring part of his dominions to the Guelph family of
Urach. But, whatever he professed, he now felt that he was disappointed of
support, in the kingdom he claimed as exclusively his own; and sought, what
may, relatively, be termed, foreign succours, in the alliance of those, whom he
himself must have esteemed rebels. In the winter of this same year, 1234, he
proposed to Milan a treaty, offensive and defensive, between himself and the
Lombard League.
As to the negotiators, German historians differ; but
whether the mission were undertaken by the Duke of Austria, or intrusted to
Marshal Anselm von Justingen and a Canon of the
Wurzburg Chapter upon the 17th of December, Henry’s proposals were laid before
the Milanese authorities; and the very next day, the 18th, a convention between
the young King and the Lombard League was signed. By this instrument, the
League acknowledged Henry as King of Italy, promising him the iron crown, and
binding itself, within the territories of the members, to assert and defend his
rights; also, to obstruct the passage of the Emperor with an army. Henry, on
the other part, recognised the Lombard League in its fullest extension and
development, renounced most of the few imperial rights reserved by the Peace of
Constance, declared the enemies of the League, i.e., the Ghibeline
cities and nobles, his enemies, and bound himself neither to conclude a
separate peace, nor to demand from the members of the League, new taxes,
troops, hostages, or pledges of any kind:—thus recklessly sacrificing his own
future rights, to further his present criminal purpose. The reciprocal oaths to
the observance of these terms were to be repeated at the end of ten years,
should Henry not have become Emperor within the time. The members of the League
whose names appear to this document are, Milan with her Podestà, Manfredi di Cortenuova, Brescia, Lodi, Bologna, Novara, and the
Marquess of Montferrat; whence may be inferred that deputies from these parties
being present at Milan, took upon themselves to bind their constituents to
renew a war, so recently terminated by the decision of the supreme Pontiff,
without waiting to consult them. The other members, seemingly, acknowledged
themselves bound by their colleagues’ act, with the single exception of one
city. Faenza rejected the treaty as iniquitous.
Henry, when informed of the satisfactory result of
this negotiation, sent an embassy to the Pope, commissioned to make his
alliance with the Lombard League known to his Holiness, and invite him to join
the coalition. Gregory, whatever his inclination, would neither sanction a
son’s unnatural rebellion, nor, at that time, quarrel with his imperial
protector. He indignantly repelled the invitation, and, upon the 13th of March,
1235, addressed an epistle to the Princes and Prelates of Germany, in which,
after eulogizing the Emperor, and declaring that the most perfect union reigned
between that monarch and himself, he expresses horror of Henry’s unfilial
conduct, exhorts them, instead of assisting him in the infamous attempt, to
which their blameable indulgence had too much encouraged him, to lead him back
into the right path; and finally, reprobating all confederacies against the
Emperor, pronounces all oaths, binding such confederacies, null and void. He
soon afterwards addressed a separate letter to the Bishops of Wurzburg and
Augsburg, and the Abbot of Fulda, reproving them for having abetted the
sinfully ambitious views of King Henry, and commanding them, unless he
instantaneously renounced his flagitious designs, to excommunicate him,
publishing the sentence throughout Germany. Such letters he could not have
ventured to write, had Henry had the means of branding him with any sort of
complicity in the acts he thus stigmatized.
The loyalty of the Princes of the Empire was
confirmed, by the proof these papal acts afforded, that no such disunion, as
could favour Henryks scheme, then existed between the Pope and the Emperor.
Hence, when, early in the spring of 1235, the King besieged Worms, in
resentment of its obstinate resistance to his seductions, the only prince who
joined him was he who had an individual interest in this operation, namely the
Bishop of Worms, expelled, as a partisan of Henry’s, by the citizens. The city
did not upon this occasion derogate from its ancient reputation of
stout-hearted loyalty; and during its resolute defence, came tidings that the
Emperor was on his road to Germany. But Henry relied upon his Lombard confederates
for impeding, if not actually preventing, his father’s progress; and only urged
on the siege the more eagerly.
The son’s hopes might have been in some measure
realized, had the father attempted to lead an Italian army across the Alps. But
to Frederic, making his way through hostile obstacles was no novelty. He knew
his own immediate presence to be the one thing needful; and, confident in his
influence for at once raising a German army, amply sufficient to crush this rebellion,
hurried forward, with little more escort, than when he first sought his
paternal kingdom; as then, eluding opposition by speed and skill. As then, he
traversed the territories of his Lombard enemies before they were aware of his
approach; and, also as then, was met on the northern side of the Alps by a
loyal as warlike Abbot of St. Gall. He was next received by the Duke of
Bavaria, as zealous, and more powerful; whose fidelity he rewarded and
stimulated, by affiancing his second son, Conrad, now not improbably his heir,
to Otho’s little daughter Elizabeth. Thus, already guarded by faithful German
warriors, he reached Ratisbon; whither princes and prelates, as they heard of
his coming, had hastened to meet him.
The Diet, thus assembled, pronounced the revolted son
a rebel and traitor, deposing him from the regal station, to which, in his
infancy, he had been elected; and the members justified the Emperor’s reliance
upon them, by instantly summoning their vassals in arms, to assist in putting
their sentence in execution. At the head of the army, thus promptly raised,
Frederic besieged his son’s strong castles; whilst his trusty friend, Hermann
von Salza, visiting the rebel, persuasively urged him to throw himself upon the
mercy of his offended, but ever indulgent, father. This was no difficult task,
Henry appearing to have been as abjectly depressed by the vicinity of danger,
as he had been childishly presumptuous whilst it was distant. He was easily
induced to raise the siege of Worms, and commission the Teutonic Grand-Master
to sue for his imperial parent’s pardon. Frederic II being evidently a kind
father, the pardon was granted as soon as solicited, upon condition of the
guilty son’s pledging himself to renounce his treasonable designs, and, as
security for his observance of his plighted word, surrendering all his castles,
whether besieged or not.
Henry unhesitatingly promised whatever his father
required; but endeavoured in every way to elude the fulfilment of his
engagements, making various excuses and difficulties, to delay, at least, the
surrender of his strongholds. He is said to have understood the pardon granted
him as implying his reinstatement in the dignity he had misused; and such very
probably was the Emperor’s ultimate purpose. But, that any such promise, as
Henry chose to understand, could, even by implication, be then made, was
absolutely impossible. The blindest of doting parents could hardly, at once,
have again confided power to a son, who had proved himself so unfit for the
trust; again relied upon the oath of one so recently perjured, without some
little preliminary trial of his professed reformation; and even had the father
been thus weak, the concurrence of a Diet would have been indispensable to
re-elect a King that very moment legally deposed. But Henry, provoked by the
disappointment of his irrational hopes, resumed, almost on the instant, the
treasonable designs that, not in repentance but in cowardice, he had, for the
second time, by a solemn oath renounced. He positively refused to surrender his
strongest fortress, Trifels—the prison of Richard
Coeur de Lion, when transferred from a ducal to an imperial jailer. He now
refused to hear argument or entreaty from the previously successful negotiator,
the GrandMaster; and was erelong accused of
attempting to poison his father. Frederic’s indulgence was now exhausted, and
he imprisoned the suspected parricide. Publicly tried Henry was not: judicial
proceedings were not then deemed as indispensable, as in more enlightened days,
to the administration of justice; and no one, probably, dreamed of the
Emperor’s voluntarily exposing his family sorrows by such a course. When he
himself was convinced of his first-born son’s guilt, he committed him to the
custody of the Duke of Bavaria, who confined him in the strong Palatinate
Castle of Heidelberg. At a subsequent period Henry was sent to an Apulian
prison, accompanied, at her own request, by his wife, Margaret of Austria, and
their two infant sons; and again the family was moved from prison to prison, in
that part of Frederic’s dominions; for what reason is not explained.
The enemies of Frederic II charge him with this
severity towards his eldest son upon his repentant submission, imputing the
unfatherly conduct to his desire of substituting his darling second son, to the
less beloved eldest. But the epistles of Gregory IX prove beyond all question
that the Emperor pardoned Henry upon his submission; and only when convinced,
by his relapse into rebellion and attempted parricide—from which accusation he
seems not to have cleared himself—of his incorrigibility, thus harshly punished
him:—if the imprisonment were intended for more than seclusion from temptation
to new crimes. The Margrave of Baden was of course immediately replaced in
possession of the territories of which Henry had despoiled him.
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