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BOOK IV.
CHAPTER VIII.
FREDERIC II. [1235—1237.
Affairs of Italy—Gregory with the Romans—with the
Lombards—Frederick's third Marriage—Legislation in Germany —The Huke of
Austria—St. Elizabeth—Election of Conrad.
Whilst the Emperor was suppressing rebellion in
Germany, the Pope was similarly engaged in the dominions of the Church. King
Henry’s criminal ambition had, temporarily, deprived the Holy Father of the personal
support of his official Protector, and disappointed him of the reinforcements,
upon which both he and Frederic had relied, for quickly reducing the insurgents
to obedience; but not deprived the pontiff of the warriors, whom the Warden of
his See had previously brought to his aid. With these, to back his own
indomitable resolution in wielding the thunders of the Church, he at length
achieved the task left incomplete by Frederic. His first success was dissolving
the association, formed, in imitation of the Lombard League, by several towns
in the Papal territories; and this was a heavy blow to the Romans. They had
originally looked to the cooperation of these confederates, for enabling them
to compel, not only the revocation of the interdict, under which the Eternal
City lay during the expulsion of the Pope, but perhaps the return of the Pope,
to officiate as supreme pontiff in the rites of the Church, without pretending
to the restoration of his temporal authority. And this was their real object; the
same pride, that for ever urged them . to revolt against the domination of a
priest, finding its gratification, in beholding the acknowledged spiritual Head
of Christendom, officiate as their chief priest or Bishop. Disappointed both of
this hoped for cooperation, and, by the sudden extinction of Henry’s revolt, of
the Emperor’s supposed perdurable engrossment with the affairs of Germany,
Roman resolution flagged under the continuous privation of the gorgeously
imposing rites of their Church. The mutineers submitted to pay the price, at
which alone they found the pompous ceremonies, that had taken the place of the
sanguinary pleasures of the amphitheatre, recoverable. They invited Gregory to
return to his basilica, his metropolitan palace, and the exercise as well of
his sovereign authority as of his pontifical functions. He gladly accepted the
invitation ; and thus a reconciliation took place betwixt himself and his
subjects, during the brief period of Henry’s apparent reconciliation with his
father, to wit, in May, 1235.
The members of the Lombard League had made no effort
to support Henry’s rebellion, though they demonstrated their complicity, by
plundering all imperial messengers who crossed their territories, especially
seizing any presents they might be carrying from the Emperor to the Pope and
his other friends in Italy. The use they attempted to make of the diversion
wrought in their favour, by their royal ally’s operations, was to subjugate
Ghibeline cities; but not even for this interest of their own, did they so
concentrate their exertions as to insure success; which the usual disunion
amongst themselves presently frustrated. So completely was the marvellous
influence of Fra Giovanni’s preaching now obliterated, that, despite the common
object to be attained by the combination of their energies with Henry’s,
hostilities were rife as ever, in northern as in central Italy. Not only was
Verona in arms against Mantua, Cremona against Brescia, Ravenna against Cesena,
Bologna against Modena, Forli against Faenza, Florence against Sienna, &c.;
but all these feuds, collective and several, in addition to the general war of
the League against Ghibeline neighbours, could not glut the appetite of the
Guelph cities of Italy for war. Civil war, yet more internal, reigned within
the walls of many. As the towns prospered, and the trading class of their
denizens grew rich, the democratic element gained strength, and democratic
ambition increased. The compromise mediated by Honorius III, between the
original noble monopolists of municipal offices, and the non-noble candidates
for magistracy, to which the former had so reluctantly submitted, no longer
satisfied the latter. The erst excluded now claimed the monopoly in their turn;
and in many places, riots ripened into civil war. At the time of King Henry’s
rebellion, Piacenza was the chief seat of this civic contest; nobility and
commonalty there virulently persecuting, and alternately banishing each other. At
Venice and Ravenna the intestine broils were rather between the clergy and the
laity; and where this last feud was envenomed by the prevalence of heresy, it
assumed a yet more sanguinary character; as at Mantua, where the Bishop was
murdered, and twenty stabs were counted upon his dead body.
Gregory, though highly offended at the conduct of the
Lombards, in thus nullifying a Pope’s mediatory labours, resumed, and strove to
render them more efficacious towards his great object. He had sent the
Patriarch of Antioch to Lombardy, to remonstrate with the members of the League
upon the guilt of violating solemn engagements, as they had done, by their
alliance with King Henry, as they were even then doing, by their internal
hostilities; a sin the more heinous, because impeding the defence of the Holy
Land against misbelievers. Further, in July, when the respective rebellions of
King Henry, and of the Romans were absolutely over, he solemnly admonished the
Emperor and the German Princes, for the sake of Christendom, and more
peculiarly of the Holy Land, to lay aside all dissensions, as well amongst
themselves, as with other Christian powers, and devote themselves to organizing
a Crusade. Frederic, on his part, professed his willingness again to refer the
affairs of Lombardy to papal arbitration, provided his Holiness would, preliminarily,
require the Lombards to pay 10,000 marks as compensation for the expense of the
late civil war, waged or stimulated by them; and bind themselves to declare, by
Christmas, their submission to, or dissent from, his sentence; thus precluding
the endless delay and uncertainty caused by their evasions and equivocations;
and provided, further, he would pledge himself, should they again prove
contumacious, to visit their contumacy with excommunication. As the bearer of
this answer to the Pope’s admonition, he sent Pietro delle Vigne to Rome.
Frederic could at this moment hardly be supposed much
inclined individually to embark in a distant enterprise, of uncertain duration,
though very willing to organize a Crusade. Besides having business, of various
kinds, on hand in Germany, he had just celebrated a long-projected third
marriage, with a princess who appears to have early acquired a stronger hold
upon his affections, than either of her predecessors. He had been a widower
since Conrad’s birth, was barely forty years of age, and had, whilst remaining
in Italy, in reliance upon his son’s plighted word for future good conduct,
consulted the Pope respecting a new matrimonial connexion. The Holy Father
naturally approved of a measure promising moral improvement in the Imperial
Court; and named the English Princess Isabella, sister to Henry III, as a
suitable consort. Before a step had been taken in the business, or even the
imperial widower’s own mind, apparently, made up as to his choice, the
likelihood of such an union was noised abroad, alarming the King of France as
to the possible consequences, of so intimate an alliance between the Emperor
and the King of England, his immediate eastern and western neighbours. He
endeavoured to prevent the nuptials that he dreaded, by causing Hungarian and
Bohemian princesses to be proposed to Frederic, with larger portions—which he
would supply—than the always embarrassed Henry III could, probably, give his
sister. But Gregory’s recommendation prevailed, contingently however, upon
Isabella’s personal qualifications proving such as the Emperor’s fastidious
taste required in his wife—a condition somewhat, if slightly, corroborating the
idea that his illicit attachments were confined to his intervals of celibacy,
that he proposed, as a husband, to lead a correct life. In November, 1234,
whilst his faithless son was planning his overthrow, the prospective wooer had
despatched Pietro delle Vigne, at the head of a
dignified embassy to England, to look at the proposed bride, judge of her
beauty, manners, and general character, and open the negotiation or not,
according to their decision upon these important points. In February, 1235, the embassadors reached London, where they were presented
to Isabella; and, delighted with her charms of person and queenly deportment,
unhesitatingly asked her hand for their master. It was naturally accorded; and
they hailed her as Empress, placing the ring of betrothal upon her finger.
Pietro then, in concert with the Council of the English King, settled the
marriage contract; 30,000 marks were agreed upon as the portion of the
Princess, with a penalty of 10,000 more in case of any delay in the payment;
adequate domains in Sicily were in return assigned her as her dower, with a
stipulation that she should, in widowhood, have the option of residing upon
them, or receiving back her portion, with which to return home.
When the diplomatists reported the satisfactory
discharge of their mission to the Emperor, they found him painfully occupied
with his son’s rebellion. But this, if matter of grief, was none of difficulty
or embarrassment, and did not prevent his sending a more splendid embassy,
headed by the Archbishop of Cologne and the Duke of Brabant, to escort the
future Empress to Germany. The new embassadors, upon
their arrival at the English Court, appear to have been yet more impressed by
the absurdly extravagant magnificence of the outfit of the affianced princess,
than their predecessors had been by her beauty. The vanity of Henry III was
flattered by the imperial alliance, and, in order to show himself worthy of
such a brother-inlaw, he lavished upon his sister
jewels and plate, under which last denomination were included numerous kitchen
utensils, usually formed of humbler materials, the money wrung from his
subjects for national purposes.
About the middle of May, Isabella landed at the mouth
of the Rhine, and journeyed in much state as far as Cologne. For, in addition
to the brilliant train, English and German, that had attended her from her
brother’s Court, a rumour that the French monarch designed, by the abduction of
the bride, still to prevent the completion of the marriage, had induced
Frederic to send a considerable body of troops as her guard. Upon her progress,
her beauty and gracious demeanour appear to have won her the hearts of her
future subjects; but amidst these triumphs, Isabella was detained at Cologne,
in the irksomely awkward position, of a bride awaiting an apparently cool
bridegroom, whom she has sought. Frederic would not cloud his nuptial
festivities with the deep gloom of his son’s guilt and condemnation; and
Henry’s relapse into rebellion was nearly simultaneous with the landing of the
English Princess. Hence, it was not till the month of July that he invited her
to join him at Worms.
Thither she was then conducted, with the pomp suited
to the occasion; and there, on the 20th of July, 1235, in the presence of four
kings, eleven dukes, thirty margraves and earls, and as many archbishops and
bishops, the marriage rites were solemnized. The festivities, by which the
celebration was accompanied, lasted four days, and are said, to have been
unprecedented in magnificence, save by Frederic Barbarossa’s Mainz Diet, A.D.
1184. It is upon this occasion that Frederic, the patron and lover of the arts,
is averred to have dissuaded the princes from lavishing their wealth upon mimes
and actors. The drama, it will be recollected, being as yet hardly in its
infancy, the mimes and histrions were probably mere buffoons, and the
discountenancing them, evidence of refinement beyond his age, in Frederic.
The Emperor was charmed with his new partner, and
dismissed her English escort with splendid presents for themselves, with others
more splendid for his royal brotherin-law. He then
arranged his Empress’s court and household, with stately elegance, and,
according to his enemies, in the Oriental or Byzantine style, which it will be
recollected was regularly that of the Sicilian monarchy; and though he surely
did not shut his English wife up in a harem, if Leo’s opinion of the retired
habits of German ladies be correct, the life of the Empress might be more
secluded than that of a Queen of England or of France. But everything
approaching to luxury, rude as such luxury may seem to the nineteenth century,
was censured by yet ruder contemporaries, as effeminate innovation, and, on
account of the superior luxury of the East, was held indicative of
Mohammedanism, or Atheism, which seem to have been thought nearly synonymous.
Within a month after his wedding, the Emperor held a
Diet at Mainz; the most important for the business there transacted, and the
most magnificent in the number and dignity of its members, of any that had sat
since that memorable Mainz Diet of Frederic I. It was attended by all those of
the wedding guests who were entitled to votes; and these are said to have
amounted to eighty princes, spiritual and temporal, and 1200 nobles; all
Germans, comprehending under that designation, the Netherlands, Lorrain,
Franche Comte, then the Frei Grafschaft of
Burgundy, Switzerland, Savoy, and probably the Arelat,
in other words the remaining dislocated provinces of the old kingdom of
Burgundy.
The first business transacted at this Diet was the
formal deposing of King Henry from the duchy of Swabia, as from his regal
dignity, and the solemn release from all the oaths of allegiance that had been
taken to him; though whether this were the first, original deposal, the
rendering a temporary act final, or only the legal ratification of the somewhat
irregular act, of a less full and less formally convoked Diet, is not clear.
The substitution of Conrad for his elder brother, was not proposed, whether, still
to leave an opening for Henry’s restoration to his birthright, if he should
subsequently deserve such favour, or because the Emperor had painfully learned
to dread placing so much present power in the hands of his heir, has been
doubted. But the substitution, though not at this moment, took place too early
to render either motive probable, suggesting instead, that the father had not
yet made up his mind so severely to punish his eldest son. The duchy of Swabia
appears, upon this occasion, to have been annexed to the crown, and some ducal
cities made immediate, or Free Imperial cities.
The next business was the final settlement of the Welf
heritage. Otho had by his judicious conduct during the whole of Henry’s
rebellious movements, both preparatory and ultimate, so recommended himself to
the Emperor, that the King of Bohemia, the Margrave of Brandenburg, the
Landgrave of Thuringia, and the Patriarch of Aquileia, were authorized to
pronounce between the conflicting claims, of the nephew and of the daughters of
the Rhine-Palsgrave. The arbitrators laid their verdict before this Diet,
which, with the Emperor’s concurrence, adopting it, decreed, that the Emperor
should relinquish his purchased claim to any Welf allodial property, in
consideration of Otho’s renouncing all pretension to the duchies and other
fiefs, forfeited by his grandfather, Henry the Lion—the family had never yet
legally done this—and surrendering the whole allodial property, whether
contested or not, to the Emperor, to be received back in vassalage. The whole,
so surrendered, was, by the Emperor and the Diet, constituted the duchy of
Brunswick Lüneburg, heritable in both male and female line, and as such granted
to Otho—Frederic I had merely created a Duke, a duchy he then could not. In
return, Otho was required further, to renounce all pretensions to jurisdiction
over the bishopric of Hildesheim, and to accept the compromise relative to the
county of Stade, ordered by the Diet between him and the Archbishop of Bremen.
Personally, Frederic, who rather enlarged than sought to contract the cessions
to Otho, derived no advantage whatever from this arrangement; and the only
benefits to the crown were, lessening the independence of a possessor of
extensive allodial property, by its transmutation into a fief, and precluding
the Welf family, by their own act, from reviving any claim to the forfeited
duchies of Saxony and Bavaria.
These were transactions of great importance to the existing
generation; but Frederic intended this Diet to confer a more lasting benefit
upon Germany, by rendering to that country, as far as the great difference of
circumstances might admit, the same service that he had recently rendered to
his southern realms; namely, regulating, improving, and fixing, both the rights
of the several classes of the German nation, and the laws under which they
lived. He did not propose to introduce a complete code, or to attempt, by
depriving the more than half independent great vassals of those regal
privileges which made them rival princes, to reduce them to the condition of
opulent and powerful noblemen, as he had done in the Sicilies.
To have even suggested such reforms would have been to
sacrifice the possible good by aiming at the impossible. Circumstances, as has
been seen, had, since the early death of Henry VI, so favoured the ambition of
the German princes, that they already held by prescription, a very decided
degree of territorial sovereignty; in which, all, and above all the
prelate-princes, were passionately supported by Rome. Extraordinary indeed must
the concurrence of propitious circumstances have been, that could have enabled
the most judicious, energetic, and potent Emperor, to deprive them of this
sovereignty, again subjecting them to the regular control of monarchial authority. And energetic as Frederic II
undoubtedly was, wise, and statesmanlike as were his views, far different was
his position, with such a pontiff as Gregory IX in St. Peter’s Chair, and
weakened rather than strengthened by his maternal heritage, as long as the
independent, ever hostile, Lombards, so inconveniently separated his southern
from his northern dominions.
The chief objects of the laws which Frederic laid
before the Diet were the repression of private warfare, by the substitution of
judicial proceedings to arms; the repression of usurpation and encroachment, by
the regulation of conflicting rights and claims; the restriction and regulation
of those independent jurisdictions, lay and ecclesiastical, which could not be
suppressed the protection of church property against the encroachments of the
hereditary noble Stewards of sees and cloisters; and restrictions upon the use
of the ban of the Empire, together with the enhancement of its efficiency when
legally denounced.
To effect the first of these objects, immediate
recourse to arms, except for actual, evidently indispensable, selfdefence, was positively interdicted. In all cases of
dispute or of injury, redress was ordered to be sought from the established
legal tribunals, under pain of forfeiture of all claims, otherwise, i.e. by arms, asserted, together with twofold damages for any mischief consequent
upon hostilities thus lawlessly begun. Only a failure to obtain justice from
the proper tribunal, after due application, could thenceforward justify
recourse to arms; and in such case, hostilities were to be preceded by a
declaration of war, with certain specified forms and delays. To a wanton breach
of the realm’s peace (the Landfriede) or the
violation of these rules, divers gradations of penalty, varying according to
circumstances, from fine and the public carrying of a dog, to the loss of a
hand, the ban of the Empire, and, where homicide ensued, forfeiture of life and
honour, were annexed. For the administration of the laws connected with this
subject, and adjudication between princes, a new tribunal was instituted,
presided by an Aulic Judge, who, save in case of misconduct, was to hold his
office for the space of a year, during which he was to sit every day, Sundays
and holidays excepted, ready to investigate and decide upon all complaints and
other questions brought before him. His authority was to be absolute, his
sentence final, in all matters, save such as should affect the Princes of the
Empire or great vassals, in life, limb, prerogative, or fief; in which cases a
right of appeal to the supreme tribunal of the Emperor, presided by himself,
was reserved to the parties. To this new Aulic Judge a secretary was assigned,
whose duty was accurately to record the proceedings of his Court; and this
secretary was to be a layman, in order that he might be answerable for his
conduct with his life. The first provision of the kind perhaps; and if so, this
tribunal offers the germ as well of ministerial responsibility, as of the Aulic
Council of Vienna, long so influential for good and for evil in the affairs of
the Empire.
The great importance to the progress of civilization
of the object so generally, and long so unsuccessfully pursued by sovereigns,
as the substitution of judicial proceedings for warfare between neighbours,
required some detail respecting the laws passed for effecting it. The rest of
the legislation of the Emperor and Diet, the views and tone of the legislator
having been shown in his Sicilian Code, where he was less fettered, may be more
concisely dealt with. The only step taken towards the abolition of the
inconvenient as numerous private jurisdictions, was, that any neglect by a
noble in the regular holding his court of justice, as also the pronouncing of
an unjust sentence, was henceforward to incur a fine; and repetition of the
offence, forfeiture of the jurisdiction. The imposition of new tolls, or the
exorbitant raising of such as were legally imposed, the establishment of
unlawful mints, the dilapidation, or neglect to repair roads, bridges, and the
like, were strictly prohibited; some, as usurpations of rights of sovereignty,
others, as wrongs to the inferior classes. The chartered rights of cities,
including that to some degree of selfgovernment,
were formally recognised and ratified; but their encroachments upon the rights
and lands of their noble or ecclesiastical neighbours, particularly their enfranchisement
of villains, by making citizens of them against the will of their Lords, were
checked; and the forming of confederations, without the express permission of
the Emperor, was explicitly forbidden—Frederic very naturally dreading the rise
in Germany of anything analogous to the Lombard League. Many of the laws of the
Sicilian Code, indeed all that the Estates of the Empire were likely to admit,
were introduced here, as those for the prevention of wrecking, for the
restriction of the suzerain’s control over the marriage of vassals, to the case
of an heiress wedding an alien, for the securing the property of dying
foreigners to their natural heirs, with some few others of the same
description. Laws published by Provincial Diets for substituting the
examination of witnesses to trial by wager of battle, or other ordeal, were
adopted as general laws of the Empire. Severe punishments were denounced
against all kinds of robbers, and likewise against receivers of stolen goods.
That valuable though still contemned class, the peasantry, was especially
protected against plunder; even in the prosecution of hostilities, any injury
to a husbandman was peremptorily forbidden. Severity, here as in Sicily, was
the character of the punishments; though here likewise rather by retaining old
sanguinary dooms than by adding new; and again, here likewise, no respect for
social position was suffered to interfere with their infliction. For instance,
a great and powerful noble, the Graf von Pfirz, was
compelled to carry a dog, publicly, a distance of two miles, for robbing the
Bishop of Basle, and imprisoning him to extort a ransom. The only law of
objectionable severity, was one, which the absolute necessity of conciliating
Gregory IX, appears to have extorted from Frederic; viz. one dooming convicted
heretics to the stake—the usual punishment, indeed, of heresy, as of some other
offences.
All these various laws were submitted to the Diet;
they were fully approved, and being enacted by the Estates of the Empire, are
generally believed to have been written and promulgated in the German language;
the first occasion of its being so honoured. The previous custom had been to
write all laws, all decrees of every Diet in Latin, translating them, verbally,
that they might be intelligible, to many of those who enacted, and nearly the
whole of those who were to obey them. The novelty was welcome to the nation,
and obedience was generally and gladly sworn to laws every one understood. The
innovation did not prove permanent; Latin again superseding the mother tongue
in legislation—and indeed critical investigation has induced a suspicion that
even now it was not excluded, the fact being that these laws, like the Sicilian
Code, were published in two languages simultaneously. Yet even so, this may be
considered as the authoritative installation of the national language.
Frederic’s cultivation of Italian, or as it was then called, Sicilian, is not
therefore to be ascribed solely to its sweetness or the associations of his
childhood; he had probably noted the advantage of cultivating the mother
tongue, in the Romance-speaking Arelat, and wished
his Sicilian and German subjects to enjoy the same advantage.
The Emperor seems upon this occasion—but as his own
separate work, in which the Diet had no concern—to have made a reform of the
German coin as complete, in one respect, as that of the Sicilian; to wit, in
its intrinsic value. No especial beauty of any new die is mentioned.
The labours of the Diet were closed by a solemn thanksgiving
for the suppression of the late rebellion, and the pacification of nearly all
dissensions amongst the Princes of the Empire. This happy event was celebrated
by a tournament, at which, in addition to the chivalrous contests, the German
Poets of the day attended, to joust in song. If Frederic did not take part in
these poetic combats, as he habitually did in those of which the weapons were
the softer, and to him more familiar, syllables of the South, he listened
attentively to the lays of the champions; encouraged, criticized, and bestowed
prizes; all in proof of his wish to exalt the vernacular tongue in Germany as
in Italy.
The Emperor now seems to have taken his bride upon one
of the usual imperial progresses through the realm. At Haguenau, in Alsace,
said to have been his favourite German home, they were met by Raymond Berenger,
Comte de Provence, and Raymond VII, Comte de Toulouse, who attended to do
homage, the first for his whole county, the second for the marquisate that he
held in Provence. But Raymond Berenger is averred to have had a second object
in his visit to the court of his suzerain. At the age of fifty he had not yet
been knighted, hindered by a traditional superstitious belief, that, in his
family, this ceremony was speedily followed by death. But two of his daughters
were married to Kings, namely, Margaret to Lewis IX of France, and Elinor to
Henry III of England; and those monarchs conceived the want of the dignity of
knighthood in their father-in-law, degrading to themselves. To please his royal
sons-in-law, therefore, the Earl now asked and received knighthood from the
hand of his Imperial liege Lord; who conferring it in the fulness of his power
and magnificence, little dreamt of the evils impending over his posterity from
a younger daughter of his honoured vassal. Nor did he, probably, to the end of
his life; although Raymond Berenger himself gave him erelong the measure of
his respect for the new tie—universally held almost filial—binding him to his
suzerain. Another part of the business of this progress, seemingly less suited
to what would now be called a wedding excursion, was the reformation of the
Abbey of Lorsch. This was one of the amply endowed, princely cloisters of Germany—as
far back as the nuptials of Henry IV, in the eleventh century, an Abbot of
Lorsch attended at the head of 1200 vassals—and wealth had, in the course of
time, produced the gradual relaxation of monastic discipline. The Abbey being
now notorious for dissoluteness, Gregory IX had commissioned the Emperor to
reform it. The Emperor called the Archbishop of Mainz to his assistance, but
their joint endeavours were fruitless. They found the evil so ingrained, that
the only remedy Frederic could ultimately devise, was, with the Pope’s
concurrence, to cede the abbey, deprived of all privileges and exemptions, to
the Archhishop, for incorporation with his metropolitan
see, and subjection to his control. The prelate, a friend to strong measures,
immediately dispersed the monks amongst the poorest monasteries, of the austerest Orders, in his province; and gave the abbey,
stripped of the greater part of its possessions, to the ascetic Cistertians.
Whilst all this was passing in Germany, Landgrave
Conrad was at Rome, pressing the Pope to complete the interrupted canonization
of his sister-in-law. He was seconded by the interest and influence of the whole
Teutonic Order, and, by the end of the year—Gregory’s anger against everything
German having subsided—his expiatory desires were gratified. This accomplished,
he proceeded to celebrate his penitence with his triumph. He now dedicated a
magnificent church, that he was building at Marburg, to St. Elizabeth; and in
the month of March, 1236, having completed the edifice, he with all possible
ecclesiastical pomp, withdrew the remains of the new Saint, from their humble
grave, consigning them to a monument in this, her own, church. The princes, lay
as well as ecclesiastical, of Germany, thronged to Marburg to witness, or to
take part in, the ceremony. Frederic and Isabella attended, and he laid his
crown upon the coffin, saying, that, not having been permitted to crown her as
his Empress on earth, he would crown her as an immortal Queen in Heaven.
Of the few dissensions that in Germany survived this
Mainz Diet, the chief were those of Frederic Duke of Austria—who had not chosen
to share in its toils—with his neighbours, his vassals, and his own family, he
having latterly treated his relations no better than the rest of his people.
That, in the boundless rapacity, generated by constant want of means to gratify
his ambition and indulge his licentiousness, he had withheld the portion of his
eldest sister, Margaret, has been stated. This having produced wrath, and
menaces of compulsion, on the part of the Emperor, at the marriage of his
younger sister, Constance, with Henry the Illustrious, Margrave of Misma, he endeavoured to obviate subsequent disputes upon
the subject. To this end, in the middle of the wedding-night, he presented
himself, sword in hand, beside the nuptial bed, and thus extorted from the unarmed
youthful bridegroom, then only sixteen years old, a formal renunciation of the
portion assured to the bride in her marriage contract. Lastly, as the climax of
his family offences, he had despoiled his mother, the widowed Duchess, of the
domains assigned her as her dower, even threatening her with personal ill-usage
in case of resistance. The indignant matron sought, first an asylum at the
Court of Bohemia—where she had a granddaughter married to the heir-apparent—and
then justice at the Emperor’s. Duke Frederic, accused by kindred, nobles,
clergy, citizens, and neighbours, had been summoned to a Diet, convoked to meet
at Augsburg, in November, 1235, there to vindicate his conduct, or satisfy his
accusers. This summons he altogether disregarded; and now the Diet, receiving
from the Emperor the additional accusation against the Duke, of complicity in
King Henry’s rebellion, laid him under the ban of the Empire; explaining that
the sentence was pronounced, not for his contumacious disobedience to the Diet,
but, “for having degenerated from the virtues of his ancestors, persecuted his
relations, wounded the honour of the Empire, broken the realm’s peace, vexed
the rich, oppressed the poor, substituted arbitrary power for right and
justice, and, in his presumptuous folly, violated the laws of God and man.” The
execution of the ban was committed to the Duke’s neighbours, the King of
Bohemia, the Dukes of Bavaria and Carinthia, and the Bishops of Passau and
Freising, with the addition of the Bishop of Bamberg, perhaps as,
geographically, a disinterested party. They entered the duchy in arms, in the
spring of 1236, and, favoured by the prevalent disaffection, seemed likely to
be, erelong, its masters.
Frederic himself was now recalled to Italy. During the
preceding autumn, the Pope had vainly endeavoured to induce, either the
Lombards to join in the Emperor’s reference of their dissensions to his
arbitration, upon the before-mentioned conditions, or the Emperor to extend the
time he had fixed for their answer. The Lombards, evidently more disposed to
resume hostilities than to run the risk of arbitration, renewed their League in
the month of November. Milan, Lodi, Novara, Alessandria, Como, Brescia,
Treviso, Padua, Bologna, Ferrara, and now Faenza, signed a convention, binding
them to raise a league fund, and deposit one half at Venice, the other half at
Genoa: evidently a provision for war. They continued to take other measures of
the same nature, even whilst at length, at the Pope’s repeated command, sending
deputies to Rome, there to accept his arbitration. But their envoys, whether
designedly or accidentally, did not reach the Papal Court within the time
prefixed by the Emperor; who, strong in the cordial loyalty of Germany,
demonstrated on occasion of his son’s rebellion, had refused every request for
its prolongation. The Imperial mission, therefore, at Christmas, when the allotted
period expired, declaring that they considered their Sovereign’s offered
conditions to be rejected, quitted Rome. And, to this refusal of more time by
Frederic, alone, have some later writers ascribed Gregory’s failure to effect a
reconciliation between him and the Lombards, who sought peace in such martial
guise. Nor do they seem to perceive any inconsistency between this view of the
failure, and their own remark, that the Pope must needs have dreaded such an
increase of the Emperor’s power, as the mere cessation of Lombard enmity, must
have caused.
When the Lombard deputation did at last arrive, Gregory
accepted their apologies for delay with a readiness, that appeared to Frederic
strongly indicative, if not of his former partiality for the insurgents, at
least of his disposition to sacrifice every imperial right to his own object,
of obtaining co-operation towards a crusade. He endeavoured by reasoning, to
counteract this apprehended tendency. He represented to the Holy Father that,
with respect to himself, one of the duties incumbent upon him, was to transmit
the Empire to his heirs as received from his ancestors, not sacrificing any
rights of the crown, by yielding, for personal objects, to the factious
insolence of rebels; that, with respect to his Holiness, he could not but
conceive, that the eradication of the heresies polluting so many Lombard
cities, was a duty incumbent upon him, prior to embarking in a distant
expedition against Mohammedans. And to these remonstrances, he added the assurance,
that, until Italy should be reduced to her ancient, proper subjection to the
Empire, he was himself deficient in the resources indispensable to render a
crusade effective; a deficiency of which he had been made painfully sensible
during his former Crusade. For the removal of these impediments and
difficulties, he proposed the summoning an Italian Diet to meet at Parma, upon
the 25th of July, of this current year, 1236; at which Diet he should be ready,
either to accept, without irritating retrospect, the submission of penitent, or
to chastise obstinate rebels. The Pope appears not to have acceded to this
proposal; at least this Italian Diet, for some reason or other, was evidently
not convoked, as the Emperor, at the time he had named, is found presiding over
a German Diet at Augsburg.
Gregory, meanwhile, strove by explanations to remove
Frederic’s mistrust, which he, on the contrary, confirmed by his choice of the
individual, whom he appointed his Legate at the Imperial Court, and mediator
between the monarch and the insurgent Lombards. This was Cardinal Giacomo di
Palestrina, who, having been previously sent as a pacificator to Piacenza, when
that city was torn by factions, was able to discover no more equitable mode of
fulfilling his mission, than the banishment of Marchese Palavicino with all the Ghibelines. The misgivings awakened by the selection of such a
Legate, were confirmed, and Frederic’s resentment against the contumacious
Lombards was both excited and embittered, by the complaints and reports of
banished Lombard Ghibelines. Driven from their homes by Guelph violence, they
flocked to his Court for protection and redress, filling it with clamorous repetitions
of their own wrongs and sufferings; mixed with as clamorous accounts of the
virulent, implacable hatred, borne by the Lombard Guelphs to the Emperor.
Whether this were exaggeration, whether even the violence of factious spirit
could exaggerate the reciprocal hatred of opposite Italian factions for each
other, and, consequently, of Guelphs for the Emperor, must be judged from the
general tenor of their conduct.
Azzo, Marchese di Este, professed himself to have been
as devotedly attached, as his elder brother Aldobrandino, to the Emperor, until
that prince incurred excommunication; but had not resumed his loyalty when the
Pope declared himself satisfied. Azzo’s adherence to the Guelph faction, as its
avowed head, had from that moment been uninterrupted, save by the ephemeral
triumph of Fra Giovanni. When the Dominican’s influence faded away, the
Marquess’s connexion with the Romanos, through the marriage in which the Friar
had entangled his son, had no power over his conduct or his sentiments; unless,
indeed, the hereditary hatred of the House of Este to the rival Trevisan Houses
may have been envenomed by the irritating fact of having a Romano
daughter-in-law obtruded upon him. As long as the Romanos and Salinguerras should be Ghibelines, the Guelphism of Marchese Azzo was invincible. Being Podestà of Vicenza, he, early in the
year 1236, made an attempt to expel the Ghibelines from the neighbouring city
of Verona, of which Ezzelino had remained really the prince, from his
acquisition of the two offices of Podesta and Capitano del Popolo, both still
habitually held by him or by some of his noble vassals or dependent friends.
Azzo’s attempt failed, but, with the aid of some of the nearest members of the
League, he invaded, and was even then fearfully ravaging the Romano
territories. Ezzelino, knowing himself singly no match for the Marquess, had
addressed an earnest petition for assistance to the Emperor; who thereupon
expedited his preparations for re-crossing the Alps. When the imperial letters,
announcing his immediate approach, reached Verona, and were circulated through
Lombardy, the triumphant Azzo refused to receive them; he, indeed, immediately
evacuated the Romano domains, retreating to Vicenza; but there, denounced pain
of death upon whoever should hold intercourse with the Emperor—his acknowledged
sovereign—or should even pronounce his name.
By the end of July, Frederic re-entered Italy, at the
head of a German army; but that army was not large. Some of the princes, upon
whom he usually relied, were engaged in putting the ban of the Empire in force
against the Duke of Austria; but the principal cause of a deficiency of troops
seems to have been, either that the progress of civilization and the arts of
peace in Germany, produced a growing distaste amongst the great vassals for
distant expeditions, or that their growing sovereignty disinclined them to such
expeditions as would strengthen the sovereign’s power. They still esteemed
themselves Princes of the Empire, still held Italy an integral part of the
Empire; and the Empire itself, with all the imperial rights of sovereignty,
indissolubly attached to the elective crown of Germany: but they no longer
frankly admitted, as a consequence from those facts, that to do battle for
those rights out of Germany, was their bounden duty, or their business. They
now sought to relieve themselves from the burthen, by asserting that it was for
the loyal Italians to reduce Italian rebels; and they alleged, that, if the
Emperor needed additional strength against the insurgent Lombards,
reinforcements might be more conveniently drawn from Sicily and Apulia, than
from beyond the Alps; although they well knew that these southern realms did
not consider themselves members of the Holy Roman Empire.
With such German troops as he could, upon the spur of
the occasion, collect—a few thousand only—Frederic crossed the Alps, and, upon
the 16th of August, reached Verona. Joyfully was he there received and
splendidly entertained by Ezzelino, as Podesta, and his brother, and thence,
attended by them and their vassals, he proceeded westward, crossed the Mincio,
and gathering, as he went, the warriors of Modena, Reggio and Parma, advanced
to Cremona.
The Lombard League had not ventured an effort at
interrupting the Emperor’s march, but Azzo, collecting the contingents of
Vicenza, Padua, Treviso, and Canino, took the opportunity of the Romano
brothers’ absence from home, as part of the Imperial army, to renew his
devastation of their now, nearly denuded, dominions. Ezzelino hurried back to
their defence, but was too inferior in numbers to the Marquess, either to
relieve Rivalta, which was besieged, or to cover Verona, which was menaced by
him. He again implored the Emperor’s aid, and Frederic, retracing his steps,
brought it in person; when, falling upon Azzo and his Guelphs by surprise, as
well as in superior force, he completely routed them, pursuing the fugitives so
closely, that these last reached Vicenza, barely in time to close the town
gates against the simultaneous entrance of the Imperialists. His summons to
open those gates to the acknowledged liege Lord of the city, was scornfully
rebutted, although Azzo, having parted from his army during the flight, was not
in the town. But in the night of the 10th of November the walls were escaladed,
and Vicenza taken by storm.
Amidst the scenes of slaughter, of reckless
indifference to human life and human suffering, darkening the pages of
mediaeval history, it is soothing to record exertions for preserving a town
taken by storm from horrors, that still, amidst all the boasted philosophy and
refinement of the nineteenth century, can hardly be prevented. Not only did
Frederic, who has been described as singularly in advance of his age, strain
every nerve to stop the sacking of a town, in which to pronounce his name had
been punished with death; even Ezzelino, branded by history with the surname of
the Tyrant, laboured almost too vigorously in the same good cause, one instance
of which is characteristic. Seeing a Vicentine lady, struggling in the clutches
of a German, and finding remonstrance unavailing to rescue her from outrage, he
saved her by cutting down the human brute who would not release his prey. When
order was at length restored, the Emperor treated the refractory city with a
lenity, in those days, nearly unexampled. He punished a very few only of the
ringleaders, freely pardoned the great body of offending citizens, without even
imposing a fine; and merely substituted their former Podestà, Alberico di
Romano, to Azzo di Este, who had wrested the office from him.
It may here be observed that Frederic II has incurred
severe censure for his favour to this, fearfully surnamed, Ezzelino the Tyrant.
That, at a later period, the odious title may, in some measure, have been
merited, there is perhaps little doubt, though there may be, whether more by
him than his neighbours. The cruelty and sanguinary violence imputed to him,
may be presumed somewhat highly coloured by Guelph historians; and his early
contemporary, Gerardo Maurisio, speaks of him with affectionate admiration.
Maurisio’s Chronicle embraces, indeed, only the early career of his hero, to
about this time; and, as years rolled on, various things may have hardened Ezzelino’s heart. At the epoch in question, however, why
should the Emperor hesitate to favour a powerful vassal, who professed to
govern himself by such chivalrous maxims as, To lead an honourable life;—Never
to succumb to adversity;—Never to break a promise to a friend;—To love friends
and hate enemies;—with others of similar tenors. He had seen Ezzelino act in
accordance with his maxims at the storming of Vicenza. Why should he not reward
and secure the active loyalty of such a vassal, with the hand of his beautiful,
illegitimate daughter, Selvaggia ? The marriage seems, however, to have taken
place later.
Be this as it may, the Emperor and the Romanos were
now triumphant, and actively ravaging the territories of the rebellious
Paduans. They had proceeded to besiege the equally rebellious Treviso, when
their career of victory was suddenly interrupted, Frederic being most unexpectedly
recalled to Germany.
The Emperor, at his departure for Italy, appears to
have taken all legitimate German energy away with him. The success of the army
of the Empire in Austria was presently arrested. Duke Frederic again burst
forth in his strength, defeated that army, made the Bishops of Passau and
Freising prisoners, recovered all he had lost, and was now threatening his
neighbours with retaliatory invasion. The Emperor, upon receiving information
of this state of affairs, immediately returned to the German scene of action. He
took his way through Styria, then a dependent province of Austria, having been
bequeathed by the last Margrave, the childless Ottocar the Leper, to his
cousin, Duke Leopold, the captor of Richard Coeur de Lion. The Emperor crossed
the Styrian Alps in the depth of winter; the Styrians loyally endeavouring to facilitate his passage. The German princes, who, whilst
reprobating the Lombards as rebels, had refused to cooperate in reducing them
to obedience, hastened to support their sovereign against one of their own
body, who resisted the ban of the Empire, as denounced by the Diet. In addition
to those of the princes, originally intrusted with the execution of that
sentence, remaining uncaptured, viz., the King of Bohemia, the Dukes of Bavaria
and Carinthia, and the Bishop of Bamberg, the Archbishops of Mainz, Treves, and
Salzburg, the Landgrave of Thuringia, the Margrave of Baden, and the Burgrave
of Nuremberg,—who had long since accomplished the conversion of his Imperial
office into a hereditary dignity of the house of Hohenzollern—with others of
inferior consequence, brought their vassals. Austria was quickly regained by
the army of the Empire, and the Duke’s possessions reduced to a single town,
Neustadt, where he was blockaded. Vienna, throwing open her gates, invited the
presence of the Emperor; and in this Austrian capital he seems to have held a
Diet for regulating the affairs of the duchy.
The deposal of Duke Frederic was confirmed, and the
loyalty of Styria and Vienna rewarded. By a charter, dated April, 1237, Styria
was made an immediate fief of the Empire, never more to be subjected to a Duke
of Austria, or any other mesne-lord, unless at the express desire of the Styrians themselves. Various legislative improvements, and
alleviations of feudal burthens, were granted; amongst others, the succession
of daughters, in default of sons, to all fiefs, and of the next of kin to
persons dying intestate; together with several of the laws enacted at the late
Mainz Diet. A remarkable circumstance, tending to show that laws enacted by a
Diet, were deemed binding only upon those states whose princes or deputies had
concurred in enacting them, or perhaps sworn to obey them. Vienna was made a
Free Imperial City, with great municipal rights and privileges; and a high school
was there founded, possibly the germ of the present university; though Germany
boasted no institution so entitled, during this century. In the Vienna charter
appear some new and singular regulations concerning Jews, unlikely to be
approved by the Pope, even by one more liberal than Gregory IX. Not only was
their compulsory baptism prohibited, but professed converts were allowed a
period of grace, during which they might, unpunished, return to Judaism; and,
as a test possibly of the sincerity of every conversion, the Jew, who abjured
the faith of his fathers, was actually required to renounce their heritage
likewise. For the moment the Emperor kept both Austria and Styria in his own
hands, appointing the Bishops of Passau and Bamberg his Rectors or Vicars for
their administration, and Graf Poppo von Henneberg Governor, or Burgrave, of
Vienna;—the usual Imperial officer in Free Imperial cities.
The princes present at Vienna appear to have
cheerfully assented to the Emperor’s wish, that his younger son, Conrad, should
now be elected King of the Romans, in lieu of the deposed Henry. But at Vienna
he took no step in the business, beyond ascertaining their willingness to
comply; most likely because the locality was judged unfit for so important a
transaction. The Electoral Diet was upon this occasion convened to meet at
Spires, but whether in February, March, or July, of this same year, 1237, has been
doubted. The date of the charters concerning Austrian affairs, April 1237,
showing the Emperor and the Princes of the Empire to have then been at Vienna,
would naturally indicate July, for the Electoral Diet; but a document relative
to the election itself, bearing the double date of February and March, 1237,
has been recently published clearly extinguishing this supposition, inasmuch as
it speaks of the election as then completed. The only conjectural explanation
of this confusion of dates that occurs, is, that the Emperor obtained the
promise of the princes at his triumphant entry into Vienna—the founding of the
High-School is believed to have been the expression of his thankful
satisfaction—that he repaired forthwith to Spires, accompanied by those same
princes, to carry that promise into immediate effect, in a regular Electoral
Diet, upon the banks of the Rhine; and that, as soon as the election was
completed, he returned to Vienna, still accompanied by such princes as were
interested in the regulation of Austria and Styria, there, in a Diet held for
that purpose, to grant the necessary charters. The document in question is
further memorable as containing the names of the Electors who elected Conrad
King of the Romans; and thus showing that the right of suffrage was, as yet,
exclusively attached, neither to great household offices, nor to especial
principalities; in fact, it might long be thought legally exercised by whatever
great princes chose to participate in the transaction. The electors upon this
occasion were, the Archbishops of Mainz, Treves, and Salzburg; the Bishops of
Bamberg, Passau, Ratisbon, and Freising; the King of Bohemia, the
Rhine-Palsgrave Otho, also Duke of Bavaria, who appears to have voted in both
capacities, the Duke of Carinthia and the Landgrave of Thuringia:—comprising
neither the Duke of Saxony nor the Margrave of Brandenberg, nor any
Lotharingian, but two Slavonians, and some prelates of lower grade. The
preponderance of ecclesiastical princes is likewise remarkable, and should
avouch that the Pope was at this time really well disposed towards the Emperor.
This election further indicates, that, although some idea of proper and
improper places for the performance of so high a function already existed,
Frankfort had as yet no exclusive pretension to such dignity.
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