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Sixth Crusade

Sixth Crusade

The Sixth Crusade began in 1228 as an attempt to reconquer Jerusalem. It began only seven years after the failure of the Fifth Crusade. Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, had attempted to join the Fifth Crusade, but Pope Innocent III prevented him from participating, fearing that Frederick would undermine papal authority. However, Frederick again promised to go on a crusade after his coronation as emperor in 1220 by Pope Honorius III, and he did send a small army to help the Fifth Crusade. In 1225 Frederick married Yolande of Jerusalem (also known as Isabella), daughter of John of Brienne, nominal ruler of the kingdom of Jerusalem, and Maria of Montferrat. Frederick now had a claim to the truncated kingdom, and reason to attempt to restore it. In 1227, after Gregory IX became pope, Frederick and his army set sail from Brindisi for Syria, but an epidemic forced Frederick to return to Italy. Gregory took this opportunity to excommunicate Frederick for breaking his crusader vow, though this was just an excuse, as Frederick had for years been trying to consolidate imperial power in Italy at the expense of the papacy. Frederick attempted to negotiate with the pope, but eventually decided to ignore him, and sailed to Syria in 1228 despite the excommunication, arriving at Acre in September. Acre, as the nominal capital of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the seat of the Latin Patriarchate, was split in its support for Frederick. Frederick's own army and many of the nobles supported him, but Patriarch Gerald of Lausanne, many of the citizenry, the Knights Hospitaller, and the Knights Templar did not. They resented Frederick's attempts to impose imperial authority, and were quickly caught up in the European struggle between supporters of the papacy (the Guelphs) and the supporters of the Holy Roman Empire (the Ghibellines). Although Frederick was able to unite the two sides in Acre, he had little opportunity to wage war before he was caught up in Ayyubid politics. Al-Kamil, the sultan of Egypt who had defeated the Fifth Crusade, quickly divided Ayyubid territory with a brother in Syria, although his nephew al-Nasir wanted Palestine for himself. On February 18, 1229, al-Kamil signed a ten-year truce with Frederick, allying with him against al-Nasir in return for handing over Nazareth, Sidon, Jaffa, Bethlehem, and all of Jerusalem except the Dome of the Rock, which was sacred to Islam (although Christians were permitted to pray near the site of Solomon's Temple). Frederick was not permitted to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, destroyed by Al-Mu'azzam, nephew of Saladin, in 1217, but he was allowed to enter the city as king. Also, because both Gregory IX and Gerald of Lausanne condemned the treaty, Frederick crowned himself king on March 18. Legally, however, he was actually regent for his son Conrad II of Jerusalem, only child of Yolande and the grandson of Maria of Montferrat and John of Brienne, who had been born shortly before Frederick left in 1228. As Frederick had other matters to attend to at home, he left Jerusalem in May. It took a defeat in battle later in 1229 for the Pope to lift the excommunication, but by now Frederick had shown that a crusade could be successful with neither military engagements nor support from the papacy. The truce expired in 1239 and Jerusalem was taken by the Mamluks in 1244, but now that Frederick had set the precedent, further crusades would be launched by individual kings such as Louis IX of France (the Seventh and Eighth Crusades) and Edward I of England (the Ninth Crusade) without papal involvement. Category:Crusades

1228

Events

- The Sixth Crusade is launched by Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, after delays due to sickness and an excommunication from Pope Gregory IX.
- Conrad IV of Germany becomes titular King of Jerusalem, with Frederick II as regent.
- Baldwin II becomes emperor of the Latin Empire in Constantinople, with John of Brienne as regent.
- Amadeus IV becomes count of Savoy.
- Francis of Assisi founder of the Franciscan order Canonized by Pope Gregory IX
- Sukaphaa the first Ahom king establishes his rule in Assam. The Ahom kings reigned for close to 600 years.

Births

- April 25 - Conrad IV of Germany (d. 1254)
- William II, Count of Holland

Deaths

- July 9 - Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury
- Aedh mac Cathal Crobdearg Ua Conchobair, King of Connacht
- Robert of Courtenay, emperor of the Latin Empire
- Queen Yolande of Jerusalem (born 1212) Category:1228 ko:1228년

Fifth Crusade

The Fifth Crusade (1217–1221) was an attempt to take back Jerusalem and the rest of Holy Land by first conquering the powerful Muslim state in Egypt. In spring 1213, Pope Innocent III issued the papal bull Quia maior, calling all of Christendom to join a new crusade. The kings and emperors of Europe, however, were preoccupied with fighting among themselves. At the same time, Innocent did not want their help, because a previous crusade led by kings (the Second Crusade) had failed in the past. He ordered processions, prayers, and preaching to help organize the crusade, as these would involve the general population, the lower nobles, and knights. The message of the crusade was preached in France by Robert of Courçon; however, unlike other Crusades, not many French knights joined, as they were already fighting the Albigensian Crusade against the heretical Cathar sect in southern France. In 1215 Innocent III called the Fourth Lateran Council, where, along with the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Raoul of Merencourt, he discussed the recovery of the Holy Land, among other church business. Innocent wanted this crusade to be under the full control of the papacy, as the First Crusade was supposed to have been, in order to avoid the mistakes of the Fourth Crusade, which had been taken over by the Venetians. Innocent planned for the crusaders to meet at Brindisi in 1216, and prohibited trade with the Muslims to ensure that the crusaders would have ships and weapons. Every crusader would receive an indulgence, including those who simply helped pay the expenses of a crusader but did not go on crusade himself. Oliver of Cologne had preached the crusade in Germany, and Emperor Frederick II attempted to join in 1215. Frederick was the last monarch Innocent wanted to join, as he had challenged the Papacy (and would do so in the years to come). Innocent, however, died in 1216. He was succeeded by Pope Honorius III, who barred Frederick from participating, but organized crusading armies led by Leopold VI of Austria and Andrew II of Hungary. They left for Acre in 1217, and joined John of Brienne, ruler of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, Hugh I of Cyprus, and Prince Bohemund IV of Antioch to fight against the Ayyubids in Syria. In Jerusalem, the walls and fortifications were demolished to prevent the Christians from being able to defend the city if they should reach it and take it. Muslims fled the city, afraid that there would be a repeat of the bloodbath of the First Crusade in 1099. The Ayyubids, however, were not interested in fighting. Nothing came of this, and Andrew, Bohemund, and Hugh returned home in 1218. Later in 1218 Oliver of Cologne arrived with a new army, and with Leopold and John they discussed attacking Damietta in Egypt. To accomplish this they allied with Kay Kaus I, the Seljuk Sultan of Rum in Anatolia, who attacked the Ayyubids in Syria in an attempt to free the Crusaders from fighting on two fronts. In June of 1218 the crusaders began their siege of Damietta, and despite resistance from the unprepared sultan Al-Adil, the tower outside the city was taken on August 25. They could not gain Damietta itself, and in the ensuing months diseases killed many of the crusaders, including Robert of Courcon. Al-Adil also died and was succeeded by Al-Kamil. Meanwhile, Honorius III sent Pelagius of Albano to lead the crusade in 1219. Al-Kamil tried to negotiate a peace with the crusaders, but Pelagius would not accept these offers. In August, Francis of Assisi, then a subordinate of Pelagius, tried to open negotiations with al-Kamil and Pelagius, but had no success. By November, the crusaders had worn out the sultan's forces, and were finally able to occupy the port. Immediately the papal and secular powers fought for control of the town, with John of Brienne claiming it for himself in 1220. Pelagius would not accept this and John returned to Acre later that year. Pelagius hoped Frederick II would arrive with a fresh army, but he never did; instead, after a year of inactivity in both Syria and Egypt, John of Brienne returned, and the crusaders marched south towards Cairo in July of 1221. By now al-Kamil was able to ally with the other Ayyubids in Syria, who had defeated Kay Kaus I. The crusaders march to Cairo was disastrous; the Nile river flooded ahead of them stopping the crusader advance. A dry canal that was previously crossed by the crusaders flooded, thus blocking the crusader army's retreat. With supplies dwindling, a forced retreat began, culminating in a night attack by Al-Kamil that resulted in a great number of crusader losses and eventually the surrender of the army by Pelagius. The terms of this surrender meant the relinquishing of Damietta to Al-Kamil and an 8 year peace agreement with Europe in return for the original piece of the cross and the prisoners held from the failed advance on Cairo. Category:Crusades

Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor

Frederick II (December 26, 1194 – December 13, 1250), Holy Roman Emperor of the Hohenstaufen dynasty, was pretender to the title of King of the Romans from 1212, unopposed holder of that monarchy from 1215, and Holy Roman Emperor from 1220 until his death in 1250. He was also King of Sicily, from 1198 to 1250, where he was raised and lived most of his life (his mother, Constance of Sicily, was the daughter of Roger II of Sicily). He is also referred to as Frederick I of Sicily. His empire was frequently at war with the Papal States, so it is not surprising that he was excommunicated twice. Pope Gregory IX went so far as to call him the anti-Christ. After his death the idea of his second coming where he would rule a 1000-year reich took hold, possibly in part because of this. Said to speak nine languages and be literate in seven [Armstrong 2001, p. 415] (at a time when many monarchs and nobles were not literate at all), Frederick was a very modern ruler for his times, being a patron of science and learning, and having fairly advanced views on economics. He abolished state monopolies, internal tolls, and import regulations within his empire. He was patron of the Sicilian School of poetry, where in his royal court in Palermo, from around 1220 to his death, we witness the first use of a literary form of an Italo-Romance language, Sicilian. The poetry that emanated from the school predates the use of the Tuscan idiom as the preferred lingua franca of the Italian peninsula by at least a century. The school and its poetry was well known to Dante and his peers and had a significant influence on the literary form of what was eventually to become the modern Italian. He was known in his own time as the Stupor mundi ("wonder of the world"). Frederick wrote, or rewrote, a manual on the art of falconry, De arte venandi cum avibus ("On the art of hunting with birds"), of which many illustrated copies survive from the 13th and 14th centuries.

Life

Early years

Born in Jesi, near Ancona, Frederick was the son of the emperor Henry VI. Some old chronicles account he was born in a public square of the city of Jesi, in northern Italy, while is father was entering triumphantly into Palermo. Frederick was baptised in Assisi. In 1196 at Frankfurt am Main the child Frederick had already been elected to become King of the Germans. At the death of his father in 1197, the three-year-old Frederick was in Italy in voyage towards Germany, and when the bad news reached his guardian Conrad of Spoleto, he was hastily brought back to Palermo to Constance. It was a good move, as Henry's empire dissolved, and its monarchy was disputed by Henry's brother Philip of Swabia and Otto IV. His mother, Constance, had been in her own right queen of Sicily; she had Frederick crowned King of Sicily and established herself as regent. In Frederick's name she dissolved Sicily's ties to the Empire sending home his German counsellors (notably Markward of Anweiler and Gualtiero da Pagliara), renouncing to his claims to the German kingship and empire. Upon Constance's death in 1198, Pope Innocent III succeeded as Frederick's guardian until he was of age: he was crowned King of Sicily on May 17, 1198, being only four years of age, and received some of his early formal education in Rome. He was to remember forever, however, the time spent in his early years in the court of Palermo, where Arab, German, Latin, Byzantine, Norman, Provencal and even Jewish influences mixed. Jewish See also Personality

Emperor

Otto of Brunswick had been crowned Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Innocent III in 1209. In September 1211 at the Diet of Nuremberg Frederick was elected in absentia as German King by a rebellious faction backed by Innocent, who had fallen out with Otto and excommunicated him; he was again elected in 1212 and crowned December 9, 1212 in Mainz; yet another coronation ceremony took place in 1215. Being King of the Germans had been the traditional precursor step for emperorship. However, until the debacle at the Battle of Bouvines in 1214, Frederick's authority was quite tenuous and he was recognized only in southern Germany: in northern Germany, the center of Guelph power, Otto continued to hold the reins of royal and imperial power despite excommunication. Otto's decisive military loss at Bouvines lost him the practical means to hold onto kingship and emperorship, and he withdrew to the Guelph hereditary lands to die, virtually without supporters, in 1218. (See also Guelphs and Ghibellines). The German princes, supported by Innocent III, again elected Frederick king of Germany in 1215, and the pope crowned him king in Aachen on July 23, 1215. It was not until another five years had passed, and only after further negotiations between Frederick, Innocent III, and Honorius III—who succeeded to the papacy after Innocent's death in 1216—that Frederick was crowned Holy Roman Emperor in Rome by Honorius III on November 22, 1220. At the same time his oldest son Henry took the title of King of the Romans. See also Personality Unlike most Holy Roman emperors, Frederick spent little of his life in Germany. After his coronation in 1220, he remained either in the Kingdom of Sicily or on Crusade until 1236, when he made his last journey to Germany. (At this time, the Kingdom of Sicily, with its capital at Palermo, extended onto the Italian mainland to include most of southern Italy.) He returned to Italy in 1237 and stayed there for the remaining 13 years of his life, represented in Germany by his son Conrad. In the Kingdom of Sicily, he built on the reform of the laws begun at the Assizes of Ariano in 1146 by his grandfather Roger II. His initiative in this direction was visible as early as the Assizes of Capua (1220) but came to fruition in his promulgation of the Constitutions of Melfi (1231, also known as Liber Augustalis), a collection of laws for his realm that was remarkable for its time and was a source of inspiration for a long time after. It made the Kingdom of Sicily an absolutist monarchy, the first centralized state in Europe to emerge from feudalism; it also set a precedent for the primacy of written law. With relatively small modifications, the Liber Augustalis remained the basis of Sicilian law until 1819. During this period, he also built the Castel del Monte and in 1224 created the University of Naples: now called Università Federico II, it remained the sole atheneum of Southern Italy for centuries. In 1226, by means of the Golden Bull of Rimini he confirmed the legitimacy of rule by the Teutonic Knights under their headmaster Hermann von Salza over the Prussian lands east of the Vistula, the Chelmno Land.

The Crusade

At the time he was crowned Emperor, Frederick had promised to go on crusade. In preparation for his crusade, Frederick had, in 1225, married Yolande of Jerusalem, heiress to the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and immediately taken steps to take control of the Kingdom from his new father-in-law, John of Brienne. However, he continued to take his time in setting off, and in 1227, Frederick was excommunicated by Pope Gregory IX for failing to honor his crusading pledge - perhaps unfairly, at this point, as his plans had been delayed by an epidemic. He eventually embarked on the crusade the following year (1228), which was seen on by the pope as a rude provocation, since the church could not take any part in the honor for the crusade, resulting in a second excommunication. Frederick did not attempt to take Jerusalem by force of arms. Instead, he negotiated restitution of Jerusalem, Nazareth, and Bethlehem to the Kingdom with sultan Al-Kamil, the Ayyubid ruler of the region, who was nervous about possible war with his relatives who ruled Syria and Mesopotamia and wished to avoid further trouble from the Christians. The crusade ended in a truce and in Frederick's coronation as King of Jerusalem on March 18, 1229 — although this was technically improper, as Frederick's wife Yolande, the heiress, had died in the meantime, leaving their infant son Conrad as rightful heir to the kingdom. Frederick's further attempts to rule over the Kingdom of Jerusalem were met by resistance on the part of the barons, led by John of Ibelin, Lord of Beirut. By the mid-1230s, Frederick's viceroy had been forced to leave Acre, the capital, and by 1244, Jerusalem itself had been lost again to a new Muslim offensive. However, Frederick's seeming bloodless victory in recovering Jerusalem for the cross brought him great prestige in Europe, and in 1231 the pope rescinded Frederick's excommunication; this event is known as the Peace of San Germano.

The war against the Pope and the Italian Guelphs

While he may have temporarily made his peace with the pope, the lesser German princes were another matter. In 1231, Frederick's son Henry claimed the crown for himself and allied with the Lombard League. The rebellion failed, though not utterly; Henry was imprisoned in 1235, and replaced in his royal title by his brother Conrad, already the King of Jerusalem; Frederick won a decisive battle in Cortenuova over the Lombard League in 1237. Frederick celebrated it with a triumph in Cremona, in the manner of an ancient Roman emperor, with the captured carroccio (later sent to the commune of Rome) and an elephant. He rejected any suit for peace, even from Milan which had sent a great sum of money. This demand of total surrender spurred further resistance from Milan, Brescia, Bologna and Piacenza, and in October 1238 he was forced to raise the siege of Brescia, in the course of which his enemies had tried unsuccessfully to capture him. Frederick received the news of his excommunication by Gregory IX in the first months of 1239, while his court was in Padova. The emperor replied expelling the Minorites and the preachers from Lombardy, and electing his son Enzio as Imperial vicar for Northern Italy. Enzio soon annexed the Romagna, Marche and the Duchy of Spoleto, nominally part of the Papal States. The father announced he was to destroy the Republic of Venice, which had sent some ships against Sicily. In December of that year Frederick marched over Toscana, entered triumphantly into Foligno and then in Viterbo, whence he aimed to finally conquer Rome, in order to restore the ancient splendours of the Empire. The siege, however, was vain, and Frederick returned to Southern Italy, sacking Benevento (a papal possession). Peace negotiations came to nothing. In the meantime the Ghibelline city of Ferrara had fallen, and Frederick swept his way northwards capturing Ravenna and, after another long siege, Faenza. The people of Forlì (which kept its Ghibelline stance even after the collapse of Hohenstaufen power) offered their loyal support during the capture of the rival city: as a sign of gratitude, they were granted an augmentation of the communal coat-of-arms with the Hohenstaufen eagle, together with other privileges. This episode shows how the independent cities used the rivalry between Empire and Pope as a mean to obtain the maximum advantage for themselves. The Pope had called a council, but Ghibelline Pisa thwarted it, capturing cardinals and prelates on a ship sailing from Genoa to Rome. Frederick thought that this time the way into Rome was opened, and again directed his forces against the Pope, trailing behind him a ruined and burning Umbria. Frederick destroyed Grottaferrata preparing to invade Rome. But on August 22, 1240, Gregory died. Frederick, showing that his war was not directed against the Church of Rome but against the Pope, drew back his troops and freed two cardinals from the jail of Capua. Nothing changed, however, in the relationship between Papacy and Empire, as Roman troops assaulted the Imperial garrison in Tivoli and the Emperor soon reached Rome. This back-and-forth situation repeated again in 1242 and 1243. Though unfruitful, these expeditions around Rome permitted Frederick to capture treasures from the church of the cities he passed through, and gave him the opportunity to enjoy the pleasant nature of hills, lakes and woods of the Latium.

His last and fiercest opponent, Innocent IV

A new pope, Innocent, was elected on June 25, 1243. He was a member of a noble Imperial family and had some relatives in Frederick's camp, so the Emperor was initially happy with his election. Innocent instead was to become his fiercest enemy. Negotiations began in the summer of 1243, but the situation changed as Viterbo rebelled, instigated by the intriguing Cardinal Ranieri of Viterbo. Frederick could not lose his main stronghold near Rome, and besieged the city. Many authorities state that the Emperor's star began its descent with this move. Innocent convinced him to withdraw his troops, but Ranieri nonetheless had the Imperial garrison slaughtered on November 13. Frederick was full of powerless rage. The new Pope was a master diplomat, and Frederick signed a peace treaty, which was soon broken. Innocent showed his true Guelph face, and, together with most of the Cardinals, fled via Genoese galleys to the Ligurian republic, arriving on July 7. His aim was to reach Lyon, where a new coucil was held beginning June 24, 1245. One month later, Innocent IV declared Frederick to be deposed as emperor: he was characterized as a "friend of Babylon's sultan", "of Saracen customs", "provided with a harem guarded by eunuchs" like the schismatic emperor of Byzantium and, in sum, a "heretic". The Pope backed Heinrich Raspe, landgrave of Thuringia as his rival for the imperial crown, and set in motion a plot to kill Frederick and Enzio, with the support of his (the pope's) brother-in-law Orlando de Rossi, who was a friend of Frederick's as well. The conjurers, however, were unmasked by the count of Caserta. The vengeance was terrible: the city of Altavilla, where they had found shelter, was razed, and the guilty were blinded, mutilated and burnt alive or hung. An attempt to invade the Kingdom of Sicily, under the command of Ranieri, was halted at Spello by Marino of Eboli, Imperial vicar of Spoleto. Spello] Innocent also sent a flow of money to Germany to cut off Frederick's power at its source. The archbishops of Köln and Mainz also declared Frederick deposed, and in May 1246 a new king was chosen in the person of Heinrich Raspe. On August 5 Heinrich, thanks to the Pope's money, managed to defeat an army of Conrad son of Frederick near Frankfurt. But Frederick strenghtened his position in Southern Germany acquiring the Duchy of Austria, whose titular had died without heirs, and one year later Heinrich died as well. The new anti-king was William II, Count of Holland. Between February and March 1247 Frederick settled the situation in Italy with the diet of Terni, naming his relatives of friends as vicars of the various lands. Marrying his son Manfred to the daughter of Amedeo di Savoia and, gaining the submission of the marquis of Monferrato, he also gained of control of the passages of the Eastern Alps, clearing the route to Lyon, where he hoped finally to settle the long-standing dispute with the Pope. Innocent asked protection from the King of France, Louis IX, but his position was not so secure, as the king was a friend of the Emperor and knew the peaceful aims of the latter. A papal army under the command of Ottaviano degli Ubaldini never reached Lombardy, and the Emperor, accompanied by a massive army, held the next diet in Turin. Turin

The Battle of Parma and the end

An unexpected event was to change the situation dramatically. In June 1247 the important Lombard city of Parma expelled the Imperial functionaries and sided with the Guelphs. Enzio was not in the city and could do nothing more than ask for help from his father, who came back to lay siege to the rebels, together with his friend Ezzelino da Romano, tyrant of Verona. The besieged languished, as the Emperor waited the besieged surrendered of starvation. He had a true wooden city built around the walls, pompously called Vittoria ("Victory"). Here Frederick kept the treasure with the harem and the menagerie, and from its pavillions he could attend his favourite hunting expeditions. On February 18, 1248, during one of these absences the camp was suddenly assaulted and conquered, and in the ensuing Battle of Parma the Imperial side was routed. Frederick lost the Imperial treasure and, with it, any hope to keep up his struggle against the rebellious communes, as well as the triumphant Pope, who began plans for a crusade against Sicily. Though he soon recovered and rebuilt an army, this defeat spurred the rebellious feeling of many cities that could no longer bear his fiscal and monarchic regime: Romagna, Marche and Spoleto were lost. On February 1249 Frederick, who had just lost his other faithful minister Taddeo of Suessa, fired his advisor and prime minister, the famous jurist and poet Pier delle Vigne. The charge was speculation and embezzlement. Some historians, however, maintain instead that Pier was planning to betray the Emperor: according to Matthew of Paris, he cried when he discovered the betrayal. Pier, blinded and in chains, died in Pisa, presumably by suicide (a presumption that placed him in the Seventh Circle of Dante's Hell in Canto XII of the Inferno). Even more shocking for Frederick was the capture of his son Enzio by the Bolognese at the Battle of Fossalta, in the May of the same year. Only 23 at the time, he was thrown into a jail cell in which he was to spend the rest of his life, dying in 1272. The place of the king of Sardinia was taken over by the marquis Palavicino, a skilled but cruel man, not different from his ill-famed contemporary Ezzelino. In this period Frederick lost another son, Richard of Chieti. But the struggle continued: the Empire lost Como and Modena, but regained Ravenna and another army sent to invade the Kingdom of Sicily, under the command of Cardinal Pietro Capocci, was crushed in the Marche, at the Battle of Cingoli in 1250. In the first month of that year the indomitable Ranieri of Viterbo died and the Imperial condottieri again reconquered Romagna, Marche and Spoleto, and Conrad, King of the Romans scored several victories in Germany against William of Holland. Frederick did not take part of any of these campaigns. He had been ill and probably felt himself tired. Despite the betrayals and the ill happenings he had faced in his last years, Frederick died peacefully on December 13, 1250 in Castel Fiorentino near Lucera, in Puglia, after an attack of dysentery: in his last moment he wore the habit of a Cistercian monk. At the time of his death, his preeminent position in Europe was challenged but not lost: his testament left his legitimate son Conrad IV the Imperial and Sicilian crowns. Manfred received the principate of Taranto and the government of the Kingdom, Henry the Kingdom of Arles or that of Jerusalem, while the son of Henry VII was entrusted the Duchy of Austria and the Marquisate of Styria. His will was that all the lands he had taken from the Church were to be returned to it, all the prisoners freed, and the taxes reduced, provided this not damaged the Empire's pride. However, upon Conrad's death a mere four years later, the Hohenstaufen dynasty fell from power and an interregnum began, lasting until 1273, one year after the last Hohenstaufen, Enzio, had died in his prison. During this time, a legend developed that Frederick was not truly dead, but merely slept in the Kyffhaeuser Mountains and would one day awaken to reestablish his empire. Over time, this legend largely transferred itself to his grandfather, Frederick I, also known as Barbarossa ("Redbeard"). His sarcophagus (made of red porphyry) lies in the cathedral of Palermo, beside those of his parents (Henry VI and Constance) as well as his grandfather, the Norman king Roger II of Sicily. A bust of Frederick sits in the Walhalla temple built by Ludwig I of Bavaria.

Heirs

Ludwig I of Bavaria All the heirs of Frederick met unlucky fates.
- Frederick's son Henry, sometimes styled Henry VII, especially during his period of rebellion in alliance with the Lombard League — not to be confused with Henry VII of the House of Luxembourg, Holy Roman Emperor 1275-1313 — was born 1211 in Sicily, son of Frederick's first wife Constance of Aragon, whom he had married in the August of 1209. King of the Germans (or, equivalently, "King of the Romans"), King of Sicily, claimant to the imperial title. After quarrelling with his father and forming an alliance with the Lombard League, he was captured by Frederick's forces and imprisoned from 1236; he died in Martirano in 1242, probably of the consequences of an attempted suicide.
- Frederick's son Conrad IV, son of his second wife Yolande de Brienne, Queen of Jerusalem, was born April 25, 1228 in Andria, Apulia. He became King of Jerusalem at birth (his mother having died in childbirth), and was elected German king and future emperor 1237 in Vienna, although no coronation took place. In 1250, he succeeded his father as King of Sicily, as well. Conrad died May 21, 1254 of malaria in an army camp in Lavello.
- Frederick's illegitimate son Manfred, King of Sicily, was born in 1231 of Bianca, the daughter of Count Bonifacio Lancia. According to some accounts, Frederick married Bianca on his deathbed, in order to make Manfred's birth legitimate, but there is no consensus on this. Manfred, initially as regent for Conrad's young son Conradin, and, after 1258 as King of Sicily, continued—after initial attempts at reconciliation—Frederick's conflict with the Pope and was also placed under papal interdict. Manfred died February 26, 1266 in battle near Benevento against Charles of Anjou, brother to the French King, who had been entrusted with the Kingdom of Sicily by the Pope. Still under excommunication, he was buried in unhallowed ground in the rocky valley of Verde. His wife Helena, and also their sons Frederick, Henry, and Enzio died in prison, the sons having been held in lifelong solitary confinement, like animals, never even learning human speech.
- Enzio (or Enzo) in particular seemed to be the father's favourite, as he received the titles of King of Sardinia and that of Imperial vicar in Northern Italy. These nominations have been seen as a Frederick's attempt to create a centralized state also in Northern and Central Italy: but this failed after the Battle of Parma and the subsequent imprisonment of Enzio in Bologna in 1249. Enzio became a popular character for his pitiful fate, as he spent all the rest of his life in prison, dying in 1272.
- The last legitimate male heir of the Hohenstaufen dynasty was Frederick's grandson Conradin, son of Conrad IV. The grandson, born March 25, 1252 at Burg Wolfstein near Landshut, held the titles of Duke of Swabia, King of Jerusalem and Sicily. He invaded Italy in 1268 to reclaim his Kingdom from Charles of Anjou, but was defeated and captured by Charles at the Battle of Tagliacozzo and publicly executed at age 16 on October 29, 1268 in Naples. In 1284 Frederick's ghost resurfaced in the form of a very convincing false Frederick, the impostor Tile Kolup, who impersonated the emperor with such expert knowledge and an amazing similarity that many of those who had known the true Frederick fell for him. Kolup was captured and executed, but rumors persist to this day that Kolup had been another illegitimate son of Frederick II.

Personality

In Frederick II we encounter one of the most remarkable personalities in world history. His contemporaries called him stupor mundi, the "wonder" — or, more precisely, the "astonishment" — "of the world"; the majority of his contemporaries, subscribing to medieval religious orthodoxy, under which the doctrines promulgated by the Church were supposed to be uniform and universal, were, indeed astonished — not seldom repelled — by the highly developed individual consciousness of the Hohenstaufen emperor, his temperamental stubbornness and his unorthodox, nearly unstoppable thirst for knowledge. Frederick II was a religious sceptic. He is said to have denounced Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad as all being frauds and deceivers of mankind. He delighted in uttering blasphemies and making mocking remarks directed toward Christian sacraments and beliefs. Frederick's religious scepticism was most unusual for the era in which he lived, and to his contemporaries, highly shocking and scandalous. In his period in Jerusalem, this behaviour was much to the dislike of the Muslims too, who grew mistrustful of a Christian which was not a Christian. Muslims Even his birth was remarkable. According to chronicles from the era, in order to stanch any doubt about his origin, the already 40-year old Constance gave birth to the child publicly in a marketplace. After Henry VI, his father, died at 31, Frederick came under the guardianship of the pope, which the latter, however, neglected him on the basis of power-politics. In Palermo, where the three-year-old boy was brought after his mother's death, he grew up like a street youth. On his own, he roamed a city which swarmed with adventurers and pirates, beggars and jugglers, Arab and Jewish merchants. The only benefit from Innocent III was that at 14 years of age he married a 25-year-old widow named Constance, the daughter of the king of Aragon in what is now Spain. As it happened, both seemed reasonably happy with the arrangement, and Constance soon bore a son, Henry. Later, it appeared opportune to Innocent III to support Frederick as a legitimate king, in order to counter the Emperor Otto — whom up to that time the pope had supported. In 1212 he brought him to Rome, gave him a round of instruction in things political, and sent him, provided with a bull of excommunication against the Guelph Otto, in the direction of Germany. The voyage seemed difficult, as the sea was roamed by the ships of Pisa, as usual faithful to the official emperor, and the road north to Rome were commanded by imperial garrisons. But in that period of his life a kind of mystic and prophetical luck seemed to illuminate every step made by the young king. Frederick managed to reach Liguria with ships sent by the fiercest rival of Pisa, Genova, where he stayed for three months. He crossed the Alps using the most difficult passes, as the Brenner Pass was occupied by the enemy troops of the duchies of Merano and Bavaria, and then he came to Konstanz in territory of the archbishop of Chur. The city was in fact preparing to receive the emperor, and would not allow the new aspirant to the imperial title to remain in the city. However, after a solemn reading of the pope's Bull of Excommunication, the gates of the city were opened for him. Otto, who meanwhile had waited in Überlingen for the ferry, came three weeks later before the city gates and was turned away. Frederick conquered the realm by means of generous promises and donations, without spilling a drop of blood. Otto, crushed in the Battle of Bouvines by the French, died some years later, a lonely man in the Harzburg, while Frederick would be crowned Emperor in Rome by the pope. In his coronation, too, he showed how unusual he was. At his coronation he carried a brand-new, red coronation robe with a strange ornamentation at the edge. In reality it was an Arabic inscription, which indicated that this robe dated from the year 528, not by the Christian but by Muslim calendar! About this was an Arab benediction: "May the Emperor be received well, may he enjoy vast prosperity, great generosity and high splendor, fame and magnificent endowments, and the fulfillment of his wishes and hopes. May his days and nights go in pleasure without end or change". This coronation robe can be found today in the Schatzkammer of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. This was typical of him: while he was being crowned by the Pope to be the highest defender of the Christian faith, his coat referred to the history of Islam. And not only that. He did not exterminate the Saracens of Sicily with fire and sword; on the contrary, he allowed them to settle on the mainland and even to build mosques. Not least, he enlisted them in his - Christian - army and even into his personal bodyguards. As these were Muslim soldiers, they were immune from papal excommunication. A further example of how much he differed from his contemporaries was his Crusade in the Holy Land. Outside Jerusalem, with the power to take it, he parlayed five months with the Egyptian Sultan al-Kamil about the surrender of the city. The Sultan summoned him into Jerusalem and entertained him in the most lavish fashion. When the muezzin, out of consideration for Frederick, failed to make the morning call to prayer, the emperor declared: "I stayed overnight in Jerusalem, in order to overhear the prayer call of the Muslims and their worthy God". The Saracens had a good opinion of him, so it was no surprise that after five months Jerusalem was handed over to him, taking advantage of the war difficulties of al-Kamil. The fact that this was regarded in the Arab as in the Christian world as high treason did not matter to him one whit. As the Patriarch of Jerusalem refused to crown him king, he set the crown on his own head. Besides his great tolerance (which, however, did not apply to Christian heretics), he had an unlimited thirst for knowledge and learning. To the horror of his contemporaries, he simply did not believe things that could not be explained by reason. So he forbade trials by ordeal on the firm conviction that in a duel the stronger would always win, whether he was guilty or not. Also, it can be forgotten amidst the general enthusiasm over his book on falconry releases frequently that he also wrote a scientific book about birds or that many of his laws continue to affect life down to the present day, such as the prohibition on physicians acting as their own pharmacists. This was a blow at the charlatanism under which physicians diagnosed dubious maladies and also at the same time in order to sell a useless, even dangerous "cure". Frederick's greatest passion were animals, and falcons in particular. He inherited his love for falconry from his Norman ancestors. According to a source, Frederick replied to a letter in which the Mongol khan invited him to sumbit that he was keen to do it, provided he was permitted to become the khan's hawker. He mantained up to 50 hawkers a time for his court, and in his letters he requested the acquiring of Arctic gerfalcons from Lübeck and even from Greenland. He commissioned the translation of the treaty De arte venandi cum avibus, by the Arab Moamyn, to his Syrian astrologer Theodor, but he corrected or rewrote it during the endless siege of Faenza. This implies that the Emperor knew the Arab language very well. Frederick picked up information from many of the philosphers then known, and mainly from the De Animalibus by Aristotle, creating a really noteworthy scientific work for the time it was written. One of the two existing versions was modified by his son Manfred, also a keen adherent of falconry. Frederick loved exotic animals in general: his mobile zoo, with which he used to impress the cold cities of Northern Italy and Europe, included hounds, elephants, giraffes, cheetahs, lynxs, leopards and exotic birds. In 1232 he sent the Egyptian sultan a rare white bear, in exchange for a planetary worth 20,000 marks: Frederick was in fact attracted by stars, and his court was full of astrologers and astronomers. He often issued letters to the main scholars of the time (not only in Europe) asking for solutions to questions of science, mathematics and physics. A Damascene chronicler, Sibt ibn al-Jawzi, leaves a physical description of Frederick based on the testimony of those who had seen the emperor in person in Jerusalem. "The Emperor was covered with red hair, was bald and myopic. Had he been a slave, he would not have fetched 200 dirhams at market." His eyes were described variously as blue, or "green like those of a serpent".

Law Reforms

His 1241 Edict of Salerno (sometimes called "Constitution of Salerno") made the first legally fixed separation of the occupations of physician and apothecary. Physicians were forbidden to double as pharmacists and the prices of various medicinal remedies were fixed. This became a model for regulation of the practice of pharmacy throughout Europe. He was not able to extend his legal reforms beyond Sicily to the Empire. In 1232, he was forced by the German princes to promulgate the Statutum in favorem principum ("statute in favor of princes"). It was a charter of aristocratic liberties for German princes at the expense of the lesser nobility and commoners. The princes gained whole power of jurisdiction, and the power to strike their own coins. The emperor lost his right to establish new cities, castles and mints over their territories. The Statutum extremely weakened central authority in Germany for ages. From 1232 the vassals of the emperor had a veto over imperial legislative decisions. Every new law established by the emperor had to be approved by the princes.

Summary

Frederick II was considered singular among the European Christian monarchs of the Middle Ages. This was observed even in his own time, although many of his contemporaries, because of his lifelong interest in Islam saw in him "the Hammer of Christianity", or at the very least a dissenter from Christendom. Many modern medievalists view this as false, and hold that Frederick understood himself as a Christian monarch in the sense of a Byzantine emperor, thus as God's Viceroy on earth. Other scholars view him as holding all religion in contempt, citing his rationalism and penchant for blasphemy. Whatever his personal feelings toward religion were, certainly submission to the pope did not enter into the matter. This was in line with the Hohenstaufen Kaiseridee: the ideology, claiming the Holy Roman Emperor to be the legitimate successor to the Roman emperors. Modern treatments of Frederick vary from sober evaluation (Stürner) to hero worship (Ernst Kantorowicz). However, all in all, agreement prevails over the special significance of Frederick II as Holy Roman Emperor, even if some of his actions (such as his politics with respect to Germany) remain quite dubious.

Parentage and children

- Parents
- Henry VI, Holy Roman Emperor (son of Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor and Beatrix of Burgundy)
- Constance of Sicily (daughter of Roger II of Sicily and Beatrice of Rethel)
- Children
- With Constance of Aragon:
- Henry (VII) of Germany
- With Yolande of Jerusalem:
- unnamed daughter, died young
- Conrad IV of Germany:
- With Isabella of England
- Margaret of Sicily, margravine of Meissen
- Henry Charlote of Sicily
- Frederick of Sicily
- Carl Otto of Sicily
- With Bianca Lancia:
- Manfred of Sicily
- Constance (Anna) of Sicily, married John III Ducas Vatatzes
- Violante of Sicily, married Riccardo di Caserta
- With Adelheid Enzio:
- Enzio of Sardinia
- With Richina of Wolfs'oden:
- Margaret of Swabia
- With Matilda of Antioch:
- Frederich of Antioch
- With unknown:
- Selvaggia
- Conrad of Antioch
- Richard of Theate
- Catarina of Marano
- Blanchefleur
- Gerhard
- Frederick of Pettorana

References

- Claudio Rendina, Federico II di Svevia - Lo specchio del mondo, Newton Compton, Rome, 1995, ISBN 8879839578.
- David Abulafia, Frederick II. A Medieval Emperor, Allen Lane the Penguin Press, 1988, ISBN 8806131974 (Italian edition)
- Georgina Masson, Frederick II of Hohenstaufen, Martin Secker & Warburg, 1957, ISBN 8845291073 (Italian edition)
- Karen Armstrong, Holy War - The Crusades and Their Impact on Today's World, Anchor Books, second edition, December 2001, ISBN 0385721404.
- R.H.C. Davis, A History of Medieval Europe, Longman Group UK Limited, Second edition, 1988, ISBN 0582014042
- Amin Maalouf, The Crusades Through Arab Eyes, Shocken, 1989, ISBN 0805208984 In addition, this article uses material from the corresponding article in the German-language Wikipedia, which, in turn, gives the following references; the notes are theirs.
- Klaus van Eickels: Friedrich II., in: Bernd Schneidmüller/Stefan Weinfurter (editors): Die deutschen Herrscher des Mittelalters, Historische Porträts von Heinrich I. bis Maximilian I., Munich 2003, p. 293-314 and p. 585 (Bibliography). An outstanding short biography. Van Eickels also edited a volume of source materials on Frederick II.
- Ernst Kantorowicz: Kaiser Friedrich II., 2. volumes, Stuttgart 1985-86 (Nachdruck der Ausgabe aus den 20er Jahren), Beautifully written, but very romanticized, so to be read with caution. The author, a late-emigrated Jew, was close to the circle of Stefan George.
- Wolfgang Stürner: Friedrich II. (Gestalten des Mittelalters und der Renaissance), 2 volumes, Darmstadt 1992-2000. The best and most recent biography of Frederick II. Sober and objective, with an extensive guide to other literature on its subject.
- Gunther Wolf (editor).: Stupor mundi. Zur Geschichte Friedrichs II. von Hohenstaufen (Wege der Forschung 101), 2. veränderte Aufl., Darmstadt 1982. An important collection of essays on Frederick II.

External links

- [http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06255a.htm Catholic Encyclopedia: Frederick II]
- [http://www.bartleby.com/65/fr/Fred2HRE.html Frederick II, Holy Roman emperor and German king. The Columbia Encyclopedia]
- [http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9035231 Frederick II -- Encyclopædia Britannica] Category:1194 births Category:1250 deaths Category:Holy Roman emperors Category:German Kings Category:Kings of Sicily Category:Kings of Burgundy Category:Kings of Jerusalem Category:Dukes of Swabia Category:Hohenstaufen Dynasty Category:Polyglots Category:House of Anjou Category:History of Sicily Category:People of Sicilian heritage ja:フリードリヒ2世 (神聖ローマ皇帝)

Pope Innocent III

Innocent III, né Lotario de' Conti (Gavignano, near Anagni, ca. 1161 – Perugia, June 16, 1216), was Pope from January 8, 1198 until his death. He was the son of Count Trasimund of Segni and nephew of Pope Clement III. His father was a member of the famous house of Conti, which has produced nine popes, including Gregory IX, Alexander IV and Innocent XIII. His mother, Claricia, belonged to the noble Roman family of Scotti. He was educated in Rome, Paris (under Peter of Corbeil), and Bologna (under Huguccio); he was considered an intellectual and one of the greatest canon lawyers of his time. After the death of Pope Alexander III, he returned to Rome and held office during the short reigns of Lucius III, Urban III, Gregory VIII, and Clement III, reaching the rank of Cardinal Deacon in 1190. During the reign of Pope Celestine III (1191–1198), a member of the House of Orsini, enemies of the counts of Segni, he left Rome to live in Anagni. Celestine III died in 1198. On the day he was buried, de' Conti was elected pope and took the name of Innocent III, at only thirty-seven years of age. The Imperial throne had become vacant by the death of Henry VI in 1197, and no successor had as yet been elected. Innocent took advantage of this vacuum to lessen German influence in Italy—his first act was the restoration of the papal power in Rome. The Prefect of Rome, who reigned over the city as the emperor's representative, swore allegiance to Innocent. He demanded the restoration of the Romagna and the March of Ancona to the Church from Markwald of Anweiler, and used papal troops to bring this about. In a similar way, the Duchies of Spoleto, Assisi and Sora were taken from the German Conrad von Uerslingen. The pope made use of the weakness of Frederick II (who was four years old) to reassert papal power in Sicily, and acknowledged Frederick II as king only after the surrender of the privileges of the Four Chapters, which William I of Sicily had previously extorted from Pope Adrian IV. The pope then invested Frederick II as King of Sicily in November, 1198. He also induced the young king to marry the widow of King Emeric of Hungary in 1209. After the death of the Holy Roman emperor Henry VI in 1197, the Ghibellines and the Guelfs had elected different emperors—Philip of Swabia (of the Hohenstaufen family) and Otto of Brunswick (of the Welf family). In 1201 the pope openly supported Otto IV, announcing that Otto had been approved as Roman king and threatened with excommunication all those who refused to acknowledge him. Innocent III made clear to the German princes by the Decree Venerabilem in May, 1202, how he considered the relationship between the Empire and the Papacy (this decree was afterwards embodied in the Corpus Juris Canonici). The chief points of the decree were: the right to decide whether a king is worthy of the imperial crown belongs to the pope; in case of a double election the electors must ask the pope to arbitrate or pronounce in favour of one of the claimants. electorInnocent changed his mind and declared in favour of Philip in 1207, and sent cardinals to Germany to induce Otto to renounce his claims to the throne. Otto murdered Philip on June 21, 1208 and at the Diet of Frankfurt of November 11, 1208, Otto was acknowledged as king and the pope invited him to Rome to receive the imperial crown. He was crowned emperor in Rome, October 4, 1209. Before his coronation Otto promised to leave the Church in possession of Spoleto and Ancona and to grant the freedom of ecclesiastical elections, unlimited right of appeal to the pope and the exclusive competency of the hierarchy in spiritual matters; he also promised to assist in the destruction of heresy (the stipulation of Neuss, repeated at Speyer, 1209). But soon after he had been crowned, Otto seized Ancona, Spoleto and other property of the Church, giving it to some of his vassals. He also invaded the Kingdom of Sicily. Otto was excommunicated on November 18, 1210. The pope managed to get most of the princes to renounce the excommunicated emperor and elect in his place Frederick II of Sicily, at the Diet of Nuremberg in September, 1211. Frederick made the same promises as Otto IV and his election was ratified by Innocent and he was crowned at Aachen on July 12, 1215. Otto allied with England (he was nephew of King John 'Lackland' of England) to fight Philip Augustus of France, but he was defeated in the Battle of Bouvines in what is now Belgium, July 27, 1214. Then he lost all influence (and died on May 19, 1218), leaving Frederick II, the undisputed emperor. Innocent played a further role in the politics of France, Sweden, Bulgaria, Spain and especially England. Innocent was a strenuous opponent of heresy. He had the Papal States cleared of the Manichean heretics, and under the leadership of Simon de Montfort a campaign was started against the Albigenses. The Church also took on the role of organising the Crusades. They were to be launched against heretics at the direction of the Pontiff and were to be used to impose the rule of the Church on the unbeliever. This was a prelude to the legitimisation of the Inquisition in 1233. Heresy was to be punished for the spiritual good of the individual as well as for the preservation of the Church. Innocent called for the Fourth Crusade in 1198, directing the call towards the knights and nobles of Europe, rather than the kings (he preferred that neither Richard I of England and Philip II of France, who were still engaged in war, nor his German enemies, participate). This call was generally ignored until 1200, when a crusade was finally organized in Champagne, which the Venetians re-directed into the sacking of Zara in 1202 and Constantinople in 1204. Innocent excommunicated the Venetians in return, and although he was not pleased with the means by which it was done, he accepted the end result of the temporary reunification of the Catholic and Orthodox churches after the Great Schism of 1054. He also summoned the Fourth Lateran Council (12th ecumenical council), in November, 1215. It decided on a general crusade to the Holy Land (the Fifth Crusade), as well as issuing seventy reformatory decrees. Innocent died at Perugia. He was buried in the cathedral of Perugia where his body remained until Pope Leo XIII had it transferred to the Lateran in December, 1891. See also: list of popes named Innocent Category:Crusades Innocent 03 Innocent 03 Innocent 03 ko:교황 인노첸시오 3세 ja:インノケンティウス3世 (ローマ教皇)

Crusade

The Crusades were a series of several military campaigns—usually sanctioned by the Papacy—that took place during the 11th through 13th centuries. Originally, they were Roman Catholic endeavors to recapture the Holy Land from the Muslims, but some were directed against other Europeans, such as the Fourth Crusade against Constantinople, the Albigensian Crusade against the Cathars of southern France and the Northern Crusades. Beyond the medieval military events, the word "crusade" has evolved to have multiple meanings and connotations. For additional meanings see usage of the term "crusade" and/or the dictionary definition.

Historical background

The origins of the crusades lie in Western developments earlier in the Middle Ages, as well as the deteriorating situation of the Byzantine Empire. The breakdown of the Carolingian Empire in the later 9th century, combined with the relative stabilization of local European borders after the Christianization of the Vikings, Slavs, and Magyars, meant that there was an entire class of warriors who now had very little to do but fight amongst themselves and terrorize the peasant population. The Church tried to stem this violence with the Peace and Truce of God movements, forbidding violence against certain people at certain times of the year. This was somewhat successful, but trained warriors always sought an outlet for their violence. A plea for help from the Byzantine Emperor Alexius I in opposing Muslim attacks thus fell on ready ears. One later outlet was the Reconquista in Spain and Portugal, which at times occupied Iberian knights and some mercenaries from elsewhere in Europe in the fight against the Islamic Moors. In 1063, Pope Alexander II had given papal blessing to Iberian Christians in their wars against the Muslims, granting both a papal standard (the vexillum sancti Petri) and an indulgence to those who were killed in battle. The Crusades were in part an outlet for an intense religious piety which rose up in the late 11th century among the lay public. This was due in part to the Investiture Controversy, which had started around 1075 and was still on-going during the First Crusade. Christendom had been greatly affected by the Investiture Controversy, as both sides tried to marshal public opinion in their favor, people became personally engaged in a dramatic religious controversy. The result was an awakening of intense Christian piety and public interest in religious affairs, which would manifest in the overwhelming popular support for the First Crusade, and the religious vitality of the 12th century. This background in the Christian West must be matched with that in the Muslim East. Muslim presence in the Holy Land goes back to the initial Arab conquest of Palestine in the 7th century. This did not interfere much with pilgrimage to Christian holy sites or the security of monasteries and Christian communities in the Holy Land of Christendom, and western Europeans were not much concerned with the loss of far-away Jerusalem when, in the ensuing decades and centuries, they were themselves faced with invasions by Muslims and other hostile non-Christians such as the Vikings and Magyars. However, the Muslim armies' successes were putting strong pressure on the Eastern Orthodox Byzantine Empire. A turning point in western attitudes towards the east came in the year 1009, when the Fatimid caliph of Cairo, al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, had the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem destroyed. His successor permitted the Byzantine Empire to rebuild it under stringent circumstances, and pilgrimage was again permitted, but many stories began to be circulated in the West about the cruelty of Muslims toward Christian pilgrims; these stories then played an important role in the development of the crusades later in the century.

Historical context

:It is necessary to look for the origin of a crusading ideal in the struggle between Christians and Muslims in Spain and consider how the idea of a holy war emerged from this background. — Norman F. Cantor The trigger for the First Crusade was Emperor Alexius I's appeal to Pope Urban II for mercenaries to help him resist Muslim advances into territory of the Byzantine Empire. Although the East-West Schism was brewing between the Catholic Western church and the Greek Orthodox Eastern church, Alexius I expected some help from a fellow Christian. However, the response was much larger, and less helpful, than Alexius I desired, as the Pope called for a large invasion force to not merely defend the Byzantine Empire but also retake Jerusalem. When the First Crusade was preached in 1095, the Christian princes of northern Iberia had been fighting their way out of the mountains of Galicia and Asturias, the Basque Country and Navarre, with increasing success, for about a hundred years. The fall of Moorish Toledo to the Kingdom of León in 1085 was a major victory, but the turning points of the Reconquista still lay in the future. The disunity of the Muslim emirs was an essential factor, and the Christians, whose wives remained safely behind, were hard to beat: they knew nothing except fighting, they had no gardens or libraries to defend, and they worked their way forward through alien territory populated by infidels, where the Christian fighters felt they could afford to wreak havoc. All these factors were soon to be replayed in the fighting grounds of the East. Spanish historians have traditionally seen the Reconquista as the molding force in the Castilian character, with its sense that the highest good was to die fighting for the Christian cause of one's country. While the Reconquista was the most prominent example of Christian war against Muslim conquests, it is not the only such example. The Norman adventurer Robert Guiscard had conquered the "toe of Italy," Calabria, in 1057 and was holding what had traditionally been Byzantine territory against the Muslims of Sicily. The maritime states of Pisa, Genoa and Catalonia were all actively fighting Islamic strongholds in Majorca and Sardinia, freeing the coasts of Italy and Catalonia from Muslim raids. Much earlier, of course, the Christian homelands of Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Egypt, and so on had been conquered by Muslim armies. This long history of losing territories to a religious enemy, as well as a powerful pincer movement on all of Western Europe, created a powerful motive to respond to Byzantine emperor Alexius I's call for holy war to defend Christendom, and to recapture the lost lands, starting at the most important one of all, Jerusalem itself. The papacy of Pope Gregory VII had struggled with reservations about the doctrinal validity of a holy war and the shedding of blood for the Lord and had resolved the question in favor of justified violence. More importantly to the Pope, the Christians who made pilgrimages to the Holy Land were being persecuted. Actions against Arians and other heretics offered historical precedents in a society where violence against unbelievers, and indeed against other Christians, was acceptable and common. Saint Augustine of Hippo, Gregory's intellectual model, had justified the use of force in the service of Christ in The City of God, and a Christian "just war" might enhance the wider standing of an aggressively ambitious leader of Europe, as Gregory saw himself. The northerners would be cemented to Rome and their troublesome knights could see the only kind of action that suited them. Previous attempts by the church to stem such violence, such as the concept of the "Peace of God", were not as successful as hoped. To the south of Rome, Normans were showing how such energies might be unleashed against both Arabs (in Sicily) and Byzantines (on the mainland). A Latin hegemony in the Levant would provide leverage in resolving the Papacy's claims of supremacy over the Patriarch of Constantinople, which had resulted in the Great Schism of 1054, a rift that might yet be resolved through the force of Frankish arms. In the Byzantine homelands the Eastern Emperor's weakness was revealed by the disastrous defeat at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, which reduced the Empire's Asian territory to a region in western Anatolia and around Constantinople. A sure sign of Byzantine desperation was the appeal of Alexius I Comnenus to his enemy the Pope for aid. But Gregory was occupied with the Investiture Controversy and could not call on the German emperor and the crusade never took shape. For Gregory's more moderate successor Pope Urban II, a crusade would serve to reunite Christendom, bolster the Papacy, and perhaps bring the East under his control. The disaffected Germans and the Normans were not to be counted on, but the heart and backbone of a crusade could be found in Urban's own homeland among the northern French. On a popular level, the first crusades unleashed a wave of impassioned, personally felt pious fury that was expressed in the massacres of Jews that accompanied the movement of mobs through Europe, as well as the violent treatment of "schismatic" Orthodox Christians of the east. The violence against the Orthodox Christians culminated in the "sack of Constantinople" in 1204, in which most of the Crusading armies took part. The fact that Western Christians had been mistreated in the past (by Constantinople) has never justified this sack in the eyes of the Church. Indeed, as soon as the Pope learned of the sack of Constantinople, all who took part were immediately excommunicated. In modern times, John Paul II has also apologized for this massacre. The 13th century crusades never expressed such a popular fever, and after Acre fell for the last time in 1291, and after the extermination of the Occitan Cathars in the Albigensian Crusade, the crusading ideal became devalued by Papal justifications of political and territorial aggressions within Catholic Europe. The last crusading order of knights to hold territory were the Knights Hospitaller. After the final fall of Acre they took control of the island of Rhodes, and in the sixteenth century were driven to Malta. These last crusaders were finally unseated by Napoleon in 1798.

The major crusades

A traditional numbering scheme for the crusades gives us nine during the 11th to 13th centuries, as well as other smaller crusades that are mostly contemporaneous and unnumbered. There were frequent "minor" crusades throughout this period, not only in Palestine but also in Spain and central Europe, against not only Muslims, but also Christian heretics and personal enemies of the Papacy or other powerful monarchs. Such "crusades" continued into the 16th century, until the Renaissance and Reformation when the political and religious climate of Europe was significantly different than that of the Middle Ages. The following is a listing of the "major" crusades.

First Crusade

Full article: First Crusade The First Crusade is generally considered to be the only one that significantly rolled back the military progress of Islam. After Byzantine emperor Alexius I called for help against the Muslims, Pope Urban II preached a crusade, which was led by several of Europe's most important people. In 1099 the Crusaders captured Jerusalem.

Fourth Crusade

Full article: Fourth Crusade Jerusalem having fallen back into Muslim hands a decade earlier, the Fourth Crusade was initiated in 1202 by Pope Innocent III, with the intention of invading the Holy Land through Egypt. The Venetians gained control of this crusade and diverted it to Constantinople where they attempted to place a Byzantine exile on the throne. After a series of misunderstandings and outbreaks of violence, the city was sacked in 1204. The popular spirit of the movement was now dead, and the succeeding crusades are to be explained rather as arising from the Papacy's struggle to divert the military energies of the European nations toward Syria.

Albigensian Crusade

Full article: Albigensian Crusade The Albigensian Crusade was launched in 1209 to eliminate the heretical Cathars of southern France. It was a decades-long struggle that had as much to do with the concerns of northern France to extend its control southwards as it did with heresy. In the end, both the Cathars and the independence of southern France were exterminated.

Children's Crusade

Full article: Children's Crusade The Children's Crusade is a possibly fictitious or misinterpreted crusade of 1212. The story is that an outburst of the old popular enthusiasm led a gathering of children in France and Germany, which Pope Innocent III interpreted as a reproof from heaven to their unworthy elders. None of the children actually reached the Holy Land, being sold as slaves or dying of hunger during the journey.

Fifth Crusade

Full article: Fifth Crusade By processions, prayers, and preaching, the Church attempted to set another crusade on foot, and the Fourth Council of the Lateran (1215) formulated a plan for the recovery of the Holy Land. A crusading force from Hungary, Austria, and Bavaria achieved a remarkable feat in the capture of Damietta in Egypt in 1219, but under the urgent insistence of the papal legate, Pelagius, they proceeded to a foolhardy attack on Cairo, and an inundation of the Nile compelled them to choose between surrender and destruction.

Sixth Crusade

Full article: Sixth Crusade In 1228, Emperor Frederick II set sail from Brindisi for Syria, though laden with the papal excommunication. Through diplomacy he achieved unexpected success, Jerusalem, Nazareth, and Bethlehem being delivered to the Crusaders for a period of ten years. This was the first major crusade not initiated by the Papacy, a trend that was to continue for the rest of the century. Bethlehem

Seventh Crusade

Full article: Seventh Crusade The papal interests represented by the Templars brought on a conflict with Egypt in 1243, and in the following year a Khwarezmian force summoned by the latter stormed Jerusalem. Although this provoked no widespread outrage in Europe as the fall of Jerusalem in 1187 had done, Louis IX of France organized a crusade against Egypt from 1248 to 1254, leaving from the newly constructed port of Aigues-Mortes in southern France. It was a failure and Louis spent much of the crusade living at the court of the Crusader kingdom in Acre. In the midst of this crusade was the first Shepherds' Crusade in 1251.

Eighth Crusade

Full article: Eighth Crusade The eighth Crusade was organized by Louis IX in 1270, again sailing from Aigues-Mortes, initially to come to the aid of the remnants of the Crusader states in Syria. However, the crusade was diverted to Tunis, where Louis spent only two months before dying.

Ninth Crusade

Full article: Ninth Crusade The future Edward I of England undertook another expedition in 1271, after having accompanied Louis on the Eighth Crusade. He accomplished very little in Syria and retired the following year after a truce. With the fall of Antioch (1268), Tripoli (1289), and Acre (1291) the last traces of the Christian occupation of Syria disappeared.

Crusades in Baltic and Central Europe

Syria, screenshot from Sergei Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky (1938).]] Full article: Northern Crusades The Crusades in the Baltic Sea area and in Central Europe were efforts by (mostly German) Christians to subjugate and convert the peoples of these areas to Christianity. These Crusades ranged from the 12th century, contemporaneous with the Second Crusade, to the 16th century.

Crusade legacy

The Crusades had profound and lasting historical impacts.

Europe

The Crusades had an enormous influence on the European Middle Ages. At times much of the continent was united under a powerful Papacy, but by the 14th century the old concept of Christendom was fragmented, and the development of centralized bureaucracies (the foundation of the modern nation state) was well on its way in France, England, Burgundy, Portugal, Castile, and Aragon partly because of the dominance of the church at the beginning of the crusading era. Although Europe had been exposed to Islamic culture for centuries through contacts in Spain and Sicily, much Islamic thought, such as science, medicine, and architecture, was transferred to the west during the crusades; for example, European castles became massive stone structures, as they were in the east, rather than smaller wooden buildings as they had typically been in the past. The need to raise, transport and supply large armies led to a flourishing of trade throughout Europe. Roads largely unused since the days of Rome saw significant increases in traffic as local merchants began to expand their horizons. This was not only because the Crusades prepared Europe for travel, but rather that many wanted to travel after being reacquainted with the products of the Middle East. This also aided in the beginning of the Renaissance in Italy, as various Italian city-states from the very beginning had important and profitable trading colonies in the crusader states, both in the Holy Land and later in captured Byzantine territory.

Islamic world

The crusades had profound but localized effects upon the Western Islamic world, where the equivalents of "Franks" and "Crusaders" remained expressions of disdain. Muslims traditionally celebrate Saladin, the Kurdish warrior, as a hero against the Crusaders. The Crusades were regarded as cruel and savage onslaughts by European Christians. In the 21st century, some in the Arab world, such as the Arab independence movement and Pan-Islamism movement, continue to call Western involvement in the Middle East a "crusade."

Jewish community

Pan-Islamism The Crusaders' atrocities against Jews in the German and Hungarian towns, later also in those of France and England, and in the massacres of non-combatants in Palestine and Syria have become a part of history of anti-Semitism. They ultimately resulted in excommunication and similar ecclesiastical penalties against their perpetrators, as no Crusade was declared against Jews, and left behind for centuries strong feelings of ill will on both sides. The social position of the Jews in western Europe was distinctly worsened, and legal restrictions increased during and after the Crusades. They prepared the way for anti-Jewish legislation of Pope Innocent III and formed the turning-point in medieval anti-Semitism.

The Caucasus

Many of the Crusaders did not return home to Europe, and instead crossed Asia Minor and settled throughout the Caucasus, where several dozen small Caucasian dialects bear traces of the medieval variants of French, German, Latin and English. Many modern village dwellers count their descent from these Crusaders "gone native", and as late as the early 20th century, relics of armor, weaponry and chain mail were still being used and passed down in such communities.

Usage of the term "crusade"

:For other uses of the term "crusade", see Crusade (disambiguation). The crusades were never referred to as such by their participants. The original crusaders were known by various terms, including fideles Sancti Petri (the faithful of St. Peter) or milites Christi (knights of Christ). They saw themselves as undertaking an iter, a journey, or a peregrinatio, a pilgrimage, though pilgrims were usually forbidden from carrying arms. Like pilgrims, each crusader swore a vow (a votus), to be fulfilled on successfully reaching Jerusalem, and they were granted a cloth cross (crux) to be sewn into their clothes. This "taking of the cross", the crux, eventually became associated with the entire journey; the word "crusade" (coming into English from the French croisade, the Italian crociata, or the Portuguese cruzada) developed from this. Since the 17th century, the term "crusade" has carried a connotation in the West of being a righteous campaign, usually to "root out evil", or to fight for a just cause. In a non-historical common or theological use, "crusade" has come to have a much broader emphatic or religious meaning —substantially removed from 'armed struggle.' In a broader sense, "crusade" can be used, always in a rhetorical and metaphorical sense, to identify as righteous any war that is given a religious justification ("Gott mit uns," "God with us"). Ardent activists may also refer to their causes as "crusades," as in the "Crusade against Adult Illiteracy," or a "Crusade against Littering." In recent years, however, there has been some heightened awareness among Westerners to the historical and political problems with the use of the term "crusade", and where any casual respect for Muslim culture has relevance, the term has largely fallen into disuse. The term may also sarcastically or pejoratively characterize the zealotry of agenda promoters, for example with the monicker "Public Crusader" or the campaigns "Crusade for a women's right to choose," and the "Crusade for prayer in public schools."

Popular reputation

zealotry In Western Europe, the Crusades have traditionally been regarded by laypeople as heroic adventures, though the mass enthusiasm of common people was largely expended in the First Crusade, from which so few of their class returned. Today, the "Saracen" adversary is crystallized in the lone figure of Saladin; his adversary Richard the Lionheart is, in the English-speaking world, the archetypical crusader king, while Frederick Barbarossa (illustration, below left) and Louis IX fill the same symbolic niche in German and French culture. Even in contemporary areas, the crusades and their leaders were romanticized in popular literature; the Chanson d'Antioche was a chanson de geste dealing with the First Crusade, and the Song of Roland, dealing with the era of the similarly romanticized