The Crusades
 

11TH-15TH CENTURY
 

3 Monument to Saladin in front of the medieval citadel of Damascus, present-day Syria

2 Mount Hattin

1 Saladin conquers Jerusalem, illumination,
ca. 1400

5 Frederick I (Barbarossa) drowns in the
Saleph River, wood engraving, ca. 1900

4 Philip II Augustus of France and Richard the
Lion-Hearted of England take the cross,
book illustration, 14th century

Philip II

Philip II, byname Philip Augustus, French Philippe Auguste (born Aug. 21, 1165, Paris, Fr.—died July 14, 1223, Mantes), the first of the great Capetian kings of medieval France (reigned 1179–1223), who gradually reconquered the French territories held by the kings of England and also furthered the royal domains northward into Flanders and southward into Languedoc. He was a major figure in the Third Crusade to the Holy Land in 1191.

Early life and kingship
Philip was the son of Louis VII of France and Adela of Champagne. In order to be associated as king with his father, who had fallen mortally ill, he was crowned at Reims on Nov. 1, 1179. His uncles of the House of Champagne—Henry I, count of Champagne; Guillaume, archbishop of Reims; and Thibaut V, count of Blois and Chartres—hoped to use the youthful king to control France. To escape from their tutelage, Philip, on April 28, 1180, married Isabella, the daughter of Baldwin V of Hainaut and the niece (through her mother) of Philip of Alsace, the count of Flanders, who promised to give the King the territory of Artois as her dowry.

When Henry II of England arrived in Normandy, perhaps with the intention of responding to an appeal by the House of Champagne, Philip II entered into negotiations with him and, at Gisors on June 28, 1180, renewed an understanding that Louis VII had reached with him in 1177. As a result, the House of Champagne was politically isolated, and Philip II was making all decisions for himself and acting as he saw fit when his father died, on Sept. 18, 1180, leaving him sole king in name as well as in fact.

When the Count of Flanders allied himself with the Champagne faction, there followed a serious revolt against the King. In the Peace of Boves, in July 1185 (confirmed by the Treaty of Gisors in May 1186), the King and the Count of Flanders composed their differences (which had been chiefly over possession of Vermandois, in Picardy), so that the disputed territory was partitioned, Amiens and numerous other places passing to the King and the remainder, with the county of Vermandois proper, being left provisionally to Philip of Alsace. Thenceforward the King was free to run against Henry II of England.

Territorial expansion
Henry’s French possessions—the so-called Angevin Empire, consisting of Normandy, Maine, Anjou, and Touraine, with Aquitaine in the hands of his son, the future Richard I the Lion-Heart of England, and Brittany ruled by another son, Geoffrey (died 1186)—all were a constant menace to the French royal domain. Furthermore, there were long-standing disputes over the Vexin (between Normandy and the Île-de-France), Berry, and Auvergne.

Philip II launched an attack on Berry in the summer of 1187 but then in June made a truce with Henry, which left Issoudun in his hands and also granted him Fréteval, in Vendômois. Though the truce was for two years, Philip found grounds for resuming hostilities in the summer of 1188. He skillfully exploited the estrangement between Henry and Richard, and Richard did homage to him voluntarily at Bonmoulins in November 1188. Finally, by the Treaty of Azay-le-Rideau, or of Colombières (July 4, 1189), Henry was forced to renew his own homage, to confirm the cession of Issoudun, with Graçay also, to Philip, and to renounce his claim to suzerainty over Auvergne. Henry died two days later.

Richard, who succeeded Henry as king of England, had already undertaken to go on crusade (the Third Crusade) against Saladin in the Holy Land, and Philip now did likewise. Before his departure, he made the so-called Testament of 1190 to provide for the government of his kingdom in his absence. On his way to Palestine, he met Richard in Sicily, where they promptly found themselves at variance, though they made a treaty at Messina in March 1191. Arriving in Palestine, they cooperated against the Muslims at Acre, until Philip fell ill and made his illness a pretext for returning to France, quite determined to settle the succession to Flanders (Philip of Alsace had just died on the crusade) while Richard was still absent. Thus, by the end of 1191, Philip II was back in France.

In spite of promises he had made in the Holy Land, Philip at once prepared to attack the Plantagenet possessions in France. Informed of this, Richard also left the crusade but was taken prisoner while on his way back by the duke of Austria, Leopold V of Babenberg. Philip did everything he could to prolong his rival’s captivity, but Richard was at last set free (1194) and went to war against Philip. The French king suffered a number of defeats (from that at Fréteval in July 1194 to that at Courcelles in September 1198) in a series of campaigns that were occasionally punctuated by negotiations. It was fortuitous for Philip, however, when Richard was killed in April 1199.

Richard’s brother John was by no means as formidable a fighter. Moreover, his right to Richard’s succession could be contested by Arthur of Brittany, whose father had been senior to John. To secure the succession, therefore, John came to terms with Philip: by the Treaty of Le Goulet (May 22, 1200), in return for Philip’s recognition of him as Richard’s heir, he ceded Évreux and the Norman Vexin to Philip; agreed that Issoudun and Graçay should be the dowry of his niece Blanche of Castile, who was to marry the future Louis VIII (Philip’s son by Isabella of Hainaut); and renounced any claim to suzerainty over Berry and Auvergne.

Shortly afterward, however, John entered into conflict with the Lusignan family of Poitou (in Aquitaine), who appealed to Philip as overlord. When he was summoned to appear before the royal court as a vassal of the French crown, John did not present himself, and Philip, in April 1202, pronounced John’s French fiefs forfeit and undertook to carry out the sentence himself. He invaded Normandy, overran the northeast, and laid siege to Arques, while Arthur of Brittany, the son of Geoffrey, who died some years before, campaigned against John’s supporters in Poitou; but John, marching south from Maine, captured Arthur at Mirebeau (August 1). In fury, Philip abandoned the siege of Arques and marched southwestward to Tours, ravaging John’s territory on his way before returning to Paris. Guillaume des Roches, the powerful seneschal of Anjou, who had taken John’s side, came to terms with Philip in March 1203.

Resuming operations against Normandy, Philip occupied the towns around the great fortress of Château-Gaillard, to which he laid siege in September 1203, having overruled Pope Innocent III’s attempts to mediate. John, who is reported to have murdered Arthur of Brittany in April, retired to England in December, and Château-Gaillard fell to Philip in March 1204. Rouen, the Norman capital, surrendered in June, after 40 days’ resistance.

After his conquest of Normandy, Philip subdued Maine, Touraine, Anjou, and most of Poitou with less difficulty (1204–05), though the castles of Loches and Chinon held out for a year. He sought to secure his conquests by lavishing privileges on the towns and on the religious houses but otherwise left the local barons in power. Unrest, however, was endemic in Poitou, and in June 1206 John landed at La Rochelle. After a campaign in the south, he turned north toward the Loire. At Thouars in October 1206, he and Philip made a two-year truce, leaving John in possession of the reconquered Poitevin lands. In the following year, however, Philip invaded Poitou again; and, after a further campaign in 1208, only the south and part of the west of Poitou remained loyal to John (with Saintonge, Guyenne, and Gascony).

Philip next hoped to exploit the dispute between John and Pope Innocent III. While Innocent was threatening to declare John unfit to reign (1212), plans were being made for a French landing in England and for the accession of Philip’s son Louis to the English throne. The plans had to be dropped when John made his submission to the Pope (1213). Throwing himself into schemes for revenge, John formed a coalition against France: the Holy Roman emperor Otto IV, the Count of Flanders (Ferrand, or Ferdinand, of Portugal), and the Count of Boulogne (Raynald, or Renaud, of Dammartin) were to invade the Capetian territory from the northeast while John attacked from the west, with the help of his Poitevin barons.

John landed at La Rochelle in February 1214 and advanced into Anjou but was put to flight by Louis at La Roche-aux-Moines on July 2; his confederates were completely defeated by Philip in the decisive Battle of Bouvines on July 27. The Anglo-Angevin power in France and the coalition had both been broken in one month. Thus Philip, who, in 1213, had transferred Brittany to his cousin Peter of Dreux, was left without any significant opposition to his rule in France.

It was not only at the Plantagenets’ expense that Philip enlarged the royal domain. His claim to Artois through his first marriage and his gains by the settlement of 1185–86 have been mentioned above, and he subsequently proceeded, step by step, to acquire the rest of Vermandois and Valois. His insistence on his suzerainty over vacant fiefs and on his tutelage over minors and heiresses was particularly effective with regard to Flanders, where two successive Flemish counts, Philip of Alsace (died 1191) and Baldwin IX (died c. 1205) had left no male issue.

Though he did not personally take part in the crusade proclaimed by Pope Innocent III against a Cathari religious sect in Languedoc, Philip allowed his vassals and knights to carry it out. Simon de Montfort’s capture of Béziers and Carcassonne (1209) and his victory at Muret over Raymond VI of Toulouse and Peter II of Aragon (1213) prepared the way for the eventual annexation of eastern Languedoc to the royal domain six years after Philip’s death and for the union of northern and southern France under Capetian rule.

Internal affairs
Several years before he tried to take advantage of the papacy’s quarrel with John of England, Philip had himself been in dispute with Rome. After the death (1190) of Isabella of Hainaut, he had married Ingeborg, sister of the Danish king Canute IV, on Aug. 14, 1193, and on the next day, for a private reason, had resolved to separate from her. Having procured the annulment of his marriage by an assembly of bishops in November 1193, he took a Tirolese lady, Agnes, daughter of Bertold IV of Meran, as his wife in June 1196. Denmark, meanwhile, had complained to Rome about the repudiation of Ingeborg, and Pope Celestine III had countermanded it in 1195; but Celestine died (1198) before he could resort to coercion against Philip. The next pope, Innocent III, was sterner: in January 1200 he imposed an interdict on France. Philip, therefore, in September 1200, had to submit, pretending to be reconciled with Ingeborg. In fact, he refused to cohabit with her and kept her in semicaptivity until 1213, when he accepted her beside him—not as his wife but at least as his queen. Agnes had died in 1201, after bearing two children to Philip: Marie, countess of Namur (1211) and duchess of Brabant (1213), by successive marriages; and Philip, called Hurepel, count of Clermont.

Throughout his reign, Philip kept a close watch over the French nobility, which he brought effectively to heel. He maintained excellent relations with the French clergy, leaving the canons of the cathedral chapters free to elect their bishops and favouring the monastic orders. He knew, too, how to win the support of the towns, granting privileges and liberties to merchants and frequently aiding their struggles to free themselves from the seignorial authority of the nobles. In return, the communes helped financially and militarily. Most of all, Philip gave his attention to Paris, not only fortifying it with a great rampart but also having its streets and thoroughfares put in order. For the countryside, he multiplied the number of villes neuves (“new towns”), or enfranchised communities.

The Capetian monarchy’s hold on the huge royal domain as well as on the kingdom as a whole was considerably strengthened by Philip’s institution of a new class of administrative officers, the royal baillis and the seneschals for the provinces, who were appointed by the king to supervise the conduct of the local prévôts (“provosts”), to give justice in his name, to collect the revenues of the domain for him, and to call up the armed forces, in addition to other duties.

Conclusion.
Philip II died on July 14, 1223. Knowing his own strength, he was the first of the Capetians not to have his eldest son crowned and associated with him during his lifetime; in fact, his conquests and strong government made him the richest and most powerful king in Europe and prepared the way for France’s greatness in the 13th century.

Marcel Pacaut

Encyclopaedia Britannica

6 Gustave Dore. Richard the Lion-Heart savagely massacres all the
Muslim prisoners when Saladin does not pay
his ransom promptly.
 

see also:



The History of the Crusades


illustrations by Gustave Dore

From Annales Marbacenses, 1238:


The Children's Crusade


"Many of them [boys andgirls] were kept back by the inhabitants of the land as farm hands and maidservants.

Others were to go to the seaside, where boatmen and sailors would deceive them and ship them off to distant regions of the world."

 

Gustave Dore 

50,000 French and German children launch their own crusade, singing “Lord Jesus, restore to us your holy cross!”

see also:


The History of the Crusades


illustrations by Gustave Dore











 

9 Emperor Frederick II crowns himself king of Jerusalem, wood engraving,
19th century

10 An imprisoned Louis IX,
book illustration, 14th century

12 Mamelukes on horseback,
Arabic book illustration,
15th century

13 Fortification in Acre dating from the times of the Crusades

11 A Knight Templar, wood engraving

Frederick II

Holy Roman emperor
 

born Dec. 26, 1194, Jesi, Ancona, Papal States
died Dec. 13, 1250, Castel Fiorentino, Apulia, Kingdom of Sicily
 

Main
king of Sicily (1197–1250), duke of Swabia (as Frederick VI, 1228–35), German king (1212–50), and Holy Roman emperor (1220–50). A Hohenstaufen and grandson of Frederick I Barbarossa, he pursued his dynasty’s imperial policies against the papacy and the Italian city states; and he also joined in the Sixth Crusade (1228–29), conquering several areas of the Holy Land and crowning himself king of Jerusalem (reigning 1229–43).

 

Early years.
In 1196, Frederick, at the age of two, was elected king by the German princes at Frankfort. His father, however, failed in his attempt to gain the princes’ support to make Frederick’s succession hereditary. Just before embarking on a crusade to the Holy Land, Emperor Henry died in September 1197 after a brief illness, only 32 years old. Though the medieval Roman Empire was at the height of its strength, the Emperor’s death brought it close to dissolution.

After the death of her husband, Empress Constance had young Frederick brought to Sicily, where in May 1198 he was crowned king of Sicily. Before her death later that year, Constance loosened the bonds that joined Sicily to the empire and to Germany by appointing Pope Innocent III her son’s guardian as well as regent of the Kingdom of Sicily, which was already under papal suzerainty. In Germany two rival kings were elected, Frederick’s uncle Philip of Swabia and Otto of Brunswick, as Otto IV.

Even the Pope, however, did not succeed in protecting Sicily from many years of anarchy. German and papal captains, local barons, and Sicilian Saracens, as well as the cities of Genoa and Pisa, fought for mastery of the country. The situation was not stabilized until the imperial chancellor conquered Palermo in November 1206 and governed in Frederick’s name. In December 1208 Frederick, then 14, was declared of age.

In 1209 he married the much older Constance of Aragon, who brought him an urgently needed troop of knights with whose help he gained control of Sicily, defeated a conspiracy of the barons, and was partially successful in regaining the crown properties that had been lost during his minority. At this time his relations with the Pope began to show signs of strain.

Frederick’s Sicilian efforts were seriously endangered when at the end of 1210 Otto IV invaded the realm on the mainland and in 1211 even threatened Sicily itself. Otto withdrew, however, when in September 1211 a number of German princes deposed him and elected Frederick king.

Before leaving for Germany in March 1212, Frederick had his one-year-old son Henry VII crowned king of Sicily and granted various privileges to the Holy See. Having rapidly conquered south Germany, where he met almost no opposition, Frederick was elected once again king of Germany by a large majority of princes at Frankfurt in December 1212 and crowned a few days later. In the same year he concluded an alliance with France against Otto, who was decisively defeated at the Battle of Bouvines in July 1214.

Consolidation of the empire.
In April 1220 Frederick’s nine-year-old son Henry VII was elected king by the German princes, thus negating Frederick’s promise to Pope Innocent that he would relinquish control of Sicily in favour of Henry, for it meant that Sicily and Germany would eventually be united under one ruler. Although Frederick sought to exonerate himself with Pope Honorius III by claiming that the election had been held without his knowledge, he had to pay for it by surrendering extensive royal prerogatives to the German ecclesiastical princes.

Crowned emperor by the Pope in St. Peter’s Church, in Rome, on Nov. 22, 1220, Frederick confirmed on the same day the legal separation of the empire from the Kingdom of Sicily while continuing the existing personal union. In addition, he granted important privileges to the Italian ecclesiastics and issued laws against heretics, and it seemed indeed that harmony had been reestablished between the Emperor and the Pope for some years to come. Frederick spent the following years consolidating his rule in Sicily. He broke the resistance of the barons to revocation of certain of their privileges and defeated the rebellious Saracens (1222–24), whom he later resettled in Apulia where they became his most faithful subjects, providing him with a loyal bodyguard immune against papal influence.

In addition to erecting a chain of castles and border fortifications, he had enlarged the harbours of his kingdom and established a navy and a fleet of merchant vessels. He instituted measures designed to bring trade under state control and make the manufacture of certain products the monopoly of the state. Finally, he created a civil service for which candidates were trained at the first European state university, in Naples, which he himself founded in 1224.

Years as a crusader.
In the meantime, the Pope was reminding the Emperor of the crusading vows he had taken at his coronations in 1212 and 1220. Frederick, however, was inclined to postpone such a venture until the Italian problems had been resolved. He claimed the Kingdom of Jerusalem for himself through his marriage to Isabella (Yolande) of Brienne, the heiress of the titular king of Jerusalem, who had become his wife in 1225 after Constance had died in 1222. Before embarking for the Holy Land, Frederick convened an imperial diet for Easter 1226 in Cremona, in northern Italy, in order to reinforce certain imperial rights in Italy and to prepare for the crusade. The cities of Lombardy, however, reconstituted themselves, under the leadership of Milan, as the Lombard League, and not only sabotaged the diet at Cremona but effectively opposed Frederick’s reorganization of northern Italy.

In September 1227, when Frederick was at last ready to embark from Brindisi for the Holy Land, an epidemic broke out among the crusaders. The new pope, Gregory IX, a passionate man who belonged to the intellectual world of Francis of Assisi—his personal friend whom he canonized as early as 1228—brushed aside Frederick’s justification and excommunicated him for his failure to carry out the crusade.

In June 1228, ignoring the excommunication, Frederick set sail from Brindisi. In the Holy Land, following complex negotiations, he obtained Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Nazareth from the Sultan al-Kāmil of Egypt. It was certainly the impact of Frederick’s personality on the Arab world, and not armed might, that made this treaty possible. On March 18, 1229, the excommunicated emperor crowned himself king of Jerusalem in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. This was the high point as well as the turning point of Frederick’s conception of sovereignty. Eschatological prophecies concerning his rule were now made, and the Emperor considered himself to be a messiah, a new David. His entry into Jerusalem was compared with that of Christ on Palm Sunday, and, indeed, in a manifesto the Emperor, too, compared himself to Christ.

In the meantime, however, papal troops had penetrated into the Kingdom of Sicily. Frederick returned at once and reconquered the lost areas but did not in turn attack the Papal States. His diplomacy was rewarded: after the Treaty of San Germano (July 1230) he was absolved from excommunication the following month at Ceprano.

In August 1231, at Melfi, the Emperor issued his new constitutions for the Kingdom of Sicily. Not since the reign of the Byzantine emperor Justinian in the 6th century had the administrative law of a European state been codified. Frederick’s codes contained many ideas that anticipated enlightened absolutism and the centralization of the state. During the same time, however, Frederick could not prevent his son, the German king Henry VII, from making a number of important concessions to the German princes. These concessions, confirmed by Frederick in 1232 at the diet of Cividale, strengthened the rule of the princes at the expense of the central power of the empire. These and other steps set back the development of communal self-government in Germany and furthered the independence of the principalities. In the meantime, relations between Frederick and Henry VII deteriorated steadily. Henry had been ruling independently in Germany since 1228, when in December 1234 he entered into an alliance with the Lombard League. This action amounted to high treason in the eyes of the Emperor. On Frederick’s arrival in Germany, his son’s rebellion collapsed; he died in a prison in Calabria in 1242.

His second wife having died in 1228, Frederick in July 1235 married Isabella of England. Shortly thereafter, he issued an edict of imperial peace, which also called for the appointment of a chief justice of the imperial court in order to protect the sovereign rights of the emperor from further erosion.

After some military successes in Lombardy against the Lombard League, the Emperor returned to Germany in 1236 to remove the rebellious duke Frederick of Austria and Styria from rule. In February 1237 he had his nine-year-old son Conrad IV elected king of Germany in Vienna. After several more months in Germany—it was to be his last visit—he descended into northern Italy. He defeated the Lombard League at Cortenuova, but, misjudging his strength, he rejected all Milanese peace overtures and insisted on unconditional surrender. It was a moment of grave historic importance when Frederick’s hatred coloured his judgment and blocked all possibilities of a peaceful settlement.

Struggle with the papacy.
Milan and five other cities held out, and in October 1238 he had to raise the siege of Brescia. In the same year the marriage of Frederick’s natural son Enzio with the Sardinian princess Adelasia and the designation of Enzio as king of Sardinia, in which the papacy claimed suzerainty, led to the final break with the Pope. Gregory IX deeply distrusted Frederick both in religious and political matters: Frederick was supposed to have jested that Moses, Christ, and Muḥammad were three impostors who had themselves been hoodwinked; and in the political arena the Pope was fearful that the Papal States were about to be isolated and encircled, particularly because a pro-imperial party had been formed in Rome. Under the pretext that the Emperor intended to drive him from Rome, Gregory excommunicated Frederick for the second time on Palm Sunday, March 20, 1239. This was the beginning of the last phase of the gigantic struggle between the papacy and the empire; it ended with the death of the Emperor and the downfall of his house.

Frederick countered the excommunication with a number of important manifestos, most of them composed by Pietro della Vigna, a member of the imperial chancery, who had outstanding literary gifts. The manifesto emphasized that the cardinals were meant to participate in the leadership of the church, and Frederick even tried to evoke solidarity among the secular princes. He also, however, intensified his military activities in northern Italy. In order to finance his constantly growing need for arms, he instituted a thorough administrative reorganization of imperial Italy (among others, the formation of 10 vice regencies) and of the Kingdom of Sicily. In addition, he decreed the rigorous surveillance of the population. In central Italy he took the offensive, occupying the March of Ancona and the Duchy of Spoleto, and in February 1240 his army marched into the Papal States and threatened Rome. At the last moment, however, the Pope won the support of the Romans.

Following the defeat of a Genoese fleet bringing delegates for a papal council to Rome, more than 100 high-ranking ecclesiastics—cardinals and bishops among them—were taken as Frederick’s prisoners to Apulia. This military victory proved, however, to be a political disadvantage: it provided material for propaganda depicting Frederick as an oppressor of the church.

While still encamped before Rome, Frederick received the news of Pope Gregory’s death and thereupon withdrew to Sicily. In the meantime, the Mongols had invaded Europe. They were temporarily halted in the extremely bloody Battle of Liegnitz in Silesia on April 9, 1241, but probably only the sudden death of their leader, the great khan Ögödei, prevented further Mongol advances at that time.

Celestine IV’s brief pontificate was followed by a long interregnum. When in 1243 Innocent IV was elected, Frederick, at the urging of the German princes and of King Louis IX of France, opened negotiations with the new pope. Agreement between the Pope and the Emperor seemed close on the evacuation of the Papal States, when in June 1244 Innocent fled the city. In Lyon he convened a council for 1245 and in July of that year deposed the Emperor, the obstacle to reconciliation apparently being the status of the Lombard communes.

The battle between the Emperor and the papacy then raged in full fury; on the papal side the Emperor was branded as the precursor of the anti-Christ; on the imperial side he was hailed as a messiah. The Emperor supported the contemporary demand that the church return to the poverty and saintliness of the early Christian community and again appealed to the princes of Europe to join in a defensive league against the power-hungry prelates. Most of the princes, however, remained neutral, and, although two successive German antikings received little support, the Emperor steadily lost ground in Germany.

In May 1247 Frederick’s planned journey to Lyon in order to plead his own case before the papal council was interrupted by the revolt of the strategically placed city of Parma. In the wake of this debacle much of central Italy and the Romagna was lost. The following year the Emperor was to suffer further blows of fate; Pietro della Vigna, for many years the Emperor’s confidant, was accused of treason and committed suicide in prison. In May 1249 King Enzio of Sardinia, Frederick’s favourite son, was captured by the Bolognese and was kept incarcerated until his death in 1272.

The Emperor’s position, both in Italy and—through the efforts of his son, Conrad IV—in Germany, was improving when he died unexpectedly in 1250. He was buried in the cathedral of Palermo near his first wife, his parents, and his Norman grandfather.

When the news of his death was published, all Europe was deeply shaken. Doubts arose that he was really dead; false Fredericks appeared everywhere; in Sicily a legend grew that he had been conveyed to the Aetna volcano; in Germany that he was encapsuled in a mountain and would return as the latter-day emperor to punish the worldly church and peacefully reestablish the Holy Roman Empire. Yet he was also thought to live on in his heirs. In fact, however, within 22 years after his death, all of them were dead: victims of the battle with the papacy that their father had begun.

Assessment.
Frederick’s character was marked by sharp contradictions, undoubtedly the result of his insecure and emotionally barren childhood. Enchanting amiability and gaiety were paired with cruelty; harshness and rigidity existed side by side with superior intelligence and a keen sense of reality; tolerance and intolerance went hand in hand; impulsive sensuality did not stand in the way of genuine piety; imbalance and inner discord pervaded his personality and his achievements.

Frederick cannot be considered the first modern man on the throne, nor a pioneer of the Renaissance, as some historians have maintained. Though his gifted personality heralded some of the intellectual trends of later times, he was, all in all, a man of the Middle Ages. He had indeed had the good fortune to have grown up in Sicily in a mixed culture that uniquely combined elements of antiquity, Arabic and Jewish wisdom, the Occidental spirit of the Middle Ages, and Norman realism. The intellectual life of his court reflected this heritage. A courtly “republic of scholars,” it nurtured and fostered the natural sciences as well as philosophy, poetry, and mathematics, and translations as well as original writing, both in Latin and in the vernacular. The pursuit of knowledge without special respect for traditional authorities was characteristic of Frederick and his court.

Witness to the intellectual vigour and distinction of Frederick himself and those around him are the content and style of his great legal codices and manifestos, many of them serving as examples to later generations; the edifices he erected, particularly the classic style of the Castello del Monte—a fusion of poetry and mathematics in stone; and, most outstanding, his own work De arte venandi cum avibus, a standard work on falconry based entirely on his own experimental research.

Frederick’s concept of the emperor’s function was rooted in the ideology of the late Greco-Roman period and the Judeo-Christian philosophy of the Middle Ages, emphasizing the sacredness and universal character of the office. In the light of it, Frederick claimed preeminence for the emperor over all other secular rulers—undoubtedly an ill-timed claim in an age when separate nation-states were developing. Thus, Frederick’s policies, full of intellectual and political promise, were in actuality dogged by tragedy.

Gunther Wolf

Encyclopaedia Britannica
 

14 Knights of the order of St. John in Rhodes,
illustration, 15th century.

8 Knight of St. John of Malta,
a Maltese knight, painting by Caravaggio,
beginning of 17th century

Orders of the Knights


The knightly orders founded in the course of the twelfth century combined monkish and chivalrous ideals. Sworn to personal poverty, chastity, and obedience, the members initially dedicated themselves to the protection of pilgrims and caring for the sick.

In addition, they increasingly took part in the fighting against the Muslims. The orders quickly developed into significant powers by virtue of their wealthy properties captured in the Holy Land and bequeathed to them in Western Europe.



Castle of the Knights of St. John in Syria, built ca. 1142

Templar





religious military order
also called Knight Templar
Main
member of the Poor Knights of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon, a religious military order of knighthood established at the time of the Crusades that became a model and inspiration for other military orders. Originally founded to protect Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land, the order assumed greater military duties during the 12th century. Its prominence and growing wealth, however, provoked opposition from rival orders. Falsely accused of blasphemy and blamed for Crusader failures in the Holy Land, the order was destroyed by King Philip IV of France.
 

Following the success of the First Crusade (1095–99), a number of Crusader states were established in the Holy Land, but these kingdoms lacked the necessary military force to maintain more than a tenuous hold over their territories. Most Crusaders returned home after fulfilling their vows, and Christian pilgrims to Jerusalem suffered attacks from Muslim raiders. Pitying the plight of these Christians, eight or nine French knights led by Hugh de Payns vowed in late 1119 or early 1120 to devote themselves to the pilgrims’ protection and to form a religious community for that purpose. Baldwin II, king of Jerusalem, gave them quarters in a wing of the royal palace in the area of the former Temple of Solomon, and from this they derived their name.

Although the Templars were opposed by those who rejected the idea of a religious military order and later by those who criticized their wealth and influence, they were supported by many secular and religious leaders. Beginning in 1127, Hugh undertook a tour of Europe and was well received by many nobles, who made significant donations to the knights. The Templars obtained further sanction at the Council of Troyes in 1128, which may have requested that Bernard of Clairvaux compose the new rule. Bernard also wrote In Praise of the New Knighthood (c. 1136), which defended the order against its critics and contributed to its growth. In 1139 Pope Innocent II issued a bull that granted the order special privileges: the Templars were allowed to build their own oratories and were not required to pay the tithe; they were also exempt from episcopal jurisdiction, being subject to the pope alone.

The rule of the order was modeled after the Benedictine Rule, especially as understood and implemented by the Cistercians. The Knights Templar swore an oath of poverty, chastity, and obedience and renounced the world, just as the Cistercians and other monks did. Like the monks, the Templars heard the divine office during each of the canonical hours of the day and were expected to honour the fasts and vigils of the monastic calendar. They were frequently found in prayer and expressed particular veneration to the Virgin Mary. They were not allowed to gamble, swear, or become drunk and were required to live in community, sleeping in a common dormitory and eating meals together. They were not, however, strictly cloistered, as were the monks, nor were they expected to perform devotional reading (most Templars were uneducated and unable to read Latin). The knights’ primary duty was to fight. The Templars gradually expanded their duties from protecting pilgrims to mounting a broader defense of the Crusader states in the Holy Land. They built castles, garrisoned important towns, and participated in battles, fielding significant contingents against Muslim armies until the fall of Acre, the last remaining Crusader stronghold in the Holy Land, in 1291. Their great effectiveness was attested by the sultan Saladin following the devastating defeat of Crusader forces at the Battle of Ḥaṭṭīn; he bought the Templars who were taken prisoner and later had each of them executed.

By the mid-12th century the constitution of the order and its basic structure were established. It was headed by a grand master, who was elected for life and served in Jerusalem. Templar territories were divided into provinces, which were governed by provincial commanders, and each individual house, called a preceptory, was headed by a preceptor. General chapter meetings of all members of the order were held to address important matters affecting the Templars and to elect a new master when necessary. Similar meetings were held at the provincial level and on a weekly basis in each house.

The Templars were originally divided into two classes: knights and sergeants. The knight-brothers came from the military aristocracy and were trained in the arts of war. They assumed elite leadership positions in the order and served at royal and papal courts. Only the knights wore the Templars’ distinctive regalia, a white surcoat marked with a red cross. The sergeants, or serving-brothers, who were usually from lower social classes, made up the majority of members. They dressed in black habits and served as both warriors and servants. The Templars eventually added a third class, the chaplains, who were responsible for holding religious services, administering the sacraments, and addressing the spiritual needs of the other members. Although women were not allowed to join the order, there seems to have been at least one Templar nunnery.

The Templars eventually acquired great wealth. The kings and great nobles of Spain, France, and England gave lordships, castles, seigniories, and estates to the order, so that by the mid-12th century the Templars owned properties scattered throughout western Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Holy Land. The Templars’ military strength enabled them to safely collect, store, and transport bullion to and from Europe and the Holy Land, and their network of treasure storehouses and their efficient transport organization made them attractive as bankers to kings as well as to pilgrims to the Holy Land.

The Templars were not without enemies, however. They had long engaged in a bitter rivalry with the other great military order of Europe, the Hospitallers, and, by the late 13th century, proposals were being made to merge the two contentious orders into one. The fall of Acre to the Muslims in 1291 removed much of the Templars’ reason for being, and their great wealth, extensive landholdings in Europe, and power inspired resentment toward them. Although an ex-Templar had accused the order of blasphemy and immorality as early as 1304 (though more likely 1305), it was only later—after Philip IV ordered the arrest on October 13, 1307, of every Templar in France and sequestered all the Templars’ property in the country—that most of the people of Europe became aware of the extent of the alleged crimes of the order. Philip accused the Templars of heresy and immorality; specific charges against them included idol worship (of a bearded male head said to have great powers), worship of a cat, homosexuality, and numerous other errors of belief and practice. At the order’s secret initiation rite, it was claimed, the new member denied Christ three times, spat on the crucifix, and was kissed on the base of the spine, on the navel, and on the mouth by the knight presiding over the ceremony. The charges, now recognized to be without foundation, were calculated to stoke contemporary fears of heretics, witches, and demons and were similar to allegations Philip had used against Pope Boniface VIII.

The reasons why Philip sought to destroy the Templars are unclear; he may have genuinely feared their power and been motivated by his own piety to destroy a heretical group, or he may have simply seen an opportunity to seize their immense wealth, being chronically short of money himself. At any rate, Philip mercilessly pursued the order and had many of its members tortured to secure false confessions. Although Pope Clement V, himself a Frenchman, ordered the arrest of all the Templars in November 1307, a church council in 1311 voted overwhelmingly against suppression, and Templars in countries other than France were found innocent of the charges. Clement, however, under strong pressure from Philip, suppressed the order on March 22, 1312, and the Templars’ property throughout Europe was transferred to the Hospitallers or confiscated by secular rulers. Knights who confessed and were reconciled to the church were sent into retirement in the order’s former houses or in monasteries, but those who failed to confess or who relapsed were put on trial. Among those judged guilty was the order’s last grand master, Jacques de Molay. Brought before a commission established by the pope, de Molay and other leaders were judged relapsed heretics and sentenced to life in prison. The master protested and repudiated his confession and was burned at the stake, the last victim of a highly unjust and opportunistic persecution.

At the time of its destruction, the order was an important institution in both Europe and the Holy Land and already an object of myth and legend. The Templars were associated with the Grail legend and were identified as defenders of the Grail castle through the remainder of the Middle Ages. In the 18th century the Freemasons claimed to have received in a secret line of succession esoteric knowledge that the Templars had possessed. The Templars were also identified as Gnostics and were accused of involvement in a number of conspiracies, including one that was allegedly behind the French Revolution. In the 20th century the image of Christ on the Shroud of Turin was identified as the head allegedly worshipped by the Templars. Resurrecting a vein of pseudohistory and Grail legends, authors in the 20th century, claiming to assert historical fact but writing what most scholars regard as fantasy, implicated the Templars in a vast conspiracy dedicated to preserving the blood line of Jesus. Similar occult conspiracy theories were also used by writers of fiction in the 20th and 21st centuries.

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Teutonic Order





religious order
also called Teutonic Knights, formally House of the Hospitalers of Saint Mary of the Teutons in Jerusalem, German Deutscher Orden, or Deutscher Ritter-Orden, or Haus der Ritter des Hospitals Sankt Marien der Deutschen zu Jerusalem, Latin Domus Sanctae Mariae Theutonicorum in Jerusalem

Main
religious order that played a major role in eastern Europe in the late Middle Ages and that underwent various changes in organization and residence from its founding in 1189/90 to the present. Its major residences, marking its major states of development, were: (1) Acre, Palestine (modern ʿAkko, Israel), its original home beginning with the Third Crusade (1189/90–c. 1291); (2) Marienburg, Prussia (modern Malbork, Pol.), the centre of its role as a military principality (1309–1525); (3) Mergentheim, Württemberg, Ger., to which it moved after its loss of Prussia (1525–1809); and (4) Vienna, where the order gathered the remains of its revenues and survives as a purely hospital order (from 1834).
 

Origin.
In 1189–90, when crusading forces were besieging Acre, some German merchants from Bremen and Lübeck formed a fraternity to nurse the sick there. After the capture of Acre (1191), this fraternity took over a hospital in the town and began to describe itself as the Hospital of St. Mary of the German House in Jerusalem. Pope Clement III approved it, and it adopted a rule like that of the original Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem (i.e., the Knights of Malta).

The death of the Hohenstaufen emperor Henry VI in 1197, when he was planning a great expedition to Palestine, caused an important change: a number of German crusaders who had arrived in Palestine decided to return home. In order to fill the gap, the German princes and bishops, together with King Amalric II of Jerusalem, in 1198 militarized the fraternity, making it a religious order of knights. The new order was put under a monastic and military rule like that of the Templars. It received privileges from Popes Celestine III and Innocent III and extensive grants of land, not only in the kingdom of Jerusalem but also in Germany and elsewhere. Innocent III in 1205 granted the Teutonic knights the use of the white habit with a black cross.

The knights left Palestine forever toward the end of the Crusades, with the final fall of the country to Islām (1291).

Eastern Europe and Prussia.
Meanwhile, under the leadership of the grand master Hermann von Salza (reigned 1210–39), the Teutonic knights had already begun transferring their main centre of activity from the Middle East to eastern Europe. The order’s first European enterprise started in Hungary in 1211, when King Andrew II invited a group of the Teutonic Knights to protect his Transylvanian borderland against the Cumans by colonizing it and by converting its people to Christianity. The order was then granted extensive rights of autonomy; but the knights’ demands became so excessive that they were expelled from Hungary in 1225. By that time, however, a new opportunity was opening: a Polish duke, Conrad of Mazovia, with lands on the lower reaches of the Vistula River, needed help against the pagan Prussians.

Hermann von Salza proceeded carefully, in order to avoid a repetition of what the order had experienced in Transylvania. He already enjoyed the confidence of the Hohenstaufen emperor Frederick II, whom he had served as a diplomat. So, when Conrad made his offer, Hermann in 1226 obtained from Frederick the so-called Golden Bull of Rimini as a legal basis for the settlement. By this charter, Frederick confirmed to Hermann and to the order not only the lands to be granted by Conrad but also those that the knights were to conquer from the Prussians. Later (1234), Hermann also secured privileges from Pope Gregory IX, which can be regarded as the second foundation charter of the order’s Prussian state: the papacy was ready to accept the order’s current and future conquests as the property of the Holy See and to grant them back to the order in perpetual tenure.

In 1233, led by the Landmeister (provincial leader) Hermann Balk and using an army of volunteer laymen recruited mainly from central Germany, the Teutonic Knights began the conquest of Prussia. During the next 50 years, having advanced from the lower Vistula River to the lower Neman (Niemen, Nemunas) River and having exterminated most of the native Prussian population (especially during the major rebellion of 1261–83), the order firmly established its control over Prussia.

Although the order gave one-third of the conquered territory to the church and granted a large degree of autonomy to the newly developing towns in the area, it easily became the dominant power in Prussia. It worked to develop the region by building castles, by importing German peasants to settle in depopulated areas, by bestowing substantial estates on German and Polish nobles who became vassals of the order, and by monopolizing the lucrative Prussian grain trade, particularly after 1263, when the pope allowed the knights, who had previously been bound by a vow of poverty, to engage directly in trading activities.

In 1237, less than two years before Hermann von Salza’s death, the Order of the Brothers of the Sword (Schwertbrüderorden), also known as the Knights of the Sword, or the Livonian Order (founded 1202), was made a branch of the Teutonic Order, its head becoming Landmeister of Livonia. The Teutonic Order, however, never established such effective control over these northern provinces as it did over Prussia.

By 1309, when the order’s grand master established his residence at Marienburg, the order had created a strong feudal state that governed not only Prussia but also the eastern Baltic lands of the Livonian Knights (i.e., Courland, Livonia, and, after 1346, Estonia); Pomerelia, or Eastern Pomerania, including the city of Danzig (Gdańsk); and lands in central and southern Germany. During the following century the order demonstrated its power by continually, although unsuccessfully, trying to conquer and convert Lithuania; by actively protecting the merchant cities of the Hanseatic League; and by expanding its territories through purchase and conquest.

The order’s expansion and increasing power, however, aroused the hostility of both Poland, whose access to the Baltic Sea had been cut off, and Lithuania, whose territory the knights continued to menace despite Lithuania’s conversion to Christianity in 1387. Consequently, when a rebellion broke out against the order in Samogitia (1408), Poland and Lithuania joined forces and decisively defeated the knights at Grunwald (1410). Although the order was compelled to give up only Samogitia and the Dobrzyń land (Treaty of Toruń, 1411), its military might was broken. Subsequently, its authority and financial position also rapidly declined; it was unable to withstand the wars that Poland continued to wage, and when its own vassals joined the Poles in the Thirteen Years’ War (1454–66), the order was finally defeated. In 1466 it ceded Pomerelia, both banks of the Vistula, and the bishopric of Warmia (Ermland) to Poland (Treaty of Torún, 1466). The order retained the rest of Prussia, but its grand master became a vassal of the Polish king for that territory. Furthermore, the formerly exclusively German order was obliged to accept Polish members.

Decline and fall of the knights.
The Teutonic Order’s rule in Prussia came to an end in 1525, when the grand master Albert, under Protestant influence, dissolved the order there and accepted its territory as a secular duchy for himself under Polish suzerainty. In 1526 a new grand master, Walter of Cronenberg (Kronenberg), fixed his residence at Mergentheim in Franconia (Württemberg). After the loss of Prussia the order still retained in Europe several territories. But in 1558 the Livonian territory was lost, partitioned between Russia, Sweden, and Poland-Lithuania. In 1580 the secession of Utrecht meant the loss of territory in the Low Countries. In the late 17th century Louis XIV secularized its possessions in France. In 1801 the Treaty of Luneville stripped the order of its German possession on the left bank of the Rhine. In 1809 the emperor Napoleon, at war with Austria, declared the order to be dissolved and distributed most of its remaining lands among other principalities.

The Austrian revival.
By the end of the Napoleonic wars the Teutonic Order retained only small territories in the Austrian domains and the Tyrol. In 1834 the Austrian emperor reestablished the order in Vienna, as an ecclesiastical institution, reserving the dignity of grand master for an archduke of his house. New statutes in 1839–40 limited the knights to charitable and pastoral activities and limited the order’s sisters to nursing. In 1871 Pope Pius IX approved new rules for the priests of the order. When the Habsburg empire collapsed in 1918, the last imperial grand master, Archduke Maximilian, gave way to a priest as grand master for the first time. A new rule of Nov. 27, 1929, emphasized religious discipline.

Currently the headquarters of the order are in Vienna (Singerstrasse 7), where it maintains a church and an archives of the order. Branch houses also exist in Bavaria, Hesse, and the Italian Tyrol.
 

Encyclopaedia Britannica

Hospitallers





religious order
also spelled Hospitalers, also called Order of Malta or Knights of Malta, formally (since 1961) Sovereign Military and Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes, and of Malta, previously (1113–1309) Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem, (1309–1522) Order of the Knights of Rhodes, (1530–1798) Sovereign and Military Order of the Knights of Malta, or (1834–1961) Knights Hospitaller of St. John of Jerusalem
Main
a religious military order that was founded at Jerusalem in the 11th century and that, headquartered in Rome, continues its humanitarian tasks in most parts of the modern world under several slightly different names and jurisdictions.
 

The origin of the Hospitallers was an 11th-century hospital founded in Jerusalem by Italian merchants from Amalfi to care for sick and poor pilgrims. After the Christian conquest of Jerusalem in 1099 during the First Crusade, the hospital’s superior, a monk named Gerard, intensified his work in Jerusalem and founded hostels in Provençal and Italian cities on the route to the Holy Land. The order was formally named and recognized on February 15, 1113, in a papal bull issued by Pope Paschal II. Raymond de Puy, who succeeded Gerard in 1120, substituted the Augustinian rule for the Benedictine and began building the power of the organization. It acquired wealth and lands and combined the task of tending the sick with defending the Crusader kingdom. Along with the Templars, the Hospitallers became the most formidable military order in the Holy Land.

When the Muslims recaptured Jerusalem in 1187, the Hospitallers removed their headquarters first to Margat and then, in 1197, to Acre. When the Crusader principalities came to an end after the fall of Acre in 1291, the Hospitallers moved to Limassol in Cyprus. In 1309 they acquired Rhodes, which they came to rule as an independent state, with right of coinage and other attributes of sovereignty. Under the order’s rule, the master (grand master from c. 1430) was elected for life (subject to papal confirmation) and ruled a celibate brotherhood of knights, chaplains, and serving brothers. For more than two centuries these Knights of Rhodes were the scourge of Muslim shipping on the eastern Mediterranean. They constituted the last Christian outpost in the East.

By the 15th century the Turks had succeeded the Arabs as the protagonists of militant Islam, and in 1522 Süleyman the Magnificent laid final siege to Rhodes. After six months the Knights capitulated and on January 1, 1523, sailed away with as many of the citizens as chose to follow them. For seven years the wandering Knights were without a base, but in 1530 the Holy Roman emperor Charles V gave them the Maltese archipelago in return, among other things, for the annual presentation of a falcon to his viceroy of Sicily. The superb leadership of the grand master Jean Parisot de la Valette prevented Süleyman the Magnificent from dislodging the Knights from Malta in 1565 in one of the most famous sieges in history, which ended in a Turkish disaster. What was left of the Turkish navy was permanently crippled in 1571 at the Battle of Lepanto by the combined fleets of several European powers that included the Knights of Malta. The Knights then proceeded to build a new Maltese capital, Valletta, named after la Valette. In it they built great defense works and a hospital of grand dimensions that attracted many physically and mentally ill patients from outside Malta.

Thereafter the Knights continued as a territorial sovereign state in Malta but gradually gave up warfare and turned wholly to territorial administration and to medical care. In 1798, however, their reign in Malta came to an end, when Napoleon, on his way to Egypt, occupied the island. The order’s return to Malta was provided for in the Treaty of Amiens (1802) but eliminated by the Treaty of Paris (1814), which assigned Malta to Great Britain. In 1834 the Knights of Malta became permanently established in Rome. From 1805 they were ruled by lieutenants until Pope Leo XIII revived the office of grand master in 1879. A new constitution containing a more precise definition of both the religious and the sovereign status of the order was adopted in 1961, and a code was issued in 1966.

Although the order no longer exercises territorial rule, it issues passports, and its sovereign status is recognized by the Holy See and some other Roman Catholic states. Membership is confined to Roman Catholics, and the central organization is essentially aristocratic, being ruled chiefly by a primary class of “professed” knights of justice and chaplains who can prove the nobility of their four grandparents for two centuries.

Encyclopaedia Britannica

The Real History of the Crusades by Thomas F. Madden

The Real History of the Crusades by Thomas F. Madden