The Two Powers. Brett Edward Whalen
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properties within one month. Later versions allowed for a window of three months if he was in the Regno, four months elsewhere in Italy, and five months beyond the peninsula. A dispute emerged about the possession of two towns, Gaeta and Sant’Agata, which the church would retain for one year while a solution could be found for their rightful disposition.91 In February, the talks almost collapsed when a contingent of Lombards arrived at the papal curia with objections to the ongoing negotiations. A month later, Thomas informed Gregory that he might achieve his goals if he could offer absolution to Frederick immediately, but he knew that the representatives from Lombardy opposed such a move. The emperor desired peace, the cardinal legate insisted, but he also remained suspicious, in part due to disturbing “rumors” he had heard from the city of Rome about the church playing him false.92
Although negotiating the form of peace involved off-the-record conversations, guaranteeing its terms represented a public and collective commitment. Frederick was expected to swear various oaths, binding himself to obey the “mandates of the church,” to make amends for his occupation of church lands, and to observe the truce that ended the fighting in central Italy, or he would suffer an automatic reinstatement of his excommunication. But he also had to secure the accompanying oaths of “worthy and sworn” princes, barons, counts, and others named by the church willing to pledge on his behalf (fidejussores), bound for eight months from the day of his absolution to assist the church against him if he failed to fulfill the agreed-upon conditions.93 In the later stages of negotiations, papal and imperial envoys argued over the protections that would be extended to the church’s faithful “adherents,” guarantees that Frederick would “remit all rancor” and revenge toward them. The princes swearing on Frederick’s behalf hesitated to give such assurances.94 People who had suffered the “hardships of war,” Thomas wrote, held high hopes for peace, but others were “throwing stones” without saying why, preferring to “fish in stormy waters” rather than seek concord. In response to his envoy’s disillusionment, Gregory sent words of encouragement, calling upon him to persist in his labors for peace. One of the final documents sent from the curia to Thomas in early July contained instructions for the drawing down of forces in the region, the lifting of sieges, and the end of hostilities.95
By July 1230, only after months of performing such a balancing act, the stage was set for the ceremonial formalizing of this peace at San Germano at the foot of Monte Cassino. The siege of that monastery had ended; Frederick met in the town below with Gregory’s envoy, Guala, the Dominican friar. Rather than the noises of war, the sound of ringing bells filled the town after Guala announced the emperor’s agreement to the church’s form of peace. On 23 July, before a “multitude” of German and Italian princes and prelates, cardinal legates, imperial officials, and local counts, Berthold of Aquileia, the archbishop of Salzburg, and the bishop of Regensburg recited the reasons for Frederick’s excommunication, reading them aloud “in public.” Thomas of Acerra, swearing on Frederick’s behalf with his hand on the Gospels, rendered an oath to obey the “mandates of the church” before a number of witnesses, promising to observe the form of peace. The emperor agreed to restore lands seized from the Roman church and also from the Templars and Hospitallers; to allow displaced prelates in the Regno access to their sees; to exempt clergy from the jurisdiction of civil courts; to forego any tallages and taxes on clerical properties; and to keep the peace, taking no revenge on faithful papal vassals who had fought against him during the recent war.96
The princes committed to guaranteeing the peace on Frederick’s behalf made their pledges, while the bishops present produced “testimonial letters” memorializing the oaths rendered aloud in Frederick’s name and by others. Seal after seal was affixed to the written copies of these agreements, including those authenticated by Frederick’s golden bull—documents that would be preserved in the papal archives and forwarded to interested parties. On 25 July, Guala returned from the Roman curia, lifting the interdict pronounced by Pelagius on San Germano, thereby allowing for the celebration of the divine offices there and elsewhere in the Regno. On 28 August, at nearby Ceprano, John de Colonna and Thomas of Capua performed the ritual of absolution for Frederick, “publicly and solemnly,” before a crowd of cardinals, clergy, princes, and a “multitude of various people,” to the “general joy of all Christendom.” An encyclical sent from the imperial chancery in September describes this scene, telling its recipients that they deserved to know about the restoration of peace after receiving so many disturbing letters from the pope and emperor. Over the following months, Gregory circulated his own letters celebrating his agreement with Frederick, assuring the Lombards of his gratitude for their efforts on the church’s behalf and asking the French King Louis IX to beseech God for their continued concord. Through such shared acts of ritual performance and remembrance, written assurances, and prayers, the scandalous discord between church and empire had come to an end.97
A few days after Frederick’s absolution, on the first of September, Pope Gregory hosted the emperor at Anagni, welcoming him to one of his family’s residences. They shared the kiss of peace and met together in the pope’s private chambers and the next day shared a meal joined by Hermann of Salza. Later, Gregory’s biographer reports, they spoke at length, “in secret discussions” and also “in public.” According to Frederick’s descriptions of this meeting in his letters, the pope received him kindly, explaining the reasons for his past judgment of the emperor and expressing his benevolence toward him, thereby wiping away any enmity Frederick might have harbored toward Gregory. “We hold him in all reverence,” the emperor declared, “our only and universal father, showing ourselves to him as a devout son of the church in the bond of love that joins the priesthood and empire to one another.” Two days later, with the pope’s blessing, Frederick returned to Apulia, while Gregory and his entourage returned to Rome.98 Even if the pope and emperor harbored personal resentments toward each other, this scene of public harmony struck the right chord after years of sensational conflict. What exact shape that reformed peace would take, however, still remained to be seen.
Chapter 2
Reforming the Peace
A year after Gregory IX and Frederick II agreed to settle their violent differences at San Germano, the emperor issued a sweeping new legislative code for the kingdom of Sicily, the Constitutions of Melfi. These laws presented the “crown” as the sole source of justice and peace, centralizing royal government over the centrifugal forces of the local nobility, clergy, and urban communities. The code also reinforced and clarified Frederick’s rights over ecclesiastical offices and properties in the Regno. According to some modern commentators, the Constitutions of Melfi represented, among others things, a challenge to the universal jurisdiction of the Roman pope over the church at the expense of the king, a tacit rebuke to the “papal monarchy,” a “gauntlet thrown down in the great struggle between the empire and papacy.”1 Certainly, when news reached Gregory about the planned legislation, he delivered a blunt rebuke to the emperor and to Jacob, archbishop of Capua, who had been tasked with helping to draft the law code. The pope warned Frederick that if he went through with his decision to issue the “new constitutions,” acting by his own will or following the advice of “perverse men,” he would rightly be called a “persecutor of the church and destroyer of public liberty.”2
Other scholars, however, have cautioned against interpreting this episode as indicative of a deeply rooted conflict between the two powers, pointing out that Gregory made no objections to the final version of the Constitutions of Melfi, apparently a sign that his protest worked, and that Frederick modified the new laws accordingly.3 Even as the pope called for the emperor to reconsider his forthcoming constitutions, he tried to avoid further escalation, stressing to the emperor in a subsequent communication that he had made his earlier complaints “in private not public, in secret letters, not cried aloud.”4 In yet another letter to Frederick that same month, which addressed persistent disruptions to the peace in the Regno, Gregory warned him about wicked men operating in the shadows who wished to destroy the state