The Two Powers. Brett Edward Whalen
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been established, or at least, their open discord was settled until another day. In later years, the pope, emperor, and representatives of the league would accuse each other of acting in bad faith, of pretending to seek reconciliation while secretly conspiring to undermine their foes. At the moment, however, as one English monastic chronicler observed about the news, “thus peace was made between them.”30
The Great Devotion of 1233
During those same summer months of 1233, the war-torn communes and communities of northern Italy experienced an unexpected movement of what we might now call religious revival: processions and sermons, miracles and other charismatic displays in the name of peace, all organized by itinerant preachers before crowds in churchyards, piazzas, markets, and fields on the edge of towns. Looking back at this Great Halleluiah, or Great Devotion, as he finished his Chronicle decades later, the well-traveled Franciscan writer Salimbene of Adam—who will reappear throughout the rest of this book—described it as a “time of tranquility and peace, when martial weapons were entirely laid aside, of happiness and joy, of gladness and celebration, of praise and jubilation.”31 Modern scholars have described the Great Devotion of 1233 as a “peace movement” that emerged from the particular mix of religious piety, social unrest, and endemic violence that characterized the urban landscape of northern Italy in the early decades of the thirteenth century. Opinions are mixed on whether the Great Devotion favored Gregory’s or Frederick’s interests in northern Italy. In his landmark work on Frederick II, Ernst Kantorowicz observed that for the emperor, “the Great Allelujah had the most inconvenient political consequences. The only person who profited was Pope Gregory.” Others more recently see the pope as incidental to the Great Devotion, arriving “late and out of breath,” showing “opportunistic” support for the charismatic preachers that led the revival.32
Neither of these appraisals captures the public complexities of the Great Devotion for the two powers. Its preachers did not uniformly favor the interests of either the pope or the emperor. Rather, their peacemaking initiatives presented opportunities and posed challenges for all sides in Lombardy, adding a new layer to an already complicated landscape of conflict and peacemaking. The Great Devotion cut across the supposed divides between the pro-imperial Ghibellines and the pro-papal Guelfs, convenient labels that mask a far more fluid set of shifting alliances and interested parties whose alignment with the party of the empire or that of the church formed a strategic choice, and not an irrevocable one. The charismatic peace movement of 1233 filled the public spaces left by the failure of established institutions to reconcile the warring factions of the strife-ridden Italian cities, rewiring the political and spiritual landscape of Lombardy and neighboring regions in the name of peace.33
Many of the Great Halleluiah’s impresarios hailed from the mendicant orders, yet another demonstration of the rapidly expanding, highly visible role played by the relatively new friars in the public life of thirteenth-century Europe. They included Franciscans like Leo de Valvassori, who would later become archbishop of Milan. Leo arrived in Piacenza in the spring of 1233, after a year of street fighting between the city’s militia and the popular party led by their captain, William de Andito. The two sides gave a commission for Leo to resolve their conflicts: he gathered them in the piazza before the city’s cathedral church, where members from the various factions gave the ceremonial kiss of peace. The friar also arranged for the election of a new podesta, Lantelmo Mainerio.34 Another Franciscan, named Gerard of Modena, along with a “simple and unlearned man” named Benedict de Cornetta, who was not a Franciscan but a “very good friend” of the friars, brought their version of peace to Parma. According to Salimbene, who saw both men with his own eyes, Gerard acted as podesta of the city, wielding “total lordship” over the Parmese so he might “bring peace to those warring against each other.” Wherever Benedict went, dressed in his black sackcloth and blowing his small copper horn, large crowds would gather, waving palms, bearing candles, and singing hymns. Salimbene listened to him preach on the wall of the bishop’s palace in Parma, then under construction.35
The Dominican friar John of Vicenza emerged as perhaps the most noteworthy of the Great Devotion’s revivalist preachers, bringing his sermons of peace and miracles first to Bologna before touring around the Marches of Treviso and Verona in the summer of 1233. Verona represented a typical hot spot for armed conflict that involved all sorts of different individuals and groups but centered on Count Richard of San Bonifacio, a prominent magnate in the region, and his rivals, the Montecchi. Unrest in and around the city also demonstrated the limits of peacemaking through conventional means. In June 1230, Richard’s enemies had seized him and his followers, imprisoning them in Verona. In response, Richard’s allies from Mantua, joined by Azzo VII d’Este, jumped into the conflict. The powerful Romano brothers, Ezzelino and Alberic, backed the Veronese.36 During a July 1231 meeting at Mantua, representatives from the communities caught up in the violence tried to broker a new confederation and end these hostilities.37 Richard was released in September. During a subsequent meeting of the concerned parties at Bologna in October, an end to the violence seemed at hand until Ezzelino felt that he had been double-crossed by the Lombards’ generous treatment of the count. Alienated from the Lombard League and its allies, he and his brother turned for support from Frederick, swearing fealty to the emperor, who took them under his special protection. In April 1232, Ezzelino and his supporters staged a coup of sorts in Verona, taking control of the city and moving it into the imperial orbit. Further armed conflict between the Veronese and Mantuans followed.38
Greeted by enthusiastic crowds at Verona and Vicenza, the Dominican friar John effectively became the “duke” and “rector” of those cities the following year. Much like Leo de Valvassori and Gerard of Modena, he organized gatherings between warring factions in piazzas, fields, and other public spaces to exchange the kiss of peace and swear their commitment to his statues for resolving the endemic conflict in each commune. On 28 August at Paquara, a few miles south of Verona, he staged a particularly large and dramatic peace assembly, which was attended by representatives from Brescia, Mantua, Verona, Vicenza, and Treviso, the Romano brothers, the Montecchi, Azzo d’Este, Richard of San Bonifacio, Guala, the Dominican bishop of Brescia, and William, bishop of Modena, among others. Those gathered in the crowd listened to John’s sermon that he delivered from a massive wooden stage, after which the antagonists rendered the kiss of peace and agreed to end their dissension.39
Viewed from the papal curia, these sorts of peacemaking scenes did not seamlessly align with the Roman church’s priorities and interests in Lombardy. When news reached Pope Gregory about John of Vicenza’s appeal and successes in Bologna, he instructed the Dominican friar to head next to Tuscany to negotiate peace between the warring cities of Siena and Florence. John apparently ignored these instructions. Years later, Thomas of Cantimpré described a telling episode about Gregory’s first reaction to news of John. One of the Dominican preacher’s detractors reported that the preacher was led into the city of Bologna on a white horse covered by a silk palanquin, acting as if he was the pope and publicly appropriating papal ceremonial. Consulting the cardinals, Gregory quickly planned to excommunicate the presumptuous friar until William of Modena swore before everyone on the gospels that he had witnessed an angel descend from heaven and affix a golden cross on John’s forehead. Bursting into tears, the pope changed his mind and sent envoys to Bologna, who determined that the accusations against the miraculous preacher were untrue.40
At the same time, there are unmistakable signs that Pope Gregory recognized the public energies unleashed by the Great Devotion and worked, indirectly and directly, to channel them in favorable directions. Upon closer inspection, the religious revival that summer appears slightly less spontaneous and more strategic, linked to a wider set of papal designs for peace in northern Italy and not coincidently happening at the same time as Gregory’s high-level mediation between the Lombards and the emperor. There is evidence of ties between John of Vicenza and ecclesiastical figures close to the pope who possessed previous hands-on experience as peacemakers in Lombardy, including Guala of Brescia and William of Modena. According to one account, when the citizens of Bologna tried to keep John in their city, William helped him slip away to begin his preaching tour around Vicenza and Verona.41 More directly, Gregory issued a number of letters during the summer of 1233 enabling and bolstering John’s