The Great Events by Famous Historians [Volumes 1-14]

After his excommunication, Frederick appealed not to the Pope, but to the sovereigns of Christendom. His illness, he said, had been real, the accusations of the Pope wanton and cruel. "The Christian charity which should hold all things together is dried up at its source, in its stem, not in its branches. What had the Pope done in England but stir up the barons against John, and then abandon them to death or ruin? The whole world paid tribute to his avarice. His legates were everywhere, gathering where they had not sown, and reaping where they had not strawed."

But although he thus dealt in language as furious as that of the Pope, the thought of breaking definitely with him and of casting aside his crusading vow as worthless mockery never seems to have entered his mind. He undertook to bring his armies together again with all speed, and to set off on his expedition. His promise only brought him into fresh trouble with the Pope, who in the Holy Week next following laid under interdict every place in which Frederick might happen to be. If this censure should be treated with contempt, his subjects were at once absolved from their allegiance.

The Emperor went on steadily with his preparations, and then went to Brundisium. He was met by papal messengers who strictly forbade him to leave Italy until he had offered satisfaction for his offences against the Church. In his turn Frederick, having sailed to Otranto, sent his own envoys to the Pope to demand the removal of the interdict; and these, of course, were dismissed with contempt.

In September the Emperor landed at Ptolemais; but the emissaries of the Pope had preceded him, and he found himself under the ban of the clergy and shunned by their partisans. The patriarch and the masters of the military orders were to see that none served under his polluted banners. The charge was given to willing servants: but Frederick found friends in the Teutonic Knights under their grand master Herman de Salza, as well as with the body of pilgrims generally. He determined to possess himself of Joppa, and summoned all the crusaders to his aid.

The Templars refused to stir, if any orders were to be issued in his name; and Frederick agreed that they should run in the name of God and Christendom. But while the enemy was aided greatly by the divisions among the Christians, the death of the Damascene sultan Moadhin was of little use to Frederick. The Egyptian sultan, Kameel, was now in a position of greater independence, and his eagerness for an alliance with the Emperor had rapidly cooled down.

Frederick, on his side, still resolved to try the effect of negotiation. His demands extended at first, it is said, to the complete restoration of the Latin kingdom, and ended, if we are to believe Arabian chroniclers, in almost abject supplications. At length a treaty was signed. It surrendered to the Emperor the whole of Jerusalem except the Temple or mosque of Omar, the keys of which were to be retained by the Saracens; but Christians, under certain conditions, might be allowed to enter it for the purpose of prayer. It further restored to the Christians the towns of Jaffa, Bethlehem, and Nazareth.

To Frederick the conclusion of this treaty was a reason for legitimate satisfaction. It enabled him to hasten back to his own dominions, where a papal army was ravaging Apulia and threatening Sicily. One task only remained for him in the East. He must pay his vows at the Holy Sepulchre. But here also the hand of the Pope lay heavy upon him. Not merely Jerusalem, but the Sepulchre itself, passed under the interdict as he entered the gates of the city, and the infidel Moslem saw the churches closed and all worship suspended at the approach of the Christian Emperor.

On Sunday, in his imperial robes and attended by a magnificent retinue, Frederick went to his coronation, as king of Jerusalem, in the Church of the Sepulchre. Not a single ecclesiastic was there to take part in the ceremony. The archbishops of Capua and Palermo stood aloof, while Frederick, taking the crown from the high altar, placed it on his own head. By his orders his friend Herman de Salza read an address, in which the Emperor acquitted the Pope for his hard judgment of him and for his excommunication, and added that a real knowledge of the facts would have led him to speak not against him, but in his favor. He confessed his desire to put to shame the false friends of Christ, his accusers and slanderers, by the restoration of peace and unity, and to humble himself before God and before his vicar upon earth.

From the Saracens he won golden opinions. The cadi silenced a muezzin who had to proclaim the hour of prayer from a minaret near the house in which the Emperor lodged, because he added to his call the question, "How is it possible that God had for his son Jesus the son of Mary?" Frederick marked the silence of the crier when the hour of prayer came round. On learning the cause he rebuked the cadi for neglecting, on his account, his duty and his religion, and warned him that if he should visit him in his kingdom he would find no such ill-judged deference. He showed no dissatisfaction, it is said, with the inscription which declared that Saladin had purified the city from those who worshipped many gods, or any displeasure when the Mahometans in his train fell on their knees at the times for prayer. His thoughts about the Christians were shown, it was supposed, when, seeing the windows of the Holy Chapel barred to keep out the birds which might defile it, he asked: "You may keep out the birds; but how will you keep out the swine?"