The Glory of the Crusades (32 page)

Authors: Steve Weidenkopf

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BOOK: The Glory of the Crusades

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The treaty was remarkable in its extent and in terms of how little it cost the emperor. As during the Fifth Crusade, al-Kamil proved himself to be generous in diplomacy. Jerusalem would remain in Christian control the next fifteen years. Frederick’s unofficial Crusade had reaped significant dividends.

Now that Jerusalem was in his control, Frederick decided to travel to the Holy City to claim the throne of the kingdom. He arrived on March 17, 1229 and toured the holy sites in the company of local Muslim authorities, displaying his disdain for the Catholic Faith when he said he had come to Jerusalem “to hear the Muslims, at the hour of prayer, call upon Allah by night.”
489

This shocking admission was overshadowed by an even more outrageous comment to Fakhr al-Din concerning his reasons for negotiating for control of Jerusalem: “If I had not been afraid of losing my prestige in the eyes of the Franks, I would have never made the sultan yield up Jerusalem.”
490
Perhaps the statement can be viewed as diplomatic small talk, but given Frederick’s affinity for Islam and conflict with the Church, the comment provides insight into the man and validates the charge that he was the “Crusader without faith.”

On March 18, 1229, Frederick entered the Church of the Holy Sepulchre for his coronation as king of Jerusalem. If not for his excommunication, this act would have fulfilled his Crusader vow. Because of his ecclesiastical censure, however, the crowd was sparse and no representative of the Church was present, so the emperor crowned himself king. In a sign he knew his actions were inappropriate, Frederick had Hermann von Salza read a statement justifying his actions and attacking his critics while the ceremony proceeded.
491

Two days later, his “Crusade” complete with the accomplishment of his personal political goals, Emperor Frederick II returned to Acre where he stayed for the next several months until leaving for home on May 1, 1229. His departure was less than regal as recorded by the chronicler of the
Gestes des Chyprois
:

His departure was a shabby affair. The emperor made the preparations for his passage in secret, and on the first day of May, without telling anyone, he set out before dawn, going through the butcher’s quarter to reach his galley. Now, it came about that the butchers in these streets ran after him and pelted him shamefully with tripe and entrails. And in this way the emperor left Acre, hated, accursed, and reviled.
492

Frederick’s adventure in the Holy Land was a strange one. The sight of an excommunicated emperor going on Crusade, negotiating with a Muslim sultan for control of the Holy City and crowning himself king of Jerusalem was most assuredly one of the greatest spectacles of the medieval period. Yet despite his unorthodox behavior and methods, Frederick II’s journey to Outrémer proved oddly successful, for “what Richard I had failed to win by force and the Fifth Crusade had rejected as unworthy or unworkable, Frederick achieved through dogged negotiation . . . The three holiest sites, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Nazareth, were restored to Christian hands.”
493

The excommunicated holy Roman emperor’s expedition to the Holy Land indeed resulted in the return of Jerusalem to Christian control—but only for a decade. The Egyptian ruler, al-Salih Ayyub, the great-nephew of Saladin, desired to conquer Palestine to restore Saladin’s empire and bring unity among the Muslim people. For help, he hired Khwarazmians, a Muslim people who in the 1220s had been driven from their lands in modern-day Iran by the arrival of the Mongols from the Asian steppe. Al-Salih Ayyub sent his new mercenary army to attack Jerusalem on August 23, 1244. The Khwarazmians captured the city, killed significant numbers of Christians, and desecrated the holy places. The loss of Jerusalem prompted the calling of another Crusade and motivated the king of France to take the cross.

433
Arnaldo Fortini,
Nova Vita di San Francesco
(Roma: Carucci Editore, 1981), 14, in Frank M. Rega,
St. Francis of Assisi and the Conversion of the Muslims With a Concise Biography of the Saint
(Rockford, IL: TAN Books and Publishers, Inc., 2007, 130).

434
Ibn al-Djusi was a contemporary of Frederick II’s living in Jerusalem when the emperor visited in 1229. Thomas C. Van Cleve,
The Emperor Frederick II of Hohenstaufen
(Oxford: 1972), 225. Cited in Carroll,
The Glory of Christendom
, 214.

435
“Francesco” was a nickname meaning “the Frenchman” since the boy’s mother was French and his merchant father spent time in France on business. Rega,
St. Francis of Assisi
, 3.

436
Thomas of Celano,
The Second Life of St. Francis
,
Book One
, trans. Placid Hermann, O.F.M., Chapter 7, no. 12, 372, (included in
Omnibus
, in Rega,
St. Francis of Assisi
, 10.)

437
Gary Dickson,
The Children’s Crusade—Medieval History, Modern Mythistory
(New York: Palgrave Macmillian, 2010), xi.

438
Ibid., 127.

439
Tyerman,
God’s War
, 609.

440
Ibid., 610.

441
Dickson,
The Children’s Crusade
, 55.

442
Auctarium Mortui Maris
(to 1234) ed. D.L.C. Bethmann,
MGH
.
SS
. 6:467, in Dickson,
The Children’s Crusade
, 55.

443
The story of Stephen’s receiving a divine mandate and the number of participants (more than likely an exaggerated number; Dickson cites an English chronicler that puts the number at 15,000, which may be closer to the actual number. Dickson,
The Children’s Crusade
, 71) is from the Laon Anonymous chronicle.
Chronicon Universal Anonymi Laudunensis
1154–1219, ed. A. Cartellieri and W. Stechele (Leipzig: 1909), 70–71. Translation from J.F.C. Hecker,
The Epidemics of the Middle Ages
(trans. B.G. Babington) 3rd ed. (Trübner & Co.: London: 1859), 354. Quoted in Dickson,
The Children’s Crusade
, 65.

444
Dickson,
The Children’s Crusade
, 109.

445
Ibid., 124.

446
Annales Marbacenses
(to 1220) ed. H. Bloch in
MGH
.
SS
.
Rerum Germ. In usum scholar
. 9:82, in Dickson,
The Children’s Crusade
, 113.

447
Dickson,
The Children’s Crusade
, 118–119.

448
Iacopo da Varagine e la sua chronica di Genova
(to 1297) ed. G. Monleone Ist. Stor. Ital., Fonti, 85, 2 (Rome: 1941), 374. J.F.C. Hecker,
The Epidemics of the Middle Ages
(trans. B.G. Babington) 3rd ed. (Trübner & Co.: London, 1859), 358. Quoted in Dickson,
The Children’s Crusade
, 2.

449
Annales s. Medardi Suessionensibus
(to 1249) ed. G. Waitz,
MGH
.
SS
. 26: 521. Hecker, 359, in Dickson,
The Children’s Crusade
, 2.

450
Ibid., 165.

451
Ibid., 166.

452
Voltaire,
Le Micromégas avec une historie des croisades
, in Dickson,
The Children’s Crusade
, 171.

453
Tyerman,
God’s War
, 606.

454
Ibid., 612

455
Ibid., 614.

456
Ibid., 622.

457
Ibid., 621.

458
Patrologia cursus complètes. Series Latina
, ed. J.P. Migne (Paris: 1844–1864), 216, col. 830, no. xxxv, in Tyerman,
God’s War
, 615.

459
Pernoud,
The Crusaders
, 166.

460
René Grousset,
The Epic of the Crusades
, trans. Noel Lindsay (New York: Orion Press, 1970), 207.

461
Tyerman,
God’s War
, 629.

462
High number of Crusaders in Tyerman,
God’s War
, 637. Numbers of those who marched to Cairo from Oliver of Paderborn,
Capture of Damietta
, trans. E. Peters,
Christian Society and the Crusades 1198
–
1229
(Philadephia: 1971), 114, in Tyerman,
God’s War
, 638.