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      The Widening Gyre

      Writing to Frederick in September 1235, after years of celebrating the harmony that lay between the two powers, Pope Gregory acknowledged the tension and mistrust that had recently begun to change the tone of their relationship. Much went unsaid in this letter. During an imperial assembly at Mainz a month earlier, the emperor had openly declared his intention to subdue the rebellious cities of Lombardy, despite his previous commitment to place the “Lombard business” into the “hands of the church.” He now seemed to suspect that the pope and papal legates were working against his interests in the region. Overseas, the emperor faced a continued challenge to his rights in the Holy Land, another sign that papal mediation had failed him, perhaps by design. Responding to these unspoken disturbances, Gregory assured Frederick that he was still on his side, blaming recent troubles on those who preferred to “fish in muddy waters” and to work “in the shadows,” sowing “quarrels and complaints” and seeking to “dissolve the bonds of love in the hearts of princes with their poisons.” Such men, the pope reminded Frederick, had harmed the interests of the papal curia and the imperial court in the past. Specifically, Gregory told him not to believe “secret letters and documents” falsely attributed to the pope and meant to cast doubt on his commitment to the emperor’s rights. His past actions on Frederick’s behalf in the kingdom of Jerusalem and Lombardy served to demonstrate his sincerity. Frederick should “block out” the words of such liars and write back to the pope when the truth became known from Gregory’s actual letters.¹

      Nothing remains of such forgeries, and the pope remained vague about the identities of the “liars” trying to destroy the peace. But the sentiment behind his letter, the sense of erosion in his relationship with Frederick, was quite real. Over the following three years, the Hohenstaufen ruler followed through on his military plans to subdue the seditious cities of northern Italy, campaigning with his own troops, his local allies, and even Muslim mercenaries imported into the region from the Regno. The emperor’s decision to settle the Lombard business by force placed Pope Gregory in a difficult position: the “evangelizer of peace” confronted a high-profile war on the Italian peninsula that he had spent years trying to prevent. During this same period, other problems surfaced, swept up in the widening gyre of discord between the pope and the prince as they began to dispute over conditions in the Regno, the emperor’s supposed abuse of the clergy, and the pope’s interference in Frederick’s kingdoms. They argued about dilapidated churches, vacant clerical offices, feudal rights and talliages, and the free movement of envoys. They even disagreed over the whereabouts of a missing Tunisian prince, who was supposedly on his way to Rome to be baptized when he disappeared, somewhere in Apulia.²

      As these disputes and grievances accumulated, Gregory and Frederick faced a growing public crisis between their offices that neither party seemed entirely to want but did not necessarily know how to avoid. The relentless political problems in northern Italy became a particular source of tension between them. Responding to the centrifugal forces spinning them apart, the pope and emperor slowly hardened and publicized their positions, leaving them less and less room to maneuver. Undeniably, the tone of their direct communications took on an increasingly confrontational posture. At the same time, these years of worsening relations were also ones of persistent if fraying restraint, each side repeatedly stepping back from an outright confrontation. Both parties had good reasons to avoid another costly and disruptive confrontation. Neither of them had particularly benefited from their last open confrontation, while their years of relative cooperation had brought undeniable benefits. Above all, the two Christian leaders remained committed, in the capacity of their respective offices, to the greater goals of peace, crusading, and wiping out heresy. Another battle between the papacy and empire would endanger those projects, as Gregory and Frederick repeatedly reminded each other, each trying to pressure the other into backing down for the common good.

      Almost four years would pass before Gregory deployed the “nuclear option,” excommunicating Frederick for the second time. If the pope was eager to annihilate the emperor, he certainly took his time going about it. At the very least, he knew that he had to proceed cautiously. After years of celebrating the concord that ought to exist between their offices, he began to erase the record of their cooperation, reminding everyone about his previous struggles with Frederick and accusing him of ingratitude, double-dealing, and sedition. The emperor broadcast a similar revision of the past. The peace, it turned out, had been a false one that concealed true enmity. As the rumor mill churned and new sources of scandal arose, as the sights and sounds of war began to drown out calls for harmony, the two powers once again stood on the verge of open conflict, provoking a renewed sense of anxiety in Christendom.

       Angels of Peace and Sowers of Dissension

      By the summer of 1235, even as Frederick married Isabella of England with the pope’s blessing, if not encouragement, Gregory knew that trouble lay on the horizon with regard to the volatile situation in Lombardy. As it had since the beginning of his papacy, the immediate circumstances of the “Lombard business” continued to shape the pope’s interactions with the emperor across the board. Gregory continued his efforts to thread the needle between supporting the Lombard League while stopping short of an open break with the emperor, sending his legates to the region to act as “angels of peace” and to counter the shadowy figures who tried to sow dissension with their lies and deceptions. Meanwhile, Christians around Europe followed news of the growing escalation between Frederick and the Lombard League, recognizing that the growing chances of war in northern Italy affected the Roman church directly and indirectly concerned the entirety of Christendom.

      In July, anticipating the emperor’s upcoming assembly at Mainz, Gregory sent a batch of letters to the clergy and lay nobles at the imperial court. Declaring that the time approached for the planned crusade to redeem the holy places, the pope called upon the recipients of his communications to lay aside any “rancor” toward the Lombards, working instead with the emperor for peace. Further discord, he insisted, would serve only to undermine the upcoming crusade’s prospects for success. Gregory also reminded the recipients of his letters that Frederick had previously placed the Lombard business in the mediatory hands of the Roman church. If they needed evidence of that fact, he forwarded copies, bearing the papal seal, of the agreement struck a year earlier between the emperor and the Lombard rectors in which both sides promised to abide by the pope’s arbitration in Lombardy, the March of Treviso, and Romaniola.³

      The pope had good reasons for communicating his concern. On 24 August, Frederick wrote to Gregory, informing him about the proceedings at Mainz. Coming on the heels of Henry VII’s unsuccessful rebellion, the imperial assembly proclaimed peace in Germany.⁴ But it also formed a council of war against the cities of Lombardy that continued to reject Frederick’s authority. As the emperor described the scene for the pope, not wishing to “conceal” anything from him, the nobles present swore to avenge all of the wrongs perpetrated by the Lombards against their ruler, taking an oath to that effect “with their hands raised in the air, as is customary among them.” Divided into two forces, the emperor’s armies would march into Italy the following April. As for the agreement made with the pope in Tuscany the previous spring, Frederick, submitting his dispute with the Lombard rebels for papal judgment, insisted that he still desired to follow the pope’s “paternal counsel” and honor that commitment. As evidence of his restraint, he would delay

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