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Wolff, R. L.; Hazard, H. W. (ed.) / Volume II: The later Crusades, 1189-1311
(1969)
V: The Fourth Crusade, pp. 152-185
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Page 155
Ch. V THE FOURTH CRUSADE 155 went to Venice to enlist the support of the Venetians, and cardinal Peter Capuano<4> went to France to promulgate the crusade there. Two cardinals were also sent to persuade the Pisans and Genoese to make peace and prepare to take part in the crusade. The pope wrote to the Byzantine emperor, Alexius III Angelus, reproving him for not having long since come to the aid of the Holy Land, and admonishing him as well to acknowledge the primacy of the papacy. Alexius replied in February 1199 with recriminations of his own. <5> Arriving in France late in 1198, Peter Capuano called an assembly of the French clergy at Dijon, where he promulgated the papal bull. He found Philip Augustus, by Christmas 1198, faced with a coalition of French lords whom Richard had won over to his side - including count Baldwin of Flanders and Hainault, count Louis of Blois, and the counts of Boulogne and Toulouse - and therefore eager to listen to Peter's proposals for a truce. <6> Two or three weeks later Peter met with Richard in Normandy. Though Richard maintained that he was only fighting to recover the lands which Philip had perfidiously seized in his absence on the Third Crusade, and accused Philip of responsibility for his captivity in Germany, complaining also that the pope had not given him the protection due him as a returning crusader, he finally yielded to Peter's plea that the war was hindering the recovery of Jerusalem. Late in January 1199 Richard and Philip met and made a truce for five years. <7> But before the end of March Richard was dead, and Philip Augustus soon renewed against John his efforts to seize the Angevin lands on the continent. The date, March 1199, originally set by the pope for the departure of the armies, passed - as did most of the rest of the year - without even the formation of an expeditionary force. 4 Sometimes erroneously referred to as Peter of Capua, he came not from Capua but from Amalfi, and belonged to a noble family of that city; see especially M. Camera, Memorie storico-diplomatiche dell' antica citta e ducato di Amalfi, I (Salerno, 1876), 90, note I; 383 ff., 665. He was to be Innocent's chief agent in the promotion of the crusade in the west until the spring of 1203, when he was sent on a special mission to the east. At the time of his French mission he held the titular office of cardinal-deacon of St. Mary in Via Lata, and was later advanced by Innocent to the title of cardinal-priest of St. Marcellus. Soffredo was cardinalpriest of St. Praxed. 5 Innocent III, Epp., an. I, no. 353 (PL, CCXIV, cols, 325 ff.); an. II, no. 210 (ibid., cols. 765 ff.). 6 Both Roger of Wendover, Flares historiarum, ad ann. 1198 (ed. H. G. Hewlett, Rolls Series, LXXXIV), I, 280 ff., and the verse biography of William Marshal, L'Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal (ed. P. Meyer, Paris, 1891-1901), lines 11355-11372, ascribe the entire mission of Peter Capuano to a ruse of Philip, who had allegedly begged the pope for a legate to make peace between himself and Richard, and who had paid so well for the favor that Innocent had complied. The verse reflects the English point of view. 7 Innocent III, Epp., an. II, nos. 23-25 (PL, CCXIV, cols. 552 ff.). Innocent's letters of congratulation to Peter, confirming the truce.
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