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Wolff, R. L.; Hazard, H. W. (ed.) / Volume II: The later Crusades, 1189-1311
(1969)
XII: The Crusade of Frederick II, pp. 429-462
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Page 461
Ch.XII THE CRUSADE OF FREDERICK II 461 appeals that, with German troops driven into Brindisi by storms on their way home from the east, they scored success after success against the papal forces. By the autumn of 1229 Frederick stood in full possession of his kingdom. It was now only necessary for him to make his peace with the defeated pope. Although rebuffed in his first efforts, the faithful master of the Teutonic Knights, Hermann of Salza, eventually obtained an armistice, Frederick displaying con ciliatory behavior and refraining from encroachments upon the papal domains. The German princes guaranteed the emperor's good faith. In May 1230 peace terms were drawn up, and on August 28 the ban was lifted; on September 1 at Anagni the "disciple of Mohammed" was once more received as the "beloved son of the church".114 The crusade of Frederick II is unique in the history of the Middle Ages, reflecting not so much the spirit of the age as the complex and cosmopolitan character of the emperor. The primary aim of any crusade was the restoration of Jerusalem to the Christians, and this had been achieved with a skill and brilliance all the more remarkable because the methods of accomplishing it were so little characteristic of the thirteenth century. Opposed at every step by the church, whose interests the crusade was intended to serve, Frederick achieved, without bloodshed, the object which the whole of Christendom most ardently desired. But in doing so, he earned for himself only opprobrium in the eyes of the leaders of the church. He was charged with sacrilege, with preferring the worship of Islam to the Christian faith, with betrayal of the crusading cause, with plundering, and with blasphemy. His outlook on life, the result of his contact since infancy with the rich and varied culture of the orient, elevated him far above the bigotry and the narrow prejudices so characteristic of Gregory IX, of the patriarch Gerald — indeed, of most of the clergy of the age. Again and again Frederick's letters, no less than his deeds, reveal his sympathies with the recovery of the Holy Land as a symbol of the Christian faith. But loyalty to this ideal did not deprive him of his capacity to understand that many of the places within Jerusalem were no less sacred to the mind and heart of the Moslem. It is perhaps paradoxical that Frederick II, subjected to the bitterest reproaches for his anticlericalism, was able to attain 114 For details of the reconquest, see Richard of San Germano (MGH, SS., XIX), 355 ff. See Röhricht, Beitrage, I, 48 ff. For the reconciliation with the pope, see Chronica regia Coloniensis, pp. 262—263; also in MGH, SS., XVII, 842; Brev. Chron. Sic. (Huillard-Bréholles), pp. 903—904.
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