The
so-called Sixth Crusade was one of the most confusing of all the
numbered crusades. It was explicitly condemned by the Pope and was led
by a man who had been excommunicated, yet it temporarily restored
Jerusalem to Christian control. It was a bloodless campaign that ended
with the leader of the crusade laying siege to the Templar headquarters
in Acre -- and being pelted by ofal
by the furious residents of Outremer. In short, while historians
generally praise this bloodless crusade, contemporaries -- from the Pope
to the common people -- were critical of it. Furthermore, while the
crusade itself was bloodless, it was the spark that set off a bloody
civil war in the crusader states. In two essays, Dr. Schrader examines the Sixth
Crusade starting today with the events leading up to it.
Friedrich
II Hohenstaufen first “took the cross” and vowed to lead a new crusade
to regain Christian control of Jerusalem at his coronation as “King of
the Romans” in Aachen on July 25, 1215. He renewed his crusading vow at his coronation as “Holy Roman Emperor” by the Pope in Rome on November 22, 1220―by which time 5th Crusade had already bogged down at Damietta and was in clear need of reinforcements and stronger leadership. Although
unable to depart immediately due to the need to restore order in his
Kingdom of Sicily, Friedrich II sent financial and material aid to the
beleaguered crusaders and promised to set out himself in 1221.
Unfortunately, the Muslim insurrection on Sicily turned out to be more
tenacious than anticipated, and Friedrich got bogged down in the
fighting until 1223; the Pope was understanding and agreed he could
postpone his crusade until 1225.
In
mid-1225 Friedrich II married the heiress to the Kingdom of Jerusalem,
Yolanda (also sometimes referred to as Isabella II). Yolanda was the
grand-daughter of Isabella I, sole child of Maria de Montferrat and her
husband John de Brienne. Maria had died giving birth to Yolanda, and
John ruled as regent for his daughter, taking the title King John. The
marriage of the Queen of Jerusalem to the Holy Roman Emperor was
considered a master-stroke because it gave Friedrich II a material
incentive for recapturing Jerusalem. In
addition to the spiritual motive of restoring Christian rule over
Christendom’s most sacred site, Friedrich now had a personal and
dynastic interest in making his Kingdom of Jerusalem as large, strong
and prosperous as possible, and securing for any children by Yolanda an
inheritance worthy of him. From the point of view of the High Court of
Jerusalem, the marriage ensured the military and financial support for
the kingdom from the most powerful Christian monarch in the world.
The
marriage was celebrated by proxy in Acre followed by Yolanda’s
coronation as Queen of Jerusalem in Tyre and then Yolanda sailed to
Brindisi to marry Friedrich in person in November. Meanwhile, however,
the crusade had been postponed again until August 1227, although this
time the Pope added the warning that if Friedrich failed to depart by
August 1227 he faced excommunication. Friedrich accepted these terms and
then proceeded in very short order to alienate his father-in-law (by
dismissing him as superfluous) and was accused (at least by his
father-in-law) of humiliating his bride with neglect and a preference
for his harem of concubines.
Nevertheless,
a large crusading army with strong German contingents gathered in
Apulia in the summer of 1227 ― only to be struck down by some epidemic
disease that started killing the crusaders before they even embarked.
Under threat of excommunication, if he did not depart, Friedrich
doggedly set sail despite being ill. While at sea, the most important of
Friedrich’s subordinate commanders, the Landgraf of Thuringia, died of
the disease. Friedrich decided that he too was too ill to command a
crusade. While ordering the Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights and
other galleys under the Duke of Limburg to proceed, he returned to
Brindisi.
The
Pope, the vigorous and uncompromising Gregory IX, promptly
excommunicated the Holy Roman Emperor. Under the circumstances, the
excommunication was hardly justified. Rather, the excommunication was
Pope Gregory’s opening volley in an all-out attack on what he viewed as
the unacceptable infringement of papal authority by the Holy Roman
Emperor. It was the opening act of a power-struggle that would last for
decades and pitted conflicting philosophies about the respective role of
sacred and secular leadership. That struggle is not the subject of this
essay, but the impact of the excommunication on Friedrich’s authority
is. Effectively,
with the excommunication, Friedrich’s campaign to the Holy Land lost
papal blessing (whether fairly or not), and his campaign could not
officially be viewed as a “crusade.”
The
situation was further complicated by the fact that in April 1228, Queen
Yolanda of Jerusalem died of the complications of childbirth. She left
an infant son Conrad as heir to the throne of Jerusalem. With Yolanda’s
death, Friedrich II lost his legal right to call himself King of
Jerusalem; that title now belonged to his infant son Conrad. The most
that Frederick could claim was the right to serve as regent to his son
until the boy came of age at 15.
It
was now 13 years since he had taken his crusader oath, and his open
confrontation with the Pope had a profound effect upon his authority in
his vast and complex domains. The excommunication above all gave his
many internal opponents and rivals an excuse for insubordination and
rebellion.
Friedrich
would, therefore, have been well justified in abandoning the campaign
to the Holy Land altogether and focusing on defending his birthright.
Then again, when fighting an intransigent pope, what better way to
undermine papal authority than to liberate the Holy City? The liberation
of Jerusalem was bound to appear in the eyes of many (or so Friedrich
appears to have reasoned) as divine favor and vindication. Furthermore,
Friedrich had good reason to believe he would
liberate Jerusalem because he had already been approached by the Sultan
of Egypt, al-Kamil, who offered to deliver Jerusalem to him in exchange
for the Emperor’s support in his war against his brother al-Mu’azzam.
The actual course of the Sixth Crusade will be the subject of next week's blog post.
The Sixth Crusade is the backdrop and subject of:
Buy Now!
Dr. Helena P. Schrader holds a PhD in History.
She is the Chief Editor of the Real Crusades History Blog.
She
is an award-winning novelist and author of numerous books both fiction
and non-fiction. Her three-part biography of Balian d'Ibelin won a total
of 14 literary accolades. Her most recent release is a novel about the
founding of the crusader Kingdom of Cyprus. You can find out more at: http://crusaderkingdoms.com 
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