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PART IV The Emperor’s Crusade, 1227–1229 Behind all the planning and mobilization of the Fifth Crusade was the figure of the emperor Frederick II (1194–1250). After the sudden death of Henry VI in 1197, Frederick’s mother, Constance, regarded by the nobles of Sicily as the heiress of Roger II, proved willing to submit the kingdom of Sicily to the pope in order to secure Frederick’s succession. She also persuaded Innocent III, who was now acknowledged as ultimate lord of the kingdom, to permit Frederick to succeed to the Sicilian throne, which he did on May 17, 1198. At the death of Constance in November 1198, Innocent III as the lord of the kingdom became the guardian of Frederick II. After the struggle for the imperial crown between Philip of Swabia and Otto IV between 1198 and 1208, the assassination of Philip in 1208, and the troubled reign and excommunication of Otto IV (1209–1211), Frederick was elected and crowned king of the Romans at Aachen on July 23, 1215, four months before the Fourth Lateran Council. Son and grandson of crusading emperors, Frederick took the cross at his Aachen coronation (with the knowledge and approval of Innocent III) and again at his imperial coronation in Rome on November 22, 1220. Between 1212 and 1216, Frederick made a number of significant promises to protect the interests of the church in Sicily, the most important of which was to separate his Sicilian crown from the imperial crown by having his son Henry elected king of the Romans. The prospect of large numbers of crusaders from Frederick’s German kingdom (like the great army led by Frederick Barbarossa on the aborted Third Crusade) and the close interest that Sicily and South Italy had in Mediterranean affairs and the Holy Land made Frederick the ideal crusade leader. In spite of the considerable and time-consuming difficulties involved in securing his position in Sicily and Germany, which were generally if grudgingly accepted by Innocent’s successor Honorius III (1216–1223), Frederick remained the great hope of the crusading forces at Damietta. Even if delayed by local concerns himself , Frederick sent his own high officials with troops to aid the crusade, as Oliver of Paderborn points out, and he may have supported the decision of the legate Pelagius to refuse the truce offers of al-Malik al-Kamil. But revolts and political opposition persisted in delaying Frederick’s departure, even to the point of trying the patience of Honorius III, who later bitterly regretted his extensions of Frederick ’s date of departure. The surrender of Damietta and the collapse of the Fifth Crusade caused considerable resentment and spread blame to the pope and his legate, but already the planning for a new crusade had begun. The pope and the emperor held meetings in 1222, and in 1223 Frederick, on the advice of his close friend Hermann von 238 Emperor’s Crusade Salza, master of the Teutonic Knights, began proceedings to marry Yolande/ Isabelle, daughter of John of Brienne and heiress to the crown of the kingdom of Jerusalem. Frederick, whose first wife had died in 1222, then could lay claim to the crown of Jerusalem by right of his new wife, thus claiming for himself, along with his crusader’s vow, his kingship of Sicily, and his identity as emperor, a status that no previous crusade leader could claim. Frederick now promised to leave on crusade in 1225, but a revolt of the Muslim inhabitants of western Sicily in 1224 caused yet further delay. Finally, Frederick and Honorius agreed, at the Treaty of San Germano in July 1225, that Frederick would deposit one hundred thousand ounces of gold with Hermann von Salza, master of the Teutonic Knights, provide a thousand knights for two years service in the Holy Land, and equip one hundred fifty ships for service in his crusade. Frederick also agreed to undergo excommunication if he did not depart by August 15, 1227. Frederick, now married to Yolande/Isabella, indeed launched his army and fleet on August 15, but his own departure was delayed until September, and an epidemic swept through his armies, killing Ludwig IV of Thuringia among others, and striking Frederick himself, whose ship had to turn back to port. Although the crusade army sailed off without Frederick, the new pope, Gregory IX (1227–1241), refused to grant yet another delay and, invoking the Treaty of San Germano, excommunicated Frederick, using the occasion to...

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