Storm from the East by Robert Marshall

Author:Robert Marshall [Marshall, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781800326460
Publisher: Canelo
Published: 2022-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

CONFLICT BETWEEN CHURCH AND STATE

The single most important issue that exercised most of the courts during the 1230s was the growing enmity between the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor. It was a conflict that had its origins in the Investiture Conference of the eleventh century, when Pope Gregory VII formulated the doctrine that the Church exerted universal rule over the whole of Christendom and over all Christian kings and emperors. It was a split between the successors of St Peter and Charlemagne that turned from a political issue into open warfare under the Emperor Frederick II. He was an extraordinary figure, sometimes described as the enfant terrible of medieval Europe. He had been educated at the Norman court at Palermo in Sicily, where he had absorbed the mores of an exotic society that combined the sternness of the Norman court with heavy influences from the Middle East. Frederick combined brilliant intelligence with a taste for the cruel, the sensual and the strange. He had a deep love of Arab culture and great sympathy for Islam. His failure to take part in the Fifth Crusade almost certainly caused its failure, for which he was excommunicated by the new Pope in 1227. In spite of that he sailed to Palestine the following year, in the wake of the Sixth Crusade, and through some stunning diplomatic moves secured control of Jerusalem, Nazareth, Bethlehem and the territory between Jerusalem and Acre without spilling a single drop of blood.

Frederick’s intimate knowledge of Middle Eastern politics enabled him to conduct negotiations with the Sultan of Egypt at the best possible time. Following the destruction of his father’s empire, Jalal al-Din had escaped to India from where he emerged in 1223 to reconquer those lands. His campaign had been short-lived, following the Mongols’ return to reaffirm their control. Nevertheless, during a brief period in 1225, Jalal al-Din was proving a serious threat to the current rulers of the Muslim world, having won control of western Persia and Azerbaijan, invaded Georgia and launched an attack on Baghdad. In other words, Frederick had caught the Sultan at a bad moment and was able to exact a heavy price for peace with the Europeans. But although the Sixth Crusade had been a success, and as a result Frederick was absolved of his sins and taken back into the Church, the rift between Church and Empire had been too deep to be easily resolved. Hostilities had broken out again by the late 1230s, dividing Europe into two separate camps just at the time when Ogedei Khan had set in motion the conquest of Europe.

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