Abstract

Although the Danish king, Valdemar II, suffered a major defeat at the battle of Bornhoved in 1227, which weakened his authority and the economic well-being of the local church, the traditional good relations between the papacy and Denmark were generally maintained throughout Gregory's pontificate because of the pope's desire to establish control over the Baltic crusade and the need for northern support in his struggle with Frederick II. The traditional problems of the Danish Church regarding clerical incontinence and violence against clerics still posed problems for the papacy, alongside more unusual questions concerning liturgical practice and cheating on exams.

Keywords: Denmark, Baltic Crusades, Frederick II, Teutonic Knights, Lateran IV

On 22 July 1227, approximately four months after Hugo dei Conti's elevation to the papacy as Gregory IX, the Danish king Valdemar II (c.1170–1241; r. 1202–1241) lost the battle of Bornhoved to a conglomerate army of north German petty princes. The defeat at Bornhoved severely diminished Danish dominance, which had been established from c.1201, over a number of North German duchies and counties, the princes of which would now renounce their vassal status to the Danish king.

The defeat at Bornhoved posed both strategic and practical difficulties for the papacy in its relationship with its northernmost ally. Since the establishment of the Danish archiepiscopal See in Lund in 1103, and the carving out of the Nordic church province from the province of Hamburg-Bremen, the Danish Church and king had more or less acted as loyal allies to the papacy, often playing a significant role in papal politics, because of the important geo-political position of the Danish realm immediately to the north of the mighty German Empire.

Historians have almost unanimously argued that, following the defeat at Bornhoved, King Valdemar radically changed his political focus. In fact, in Danish historiography, the battle, lost to German adversaries in the German-Danish borderland, has been interpreted as the beginning of the end of the Danish rule over the Baltic Sea. Following his defeat, Valdemar II would shy away from his hitherto expansionist foreign policy. The Danish king would turn his focus and his efforts inwards with the aim of securing control over the remains of his realm, while striving to reconcile himself with his German adversaries.

Abstract

Coinciding with the pontificates of Innocent III (1198–1216) and Honorius III (1216–1227), Hugo's cardinalate provided a period of diplomatic and practical experience as both advocate and papal auditor. In delivering Innocent III's mandate of submission to Markward of Anweiler in 1199, his courage was rewarded when, between 1209 and 1221, as cardinal bishop of Ostia and legate a latere with plenipotential power, further legations took him to Germany, Tuscany, and Lombardy. Whilst his dealings with Otto IV proved ultimately unsuccessful, his strong defence of the faith against heresy, his pacification of the North Italian communes and his active campaigns to preach and raise troops for the Fifth Crusade all added to his reputation. In religious matters, on hearing Jacques de Vitry's account at Perugia in 1216 of large numbers of penitential Umbrian women seeking a religious lifestyle, by 1219 Hugo had himself succeeded in gathering four convents into the Order of the Poor Ladies of the Valle Spoletana.

Keywords: Legate, Fifth Crusade, North Italian communes, heresy, penitential women

Were we to accept without qualification the brief and formulaic second and third chapters of the Vita Gregorii noni, an anonymous, official biography emanating from the Curia during the summer of 1240 whilst the pope still lived, we might be forgiven for believing that his twenty-nine years of pre-papal service to the Church had passed almost unnoticed. It should be no surprise, therefore, that two decades ago the forty-four subsequent, often polemical and overwhelmingly hagiographical chapters of the Vita which cover Gregory IX's fourteen-year pontificate were also authoritatively dismissed as ‘of scant assistance’ in the reconstruction of this papal biography. In conformity with the Liber pontificalis, the second chapter of the Vita locates his origins firmly in the Campania, recording his mother's descent from the local nobility of Anagni and his father's from the Conti di Segni whilst also noting his relationship in the third degree to Innocent III (1198–1216) through their common great-great grandfather. There follows a long list of his attributes – huge perspicacity, sound memory, profound knowledge of the liberal arts, mastery of law – a river of Ciceronian eloquence – scrupulous master of the Sacred Page, zealous in the faith, upright in virtue, righteous in justice, consoler of the wretched, sower and cultivator of religion, lover of chastity and exemplar of all sanctity – such qualities leading to Gregory's immediate promotion.

Abstract

Literature on Gregory IX's patronage has hitherto considered the facade mosaics of Old St Peter's as his ‘only known enterprise’ in Rome. Previously overlooked sources (both documentary and epigraphic), combined with a fresh analysis of architectural and material evidence, lead us to demonstrate that his attention to the City was much more wide-ranging and of a far greater scope: from churches to welfare structures and urban infrastructures, including a poorhouse, the major bridge of Rome and a sewer system for the viability of the streets; from buildings in the Patriarchio to a stauroteca for the Holy Cross, from textiles to the finest manuscripts; from the commission of a monumental bell for the promotion of the Vatican, not to mention his intervention in favour of the Franciscans. Furthermore, grandly orchestrated processions throughout the city played just as an important role as the ‘patronage’ itself in shaping the Rome of Gregory IX.

Keywords: Vatican, Lateran, processions, icons, relics

It is often stated that ‘the facade mosaics of Old Saint Peter's are Gregory IX's only known enterprise in Rome’. Such a statement, and those analogous to it, do not surprise in as much as the facade mosaics of the Vatican basilica were ‘one of the most prominent of all papal decorative campaigns throughout the thirteenth century’, and have thus succeeded in overshadowing the memory of any other instance of Gregory's patronage for the city. Indeed, recent research – based, inter alia, on the discovery of hitherto overlooked sources – has unveiled several neglected aspects of the mosaics. This in turn has led to a reappraisal of relic distribution in Old Saint Peter’s, ultimately leading to a new interpretation of the facade as ‘an extraordinary dense manifesto of both Gregory IX's ecclesiology and eschatology, as well as of his idea of the role of a changing Church – and of the pope as its leader – in guiding the faithful on the right path both on earth and to Heaven’.

Despite the undoubted importance of the Vatican campaign, Gregory's patronage and attention for the Urbe was far from being limited to it alone. After all, during his fourteen-year pontificate he devoted energy and financial resources to several significant building campaigns outside Rome and it would have been surprising had he only focused on one single enterprise in the Eternal City.

Abstract

This chapter examines various thirteenth-century chronicles to assess their reactions to Pope Gregory IX's efforts in the field of the persecution of clandestine heretics. The central focus is Gregory's creation of the new role model of the plenipotentiary inquisitor, an innovation tested in the persecution campaigns of the Dominican Friar Robert le Bougre in northern France and Champagne and of the priest Conrad of Marburg in Germany. Among those analyzed which concern Conrad are the chronicle of Alberic of Troisfontaines, that of the Dominicans of Erfurt, the Annals of Worms, and the Deeds of the archbishops of Trier, while the works of Philippe Mousket, Matthew Paris and Richer of Senones concern Robert. They are examined not just as sources of information but with regard to their contexts and discussed in terms of their treatment of the inquisition.

Keywords: Heresy, inquisition, chronicles, Conrad of Marburg, Robert le Bougre

This chapter deals with the innovation and intensification which Gregory IX brought to the persecution of clandestine heretics – especially when he tested a new model, the plenipotentiary inquisitor, provided with a newly adapted set of rules for legal procedures – and with the impact these developments made on contemporary chroniclers. More precisely, it will contrast the slight impression which the pope's measures against heretics in Rome and Northern Italy left in the historiography with the deep imprint left by the actions of his most famous inquisitors: the Dominican friar, Robert le Bougre, who acted as malleus haereticorum in Northern France and Champagne in 1232/1233 and again in 1236 to 1239, and then disappeared, perhaps into monastic confinement; the notorious priest, Conrad of Marburg, who unleashed a wide-ranging persecution of heretics in Germany from October 1231 until his assassination by some of his would-be victims in June 1233.

During Gregory's pontificate significant changes in the procedures against heretics took place. Canon law substituted the trial based on accusatio and defensio with the processus inquisitionis, the investigation ex officio. In consequence, specific forms of heresy trial were developed, in which the accused gradually lost rights which had been taken for granted in traditional law-suits.

Abstract

The Liber Extra, the most widely circulated collection of medieval canon law, was commissioned by Gregory IX and assembled by the Dominican Raymond of Penyafort. Gregory IX's bull of promulgation, Rex pacificus (1234), ordered that it would be the only collection used in the schools and in the courts and that no other collection was to be made without the special approval of the Apostolic See. It would be Gregory IX's major contribution to the development of medieval canon law. This chapter focuses on the genesis and intentions behind the Liber Extra, the pre-Gregorian sources for the compilation, and Gregory IX's own contribution, before offering suggestions for the path of future scholarship concerning the Liber Extra and Gregory's own legal accomplishments.

Keywords: Canon Law, Liber Extra, Raymond of Penyafort, Decretals, Jurists

The legate's patience was wearing thin. Amidst the protestations of the assembled English prelates, he gestured from his position near the high altar of St. Paul's Cathedral to his assistant. Master Attho rose from his seat and took up an imposing codex set out among documents prominently bearing the papal seal of Gregory IX. Opening the volume and turning the leaves, Attho ran his finger down the column of tightly packed capitula until he arrived at the end of the section on the legatine office. The room now quieted down as Attho read out the last entry in the title, an item written by Gregory himself: ‘we wish no one to doubt but that the statutes of legates of the Apostolic See, promulgated in the province in which they are conducting their mission, shall endure as perpetual even after they depart from that province’. The English prelates had already demanded a delay for a closed meeting to review the legate's proposed statutes, among which they had found, much to their consternation, one reaffirming the Fourth Lateran Council's ban on holding plural benefices. They now realized they could no longer pre-emptively undercut the legate's authority. Otto Candidus, cardinal deacon of S. Nicola in Carcere Tulliano, and a veteran of legatine missions in Lombardy, Livonia, France and Germany, could finally get down to the business of reform in London.

Matthew of Paris, who left us this account of Otto's November 1237 council in London, identifies the book from which Magister Attho read the decree on legatine statutes only as Pope Gregory IX's liber autenticum, scilicet register.

Abstract

For popes of the High Middle Ages, peace-making was considered an essential function of their office. Peace, a central part of the Christian message, was particularly necessary within Christendom for the success of the Crusades. The papacy was deeply involved over a long period in attempts to bring about peace between France and England. This study, exploring Gregory IX's attempts to secure peace between Henry III of England (1216–1272) and Louis IX of France (1226–1270), demonstrates the manner in which the process of peace could be manipulated by the parties involved and contributes to the debate concerning whether the papacy was proactive or responsive in its government.

Keywords: Peace, Truce, France, England, Papacy

Gone are the days when the biographers of medieval popes, even of such exalted figures as Gregory VII or Innocent III, could write of them as ‘Leaders of Europe’, let alone as men who ‘shook the World’. It is increasingly acknowledged that a large part of the business of even the most autocratic of medieval popes was transacted in answer to petitions submitted to the Curia by those seeking favours. Save when specific circumstances persuaded particular popes to reshape policy, papal government was responsive rather than dynamic. In the case of Gregory IX, this would allow us to view the high politics of Church and state, especially the relations between Pope Gregory and the Emperor Frederick II, as subject to direct papal control, but much of the rest of papal policy as responsive routine.

Where, between these two extremes, active or passive, are we to place the pope's commitment to the establishment of peace as a prerequisite for the salvation of souls? Peace-making was one of the functions of the papacy, from at least the time of Leo I, and his supposed defence of Rome against Attila. However, whilst historians have paid lip-service to papal peace-making activities, very little has been written on the effects of papal diplomacy within any particular peace initiative. A notable exception is Michele Maccarrone's study of Innocent III's dealings with England and France, focused upon the decretal Novit ille and the pope's claims to jurisdiction over breaches of the peace as a matter of sin rather than of feudal jurisdiction.

Abstract

The pontificate of Gregory IX saw an astonishing expansion of the range of crusading activities, with multiple campaigns on many fronts annually against every perceived threat. Although not aiming to fulfil a programme, in some areas Gregory took the initiative, while in others he reacted to requests and opportunities. His policy of vow redemption, use of the friars in preaching a universal crusading propaganda, and attempts at enforcement of sermon attendance, met with mixed results, posed a host of problems, and had unintended consequences for the Late Medieval Church. But his influence on the history of the crusading movement cannot be questioned.

Keywords: Crusades, Vows, Teutonic Knights, Indulgences, Preaching

Gregory IX was at the centre of two great changes in crusading that took place in the thirteenth century. One had to do with the targets and reasons for crusades, the other with how they were recruited and financed. In the twelfth century, most crusading activity was focused on the Holy Land or the Iberian Peninsula. The Baltic was a fledgling theatre of operations. There were major campaigns, such as the Second and Third Crusades, but in general crusading remained an infrequent phenomenon. The beginning of the thirteenth century witnessed a massive expansion of crusading, with expeditions departing with greater frequency than ever before to new theatres of conflict against newly identified enemies of Latin Christianity. The two key figures in this expansion were Innocent III and Gregory IX.

Innocent opened up new fronts in southern Italy, where he preached a crusade against Markward of Anweiler in 1199; in the Languedoc, where he launched the Albigensian Crusades (1209–1229) against secular lords he accused of failing to eradicate heresy from the lands they ruled; and in the Latin Empire of Constantinople, the regime founded in the wake of the Fourth Crusade, which Innocent had originally recruited to aid the crusader states of Syria. Gregory intensified papal commitments in these arenas while adding several new ones of his own, preaching campaigns against the Drenther peasants in Utrecht; against Stedinger peasants in the lower Weser valley; against heretics in Germany; against the heterodox ecclesiastical establishment in Bosnia; against the pagan Cumans in Hungary; and against the Mongols in eastern Europe. All the while, he maintained traditional levels of papal support for crusading in the Holy Land and Iberia.

Abstract

This chapter explores the relationship between Cardinal Hugo/Gregory IX and Joachim of Fiore and the Florensian Order. It first explores the influence of Joachite thought, particularly concerning the Apocalypse, on the Curia and the wider world of the early thirteenth century. It then examines the part played by Joachim's great confidant, Rainier of Ponza, and Joseph of Fiore, who was closely tied to the Curia, in developing the thought of Hugo/Gregory concerning the part of new religious movements in a new eschatological stage of history. It closes with a thorough examination of the symbolism of the canonization letter of Dominic where the Cistercians and the Florensians together, as the white Quadriga, signify the coming of the Last Age.

Keywords: Joachim of Fiore, Dominicans, Franciscans, Apocalypse, Antichrist

The Pope and … who?

Pope Gregory IX, formerly Cardinal Hugo of Ostia, was known to hold in great esteem the Calabrian abbot Joachim of Fiore (d. 1202) and the Florensian order, which Joachim founded. Gregory's first modern biographer, Joseph Felten, writes of his role in the history of the mendicant orders and his multidimensional contest with his antagonist Frederick II of Hohenstaufen as the two main characteristics of Gregory's pontificate. In both thematic strands, Joachim of Fiore and his legacy were crucial, and without him, his thought and its reception, the history of the rise of the Franciscans and Dominicans and the antagonism between imperial court and Curia in the first half of the thirteenth century would have concluded differently. Throughout his career as cardinal and later as pope, Hugo or Gregory favoured the Florensian order. In a famous letter of the year 1234, he even placed the Florensians on a par with Cistercians, Dominicans, and Franciscans. At first sight this might come as a surprise, given the widespread and long lasting influence that both the Cistercians and the mendicant orders were to enjoy across the centuries, while Joachim's order appears to have faded within his own lifetime, even though his thought and work was to have a lasting impact on the history of medieval, early modern and modern thought. Apart from its founder, almost no members of the medieval Florensian order are known by name and none were in any way particularly prominent either spiritually or intellectually.

Abstract

This chapter examines Pope Gregory IX's involvement in the Greek East, which revolved around three interconnected issues: crusade, Church Union, and heresy. Gregory used both force and negotiations in pursuit of the dual objectives of protecting Latin possessions in the area and effecting papal control over the Eastern Churches. He actively deployed the crusade to buttress the Latin conquest of Byzantium, while he was also involved in Greek-Latin ecclesiastical contacts in Greece, Cyprus, Syria, and southern Italy. In a striking – if short-lived – departure from precedent, Gregory explicitly accused the Greek Church of heresy. At the same time, his envoys’ (eventually unsuccessful) negotiations with the authorities of Nicaea were an implicit recognition of the government and hierarchy established there as continuators of Byzantium.

Keywords: Byzantium; Greek-Latin relations; Church Union; heresy; crusade

Crusade, Church Union, and heresy: these three interconnected issues delineate Pope Gregory IX's involvement in the Greek East. Gregory's activities ranged from the use of crusading force to ecclesiastical negotiations, in pursuit of the dual objectives of protecting Latin possessions in the area and achieving papal control over the Eastern Churches. The early thirteenth century was an important period for Greco-Latin interaction. Orthodox populations lived under Catholic rule not only in the recently conquered Byzantine territories in Greece, but also in Cyprus, Syria and Palestine, as well as in southern Italy; each of these theatres of interaction had its own distinctive characteristics and historical peculiarities. Over the fourteen years of his pontificate, Gregory devoted a considerable part of his activity to buttressing the Latin conquest of Byzantium by calling for reinforcements from the West. But he also dealt directly with the Byzantine ecclesiastical and secular authorities. As far as relations with the Orthodox were concerned, Gregory's pontificate was punctuated by two contrasting events. In 1232–1234, there were extensive negotiations with the Byzantine Church at Nicaea on the issue of ecclesiastical union. This was the first considerable unionist effort since 1204, as both Innocent III and Honorius III had adopted the view that the conquest had already resolved the schism by bringing the Greek Church back to obedience. In conducting these negotiations, Gregory not only distanced himself from that view, but his action also constituted a more or less direct acknowledgement of the government and patriarchate at Nicaea as the continuators of Byzantine institutions.

Social change in post-Islamic Iran was tied to the formation of the ʿAbbāsid Caliphate. The ʿAbbāsid ploy to exploit dissident agents and mobilize them against the Umayyad Caliphate led to the formation of various social groups. Aware of their historic opportunity to bring about social change, the ʿAbbāsids took full advantage of their potential. The use of tools such as daʿva, which had a long history in Islamic history, exploiting Shiʿite structural resources such as the imamate, and identifying Khorāsān as a suitable place to start daʿva, was part of the ʿAbbāsid plan to gain religious legitimacy among the people.

The Iranians, who had not forgotten the memory of their glorious pre- Islamic history and looked to reproduce those structures in order to gain independence, came to the scene with all their strength. The presence of many of them as dāʿies, including Abu Salama Khallāl and great commanders such as Abu Moslem-e Khorāsāni, eventually led to the fall of the Umayyad Caliphate. The ʿAbbāsid Caliphate can be considered a reproduction of the Umayyad Caliphate, which tried to rule with the same monopolistic power. Although the ʿAbbāsids used various structural resources and agents to gain power, they chanted only negative slogans during the invitation and did not promise to make fundamental changes.

But ʿAbbāsid efforts to overthrow the Umayyads had brought new agents to the scene who never intended to give up their share against the ʿAbbāsid Caliphate. The Shiʿites, who saw the ʿAbbāsids indebted to their structural resources for recruiting dissidents, renewed their rebellious activity more strongly than before. The ʿAbbāsids were aware that the Shiʿites were not looking for a share of the power, but to possess all of it; therefore, the ʿAbbāsid Caliphate tried to subdue the Shiʿites with a policy of repression. But, the power structures of the ʿAlawites became more cohesive and stable with the physical elimination of their agents. Eventually, Maʾmun, who saw that the policy of repression was unsuccessful, complied with the Shiʿites’ demands and, by electing ʿAli ibn Musā as the crown prince, took a different approach to dealing with them.

Yaʿqub, an Activist with Military Legitimacy

While the Tāherids and Sāmānids, by obeying the ʿAbbāsid Caliphate, developed their power structures in Khorāsān and Mā Varā al-Nahr, some Iranian amirs, without serving the ʿAbbāsid caliph and only by relying on military force, were able to establish new dynasties in Iran. The establishment of the Saffārid dynasty was the beginning of the way for the Iranian amirs to create political structures independent of the ʿAbbāsid Caliphate. The Saffārid government founded its structure on military force and far from the ʿAbbāsid power framework. By questioning the caliph's religious legitimacy, it provided the ground for the reproduction of successive Iranian local governments. The social changes brought about by the Saffārid dynasty paved the way for Iranian agents to take a different path to power from the Tāherids and Sāmānids and gradually gain a greater share of it.

Unlike the rule of the Tāherids and Sāmānids, which had been formed with the ʿAbbāsid caliph's approval, Saffārid rule was shaped in Sistān in the dust of conflicts among different rivals, none of whom had any mandate from the caliph. The historians’ accounts of the formation of the Saffārid government detail a number of conflicts before Yaʿqub eventually, after many years of co-operation and struggles with different amirs (such as Sāleh ibn Nazr and Derham ibn Nazr) and with a coalition of different religious and intellectual groups (namely, the Khārejites and the ʿAyyārs), was able to come to power in Sistān.

The Sāmānid rule: Borrowed from the ʿAbbāsid Caliphate

The borrowed nature of the Sāmānid dynasty prompts one to examine the structure of this government in the persistence of the Tāherid government. One must note that the Sāmānids, in light of their geographical location, cultural thinking, and intellectual currents, reproduced the borrowed structure in a different direction. The sources of power derived from the ʿAbbāsid Caliphate after Khorāsān reached Mā Varā al-Nahr under the Sāmānids and made significant and wide-ranging social changes. Those far-reaching changes became the model for the Sāmānids and the dynasties that followed.

The formation of the Sāmānid dynasty, like that of the Tāherids, was the result of delegating the reign of Mā Varā al-Nahr to the Iranians. The starting point for the presence of the Sāmānids in Mā Varā al-Nahr was the revolt of Rāfeʿ ibn Leys, which forced Hārun al-Rashid, the ʿAbbāsid caliph, to move to Khorāsān. This revolt, which could have posed a great danger to the ʿAbbāsid Caliphate's eastern frontier, was resolved by the Sāmānids. It ended without war or bloodshed at the lowest possible cost. According to Narshakhi: