The agreement between Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor and king of Sicily, and Pope Gregory IX that ended the conflict arising from Frederick’s excommunication in 1227, which Gregory had pronounced because of Frederick’s delays in going on crusade to the Holy Land.
The settlement was negotiated by Hermann von Salza, master of the Teutonic Order, and Cardinal Thomas of Capua, and confirmed by Frederick II at San Germano in Italy on 23 July 1227. It included the promise that those who had supported the papacy would be taken back into the emperor’s favor; that Frederick would not enter the duchy of Spoleto or other papal lands; that episcopal elections in Sicily would conform to the rules laid out at the Fourth Lat-eran Council (1215); that the church in Sicily would be free from taxation, and its clergy exempt from royal jurisdiction; and that lands that had been seized from the military orders would be returned to them.
Various issues were not, however, fully resolved until 28 August, at Ceprano (on the borders between the kingdom of Sicily and the papal states), where two papal legates absolved Frederick from his sentence of excommunication. By that stage, some of the more stringent clauses had been modified in Frederick’s favor. The ceremony was followed by a meeting between Frederick and Gregory at Anagni on 1 September, which symbolically ended Frederick’s excommunication.
-Bjorn K. U. Weiler
See also: Baltic Crusades; Lithuania; Teutonic Order
Bibliography
Abulafia, David, Frederick II. A Medieval Emperor (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1988).
Die Actenstucke zum Frieden von San Germano, ed. Karl Hampe (Berlin: Weidmannsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1926).
Sturner, Friedrich, Friedrich II., 2 vols. (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1994-2000).
World History
