Pelagius of Albano (d. 1230)

Cardinal and papal legate during the Fifth Crusade (1217-1221).

Pelagius served as cardinal-deacon of St. Lucia in Septa-solio (1206/1207-1211), cardinal-priest of St. Cecilia (1211-1213), and cardinal-bishop of Albano (1213-1230). By 1213, his skill as a papal auditor earned him the unenviable task of reforming Latin and native ecclesiastics in the recently established Latin Empire of Constantinople while facilitating the union of the Roman and Greek Orthodox churches. Although nominated to the Latin patriarchate of Antioch, Pelagius returned to Italy by 1215 and was appointed legate for Pope Innocent Ill’s long-planned crusade to the Holy Land. As legate, he was to combine the reform of the church in Outremer with serving as peacekeeper and disciplinarian for the crusading army. Delayed by affairs in Cyprus, he joined the crusading army then besieging the port of Damietta in Egypt (1218).

As head of the papally subsidized Roman fleet and dispenser of the crusading funds forwarded from Europe, Pelagius was initially only one of many spiritual and military leaders in the army, but soon assumed a decisive leadership role during ensuing crises. With the support of other clergymen, he promulgated laws governing the army and wielded his legatine powers of excommunication and ability to grant indulgences to hold the army together in anticipation of the advent of the crusade’s presumed leader, Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor and king of Sicily. Because they expected reinforcements, Pelagius and other parties rejected the truces offered by the sultan of Egypt both before and after the capture of Damietta.

In 1221, after the departure of John of Brienne, king of Jerusalem, and the arrival of Frederick II’s representative, Duke Ludwig I of Bavaria, Pelagius urged the army to advance. He supported his arguments partly with prophecies circulating in the crusader camp that a Christian King David and a Western emperor (glossed as Frederick II) would take Cairo in the near future. Although some contemporary chroniclers and poets blamed the army’s subsequent defeat and surrender to the sultan of Egypt upon Pelagius’s inept strategizing, the army’s variable supply of funding and men and Frederick II’s delayed participation sealed the crusade’s disastrous denouement.

Immediately after his release by the sultan of Egypt, Pelagius attempted to resolve the contested succession to the principality of Antioch, which threatened to further weaken the Frankish states in Outremer. He also strove to redress conflicts between the Latin and Greek clergy in Cyprus, which were similar to those he had previously encountered in the Empire of Constantinople. He later became involved in the planning of Frederick II’s crusade at the councils of Ferentino (1223) and San Germano (1225). After Pope Gregory IX excommunicated Frederick for failing to depart in 1227, the pope took advantage of Frederick’s absence on crusade to dispatch Pelagius and the legate Pandulf to Sicily with a papal army in support of John of Brienne’s claim to the Western emperorship, which John abandoned after his election as Latin emperor of Constantinople. After Frederick II’s victorious return to Europe, Pelagius participated in negotiations between the emperor and Gregory IX before his death in 1230.

-Jessalynn Bird

See also: Fifth Crusade (1217-1221)

Bibliography

Donovan, Joseph P., Pelagius and the Fifth Crusade (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1950).

Maleczek, Werner, Papst und Kardinalskolleg von 1191 bis 1216: Die Kardinale unter Coelestin III. undInnocenz III. (Wien: Verlag der Osterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1984).

Powell, James M., Anatomy of a Crusade, 1213-1221 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986).