The Case of the Emperor or
"The Sicilian Problem”
political tragedy out of reality
presented by Christian Lanciai (1990)
This tragedy of tolerance from the high middle ages about the conflict between pope and emperor when it reached its critical culmination with the resulting collapse of both institutions is remarkably actual still today, perhaps most of all in view of the Palestine problem, which has changed very little since then. What’s missing is still a good will on the part of the polarised and locked up positions of the parties in question, while the good will, once it is there, could accomplish any miracle if it just was given allowance.
The playwright has been accused of anachronism, since he consistently chooses timeless subjects for his plays and also gives them completely outdated (read: antimodernistic) forms; but does anachronism and untimeliness have to be something negative? We hear today about infuriated theatre audiences who come home angry and disappointed from performances that have been completely ruined by modernizations, so that the realistic character with appropriate costumes and decor have been banished to instead make place for completely anachronistic experiments with absurd inclinations, like a putting Faust on a urinal, make Hamlet & CO appear in space suits, give Tosca and Don Juan access to computers, etc. That’s what is anachronistic and destructive of style, while the best kind of drama always remains timeless and is best presented ”untimely” with realistic decor, costumes and environment.
This apropos the hopeless struggle of tolerance with stupidity in the form of the prevalent fixed positions of established authorities in the completely realistic tragedy ”My Emperor”.
The drama shows the culmination of the conflict of several centuries between pope and emperor during the middle ages, which culmination in the times of Frederick II of Hohenstaufen was followed by the fall of both his empire and the papacy. The action begins during the highest heyday of the papacy during Innocent III (1212) to comprise the almost 40 years long reign of the emperor and what happened afterwards including, the insurrection of the Sicilian vespers (1282)
As a reading drama the play could be of great use as a historical chronicle and lesson with its clear psychology, which quite logically shows the background of the
great world conflict of 30 years that started to lead up to the Renaissance and the Reformation.
For the sake of form the unsurveyable historical material with its countless characters had to be compressed rather drastically, with the consequence that the author made himself guilty of at least one irregularity: Bianca Lancia was the mother of Manfred, not of Enzio, but the form would not admit the presence of Enzio’s mother Adelheid, while Bianca Lancia just had to be included. (editor’s remark)
The characters :
(in the order of their appearance)
Pope Innocent III ( - 1216)
Cardinal Hugo of Ostia, later pope Gregory IX ( - 1241)
St. Francis, beggar monk (1182-1226)
Emperor Frederick II of Hohenstaufen (1194-1250)
Berard, archbishop of Bari, later of Palermo Constance, the emperor’s first consort a Jew three children, a girl and two smaller boys an Arab merchant
Pope Honorius III ( - 1227)
Roffred of Benevento
Landulf of Aquino (father of Thomas of Aquino)
Hermann von Salza, grandmaster of the German order, diplomat Isabella, the emperor’s second consort a doctor a servant
a cardinal, later pope Innocenti IV ( - 1254, cardinal 2 i act II scene 4, in later scenes cardinal 1.) other cardinals
Sultan Malik-al-Kamil of Egypten
The emir Fahr-ed-Din
A vizier in the sultan’s service
Jacopo Tiepolo, doge of Venice
Henry VII, king of Germany, oldest son of the emperor
Bianca Lancia, the emperor’s friend
Petrus de Vinea (or Pier della Vigna), the emperor’s chief justice
Cardinal Jacopo di Palestrina (cardinal 1 in act II scene 4)
A clerical delegate from Russia
The orthodox patriarch of Antioch an interpreter
Cardinal Rainer of Viterbo King Louis the saint of France (1214-1270)
Thaddeus from Suessa the high guard of Grosseto a courier
Enzio, the emperor’s son, king of Sardinia
Manfred, the emperor’s son, last king of Sicily a prison guard
Conrad, son of the emperor’s son Frederick
And bishops, priests, warriors, pilgrims, other people and Sicilians.
The action is mostly in Italy and Sicily but also in Aachen and Wimpfen in Germany, in Jerusalem and in Lyon in France during the 13th century.
Copyright © Christian Lanciai 1990
My Emperor
Act I Scene 1. The Vatican.
Innocent O God! These damned beggars! The whole world is drowning in them! Why does the church get so many beggars when it is so rich?
cardinal Your holiness, many of the first Christians and even the apostles made their livelihood by begging.
Innocent Yes, but those were the days! Since then the church has grown rich! It has developed, made progress, become civilized and the greatest power in the world! Why is it then such a fashion among monks to go crawling in the dust and become beggars?
cardinal Your holiness, let the beggars themselves answer the question.
Innocent Well then, show in that mad village fool Francis then, who believes he could convert islam!
(The cardinal lets Francis in who enters simply dressed in his monk robe and barefoot.) Why don’t you have any shoes on your feet?
Francis Holy father, I am used to walk without.
Innocent But there is something called minding others. Who knows what dirt you bring to our floors when you come from the outside?
Francis Your holiness, bare feet are always cleaner than any shoes, for the feet feel the dirt of them while shoes feel nothing. Therefore it is easier to keep bare feet cleaner than shoes.
Innocent Holy simplicity! You are really an original then! But if you alone among all the holy brethren here in the Vatican dare make yourself special by clamping around barefoot, what on earth are you then doing in the Vatican?
Francis (prostrates himself in full length in humility to the pope) Holy father, we ask you to confirm our holy order.
Innocent And why would I sanction a beggar society in church which would only put the church to shame?
Francis Because it is the beggars who will save the church.
Innocent Do you suggest the church is in danger? Don’t you know it has never been more powerful than now`?
Francis Holy father, forgive me, but that’s the very danger.
Innocent Explain what you mean.
Francis Christianity consists only of humility. Now the church has the greatest power in the world. Then the risk is that it no longer can remain so very humble. Then we appear, me and my brothers, as God’s poorest and most humble brotherhood, and with our poverty and humility the necessary humility of the church will be saved.
Innocent (to the cardinal) This smells of advanced church politics.
Francis Holy father, we are the seal of Christ’s own total humility. He was also just a beggar.
Innocent (to the cardinal) Call my ward here. (The cardinal leaves.) Well, my good Francis, suppose I confirm your order. Suppose you then go begging your way through the world. The world will then pity you poor barefoot beggars and give all kinds of rich gifts. What will you do then when you have got rich?
Francis We give our gifts to the poor.
Innocent And what will the church gain by that?
(The cardinal enters with Frederick, a dashing almost fullgrown young man.)
Frederick Here I am father. What is your wish?
Innocent Look at this pauper, my dear son. What do you think of such a one?
Frederick That he needs a pair of shoes on his feet.
Innocent What else?
Frederick He seems to want some encouragement.
Innocent For what? For begging?
Frederick I think, father, that what he needs is some moral acknowledgement.
Innocent And what do you mean by that?
Frederick That he gets whatever he wants
Innocent He asks permission for himself and his brethren to live by begging in the name of the church. Isn’t that rather presumptuous?
Frederick Father, no one can prevent a beggar from begging. If this monk and his brothers want to go begging, they will go begging. I think what he wants is really something else.
Francis Graceful youth, the holy father does not understand the meaning of the rule of my order, which is just an implementation of absolute Christian humility and poverty.
Innocent Hasn’t the world got enough of all the beggars going around already? Does my church have to add to making even more beggars?
Frederick Try to be tolerant, father. Monks only mean well. This monk wants no evil just by begging. There is nothing evil in granting his requests.
Innocent You are far too tolerant, Frederick. With your generous attitude you will encourage all rotten eggs of this world. You are lucky to be completely under the control of the papacy.
Frederick Father, I can see that this beggar monk is an entirely good man.
Francis Then you can see more, graceful youth, than the holy father, who rather watches out for evil than favours the good.
Innocent Watch your tongue, Francis, or you will never get your order confirmed!
Francis Forgive me, holy father.
Frederick This monk is more honest than perhaps everyone else, for he doesn’t flatter you.
Innocent You are right. I will show grace. You will have the confirmation of your order, Francis, but woe betide you if you collect property! Go begging through the world, help the poor and the miserable, convert the sultan if you want, but woe betide you if you get any influence and power! There must only be one pope in the world. Do you understand? You will have your order only if it always remains without property.
Francis That’s exactly what I always asked for, holy father, to always remain without property.
Innocent Holy simplicity! Get out of here and beg in the streets and in the country, you will have your order, but never come here again! I never want to see a monk barefoot in the Vatican again!
Francis (bows to the ground) Holy father, I am overwhelmed by gratitude.
Innocent That’s all right. Get out now.
(The cardinal shows the overwhelmedly grateful Francis out.)
Well, my son, what do you think of such village fools?
Frederick Father, as I said, tis monk was a good man. I must have my doubts, though, concerning that other order of beggar monks that was recently confirmed.
Innocent Dominic is useful. His activity is necessary to the church.
Frederick But it imports a use of power that could be abused.
Innocent How?
Frederick The Dominicans already have the authority to convert heretics by any means. They could assume that any means also could mean torture, which they could use also on Jews and Arabs.
Innocent Your ancestors on Sicily were far too tolerant. Jewry and Islam are outdated as religions. They are doomed.
Frederick But the Jews and Muslims who dwell in the world are still human beings.
Innocent But they are not Christian.
Frederick But they are human beings.
Innocent But they are no Christian human beings.
Frederick Still they are no less human than Christian people. I suggest that the freedom given the Dominicans can be used by Christians to be less human as human beings than even Jews and Arabs.
Innocent I will never understand you, Frederick. You have so strange ideas.
Frederick Father, the ideal of the Sicilian kings has always been justice. Not even the pope can set himself above justice.
Innocent Justice is settled by the pope.
Frederick No, father, it is settled by God. The pope may decide the law but not justice.
Innocent You will be a great king one day, Frederick.
Frederick I will be what I was made for.
Innocent But beware of challenging my successors on the papal throne. They might not always be as magnanimous as I.
Frederick Father, it is not so difficult to know what is right, but it could sometimes be considerably harder to do what is right. Whoever your successors will be, I will only do what is right. And the most important thing you can do about what is right is to tell the one who is wrong that he is wrong.
Innocent You can do that with anyone but the pope.
Frederick If the pope anyway would be wrong some time, it would then be more important to tell him that he is wrong than anyone else.
Innocent The pope is infallible.
Frederick He is infallible as pope but not as a man. It is vital for the welfare of the world that his human errors are pointed out if they occur.
Innocent A cardinal with human errors can never be pope.
Frederick Nothing is impossible.
Innocent That’s what all youths imagine. My son, even you will shed blood hitting your head against the inevitable thwarts of your will by destiny.
Frederick As long as you are right you will have the power to fight.
Innocent But only until you die, my son.
Scene 2. The sumptuous court of Palermo.
Berard Greetings, my emperor, second only to the Pope the most sovereign power potentate in our world, to the Pope the supreme steward of all world Christendom! A unanimous Congregation of Electors has decided in Aachen that
you alone are worthy of the highest monarchy dignity in the world, and a more illustrious prince we cannot conceive. You are to the world like a dawn, you shine with glorious talent and magnificent knowledge, you have a knowledge of languages that probably no one else in the world possesses, you are only seventeen years old but are already wise as a mature man, you are filled with nothing but good intentions and Christian virtues, rightly you are described as the astonishment of the world, and in addition, you are familiar with the living conditions and hard work of the poorest people. As young as you are, you already know humanity well. We cannot have a more suitable emperor.
Frederick No monarch, dear excellency, can stand flattery at length. You introduce my difficult reign rather ill. Don’t imagine you could tempt me to blind presumption. Don’t praise me until I am dead.
Berard Dear Frederick, I would not have dared to praise you at all if I had not known how well you were already worth all the praise and honour and how impervious you would be to flattery. I know you through our Holy Father in Rome, your guardian. By his well considered and careful skill and policy, he has succeeded in making you his emperor, his right hand, his blessed ward, and by his education of you, he knew very well that you alone in the world were worthy of receiving the task of emperor.
Frederick I thank you, uncle, for your generous good intentions. I thank you all for your frank tribute to me. I really want to hope that I will also fulfil all your hopes. But most of all, I want to thank my wife and queen. Come forward, sweet angel Constance, the noble companion of my life, my educator and guardian angel, and the mother of my children!
Constance You have blessed me with one son, and it will be no more. I thank you for your sincere love, which I have probably never deserved, for I am not beautiful, I am much older than you, and I feel more like an older sister to you than a true consort. But for your honest friendship and your noble consideration for me I will always highly honor you, and when the day comes when you find younger ladies than I to please you more, I will never try to fight nature.
Frederick Your wisdom, your high understanding, your sisterly qualities are what I have always most appreciated in you. Though the whole world be full of the most beautiful women, and though they should all one day be loved by me, yet thou shalt remain my only sister continually. Probably the most important woman in every man's life is his mother, and the least important is everyone he makes love to. Between those extremes we find the sister and the wife. A sister is like a continuation of motherhood, and the best wife a man can have is a woman who is like an older sister to him. So I am extremely fortunate. My sister, my mother, my sweet consort, my mistress, you are all the women one man needs in one person Come, let me in front of everyone here now envelop you in a true embrace of everlasting friendliness. (They happily embrace, and all the people cheer and celebrate.)
Berard Let this then be a day of joy and festivities for everyone, for we have brought home our king, our world has a new competent emperor, and consequently all people are happy, since there is order and happiness in the world! (All cheer.)
Frederick I can hardly believe it is true. Everyone has always taught me that happiness cannot ever be sustainable in the long run, and yet it seems that my whole world is already well established in sustainable bliss. Is there anything missing? Does anyone have the slightest complaint to share? I want to make amends for everything that may be wrong in any way.
A Jew (steps forth) We are happy to have our worthy king back with us at home here in Sicily again. But not all beings in this world are completely happy.
Frederick Then tell me at once what I can do to make those beings happy to whom you refer.
Jew (makes three ragged ailing emaciated children appear) These beings, my lord, were found in cages of a Muslim merchant in the harbour.
Frederick But they are Nordic children?
Jew Yes, they are children from the north, as blond and fair as your own Nordic tribe, o king.
Frederick But how could these children be found with a Muslim as slaves? There is something wrong here.
Jew O king, these three neglected and thoroughly confused children are just three of three thousand, yes, maybe as many as three hundred thousand.
Frederick What are you saying, man?
Jewn They are all victims of the fourth crusade.
Frederick Jew, you know much more than I! Explain yourself!
Jew (on his knees) My lord, my heart is heavy with the deepest pain and most intolerable abyssal despair! Behold these three poor lost distracted children! The whole world, yes, all Europe and all our Mediterranean Sea is swarming with these exposed completely abandoned little darlings!
Frederick Why? What is on your mind? Speak up! Your whole appearance cries out loud about the most outrageous human crimes!’
Jew My lord, these miserable children have been deluded by deceitful tongues into the most atrocious perdition. Some year ago preachers all over Europe were obsessed by hysteria and proclaimed that only the purest hearts completely without guilt could ever liberate the holy land from the Mahometan yoke. Therefore all pious families of Germany and France sent out crowds of children to march south They were thousands, yes, tens of thousands, yes, hundreds of thousands.
Frederick I heard something about this but refused to believe it, since it sounded just too insane, inhuman, stupid and absurd. Not even the pope took the rumour seriously but considered it slander against the holy church.
Jew But it is true! The children perished in thousands, yes, tens of thousands of starvation and ordeals on the way, went astray and froze to death up in the Alps! Still crowds of children were fooled to embark on false ships that afterwards with wicked cunning were cold-bloodedly sold to islamitic merchants as slaves. And the
inhuman islamic owners of these children gelded most of them and gave them over to their harems and seraglios as eunuchs.
Frederick What are you saying, you horrible messenger? These children are like my own son’s three elder siblings, as fair, light and blond as he!
Jew Ask his excellency the cardinal whether I spoke the truth or not. He is sure to know some more.
Frederick My father, what do you say?
cardinal I had these shameful rumours long ago down my neck myself. Don’t believe a word of what that Jew is saying. What the truth is about these crowds of children circulating as beggars everywhere we don’t know, but it is not true that it is the church herself who brought them out. There can’t be a shred of truth in such infernal rumours.
Jew One crowd of children made their way to Rome and went pleading to the pope, who crying sent them back home.
cardinal That is not true.
Frederick Where is the muslim with whom you found these unfortunate children?
Jew He is thrown in jail.
Frederick Bring him immediately here to me. I want to speak with him. And while you fetch that merchant, I will speak with the children myself. (The Jew leaves. Frederick sits down with the children.)
What is your name, son?
Boy I have forgotten my name.
Frederick At least you speak German. Tell me, where do you come from?
Boy I have forgotten.
Frederick Perhaps you know how old you are?
Boy No
Frederick Do you remember your mum and dad?
Boy (bursts into tears) They sent me away! (cries desperately, throws himself in Frederick’s arms.)
Frederick (turns to another) And you, my girl, do you know your name?
Girl Not understand.
Frederick Where do you come from?
Girl I was home in Burgundy.
Frederick Aha! You speak French. Well, perhaps you know how old you are?
Girl Before I was sent out to save the holy land I was ten years.
Frederick Is it long ago?
Girl I don’t know how long ago it was.
Frederick Would you like to go home to mum and dad?
Girl(leaning on Frederick) They told me that I one day would come back as the queen of Bethlehem or at least as a princess, but now I don’t even have clothes to cover myself with. (sinks to Frederick’s bosom with the first boy.)
Frederick (to the third, the smallest boy) And what about you, my dearest, do you know your name?
Girl He doesn’t know anything.
Frederick Do you know anything about him?
Girl Yes. He was taken by the dark doctor.
Frederick Why was he taken by the dark doctor?
Girl The doctor would take him aside to make an angel of him.
Frederick How?
Girl By cutting off what he is peeing with.
Frederick God! Can you see this without crying?
cardinal They are just children. They don’t know what they are saying. They are just beggar orphans who only live on lies.
Frederick Your excellency, if you can’t see the truth with your own eyes, what can you see then but lies?
cardinal My son, let not your grief turn you blind or beguile you into hysteria.
Frederick Father, who was it that said to the world: ”But one who seduces one of these little ones, for him it would be better to have a millstone around his neck and be thrown into the sea”?
cardinal Our lord said that. But it is the Arabs who have seduced these little children.
Frederick Isn’t it rather those who preached that these children should be sacrificed and sent out to bloody war?
cardinal My son, beware of such terrible blasphemies!
Frederick Here is now our Arabic merchant and the warrior who found him. Speak, Arab! Why did you keep these three small children in cages?
Arab My lord, you see here three orphaned demented children without identities out of fifty thousand scattered about in all the Oriental ports. At first they were a commodity much in demand, but the market became saturated, prices fell, and eventually the exiled children became a burden to all Arab merchants. In Alexandria, thousands of cages of children who could no longer be sold were assembled. They were collected in warehouses where they rotted away or died or dispersed. Some Arab merchants, especially from here in the more humanitarian Sicily, decided to return the thousands of homeless children to the Christian countries that had sent them away, but these few human spirits were not enough. My intention was to take these three to Marseilles, whither I intended to go next, for at least the girl is French. It was easiest to keep them in the cages I got them in for free in Alexandria, so no Arab could kidnap them or hurt them on the way.
cardinal He is lying! He intended to sell the children as slaves himself! You are lying, you dirty dog!
Arab Cardinal, like the uncleanliness of your hands your feet are stinking as much as your whole hypocritical sanctimonious church!
cardinal He is blaspheming! And what an atrocious blasphemy! (Frederick smiles.) My son, can you hear such words of the devil and let the sinner live?
Frederick My father, this good merchant has restored three children to you who the church sent out to war in Palestine. It is not proper then for the church to be ungrateful.
cardinal Do you then take the side of the heretic, the heathen and the devilworshipper?
Frederick I take the side of the children against the grown-ups, which Jesus himself also would have done. Cardinal, leave this Arab merchant alone. He is under my protection, for he wished to save the lives of three Christian children and was for that thrown into prison by the church. The three of us, you, my Arab friend, and you, old Jew, will together discuss this confusing children’s crusade and how we should try to come to terms with it. You, cardinal, I wish to speak with later. Come, my children. (exits with the children, the consort, the Jew and the merchant.)
cardinal Does he then take such lies seriously? Anyone can see that the children were just forlorn beggars! I begin to fear that our young emperor is getting too intimate with Muslims and Jews and heretics! Hem! (falls deep into thought.)
Scene 3. The coronation at Aachen.
Berard We hereby proclaim before all the world Emperor Frederick, the brilliant grandson of Barbarossa with his grandfather's first name and glorious surname von Hohenstaufen!
All knights (raising their swords) Hail!
Berard Swear allegiance and obedience to him forever, as the only lawful emperor of the Holy Roman Empire founded by Charlemagne, as long as he lives! He alone is the legal steward of this world empire over Europe that has now already lasted for four centuries.
all We swear him allegiance and obedience forever!
Berard With success, you have bravely fought your way here to Aachen, almost without weapons. Otto IV was completely defeated by Philip August's armies last year at Bouvines, but it was your personality and the diplomacy of your ingenuity that won France and Emperor Otto's personal chancellor and closest servant Konrad von Scharfenberg over to your side. Your most brilliant victories were won with your intelligence without weapons and without any money. Your greatest merit, which has rewarded you with this lifetime imperial crown, is your wonderful personality, the chief characteristic of which is almost a universal human education and broadmindedness. Frederick, you were born an emperor, and may you live as long as possible as an emperor.
Frederick The vernacular claims that my great grandfather still sleeps in the mountain as emperor and that one day he will come back, no matter how unpleasant he found the office to be.
Berard If he is immortal may you be as immortal as he.
Frederick However, I have heard that the credibility of my soul has already been questioned by certain high prelates of the Church, and even that certain priests have dared to declare me a security risk to our Holy Church before my guardian himself, my beloved Holy Father in Rome. To dispel all such doubts, I hereby declare that, as I have conquered my imperial title entirely weaponless, without money, and with only a few covenant brethren, I shall likewise go on a crusade against the East, and enter the holy city of Jerusalem myself. I will do so not for any crass political reasons, and not only for show, but to prove myself worthy of my sacred title as Emperor of Christendom. I have also allowed myself to be admitted to the Cistercian order, and I will carefully see to it that the St. Bernardines are being propagated with their culture in Sicily. In doing so, I firmly distance myself from begging Dominicans. You priests who have doubted me, go to Rome and tell the Pope that he himself does not have to reconcile three crusade disasters by going out to the Holy Land himself. I do it instead of him, me, his own ward and foster son.
Berard I am quite sure that Innocent III will find your boldly proclaimed resolution another source of joy and pride for him and for all world Christendom. But know, dear son, that a promise so solemnly given, you can never, ever escape from.
Frederick That is why I have proclaimed it. Father, you say quite rightly: we have three fateful terrible crusades to atone for. The second, preached by St. Bernard himself, ended in disaster, as did the fourth, and then the whole crusade idea was reduced to folly and disgrace by sending defenseless children to defeat the wildest bloodthirsty barbarians by their innocence. These children are still wandering around today. They have lost their minds from their hardships, they do not know where they have come from, we have met frozen crowds high up in the Alps, and many thousands have been sold as slaves to sneaky Arabs who have mutilated and gelded them. Mostly to atone for the latter genocide, yes, this very genocide, I want to go out against the Holy Land, not to secure Jerusalem for Christendom forever by war, but by peaceful means.
cardinal You have just received the imperial crown and already dare to accuse the Holy Church of the misfortunes of homeless beggar children?
Frederick Cardinal, I am not the one to accuse anyone, but there is a lot in the world to atone for.
cardinal As emperor you already risk becoming presumptuous. I warn you, Frederick the Second, there have been numerous emperors before you who were excommunicated for brazenly placing themselves above the infallible authority of the Holy Church.
Frederick Will you not also point out all the emperors who died as sacrifices to the Church because the latter refused to forgive them? Was it not for this very reason that my immediate predecessor, Otto IV, died?
Berard Let us not quarrel. This is a festive and solemn day that should be distinguished only by constructiveness and true joy and honor. My brother in office,
forget your disputes before you have started them. It is in no one's interest to seek an argument before there is even a reason for it.
Frededrick Berard, Archbishop of Bari, my confessor, you are, as usual, absolutely right. Let us forget the absurdities of the temporal world, and devote ourselves solely to solemnity and religion, at least for this day.
(Procession. The solemnities go on.)
Scene 4. The Pope’s deathbed, Perugia 1216.
Innocent My son, I have neglected you. When your mother died and handed you over into my hands without warning, I would rather never had seen you. I've always hated children. You became a burden to me from the beginning.
Frederick Still you were always good and generous to me no matter how little we saw of each other.
Innocent You were abhorrent to me, as were all the incurable princes of the world. World contempt and contempt for man have dominated all my life from my first thought to the last, and you were no exception. What are your fair locks, your clear eyes, your universal education, your knowledge of languages in every useful tongue, your clear-sightedness, talent, and intelligence, so sung out loud even in all the world by every vain mad troubadour, in my eyes but the curse of your own life? My son, I die the indisputably most powerful man in our world, and after me you are the most powerful. Don't think that it will be a child's play. I am a pope, I was a saint, therefore I could handle power, but you are a mortal secular monarch only, you have a wife and children and mistresses; in the hand of a mortal, power is never anything but a weapon of damnation I made you emperor only because all the other emperor candidates were even more stupid, impossible and vain than you. Every king and prince, lord, baron and duke and aristocrat are just intolerable chickens cackling to be necked. You will become one of them. That's the only thing I've done for you.
Frederick My father, you gave me all the world.
Innocent All the world belongs to the Church, never to anyone else! Never provoke the Church, Frederick! It may break you, as I have broken every emperor who lived before you. Only your grandfather was never broken by the Church, because he was too honest, but you are not equally honest. You associate dangerously with Mohammedans, Jews, philosophers, poets, and other dubious people who have no part in the church. You may become dangerous yourself if you go against the Dominicans.
Frederick I cannot see the sense in torturing people to death because they have their own perception of life. I can never accept that violence is used in the name of the church.
Innocent How then do you think the church has acquired its position as the center of all the world's power? Through beautiful dreams, beautiful words and poetry, naïve songs and bouquets of violets? No, my son, one cannot get anything without
struggle, and least of all one's bliss. If you want to hang out with harmless, navelgazing, preposterous brooders and foolish philosophers, you can scrap the imperial crown right away. Take good care. You became an emperor only because the pope, I, your church and guardian, destroyed all other emperors, so that you alone were left. I banned your competitor because he was brazen enough to try to contain the church state geographically and politically. Only for this reason did you become emperor. Don't ever try to become such a stupid reprobate fool.
Frederick I never want to make war.
Innocent You have to! Whoever does not go on a crusade against the Arabs is not a Christian prince! The day you are in Jerusalem as lord of the city, then only you are worthy of your Christian imperial title. Until you are there, you are but a contemptible vain fool of nonsense like everyone else. Nothing is more important, Frederick, for the maintenance of your positions than that you always remain humble to the church.
Frederick I vowed to go for a crusade, and I entered the Cistercian order.
Innocent Be faithful to it all your life. Only that way you will be redeemed.
Frederick From what?
Innocent From all the misfortunes, lout, which I have already heaped in your way with my power by burdening you with the imperial crown. (dies)
Frederick (rises) There died the only one who stood above me and whom I could respect. What is the whole world now to me if not only a sea of slaves? And my guardian Pope Innocent was right. He gave me the title of emperor only to give me hell, and I am already tired of having to be emperor of only slaves. I need some challenging opposition! And I can only find one in those black slaves to the established superstitions of the whole world called the dogmas of the Church. Father Innocent, I revered you devoutly as long as you lived, but I don't give much for the power-hungry, loveless, and fanatical bigoted priests who after you will dance to the Dominican Inquisitor's pipe with the whole Church down into hell.
Honorius III I don’t understand the young emperor’s course of action.
cardinal He has played a trick on you, holy father.
Honorius Explain what you mean.
cardinal He claims here in his latest letter that the Germans have chosen his son Henry for their king ”without his knowledge” while he actually all the time acted to make the Germans choose his son for their king.
Honorius But why?
cardinalen It’s the first step towards establishing a hereditary imperial title. The young Frederick wants the Hohenstaufen family to become a new family like the Caesars.
Honorius But why has he tried to conceal this?
cardinal Not until now he lets us know about it. Not until now four months after it happened the letter arrives, and he delayed it himself. For you have already accepted the kingdom of Sicily to be a part of the German-Roman empire, and you can’t retrieve an acknowledgement. He has pulled your nose, holy father! Innocent would never have allowed his realm to contain Italy both north and south of the papal state, and he would also never have risked to let the imperial office become hereditary.
Honorius But what shall we do?
cardinal Search me. You are the pope now, and what is done is done. There is nothing more for you to do than to crown him here in Rome, for you promised that as well.
Honorius Yes, I did promise that. But he promised me a crusade to Jerusalem to support our campaign against the heretics, and he must keep that promise.
cardinal May he break that promise, so that we then calmly can excommunicate him and prepare his ruin.
Honorius No, my cardinal, you must not think like that. Consider our holiness. At least we must remain holy. I will crown him here in Rome, but then he must promise to execute his crusade already next year.
cardinal (giving up) Do as you wish, holy father. The emperor will anyway do as he wishes.
Scene 6. The imperial coronation in Rome.
(The solemn coronation ceremonies are at full go. Frederick and Constance ascend to the high altar and receive the kiss of peace by the pope.)
Honorius (as he kisses Frederick) You incorrigible scoundrel!
(The entire conversation that follows is very low, so that no one but the three main actors can hear it.)
Frederick What have I done, father?
Honorius Intrigued!
(The golden purple is brought.)
Frederick (to Constance) The pope is angry with me.
Constance Why?
Frederick Because I dared to expand.
Constance But that is your job as politician.
Fredrick Tell that to the pope.
(Frederick is invested with the golden purple while the choir sings the Graduale.)
Honorius May this be your Nessus mantle!
Frederick You are in a bad mood today, holy father.
Honorius I always am and only because of you!
Frederick Don’t worry, holy father.
Honorius Innocent thought you were reliable!
Frederick Is that not what I am?
Honorius No! (takes the crown of Charlemagne.)
Constance You must tune him milder against you.
Frederick How?
Constance Say something nice about your crusading plans.
(The pope crowns Frederick with the crown of Charlemagne.)
Honorius You have got everything you wanted thus far, but that’s the end, you idiot!
Frederick My father forgets my promise about the holy land.
Honorius No fool in the Vatican does believe any more that you will go there. All you want is power.
Frederick In August next year I promise to commence the sixth crusade.
Honorius If you do all your sins will be forgiven.
(gives him the imperial sword. Frederick raises and lowers it three times.)
Frederick Now I am the highest protector of the Church in this world.
(The pope gives him the imperial sceptre and apple.)
Honorius And here are the symbols of your power of the whole world. Just beware of how you use them!
Frederick Holy father, my queen is waiting for her coronation.
Honorius Yes, now it is her turn.
(She is also crowned. The litany of all saints is commenced. The emperor lays off his purple and dons the priestly Alban and Dalmatian to minister at the Pope's side.)
Remember that you promised to support the war against the heretics.
Frederick Holy father, apostates from the Church are the same as rebels against the state. But Jews and Muslims, who have never been Christians, must not be persecuted as heretics.
Honorius Do what you want with them in Sicily. But all Cathars and Patarenes must be exterminated! We can’t allow them to divide the Church!
Frederick Father, do what you like with them in Church. But outside Church they are at liberty.
Honorius You are impossible!
Frederick No, I am trying to be tolerant and fair.
Honorius You can’t be both.
Frederick You can try.
Honorius Madcap! (They kneel. The holy service begins.)
Act II Scene 1. The court at Palermo.
Frederick Well, what news from our heros in Egypt? What does the Pope say now about our brave knights, who did not even need me to put in order a real crusade and a successful one after all the Pope's fiascos? No holy monk preached our crusade, I myself took all responsibility for its implementation, and I did not even have to
attend myself. What do the heroes of the crusader army now say about the successful result?
Jew (on his knees) Be brave, o emperor, of both Sicilies! The knights bring less pleasant news.
Frederick How is it possible?
Jew Here comes Berard, the archbishop, his excellency of Palermo.
Berard My son, the pope finds reasons to be greatly displeased with you.
Frederick Out with it, my faithful Berard!
Berard The Admiral of Malta arrived in Egypt too late. All the crusaders had surrendered. Damiette is once again in the hands of the Muslims. And the Pope gives you all the blame as you did not yourself follow the crusade.
Frederick Does he mean then that I could be everywhere at the same time? Doesn’t he see that I have to conclude the civil wars of my own country first?
Roffred av Benevento Unfortunately the pope does not consider realities.
Frederick Very true.
cardinal Even the Pope is right, though, and his power is greater than that of the emperor. He thinks the crusade is more important than political pettiness in the countryside of the grotesquely backward Sicily. May the emperor first of all fulfill his obligations as he promised. Then he can burrow into Sicily's morass.
Frederick You are a Roman, cardinal, and as such you might learn at once not to insult Sicily.
cardinal His Holiness has all the respect for his emperor and for the Christians of Sicily, but finds that the emperor is too much in favor of all the loose scoundrels in Sicily who call themselves Jews and Mohammedans.
Frederick My friend, I am only doing my duty. Through the cruelty and intolerance of such as the fools whom you represent with your exemplary ignorance, the Arabs here on the island have for many decades been forced into lawlessness, under which they have been forced to terrorize the population in order to survive at all. It is sheer madness to cruelly persecute a minority for the sake of their faith so that this minority is forced into incessant criminality as a curse the whole country. And the senseless curse is to be blamed only on you in the Church, with all its ignorance. Only because you have given me such headaches, I have been prevented from going on crusades. Sicily happens to be my country, and I happen to be its king myself. It is therefore my first duty, until I do anything else, to put my own country in order. Before I can do the least for the world, I must first put my own house in order.
cardinal Jews and Mahometans are never likely to be clean unless you baptize them by force.
Frederick To baptize them by force is the best way to make them poop in the church, as if it wasn’t enough fertilized already by abuse of power.
cardinal The emperor is haughty enough to dare to blaspheme. You usually get excommunicated for such manners.
Frederick Do not come interfering in my peace policy! I have promised a crusade, and the Pope will receive it. I will give him Jerusalem after I myself as king have ridden into the holy city without any need for war. But first I must give the Arabs freedom of conscience, security and property here in my country, for I owe them as much since your church has deprived them of all their human dignity. When the Jews and the Islamites are satisfied with me here in Sicily, then I will lay Jerusalem and the Orient at the feet of the Pope and your Church, whether or not you are worthy of such a far more civilized world; or you are not even worthy of a single stone from its holy deserts.
Berard My son, don’t slander the church unnecessarily.
Frederick I am not slandering her. I am just telling her the truth, and if I conceal it I am a liar, and then I am no prince of justice.
cardinal Unfortunately, the Holy Father is too weak for the self-willed and haughty emperor to take on the hard gloves that will one day be required. Honorius III is too timid to punish a heretical and deceitful calculating power-mad scoundrel for his impudent pretenses. But correct punishment cannot be absent indefinitely.
Frederick Your Excellency, you have been drooling and pooping enough here at my home in Palermo. Go home with you now to your Pope in Rome to further defile yourselves where your manner may be more appreciated. But here we want to stay clean.
cardinal Don’t forget, young man, that you yourself sanctioned the holy inquisition!
Frederick Yes, against criminals, but not against faithful Jews and Mohammedans, whose only crime is that they were born in a religion that long before the Christian professed its faith in the one and eternal God.
cardinal The Muslims are the mortal enemies of Christianity!
Frederick Yes, if you are stupid enough to persecute them. Make them your friends, and they will become better friends than any sanctimonious Christians.
cardinal How could you at all endure listening to his frightful blasphemies!
Roffred Your excellence, we are used to them.
Landulf of Aquino We serve our emperor only as jurists and praise his zeal to create a rule of law.
Hermann av Salza We cannot judge our emperor for meaning well even with his most daring words.
cardinal I’ll promise you that he will be excommunicated!
Hermann By whom? Are you a pope to be so positive about it? We thought Honorius the Third was still a pope, who more than you has made himself known for true papal wisdom.
cardinal His holiness shall know indeed that his favourite emperor will not fulfill his promise to carry out a crusade!
Frederick My lord cardinal, if you go to Rome with such lies you will never be credited. There are other messengers for us to send than you.
cardinal My colleague, my dear Berard, then talk some sense into that scoundrel before he makes a fool of himself and gets himself more trouble in the way of excommunication than all the world's most papal absolutions can cleanse a saint from!
Frederick I think it is mostly saints who become victims of the weapon of excommunication, which the popes resort to only out of cowardice.
cardinal Now he is blaspheming again!
Berard (to Frederick) Don’t make matters worse, my son.
Frederick With such incompetent and childish scoundrels in the service of the Church, the matter cannot be made worse, my father.
cardinal You accuse me, the archbishop Hugo of Ostia, of incompetence?
Frederick You are but a lackey. You have no personality. No one can take you seriously. Personality is gained from knowledge and education. The more limited one's view is through career-oriented and one-sided education, the weaker one becomes as a human being and the more powerless as authority and personality. You servants of the Church are all cornered as if in a trap of artificial and unnatural dogmas that have transformed the Church from religion into a prison for mere miserable souls.
Berard That’s enough, my boy!
Frederick Very well, cardinal, I will remain silent until we meet again, which will probably never happen, for I will never come to Rome again, and you yourself will no longer be welcome here in Palermo. You are not house-trained.
cardinal (bows) I ask your leave to remove myself. (leaves)
Berard You angered a dangerous eunuch, my son.
Frederick Such only exist to be taunted.
Berard You don’t know the Dominicans. They may carry daggers concealed in their sleeves insidiously recessed into crucifixes, with which they can stab you from behind and anonymously.
Frederick Father, do I as an emperor even have to fear one who murders me from behind on behalf of the secret Church? If the Church herself makes herself my worst enemy, and in that case she alone would be totally overpowering me, I would only be compelled to fear the Church least of all possible enemies.
Berard I am not worried about you, my son, but you have a family and a world to care for.
Hermann Try now to be reasonable, Frederick. I have managed to bring it this far, and the Pope has not yet excommunicated you. As long as he hasn't, there's hope. Now try not to offend him when you finally have an opportunity for reconciliation.
Frederick You are asking for the impossible, Hermann.
Hermann To a Christian nothing is impossible and not even the impossible.
Frederick It’s the pope who isn’t Christian.
Hermann He says the same about you. Words stand against words, but he happens to be the highest representative of established Christendom. You have to listen to him.
Frederick Very well, I will try to appease him.
Hermann It’s to the interest of both of you. I assure you, that without each other you are both lost.
Frederick That’s a matter of discussion. Me and the world would manage better without the papacy, since it only consists of corrupt spirituality that usurped the power.
Hermann It’s very such kind of things you must not tell His Holiness.
Frederick That’s the very unfair side of things, because the pope may say anything he likes to me.
Hermann Don’t be childish. Forget for once your intolerable youth.
Frederick How could I, when the whole world constantly keeps reminding me of it by its jealousy?
cardinal (enters) His Holiness Honorious the Third. (Hermann rises, also Frederick but more reluctantly.)
Honorius (enters) So, there you are, you unhung arch scoundrel! I should have excommunicated you long ago! If I haven’t done so it is only because of the good Hermann von Salza here. The devil knows what you have done to deserve such a good adviser and skilled diplomat!
Frederick God loves me, father.
Honorius I have every reason to doubt that. Well, to the point! Let’s have it over and done with! (sits down, All the others follow his example.) You have no choice, Frederick. Von Salza’s plan is the only thing that could save you from excommunication, which would probably be yours anyway, the impossible way that you behave!
Frederick If the holy father’s excommunication is unavoidable, why discuss the matter any further? What is there for us to discuss?
Honorius The plan is constructive, Frederick. It is constructive for you and for me and for all Christianity.
Frederick But the girl is just a child. I couldn’t bring a child to the altar. I could have been her father. The system of political marriages has never appeared more loathsome to my eyes.
Honorius You have no choice, Frederick. Explain the situation, Hermann.
Hermann The Holy Father means, Frederick, that through the young Isabella you get the title of King of Jerusalem for free, for her mother is the direct heiress of the title after Gottfrid of Bouillon. Then it is only for you to sail out and get your kingdom and at the same time secure Jerusalem to Christendom, as you promised to do long ago.
Frederick Has the girl herself then no say in the arrangement?
Honorius All Christianity with me as the head stand up for the defense of her titles. So she has no say in the matter.
Frederick But perhaps she would not like to leave Syria?
Honorius What do you know about that?
Frederick Let's say we bring her here and I marry her. I can't sleep with a thirteenyear-old girl. She then has to live alone, like in a monastery. She would die of sadness before she was seventeen, and the only way she would experience me as a husband would be for me to deceive her. My first wife went to the grave with indignation over my mistresses. Do you want me to kill number two as well?
Honorius Fuck your damned mistresses! You don't need them! Your own personal counsellor advises you never to have sexual intercourse more than once a week. Still, you've got yourself the world's largest harem! And young empresses reach sexual maturity faster than ordinary mortal women.
Frederick What does the holy father know about women?
Honorius Everything! Besides, you have no choice. By her you get Jerusalem for free. It’s the most brilliant opportunity of your life. If you refuse it, you are an idiot, you are that already since long indeed anyway, and then you will be excommunicated for the rest of eternity.
Hermann You actually have no choice, Frederick.
Frederick So the Church demands of me to sacrifice the life of a young girl in order for the Church to get Jerusalem.
Honorius No, you will not sacrifice her life. On the contrary. By her and your sacrifice she will acquire eternal life.
Frederick Does she really want it then?
Honorius What do you mean?
Frederick Your tactics, father, is the same as that of a street monger who wants to force on innocent customers what they don’t want and then enforces payment from them We have enough of that in the indulgence trade.
Hermann Take it easy, Frederick!
Honorius Make your choice. Marriage, or excommunication forever of all your family.
Frederick So you don’t even refrain from threatening my children?
Honorius With a father excommunicated your children will be worthless.
Frederick It is extortion!
Honorius No, my son, it is an inevitability for the sake of your own blessedness.
Frederick (to Hermann) And you ask me to listen to such crap, say nothing to it and just swallow it.
Hermann Consider the case, Frederick. His Holiness is unfortunately serious.
Frederick Very well, holy father, you will have your Jerusalem, and the Church will have her Iphigenia sacrificed on the altar of her holiness in marriage with me, which for a young girl is tantamount to death. The world and the church will see her weep, the world will feel sorry for her, and one day the church will pay the debt for her and for the world's misfortune.
Honorius Whatever you say, Frederick, you will be forgiven everything, if you just at last will embark on your crusade!
Frederick God’s will be done, holy father, and not just yours. Hermann Amen.
Scene 3. The childbirth of the empress Isabella
Frederick How are you, my dear?
Isabella It doesn’t hurt now. It never hurts when you are by my side. But I have hardly seen you since we married. That’s why I have wasted away, so that almost nothing remains of me any more.
Frederick My wife, you are giving birth to my son, to the heir of our well-ordered happy future world.
Isabella How do you know it will be happy? How could I believe there could be happiness in the world when I only suffer and feel outrageous pains? O emperor, you should never have taken me away from my home in my beloved Syria.
Frederick The pope himself demanded it.
Isabella And what power does the old man have over you, the emperor of the world? Everything you ever told me has smacked of falsehood and deception. I don't think you've ever been serious about loving me. You already spent our wedding night with one of my homeland's slave girls.
Frederick You were only fourteen. I only wished to spare you.
Isabella And why then did you make me pregnant, if you wished to spare me?
Frederick I only gave you love.
Isabella That love only hurt me and gave me pain. We were married for two years, and during those years you've seen me maybe three times. For the sake of it, you then impregnated me, but this act was only the seal of our failed marriage. I became a widow when I was taken from my home, and now, at the age of sixteen, I am already dying old.
Frederick My wife, you must not die.
Isabella I will leave you immediately after I have done my duty and given birth to your lord son, who will be your lord heir, for whose sake you found me fit to be your sacrifice. My husband, I am but a cocoon to you, a machine for the birth of the future emperor of the world. I have never been more to you. When I have given birth to him, I shall free by death.
Frederick You must not die, little girl.
Isabella I will do that exactly as I wish! Go away now! I feel how the child will force his way out of me!
doctor His grace should now leave his wife alone. It is obvious that the delivery has started.
Frederick Take well care of her and of the child. (leaves the room which is closed up behind him.)
I did not want to marry her, I never wanted to be the tormentor of a defenseless and fragile girl, but everyone forced me to do so, and I was forced to play a role that was not at all compatible with me: that of the child abuser. The Pope is
pleased now, because through my childwife I have been charged with the title of King of Jerusalem, and the next step will be to save Jerusalem from the crude oppression of the Islamists, which the Pope also will also force me to do of course, so that he will have the pleasure of becoming the oppressive dictator of the East instead. The Christians then oppress the Muslims instead of the opposite until fortune swings again in favor of the Muslims. No one is right, for all oppress one another, and no one disputes the Holy Father's presumptuous absurd unnatural claim to monopoly as to God the Father and how He is to be worshipped. (enter doctor)
What is it?
doctor Your grace, you have got a son.
Frederick Thank God, praise and glory, and glory to God, and peace on earth to all men! So my empire is secured! May all the world rejoice! But why, Doctor, are you so gloomy?
doctor Your grace, your delicate consort was too young to endure the ordeals of the delivery.
Frederick Which means?
Doctor She is no more. But she gave you a son. (prepares to leave)
Frederick Shall I then only be a maker of angels to my queens? This cuts deeply into my conscience. What good can become of my children if they never get to experience their blessed only natural mothers? It is as if by dying they only bequeathed curses to their initially totally abandoned little children.
Doctor It’s just for you to marry a new empress.
Frederick You make it sound so simple. To me marriage was not just an empty formality.
doctor Still you always preferred mistresses.
Frederick Yes, I always preferred loose connections that never would risk becoming contaminated by the eroded emptiness of formality of marriage. You can’t refuse me having access to both alternatives.
doctor No, not even the pope could refuse you that.
Frederick Thank you. Let us then proceed to taking the painful farewell, burial and mourning conditions of my deceased wife, the young blessed mother of the future emperor of the world.
A servant (enters) Lord, forgive me for disturbing you. There is a monk looking for you.
Frederick Is there? Is it perhaps the undertaker himself already?
Servant I rather believe, my lord, that he is something of the contrary.
Frederick What kind of a monk is it?
Servant It’s a simple beggar monk.
Frederick Then I am not at home.
Francis (enters) You certainly are, your imperial highness, as much as my brother the sultan was at home in Cairo.
Frederick And with whom do I have the honour of speaking?
Francis Brother Francis, at your humble service.
Frederick Oh that scapegrace, who thought he could convert the sultan.
Francis I met him, and he is my brother just like you. And I thought, that since I had met the sultan, I could just as well turn in to have a chat with the emperor as well on my return journey.
Frederick And you succeeded. But you turned up in a rather unhappy moment.
Francis In what way?
Frederick My consort has just departed after having given life to a son.
Francis The empress deceased? And wasn’t it already your second?
Frederick Yes.
Francis I really am sorry. What can I do for you?
Frederick You should know. You are the holy one here. We are contraries. You stand for all things poor and basic, while I represent all power and wealth.
Francis I think it is rather the contrary.
Frederick How would you explain that? You don’t even have a pair of shoes to walk in!
Francis My brother and friend, I am happy and simple and own the whole world and all nature. But everything you own and represent, all the glory, power and imperial family that you manage will all pass away and get out of your hands.
Frederick You say so only because you are jealous.
Francis No, great lord, you say so yourself because you are jealous yourself. I have no family, but I have perhaps the happiest brothers in the world spread all over the world.
Frederick Yes, poor begging brothers like yourself, you pauper.
Francis No, not just human brothers, but the sun is also my brother like the moon and the stars, the wind and the birds, the flowers and all animals and all wild natural life in the universe, and that is far more than what is contained in your strictly confined realm bursting with conflicts and wars.
Frederick You are a philosopher and poet. You are welcome home to my court in Palermo.
Francis Unfortunately I don’t have much time left. We’ll have more time in the other world.
Frederick Are you ill?
Francis Only dying. It will pass.
Frederick My brother, come home to my court. I will open my country to your order.
Francis Thank you, brother, but papal protection is all I need, and I have already got that. I have won the world with my poverty, but, brother, I can see that you will lose yours with all your wealth. Your children will not be happy.
Frederick How could I avoid it?
Francis Leave everything and follow me.
Frederick That is impossible. I am responsible for the world.
Francis No, God is responsible for the world, and he will not let it down because you do. My advice is that you abandon your false roleplay, which you are acting in
even with reluctance, to instead follow your happiness which you only could find with me.
Frederick I will think about it, but I believe we must first of all follow our destiny.
Francis You can avoid your destiny by renouncing the world.
Frederick You are too wise for me. And as wise as you are you must know, that he who once owns the world never can be made to renounce it except by force.
Francis I deplore you and your miserable fate, you the greatest and happiest emperor ever.
Frederick You are too much of a paradox. But I will consider what you might mean.
Francis You will be mine one day, but then it will be too late.
Frederick Good. Let me mourn my wife now.
Francis Thanks, brother, for seeing me anyway.
Frederick No matter.
Francis Farewell.
Frederick Farewell, little brother. (Francis leaves.) I actually believe by my soul that for the first and last time in my life I met a person who was really happy. And at the same time, it feels as if I've seen that person before, yes, as if he's always lived close to me and been here by my side. What could the reason be for this phenomenon? (doesn’t understand it, shakes his head and leaves. At the exit he runs into Berard.)
My father, your shadow darkens my life with its pale sombriety and fatally gloomy and ominous outlook. Do you come from the grave?
Berard Yes, almost, my son.
Frederick Who has died then besides my wife?
Berard The holy father.
Frederick Honorius?
Berard He died as he lived an honest man with his entire life’s program of only well-meaning.
Frederick You have something worse to deliver, according to your long face.
Berard Yes. Hugo of Ostia has been chosen pope.
Frederick Then I am lost.
Berard Unfortunately, my son, you couldn’t have any more bitter enemy in the Vatican than the old completely unreasonable boasting power fanatic of sumptuous greed.
Frederick What will be his papal title?
Berard Gregory the Ninth.
Frederick Will he then like Gregory the Seventh fight all imperial power unto death?
Berard You are excommunicated already.
Frederick He has been quick about it. And what’s his reason?
Berard That you already postponed your crusade for twelve years.
Frederick Didn’t I have reasons enough? Did I not gather a fleet to immediately get on my way, and was I not hindered by illness just as everything was ready? And will he not give me leave to bury my wife?
Berard He doesn’t care about such matters. You haven’t kept your promise. That’s enough for him. Your justified reasons he calls a cunning emperor’s farfetched excuse.
Frederick (opens up the doors to his deceased wife’s death bed) He is not human. He can say so only because he is a eunuch and cannot consider the hard conditions of human life! I tell you, Father, that this blessed carcass, which no longer shelters the beloved life that filled it, is worth more to me in all its cold death in eternity than the whole accursed church of your cruel short-sighted pope! To me, that church is a rotting corpse, while this corpse, a young virgin child recklessly sacrificed to the ecclesiastical thirst for power and vanity, a holy virgin of such high purity that there was not its like in the entire so shamefully feigned institution of nunnery, is dearer to me and more essential to my own happiness than the whole decadent accursed church with all its satanic pomp, worldliness, rapacity and inhuman power politics! I will probably carry out the crusade I promised to carry out thirteen years ago and so wash off the infamous ban with my personal innate honour and glory, but never again can the church expect me to spare it or bring myself to respect it.
Berard Son, I understand your sorrow screaming to heaven, but you still must live sensibly and save your throne for your future, your son and your family.
Frederick Do you mean that I should cowardly crawl to the pope?
Berard I sympathize with your harm, since I do feel indeed how reasonable your sacred anger is, but I must advise you to curb it and not to expose it to the whole world in foolish ostentation.
Frederick Father, I ask you to tell his holiness that he will soon have his Jerusalem by me.
Berard That’s all I beg to communicate.
Frederick Father, I thank you for your understanding. Only by human spirits like you, the church will still be able to in spite of all continue its dubious march towards a constantly darker future.
Berard My son, the Church has survived the fall of Rome many times before.
Frederick Do you mean that it would also ride out my case?
Berard No, but the Church has a strange capacity to always be able to outlive itself.
Frederick Thereby the church is superior to me, for I am just a man in all my imperial status, and a man can do anything but outlive himself.
Berard Yes, and there is your weak spot which the Church is without.
Frederick I will try though. If the church chooses to be my enemy, I will fight that church until either of us has gone under.
Berard My son, I could hardly recommend an initiative to such a conflict.
Frederick I will provide the holy land for the pope. Then the pope will decide all by himself what state of things he would like to have.
Berard (takes his shoulder) My son, God himself is on your side. Frederick I sincerely hope so, or else I would probably never stand a chance.
Scene 4. The Vatican. Gregory IX in all his splendour.
Gregory Well, what did Rome think of the coronation of its new most glorious pope?
A cardinal Rome was amazed, your holiness, by such an overwhelming splendid spectacle.
Gregory They were stunned to silence!
Another cardinal Many have wondered at the beatifier of St. Francis being so boastful about his riches.
Gregory May I not show what I am good for? Is Rome not the heart of the world for all wealth, all affluence, all generosity and all welfare? Can’t you say anything more positive, cardinal, then you had better shut up!
cardinal 1 The whole world is stunned by the fabulous greatness, power and glory of the new shepherd of the church, perhaps even more than by that of Stupor Mundi. Gregory That exactly was my intention. The emperor must be crushed and humiliated by the fact that only the Church must have say and influence across the world.
cardinal 2 Concerning that, there has been a delegation from the emperor at Acre requesting liberation from the ban by reason of the now proceeding crusade to the holy land.
Gregory Has he then already taken Jerusalem, since he dares to ask forgiveness? cardinal 2 He sends his greeting that he will soon be entering Jerusalem as king. Gregory His arrogance is without limits. How could he imagine he could have any success? Everyone before him has failed. His army is smaller than that of his worst predecessors. Does he even have twenty thousand men?
cardinal 2 He has about ten thousand, I would think.
Gregory There you are! And he is hopelessly banished. He has all the Templars and knights of St. John against him, and they are the only Christians established in the country. If they close the gates to him, work against his plans and preach against his cause, he has no chance. He will come crawling back to Europe as a beggar after a few years as banished as before, for he will never take Jerusalem. And his to us so fearful political influence will be broken forever.
cardinal 2 His delegation is asking for an audience, and they know more than we do.
Gregory How long have they been waiting? cardinal 2 Four days.
Gregory Let them wait until they rot.
(a cardinal comes rushing in)
And what is the matter with you, hysterical panicking lout?
cardinal 3 Your holiness, Rome is in turmoil!
Gregory Why?
cardinal 3 They have learned that you banished the emperor!
Gregory And what cause is that for a rebellion? Are popes not for banishing emperors? It should have been done long ago against that inhumanly wise bully!
cardinal 3 Your holiness, you must leave the city for a few days until the angry masses have calmed down.
Gregory Do you think I am scared?
cardinal 3 Your holiness, I ask you to examine the matter yourself. Open one of your windows, listen and look for yourself what is going on out there.
Gregory (goes to a window) Rome is always ungovernable, has always been so and will always remain so, but against the pope no Roman will ever dare anything. (opens a window and immediately receives a rotten fruit thrown into his face. Gregory retires.)
You are right. This is something different. Let us leave the city until they have calmed down somewhat. (wipes his face) They are angry about the loss of their emperor, but they will never accept living without both emperor and pope! (leaves resolutely in anger. The others follow exchanging glances.)
Scene 5. With the sultan in Jerusalem.
Malik-al-Kamil What more could we expect? Here is the evidence of the total hopeless barbarism of the vandals! They come here armed to their teeth to enslave peoples and countries they know nothing about, and they can't even make a living! Consequently, they plunder our countryside, murder our peasants, rape their women, and only burn and destroy in senseless and inscrutable madness. These madmen who serve the cross and do all what they do in the name of the religion of violence, whose primary laws seem to be "all things are permitted" and "the end justifies the means," have nothing to gain here but their own destruction and death. These fools only deserve to be exterminated to the last man.
Fahr-ed-Din Malik-al-Kamil, great lord, the emperor of Europe is your friend. He is allied with you by his immense gifts and support of you in the struggle against your wild and ambitious brother of Damascus.
Malik-al-Kamil Malik-al-Moazzim is no more. He is dead, and without any help from any European we have taken Nablus and Jerusalem from his immature and weak son the sultan of Damascus.
Fahr-ed-Din But I happen to know that your siege of Damascus has been without results.
Malik-al-Kamil And would then your emperor risk his standing in Europe by in league with a Mohammedan sultan go to war against the mighty Damascus of Syria?
Fahr-ed-Din He has no standing in Europe to consider. I happen to know that he has been excommunicated by his pope.
Malik-al-Kamil That’s interesting. Then he is here in exile and searching for friends.
Fahr-ed-Din It might be so.
Malik-al-Kamil But why does he then allow his knights to plunder and harass our civilians?
Fahr-ed-Din He has strictly ordered all loot and plunder to be restored. And he gives you a personal gift himself.
Malik-al-Kamil What then?
Fahr-ed-Din (gives a sign to a page who brings the emperor’s helmet, armour and sword.) He pledges his armour, his weapons, and his helmet with you as seals of his peaceful hopes, and these he gives into your own hands as a proof of his personal confidence, his compliment, and his admiration.
Malik-al-Kamil This is constantly growing more interesting. And what does our brother of Sicily then suggest, who helped so many Saracens there to a worthy human life?
Fahr-ed-Din He suggests that he receives the coast up to Jaffa and Jerusalem and Bethlehem and the surrounding country on condition that not a single Islamite will suffer any harm.
Malik-al-Kamil Yes, his tolerance is well known throughout the Islamic world. In addition, he is a learned poet and philosopher who values science. He is our brother and equal. I guess we can trust his word. But the Muslim part of Jerusalem with the Mosque of the Rock and the Haram-es-Sharif, the holy quarters, we must be allowed to keep for the sake of all Muslims.
Fahr-ed-Din He is not so stupid that he doesn’t realize this to be extremely important to your religion. So I could inform the tolerant emperor that you give him the coast and Jerusalem with Nazareth and Bethlehem?
Malik-al-Kamil The treaty must be carefully worded and witnessed by the most reliable witnesses thinkable.
Fahr-ed-Din Of course.
Malik-al-Kamil (calls the vizier) Vizier, make sure the emperor gets the double of the generous and valuable gifts that he offered us. vizier Yes, o most glorious lord.
Malik-al-Kamil Then I just hope for my wise brother’s help against my incompetent nephew in Damascus.
Fahr-ed-Din You can surely count on that.
Malik-al-Kamil Then I am satisfied. Then our holy Arab world got away cheaply this time. I can't afford bloody unnecessary crusades when I have quarrels within my own family. And Emperor Frederick is an honourable and wise man who is well acquainted with our mentality and religion. You can work with him without risk. And when he has left this part of the world, we can recover the Christian cities in peace.
Fahr-ed-Din All he wants is the vanity to once be able to enter this city as king of Jerusalem.
Malik-al-Kamil I guess it is to placate the impossible fanatic in Rome.
Fahr-ed-Din Yes, only for that reason our tolerant brother came all the way here.
Malik-al-Kamil Then we can help him without any risk. Let him have Jerusalem and whatever he wants. We will then have problems with all the chiefs of Islam, but I will talk them to reason. This comedy is rather satisfactory.
Fahr-ed-Din The emperor thinks so too.
Malik-al-Kamil A lucky star has sent us a Christian crusader as a brother of our own religion with only peace and shows. I only wish that all the belligerent obnoxious and stupid Christian militant rascals could get real long faces out of it
Fahr-ed-Din Both I and the emperor Frederick hope so too.
Malik-al-Kamil Diplomatic emir, you have put me into a good mood. I just wish I could have a festive banquet with your original Christian emperor as soon as possible.
Fahr-ed-Din It will truly be a great pleasure to deliver your wish from yourself to him. (They have tea together. Curtain.)
Act III Scene 1. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.
(Evening. The church is full of pilgrims with lighted candles. In a quiet procession followed by Hermann von Salza, Berard of Palermo and his closest retinue, Frederick proceeds in a white mantle to the altar, takes the crown in his hands that has been placed there and crowns himself. Then he turns around.)
Frederick My friends, you have heard that I am excommunicated. That is why I have not been able to participate in any holy mass here in Jerusalem, that is why there are no Knights Templar or Knights of St John among you, and that is why I haven't been crowned at any service. I stand here spiritually naked before you dressed in the white robe of purity and simplicity, and yet I am king of Jerusalem. My wife inherited the title from her mother after Gottfrid of Bouillon, and as the father of her son I secure the title to be able to pass it on to our son. As King of Jerusalem, I extend my hand for reconciliation between me and all people and between all peoples in the whole world. Jerusalem's highest and holiest patriarch Gerold has cursed me in the name of the Pope and in the name of all the Christian churches and forbade any Christian to have anything to do with me. I thank you, pilgrims, for coming here anyway. The Pope excommunicated me because I postponed a promised crusade to the Holy Land for twelve years. Now I have given him Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth and the whole coast and that without a single battle being fought. It took me six months through peaceful negotiations to get this far, but now I have arrived, and although the bull of excommunication still has formal force, the Pope no longer has reason to excommunicate me. I have come as a prince of peace in the spirit of Christ and in the spirit of King David, and in their name and succession I restore their kingdom. I am without armed force, but I have succeeded, it may just be a parenthesis in history, what has been won here without
armed force can hardly be maintained even by armed force, but here a demonstration is still taking place before eternity. Peace is possible, a universal reconciliation is possible, and today here in this holy city Jews, Christians and Arabs live in peace with each other. My prayer to all of you is this: Remember this moment, and let it be established in your memories as an example for the future. I don’t ask for anything more.
(turns around and kneels to the altar. The pilgrims raise an anthem to the glory of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The procession recommences and goes out. All pilgrims follow with their lighted candles.)
Gregory Now we are rid of that conceited and self-sufficient idiot of a selfrighteous emperor, who thinks he has a monopoly on the whole world. He has brought an insufficient army to Palestine, and there he must rot with his Arabs. I bet he's already lost, dead, rotten and, if he's lucky, buried. Now sweep over Italy, glorious papal perfection, occupy all the fortresses and cities of the haughty imperialist who have so long threatened the Church State, take from the insufferable benefactor all the mainland of his Sicilian kingdom, sack Brindisi and fortify Bari, now all divine Italy shall be the Pope's inalienable property and inheritance alone, and no one will now question the Pope's monopoly and omnipotence over the whole world!
cardinal 1 (enters) There have been fresh messengers from Jerusalem, your holiness.
Gregory What news?
cardinal 1 Like a Norman king the emperor Frederick has crowned himself king of Jerusalem in the very Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
Gregory It cannot be true! He cannot do that! As excommunicated he cannot participate in a church service!
cardinal 1 He was crowned without any service. He has not attended any service.
Gregory (terrified) Has he then defeated the Islamites and taken Jerusalem?
cardinal 1 He got Jerusalem and Bethlehem and Nazareth and the entire coast without violence. Not one drop of blood was shed.
Gregory It sounds like a fairy tale. How did he do it? It sounds absolutely incredible.
cardinal 1 He negotiated for six months along diplomatic channels, but then the gates of Jerusalem were opened to him without force, welcoming him.
Gregory Is he then a magician, who casts spells on the Arabs completely blinding and enchanting them?
cardinal 2 He knows Arabic. And according to the patriarch of Jerusalem, the austere Gerold, he has become a Mahometan himself. He only associates with Arabs, constantly exchanges gifts with the sultan of Egypt, associates with the sultan like with a brother, tries his harem out and has got a harem for himself, while he despizes
his own crusaders. And the testimony of Gerold is confirmed by the respectable Templars and the Knights of St John.
Gregorius Have they not succeeded then in disposing of Frederick, as they promised to do at our own urgent wish?
cardinal 2 They have tried, but each time Frederick has been warned by the sultan who discovered the intentions of the intriguing brothers of the orders.
Gregorius The sultan has then not himself availed himself of the opportunity to imprison the emperor?
cardinal 2 No. He has warned the emperor instead, since he regards Frederick as a brother of his own faith.
Gregory Is Frederick than a Mahometan?
cardinal 1 He has not broken a single law of the Catholic Church. He has never attended any church service, and when he himself was crowned it was on behalf of his dead wife to bestow the title on his son. He crowned himself in the name of King David and in the name of Christ, but without a service or any regular ceremony.
Gregory Does he then have three legs standing with one leg in every religion?
cardinal 1 That is how it seems.
Gregory I don’t believe what you are saying. He is dead, and consequently the legends are now spreading from his last departure. He couldn’t have made a peaceful entry into Jerusalem. It would be too good to ever be possibly true.
cardinal 1 It’s what the messengers say.
Gregory Anyway he is gone, and may we in his absence carry through our political program. Let papal armies run over his Italian mainland. He can’t rule it anyway when he is gone, so the pope must do it.
cardinal 1 Consider one matter, your holiness.
Gregory What?
cardinal 1 If it is true that he is crowned king of Jerusalem, he has with or without violence carried through his crusade, and in that case the Church must recall the excommunication.
Gregory That is correct, if he really has conquered Jerusalem. But we don’t have any hard evidence for that yet. May he present himself to us with the crown of king David, and we shall then pardon him. Until we know whether he is still alive or dead he will remain excommunicated.
cardinal 2 Will you then really release him from his ban if the rumours are true and he returns alive as king of Jerusalem?
Gregory I have to, but impetuous, young and impatient as he is at the age of only thirty-five, he will probably soon get himself another excommunication which will be harder to get away from.
Scene 3. Jerusalem. The sultan’s palace.
Malik-al-Kamil Dear brother, welcome! Everything that belongs to me is yours. I have given you Jerusalem with pleasure and everything you asked for, and I would gladly give you the entire world.
Frederick Great philosophical colleague, all your magnanimity and generosity and all your fantastic gifts, which ever since I came here as an uninvited guest to your country have overwhelmed my soul, are still nothing in comparison with the unlimited joy I feel when now at last I may meet you personally.
Malik My friend, in your world you are a more powerful and significant sultan than I. In comparison with your position mine own is like that of a servant, and my life’s greatest honour is to be able to serve you here.
Frederick You transcend me in eloquent compliments. I do command your blessed copious mother tongue but not as well as you. Mostly because of that my compliments will not suffice as well as yours, but I promise you that my thoughts contain all the depths of an ocean of affectionate admiration for your high example as a paragon elder brother for me.
Malik (laughs) My friend, I believe we don’t have to bow any deeper now to each other with flattery in order to understand each other. Let’s speak like old friends, for that’s what we are and nothing else. Servants! We need some food! (claps his hands. A great festive dinner is brought and served.)
Well, my brother, tell me now, how does it feel to have become king of the capital of history and all religions?
Frederick It is undoubtedly a highlight of my life, but I can only stay here for two days.
Malik That’s far too little. You have travelled so long, you have been preparing for so long, and you have put down so much work during such a long time, and then you will not remain in Jerusalem even for three days!
Frederick I am compelled to immediately go back to Europe. The pope’s armies have broken into my own kingdom.
Malik (with acted surprise) Isn’t the pope just a priest? What does he do then with bellicose soldiers? Are you not the emperor of the Christians? Are you not respected by the peoples of Europe like me by the Arabs?
Frederick My friend, the Christians only give me trouble. I am banished by my own church, all priests speak ill of me and make of themselves hateful and irreconcilable mortal enemies, and even the patriarch of Jerusalem condemns me for having carried through an entirely peaceful crusade for the benefit of all Christians. You know yourself how the Templars and the Knights of St John already twice have made efforts to betray me and get me liquidated. On both occasions the alertness of your ears, your wisdom and your warnings saved me. My own pope forced me by excommunication to travel here and occupy your country as a most uninvited guest just to get the great pleasure of seeing me succumb and fall a victim to the Arabs by death. I know that he takes it for granted that I should be out of the way already. That’s why he dares to take my lands by force.
Malik Your Christian countries only seem to get and make more trouble the more Christian they are.
Frederick Yes, that is the problem.
Malik But you are yourself a wise man. You have been characterized by your own Christendom's highly regarded primates as an overly wise man. And why are you so stupid that you remain a Christian? All Jews and Muslims love you for what you are to them with your famous tolerance. It is only all these quarrelsome, petty, and stupid Christians who, out of sheer folly, alone hate you. You are already like a brother to us. Leave the religion of foolishness and hatred and come instead home to God. I will sustain you with the world's largest most beautiful harem, which you can keep with my friendship for all our days together.
Frederick Dear brother, I was born in my religion. You Islamists do not change your religion because you prefer another or wish to leave behind the difficulties and worries it gives you. It is wrong to change religion. If you have been born a Jew, a Christian or an Islamite, it is because God has meant something by it, and it is your duty to fulfill that meaning. Unfortunately, I can only look upon Christendom with contempt and disgust, and it may be my fate as a Christian to have to fight against the Pope all my life, but if that is so, then there is some meaning to it, and I am forced to fulfill that destiny.
Malik You are more humble, brother, than anyone I know.
Frederick There is one single meaning of all life in the world, and that meaning is love. But the unfathomable mystery of this meaning you can only approach by humility.
Malik My brother, I will always be bound to you. You are actually the only good friend both we Muslims but also Jews have in this by morbid anxiety and confusion so badly infected world of Christendom.
Frederick If I have no friend among my own Christian brothers, it is a relief though to know that I have so many friends left among the enemies of Christianity.
Malik I must ask you not to call us enemies of Christianity. The three of us are brothers, we, the Jews and Christianity. The Jews are the oldest, followed by Christianity, and the youngest brother, the Muslim, is the one who has fought hardest against his elder brothers' superiority. But some day we shall learn that we are equal brothers of one father, who is God, whom we as mortals cannot ever inherit. Why then should we quarrel by envy with one another over the unreliable capricious grace of the almighty father?
Frederick If only we were just three brothers! Christianity is an unblessed family of a number of millions, and they all keep trampling on each other just to make trouble and achieve more grace of the same Father, who has equally millions of Jews and Arabs to support.
Malik Do you think we could ever stop fighting each other?
Frederick Yes, when we all have grown wise. But so far wisdom has only been an alien, unique and rare guest on earth who by Solomon for the first time was already ruthlessly banished by the highest representatives of religion themselves at that time.
Malik What is then the reason for the quarrel? Why this constant disturbance without reason and purpose?
Frederick Man was born a maniac. Unfortunately, she has never understood this herself, and therefore she has always remained the same maniac. Only we who sees how crazy human beings are and who distance ourselves from all quarrels are not completely hopeless as human beings. For only he who is already a mad soul is born a man. It would be better to be born as a bird or an elephant, as a monkey or a whale, for these do no harm.
Malik But they are hunted and enslaved, eaten and tortured by the mad human beings. Then it is better as a man to at least have some position of defense.
Frederick Neither Christ nor the saint Francis did have that.
Malik It is obviously your destiny to remain a Christian.
Frederick Yes, my friend, I am afraid so.
Scene 4. The papal palace of Anagni, September 1230.
cardinal 1 Your holiness, your emperor is here.
Gregory Already?
cardinal 1 Yes. He wishes to see you.
Gregory But how could I receive the daring young man? Is he very angry with me?
cardinal 1 He is composed, calm and comes without pretensions with only a minor following. He carries no arms and does not seem to bear any grudge.
Gregory This is most unpleasant. I never thought he would come back any more. I have informed the whole world of his death and taken appropriate measures accordingly, annexing Puglia and all his lands on the mainland except Sicily. Doesn't he demand redress for my abuse?
cardinal 1 He actually only seems to ask for reconciliation.
Gregory I am afraid we have to receive him, and we have no choice but to remove his ban. Otherwise, things would look bad for us in front of the world. Then let in that all-too-successful emperor, the most troublesome of all people.
(The cardinal allows Frederick with Hermann von Salza.)
My son! So you are back at last! What a joy for all Christianity! At last there is order again in the world!
Frederick What are these tender kisses, this embrace, and this game from the one who has excommunicated me and has not yet withdrawn the ban, even though I have given Jerusalem to my Christianity?
Gregory My son, I beg you, do not misunderstand me. My joy, tenderness, and adoration of all the chief adornment of Christendom are not acted, but genuine. I was the nephew of your own guardian Innocent III, so we are almost related. Your excommunication has now been universally lifted, and I have written letters to the Johannites and the Templars and also to Gerold of Jerusalem, solemnly commanding
them to accept in all points your peace treaties with the Islamites and to maintain peace.
Frederick If you are so dear to me, my holy father, why have you so violently molested my country when I was gone?
Gregory Someone has to maintain order in your countries, and we received a terrible rumor of your death. But our troops have now all left southern Italy and Puglia. Now that you are back home in Europe, a time of peace is finally approaching for the whole world.
Frederick Yes, I hope so, your holiness.
Gregory I am your father, and you are yourself the beloved and fondest most inalienable son.
Frederick My father, I want nothing more than a total reconciliation. Have you granted me this?
Gregorius Completely.
Frederick Then we may be together in more relaxed ways. Hermann, my good cardinal, aren’t you all hungry? What about some dinner?
Gregory A splendid suggestion, thou the favourite son and highest prince of the Church.
(Frederick, the pope, the cardinal and Hermann von Salza prepare for dinner. A table is laid while they relax completely intimate conversation with each other.)
The doge (Jacopo Tiepolo) Your imperial highness, we sincerely regret that we can’t receive you with the greatest pomp and most extreme circumstance…
Frederick I am more flattered by an unconventional reception than by all the most lavish ceremonies in the world.
doge Your visit is somewhat surprising; If you had been willing to announce your intention to visit us a year in advance, and not just a month, we would have been able to impress you with the most dizzying resources of our hospitality, with greater dignity, and thus have been able to compete better with your dazzling personality, which constantly astonishes the whole world.
Frederick I am sorry, and I apologize for my short notice, but I happened to be close to you as I was in Ravenna, where I could not do everything I wanted because I had problems with the bouncy Lombards, and so I wanted to make up for the damage by coming here to befriend Venice.
doge We are very flattered, and we are extremely impressed by the very generous trade agreement that you are proposing. It is so generous that the Venetians have become suspicious, and they do not want to give up their freedom and political independence. As an Italian politician, you must know that Venice is the only democratic and free republic in Italy.
Frederick It is your very sovereignty we wish to protect and safeguard.
doge Your proposal involves giving us significant material gains if we ally ourselves politically with Sicily and the emperor. Venice does not know Sicily, and does not want an emperor or even a king over it.
Fredrick Now you misunderstand me.
doge Your imperial highness, we know everything about you. You are as great a dictator as Augustus, just as powerful, just as capable, just as unreliable.
Frederick Why am I unreliable?
doge You are not unreliable in yourself, but what are the consequences of your authoritarianism? Augustus ruled well as long as he was alive, but when he was gone, tyranny followed under his family, which became hell for the whole world. Suppose we commit ourselves to you, and suppose you are murdered in a year. You have admitted that Lombardy has started a rebellion against you. Suppose there will soon be war between you and Brescia and Milan, and that we will have to bear the consequences of that war after you leave the scene. We don’t want that.
Frederick You don’t know what dangers it could mean to you to not be on our side.
doge Do not be so naïve, your Imperial Highness. You are not a man of war. Your grandfather was a greater warrior than you, and he himself was defeated by the Lombards, and did not succeed in breaking them, though he burned Milan and turned that city into a stamped-up heap of ashes.
Frederick The Lombards are not the great threat in the future. It is Rome and the papal church.
doge Do you mean that the pope supports the Lombard conspiracies?
Frederick We don’t know for sure. It is possible, it is even probable, although he himself claims the opposite…
doge What do you then have against his holiness?
Frederick I have nothing against his holiness as long as he is holy. But he should not meddle with politics. He has no say in Palermo, in Venice, in Apuglia, in Germany or in Milan. Still he believes that every city in the world outside his own papal state is as much in serfdom, dependent and controlled by his church as his own in thralldom fallen and ruined city.
doge Your highness, we have indeed heard about your free-spirited attitude towards dissenters, but you yourself have made laws against heretics. Is your official stance against heretics just a mask to please the Pope?
Frederick I defend Jews and Arabs against the prejudicial infallibility of the church, but a renegade from the church is an enemy to the state.
doge Then you have nothing to fear from the pope. He has the same idea.
Frederick The existence of the German-Roman empire depends on the cooperation between the emperor and the pope and that they are of the same mind. The problem lies in the fact that my respectable son in Germany, King Henry, who has been of age for two years, wishes to separate Germany from our empire. He is connected with Lombardy, and he writes letters to the Pope asking his holiness to oppose my laws, which the Pope also does, although he has no business with worldly legislation.
doge And you wish to drag Venice into that conflict?
Frederick Don't get me wrong. Justice is the sole basis of my existence. Of course I am powerful, but I am also a lawyer, because I defend the people's rights against counts and barons. The emperor is the only warrant for justice prevailing in society. If the Pope himself becomes an enemy of my laws, justice and its system will be in danger. The Pope's law is prejudiced arbitrariness, extermination of dissent, crusade against all pagans with indiscriminate violence, and heretical fire against all Jews and Arabs and every one suspected of thinking for himself. Is that the kind of future you desire?
doge My son, we share the same view on the poor papacy. Our Venetian Republic never wants anything to do with the papacy. Therefore, we do not either want any conflict with the pope. Therefore, we must preserve our natural neutrality. But take a word of advice. Negotiate with Verona. There you may have just the ally you need for a long impossible struggle against the supremacy of the entire world in the form of mortal stupidity
Frederick Thanks for the advice.
doge We very much appreciate what you did in Ravenna for the old mausoleum of Galla Placidia.
Frederick It was immersed in water and was falling apart. To preserve the oldest building of the city was the very least I could do.
doge Only the one who takes pains and has energy enough to preserve what is past can give the world a future.
Frederick Thanks for your words.
doge My son, the course of your destiny begins here. You have a long and hopeless struggle ahead of you. I can only wish you all success, even if it always will be accompanied by defeats and adversities that will be hard to endure.
Frederick I am still relatively young.
doge Your life’s highlight was Jerusalem. You are now thirty-eight. Old people complain in despair about the hell of old age, but old age is pretty much the same thing as fate. No man can escape his destiny. It is the battle of life, which never can lead to victory. All you can do is to fight on and never admit defeat and never give up. If you stand unbroken and upright when you die, you may, and at best, if you're lucky, get a decent legacy. That's all, my son. God save you from the pope. Frederick Amen. (kneels, kisses his hand and leaves.)
Scen 6. Wimpfen, July 2nd , 1235.
Frederick No, Hermann, you have done everything in your power to help my son. Any further efforts on your side are in vain.
Hermann von Salza King Henry the Seventh has appealed to me. He is still your son.
Frederick That is precisely what makes his case so unforgivable. My friend, my inexorability in this case is necessary and maximal. That's enough. Let us bitterly behold the hopeless fool (Henry is admitted. He throws himself headlong on the floor in front of his father, prostrating himself in despair.)
Henry My father, I am no longer worthy to be your son. But just say one word, and my soul will be purefied.
Frederick And how dare you take into your blasphemous mouth words directly from our holy Mass? Don't you know that you are banished?
Henry Father, forgive me. I am still your oldest and most genuine son.
Frederick All my bastards are paragons of virtue and shining angels in comparison with you. I gave you a kingdom simply because you were my firstborn son. And how have you managed the Germany I gave you? Well, you turn every single German count, baron and elector into petty kings so that your kingdom becomes a bloated chaos of petty states. And to multiply this injury you then conspire with the Lombard League and raise your sword against your father! What kind of way is that? How do you think I could ever forgive you when the whole world condemns you?
Henry Father, you gave me no choice. You yourself procured me an excommunication, although you yourself suffered from the curse of the church and experienced its injustice.
Frederick Don’t call me father. Just because you call me father, my judgment as an imperial judge must be all the more severe, for surely I could forgive you everything, if only you were not my son! But the one thing I can't forgive you is that you were unworthy of me as a son.
Henry I never saw you in all my life. I was brought up by strangers to whom you abandoned me when I was just a child. I never got to know you, never got close to your personality and was never called your son by yourself.
Frederick You were appointed king. As a king, it was your duty to rule responsibly and not waste your life on games and women and pranks and nonsense. I gave you to the guardianship of Germany's most worthy prince, but you have sullied his memory and wilfully forgotten him.
Henry He was murdered while I was still a child. I really tried to favour Germany and do everything I could for the country.
Frederick Yes, you gave it licence to chaos.
Henry Alas, do not scold me because I am your son and like you! Poetry sings out loud in your own blood; art, music, and beauty I learned to love and nurture through the mother's milk of your own Sicilian court; you can't blame me because I'd rather hang out with beautiful singing troubadours than with dry pedants of dull politicians!
Frederick Don’t blame art for your outrageous treason against your father and your mother country!
Henry I had no other chance as excommunicated. What will you do to me? Do you intend to execute your own firstborn son?
Frederick No, because you have appealed with your last piece of sense to the world's most skilled lawyer, our friend Hermann von Salza. His intercession with me has led to your being able to keep your life. But treason is treason. You will never escape the mildest possible punishment for such an offence, which is life imprisonment.
Henry Should I then sit rotting in loneliness all my life imprisoned in a dreary castle? Father, you can’t be serious!
Frederick My son, only you yourself are to blame. As a politician one cannot show traitors the slightest leniency. Still, your punishment will be the mildest imaginable.
Henry But I am young! I am only twenty-four years old! And such an imperial eagle you wish to cut the wings of, put into a cage and bereave of his life!
Frederick No, you may keep your life. You may even receive guests, visitors and whatever friends in your prison.
Henry It’s still inhuman of you, father! You yourself did nothing to correct me when I let the reins become a little loose for this Germany, you did not even look at this Germany when you only preferred the south and reveled in Sicily; but you never hesitated to oppose me, your own son, and arrange my excommunication yourself. The pope was forced by you to excommunicate me, he never did it of his own free will, you frightened that old man into it by pointing out the rampage of the heretics in the rich big Lombard cities, but one day you will be excommunicated with your intrigues again, and then for the rest of your inhuman life! You have sentenced your son to life imprisonment. May you be punished for this inhuman deed by also being forced to see one of your closest faithful kin languish in some dark dungeon for life, severely condemned to it by the social system on which you yourself have put a stamp of inhuman harshness! Father, I curse your blood! May your family be as cursed for eternity as I myself have been cursed by you!
Frederick This will not do any more. Take out the desperate misfortune. He does not know what he is saying. He is not responsible for his own thoughts. (Henry is taken away. Thereafter pressing silence.)
My best advisor and best friend, this blow from my son is tearing my soul apart. He is worse than Absalom. What have I done to be forced to experience this? A confrontation like this one today with my son, the King of Germany, who had openly committed a treason against his father, against his emperor and against his motherland, was far worse and more crushing to me than any defeat by regular armies could ever be in the abomination of warlike desolation.
Hermann My liege, without violence, without armies, and without a weapon, you have now once again subjugated all of Germany directly to you. It has not taken even a skirmish of any kind to quell your son's terribly treacherous conspiracies. You are, remain, and will always remain a true emperor of peace and order. If you right consider this tremendous success and just victory of peace over your son, you can probably endure any future battles and defeats and military setbacks.
Frederick And what do you mean by such prophecies?
Hermann Nothing in particular. I would just like to point out, that what you now present as a painful loss was, however, a decisive victory for peace, for justice and, not least, for yourself.
Frederick I have destroyed my firstborn son. Even if it was necessary, and even if it was successful, such an action could never be turned even into any imagined victory.
Scene 7. The Vatican.
Gregory Well, what news from the war, cardinal?
cardinal Contrary to all logical presumptions, the emperor Frederick has suddenly in just one battle crushed the entire Lombard army of ten thousand men.
Gregory It must not be true! It can’t be possible! Frederick was never any warrior!
cardinal It is incredible but perfectly true. Never has any Christian emperor had greater power than what now the emperor Frederick possesses. He is now busy with plans to carry out a Caesarian Roman Empire of a more secular than religious nature, he preferred to have Rome as his capital, in Germany he has made peace with all the opponents of the Welfish party, all Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the Baltic States are united now behind the emperor, and he has even now married the sister Isabella of the King of England. Even England is now a loyal family member of the imperial house.
Gregory Did he get Isabella without force? She is just a girl and at least twenty years younger than he. Did king Henry give his sister to the emperor without any pressure?
cardinal Naturally the imperial marriage preceded by endless negotiations and diplomatic complications, and such things Frederick is of old a superior master of; Henry was overwhelmed with the most generous gifts, and finally he was satisfied enough.
Gregory Naturally Frederick wants to enlarge his family and get more male heirs, as if all his numerous bastards were not enough, Manfred, Enzio and whatever their names are, who are more skilled militaries than himself. This irresistible giant of a constantly less Christian, whose power so consistently continues to grow over the head of the Church, is beginning to become too powerful and dangerous.
cardinal Don’t worry, your holiness. Signs have been observed of faltering moral balance in his imperial highness.
Gregory That sounds interesting! Tell us!
cardinal Already when he was forced to sentence his son King Henry for his treason to life imprisonment, some disturbance in the imperial majesty's balance of mind was observed. Even earlier, when Sicily revolted against his tightly centralized government, oddities were noticed in his actions
Gregory Like what?
cardinal He made the law for Sicily that no Sicilian could marry any foreigner.
Gregory What did he mean by such a law? Are his own Sicilians such a remarkable race that he decides that they must not mix with others, those who are already so mixed with Jews and Arabs, with Albanians and Normans, Greeks and Spaniards?
cardinal Or perhaps he thought the uprising was instigated by foreign interests. We are not likely to ever have any clearance in his way of thinking.
Gregory Go on.
cardinal On Sicily he has always been tolerant to Jews and Arabs. They have the same human rights on that island as all Christians.
Gregory May God that the Church some time could change that!
cardinal While he was in Germany, there were bloody pogroms breaking out by rumours that the Jews were committing ritual murder by slaughtering Christian children in their sacred services.
Gregory But everyone knows they always have been doing so.
cardinal But the emperor had the matter investigated very carefully, and he found that there was no evidence for such assumptions. Instead, he had laws enacted against denunciations of Jews. Anyone who accuses a Jew of ritual murder is now punished far more severely in Germany than a Jew who actually committed ritual murder.
Gregory But that is crazy! Is the emperor insane?
cardinal But the best is the observations made now after the Emperor's surprising victory over the Milanese at Cortenuovo. Only Brescia, Alessandria, Piacenza, and Bologna, as well as Faenza, now side with Milan against the imperial supremacy. After the defeat, Milan has begged for peace and made incredibly humble offers, which it was not believed that Milan with its pride, opulence and superiority would ever condescend to. And the emperor, whose magnanimity and humanism and generosity had always been without bounds, stunned our world by refusing. He thus made it very clear to the Milanese that he does not intend to settle for anything less than total surrender.
Gregory Lombardy will never agree to that. Frederick has committed his first stupidity. He brought peace within reach on favourable terms but rejected the positive humility of Milan and preferred the cruel war. Now Lombardy never will give in. This does not resemble the overly wise emperor, who always preferred peaceful options. What explanation do you have for such a strange change in his character?
cardinal The treason of his son king Henry was like a knife in the father's back. He no longer believes anything good about anyone. He took it for granted that Milan's peace offer was nothing but deceit, even though it was sincerely meant. This may indeed have been a mistake. The emperor did not fulfil his great victory. The Milanese were allowed to escape in peace and can now reorganize for a more effective defense. And the most remarkable of all the new phenomena observed is that the emperor has begun to listen to and depend on his flatterers.
Gregorius Will he then fall into the same trap that was the destruction of every mundane tyrant – a senseless lack of self criticism?
cardinal For a dominating flatterer appears Petrus de Vinea, who extols the emperor’s Messianic mission and personality in terms totally ignoring the Church. Gregory That is what I fear most of all, that Frederick turns himself into some kind of cult figure, whose indispensability to the world would allegedly make the papacy redundant. Frederick, beware of treading on the sacrosanct ground of religion! You have no business there! Be a mundane emperor as much as you please for the sake of justice, but if you give yourself a religious meaning, it means mortal war with the Vatican! I watch your smallest steps, and nothing can save you from eternal banishment, if only I get some pretext.
Cardinal, contact the Milanese and what remains of the League of Lombardy. I am henceforth entirely on their side in the heroic defense of the freedom of Milan, Brescia, and Bologna.
cardinal I will inform them. But it would be best to let the alliance be organized in secret.
Gregory Yes, of course.
Act IV Scene 1. Padua, March 1239.
Bianca No, your imperial highness, I do not understand why you have summoned me. You have a new young beautiful empress to cherish and care for, I have filled my life's function to please you and fill the emptiness of your widowhood, but now I am also getting on in years.
Frederick Dear Bianca, if it were not for your untitled status forbidding it, you and no one else would be the empress of my life. I have placed you highest of all the ladies I have known, and they are many; with you God gave me my beloved son, the handsome youth, the dashing Enzio, who is now crowned king of Sardinia only to please you.
Bianca Are you not challenging the pope by making our son king of this county which belongs to the pope himself?
Frederick My dove, I will do anything to make the Pope commit a folly and overstep the bounds of his sacred authority and pontificate. Our Enzio's wife owns Sardinia by inheritance, and Sardinia belongs to the German-Roman world empire. It is true that his Holiness has that island as a fief, but if he objects to Enzio becoming king of Sardinia he is meddling in perfectly secular affairs, and then the dear old pope will have war with me and the whole world.
Bianca Are you not afraid of his power of excommunication?
Frederick His system of excommunication system is outdated. Soon everyone will ignore it. I'm just the first. The day will soon come when the old loveless desiccated old man in the rotting magnificent Vatican crematorium of Rome will be laughed at with the whole church and its scaremongering of threats of excommunication and
childish hellish fantasies, in a better world than his papacy of Christendom's morgue of dogma has ever dreamed of.
Bianca Are you not afraid then of the Lombard league after your utter defeat against Brescia?
Frederick I am without an army after the healthy defeat, but it doesn't matter to me, because I'm right. My defeat at Brescia was just what was needed to cheat out his sanctity and expose his machinations. Now he has taken a stand for the Milan gangster mafia against our Roman rule of law and cosmic order in front of the whole world, and his misstep is just the beginning of the end for his rotten church, whose catholic religion is really just mere superstition.
Bianca I value your friendship, wonderful emperor, and hope to retain it whatever happens.
Frederick Those very words were just what I was hoping to hear from you, my beloved. All I need is the certainty that I at least have one friend left even if the whole world would let me down.
Bianca My friend, you are the only man of my heart, and you became that once and for all to remain so forever.
Frederick I thank you, my friend. (kisses her hand)
Bianca Now your servants are coming. You have to leave me to mind your duties.
Frederick The world with its human sea of life in teeming endlessness is bad company in comparison with one good single woman.
Bianca Go now, cavalier. (They part.)
Frederick (to himself) What awaits me today of the world with its constantly bad news? (Enter the court.)
Petrus de Vinea Supreme ruler of the Lord's grace, the world greets you with good wishes and all respect to your splendour whose radiant magnificence outshines the sun!
Frederick Ingenuous poet, your flattery competes with that of a court jester.
Petrus Lord, this day you may well need the encouragement of some comedy, for two evil messages await you.
Frederick What has happened?
Berard of Palermo My son, I regret to have to say, that the pope on Palm Sunday has officially excommunicated you.
Frederick So all my writings to the cardinals of Rome had no effect at all?
Berard Your bill of grace was expected, just as you have been waiting for the pope's excommunication. The pope wished to pre-empt your attempts to avert it. Excommunication bills are usually preferred on Maundy Thursdays. He excommunicated you on Palm Sunday already, only to preempt your letters to the cardinals against his holiness.
Frederick He keeps up with me. That cannot be denied. And what is the reason for the ban?
Berard You are accused of arrogance. His Holiness cannot forgive your presumptuous condescending addresses to his Rome, he cannot forget that after your triumph at Cortenuovo you disgraced Pietro Tiepolo, the podestá of Milan and the son of the Doge of Venice, to the point of having your prisoner placed at the pillar of Rome's own heart Capitoline. Italy as a whole was violated by this, the Pope said. Most of all, however, he cannot forgive you for giving your illegitimate son, Prince Enzio, the title of King of Sardinia, even though Sardinia is the Pope's own province.
Frederick And what has the Bishop of Rome, the most holy priest of our Christian Church, to do with worldly affairs which only the emperor is appointed to organize?
Berard (with a sigh) Your objection does not help the situation. You are banned. You have provoked your banishment yourself. To brazenly step on the pope's toes and to spit everything Italian in the face can only be regarded as political folly and incomprehensible nonsense. The whole world considered you a wise man.
Frederick Don’t judge me until I am dead.
Berard You will die prematurely if you go on like this. Apart from the Lombard League, you now also have the Genoese and the Venetians against you.
Frederick Are they not fighting among themselves?
Berard They have made peace to war against you. They are now capable of attacking even Sicily with their fleets.
Frederick I confess that comes as a most unpleasant surprise. Was that all?
Berard My son, prepare yourself for a shock.
Frederick Tell me.
Berard Your adviser and best diplomat Hermann von Salza has passed away. Frederick When did it happen?
Berard On Palm Sunday, the very day on which the pope excommunicated you. Hermann von Salza if anyone could have achieved a peaceful settlement of the conflict. Now the war is unavoidable.
Frederick Woe is me! He was more than like a father to me!
Berard He hoped to cure himself of his pains in Salerno, but he only came to the health resort to die.
Frederick Now darkness looms over the horizon of the future. I must ask you all: leave me alone! (all leave)
He was the backbone and wisdom of all my politics. Whenever I wanted to go too fast and act quickly, he kindly but firmly held me back and explained the dangers I overlooked. Now he is gone, the pope is crossing all decency, and I am alone facing a personal world war that I now have to fight alone without my advisor against all the world's papal superstition, prejudice, fanaticism and fixations. Now the pope will never give up, and I will never be reconciled to his destructive church. Future, I can only welcome you with your deluge. An ark for the justice and order of the world will not be easy to build, but I will do what I can. But I fear that it will take centuries before the blinded and ruthless wrath of the senselessness of the papacy is stormed, and those who will pay the price will be the most innocent, the gullible naïve free-thinking advocates who cannot defend themselves against evil.
Gregory (to his assembled cardinals, walking around among them)
May he be damned in daytime, and may he be damned in the night!
May he be damned in the morning, and may he be damned in the evening!
May he be damned when he eats, and may he be damned when he drinks!
May he be damned when he sleeps, and may he be damned when he is awake!
May he be damned thousandfold forever!
Our disgrace is inexorable and unforgiving!
All communications from him are categorically rejected! All letters from him are torn to pieces, all messengers from him are returned, all who come in his name are cursed, as soon as his name or person is mentioned the subject of conversation, he will be silenced, and all who have anything to do with him fall under the same curse. The church that receives him shall be unclean, the man who speaks to him shall be defiled, all who follow him shall be eternally cursed, and hell shall be his lot on earth as it will be after death. We have torn him out of our hearts for his disobedience, his destructive intrigues to turn the cardinals of the Church against the head of the Church, his flagrant heresy, his tremendous blasphemies, and for putting himself above all others as an Antichrist. Hereby I, Peter's successor, declare him to be the Antichrist himself, and blessed the one who frees the world from his bloodthirsty and greedy tyranny! We have appealed to France for help against him, and in the name of the Holy Cross the military superiority of the French will soon eradicate his influence from the earth, along with all his accursed family and race. Our new Franciscan order has been given the sacred task of preaching against him everywhere, in all the world, in all cities, in all churches, in all schools and in all monasteries. Soon the whole world will curse him and free itself from the tremendous filth and evil that the presence of the Antichrist in the world entails. Has he not himself publicly declared Moses, Christ, and Muhammad to be the three greatest impostors in history? Does he not have his private harems in every one of his cities like an unfaithful Saracen dog? Has he not himself murdered all his empresses, and defiled each of his marriages with adultery? May the world never rest until it has freed itself from the horrible oppression of the Antichrist! (disappears with the cardinal college.)
Frederick (sitting with his assembled dignitaries) The banishment of me by His Holiness is without sense and reason. All his accusations are false, they can be refuted point by point by factual evidence, we have done this before papal diplomats and legates, we want nothing more than peace and reconciliation with the Holy Father, but his holiness is obstinate. One cannot communicate with him, our emissaries are rejected and sent back, our letters are returned with unbroken seals, and therefore our conclusion is that such a man who so clearly shows such signs of insanity, senility, and disturbance of the brain is not fit to be responsible for the supreme leadership of the Church. He has commanded all the bishops and princes of the world to depose me, but such a command he has no right to give. He has the right to personally
anoint and crown me emperor, and that’s what his holiness has done himself, but no one can depose me except all the electors of the kingdom jointly. His most absurd accusation against me is that of heresy, although I myself have aided him in his efforts to overcome all heresies. I have never denied the divinity of Jesus Christ or declared him, Moses and Muhammad to be impostors. I have been critical of certain points in the procedure of these three monotheistic world religions towards dissidents, but a little healthy and necessary criticism must be tolerated by all, and also by his holiness. Since he has declared a holy war against us that excludes all possibilities of reconciliation, we must consider it our duty for the sake of world peace to defeat him politically and depose him. Therefore, it is our intention to destroy the Church State. No citizen of this country is allowed to enter the Holy Roman Empire, and those who try are to be taken prisoners. As long as no peace is possible with His Holiness's leadership of the Roman Catholic Church, we have no choice but to fight Gregory IX politically until he is crushed as an unworthy leader of the Church. His main victims of his intolerant and deranged policies will be primarily all his own innocent subjects. May these be enlightened throughout the Ecclesiastical State, including Bologna, Milan, Brescia, and other cities and countries that are pleased to take the doomed side of His Holiness.
(disappears with the court. Berard remains with Petrus de Vinea.)
Berard The world is shaken by the violent conflict between the two highest representatives of all Christendom, both of whom accuse each other of being the Antichrist. Worries and concerns about the future characterize all courts, and everyone asks the question: "Why can't the leaders of the Church and Christendom be friends?" But the world conflict is a fact. Through secret intrigues, the pope has constantly worked more and more clearly against the emperor, who has constantly escalated his provocations against the Holy See. The pope himself has taken the initiative for a life-and-death struggle that makes any way back impossible.
Petrus Both claim to be right and that the other part is either mentally ill or a maniac, but who is right? And who will prevail?
Berard Both are right, and both are wrong, but the emperor is more right than the pope, and the pope is more wrong than the emperor. The pope is right in his condemnation of the emperor's arrogance, but ordinary human vain hubris is no reasonable reason for papal excommunication. The emperor has not committed any of the crimes of which the pope accuses him without any evidence. The result of the conflict will be a tragedy in which no one will prevail, but the more certain all will be losers. An irreconcilable duel between pope and emperor can only lead to the loss of the papacy as well as the empire, both of world-political significance.
Petrus Nevertheless, our emperor is victorious, the cities are enthusiastically opening their gates to the peacekeepers, the Messianic Prince of Peace is gratefully welcomed by Montefiascone, Spoleto, Ancona, Viterbo, and the merchants nearer to Rome for his kindness and nobility, freeing the discontented burghers from ecclesiastical bureaucracy and the tax oppression of the blackcoats, and in Rome several cardinals are turning away from the ninety-year-old pope to align themselves
with the emperor's better government. Soon the liberation troops are making all their way to Rome: Palestrina, Albano, and Tivoli have surrendered voluntarily, and all that is missing is the entry into Rome itself. He only wants to deprive his pope of all worldly political power, but not to do the least harm to the sacred office of St. Peter's deputy.
Berard The pope's defense will be to summon all priests and bishops throughout the world to a new council whose main purpose and goal will be to depose the emperor. Frederick is well informed and refuses to allow any prelate to pass through to Rome, so in order to avoid dangerous highways, all the invited prelates, primates and bishops gather down in Genoa to sail safely to the port of Ostia with a special fleet. But on the way, the fleet is met off Monte Christo by the emperor's fast galleys, and the naval battle is decided immediately. Four thousand prelates, legatees, primes, and bishops are taken prisoners, six ships are sunk in the depths of the sea with priests and commanders-in-chief, while all the other ships are hijacked by king Enzio, who brings them to port into Pisa. Nothing will come out of the great imperial condemning council. The pope himself is bedridden by his migraines and his old incurable kidney disease, while the imperial unstoppable armies close their circle around the eternal city, which is now expected to fall like a ripe fruit alongside the pope in the gentle hands of the Emperor. But pope Gregory the Ninth dies with a laugh of scorn and gets away with the whole thing as cheaply as possible. In doing so, he has cruelly outwitted his excommunicated enemy, who can do nothing more until the cardinals of Rome have elected a new pope.
Scene 3. Apulia, Foggia.
Frederick (obviously aged) Tell me more! This is the best entertainment I have had for years!
Petrus In order to consolidate his positions and his grip on the Church, the Pope had helped his faithful friend Orsini, a senator and a minority brother, to absolute power in Rome. To force a quick and desirable papal election, he drove all the cardinals into the Severus Septigonium, from which building no one was released until the correct pope was elected. There sat the high cardinals and archbishops as if in a prison in the midst of the murderous Roman heat of August, and they could not reach an agreement.
Frederick (laughing) And what did senator Orsini do then?
Petrus He lost all patience and started to subject the cardinals to downright torture. He had them led down deep black basement passages where they were kicked and slapped as punishment for disobedience and inertia. One of the cardinals fell down a flight of stairs, went down, and tore open his entire back on the sharp stones. The roof of the room was like a grate through which the sun scorched without a single tormented soul getting fresh air or being able to get out. Nor were there any hygienic devices. Soon disease, intestinal problems, epidemics and everything except
plague broke out. To speed up a papal election, senator Orsini had manure and urine poured for the cardinals through the bars of the roof. The victims did not even have access to hot water, and even if they could find the means to keep the room clean, they could not free themselves from the horrible stench. Soon the senator's victims began to die, and first among them was the Englishman Somercote. His corpse was mocked by Orsini, who announced to the cardinals that if they did not elect his pope soon, he would hasten the election by hoisting Gregory's corpse into the state of disintegration in which it already was as suitable companionship for the sluggish brains. At that time, the cardinals elected a Milanese pope, Gottfrid of Sabina, but he died of the consequences of the horror conclave in the form of the most horrible illness after seventeen days. Thus the cardinals must reassemble to conclave on senator Orsini's terms, as if the conclave of sixty-four days of horror had not been enough
Frederick (laughs heartily) There you are, Romans, for having preferred their pope to me! If they only had opened their gates to me to spew out their old mummy of a demented pope, senator Orsini would never have had a say!
Petrus Wouldn’t it then have been better to take the city and remove the pope by force?
Frederick I am not like that. Other emperors may sack Rome in the future, that rotten city deserves no less, but I will not deign to do such a thing.
Petrus Since you kept away you were the more cursed by the poor priests. They blamed all the suffering they had to endure on you, and you were blamed for having raised the Mongols in Asia just for them to crush Christianity.
Frederick These priests are like women. They have no sense of logic. Am I then responsible for Mongols raging in my own realm and for that my own army at Liegnitz is defeated by the barbarians? Am I then responsible for the destiny of the whole world, just because I was excommunicated by the demented old men of the church, who are leading it to hell instead of responsibly and sensibly managing its economical assets and morals? I am responsible for the death of my unhappy son but am myself a victim to the fate of the world.
Petrus Henry died quite suddenly in an accident for which no one was to blame.
Frederick But I condemned him to a life in captivity without any chance of any kind of exoneration
Petrus You are exactly as innocent of Henry’s death as of your third empress.
Frederick Isabella died in childbirth. Who was it who made her pregnant?
Petrus She gave birth to two children of you without dying.
Frederick She still died of a childbirth as consequence of my using her.
Petrus You can’ t blame yourself for that.
Fredrik (screams) Who could stop me? (silence)
Carry on your story. It cheered me up for a moment.
Petrus After two years without a pope, at last a pope could elected by your efforts, since you set two cardinals free In Anagni the cardinal collegium could then
without disturbances from senator Orsini elect your good friend Sinibald Fiesco, cardinal of Genoa.
Frederick So at lest we have a friend on the papal seat. He always belonged to the peace party. Peace is what we need now, Petrus de Vinea, so very urgently and necessarily. It was no good sport to lay siege to the innocent Faenza and let children and women starve there through eight months. Italy is not fit for war, and I am an Italian and not fit for it either.
Petrus You are Sicilian, your majesty.
Frederick A Sicilian is more Italian than any Italian. Only Sicily could unite everything Italian, and all Italian culture comes from Sicily today. We have even structured the Italian language, which didn’t exist until we launched our literary initiatives.
Petrus Still Italy blames you for all wars.
Frederick They have such a superstitious fear and respect for the rot of the papacy that they dare not accuse the only guilty one.
Petrus Still he can now give the world peace.
Frederick Yes, only he, because I am excommunicated, and as long as I remain in that predicament the whole world must suffer from my anguish, since I happen to be the world.
Scene 4. The Council of Lyon, summer 1245. Inside the cathedral.
Innocent IV (earlier cardinal 1, speaks to 150 delegates.)
You have heard that I am a man of reconciliation and peace. Surely you have also heard that I was the excommunicated person's own candidate for the most sacred of all offices. To be sure, you are also aware of the excommunicated's tireless, convulsive and almost suspiciously generous openings and promises of reconciliation if he is only released from the ban. We are now here together to discuss this.
Berard With the permission of your Holiness, I beg to present the Emperor's most current proposal. He accepts the conditions of the cities of Lombardy, and he undertakes to make a new crusade to Jerusalem and stay away for three years to assure Christendom of the mandate over the entire Holy Land.
Innocent Cardinals, bishops and priests, I ask you to bear in mind that this is an offer that our Church cannot afford to resist. The Islamites have retaken Jerusalem, the peaceful Egyptian sultan who gave us the city without war has been dead and gone for seven years, and if we are to get Jerusalem back, we must use bitter violence with war and competent generals. The excommunicated person undertakes to do this as atonement for his burden of sin, his blasphemies, his arrogance and his perversity.
Jacopo di Palestrina And how could we trust his word? How do we know that when he is released from the ban, he will immediately leave Europe? Did he not take twelve years at the latest, after a promise of crusade, before he left, and then only to
get rid of the ban, whereupon his muslims gave him Jerusalem completely free of charge just to please him? The whole world knows that he stands with his left foot in the camps of Jews and Muslims, that he never had a wife without deceiving her with Arab and Ethiopian slave girls, that he uses the most horrible Saracens as a police and bodyguard to keep order in the countries he oppresses, and that he is ready with cunning for any misdeed. How do we know that if he is freed from his excommunication, he will not immediately cancel his journey, and instead make a crusade against Milan, Brescia, and Bologna, destroying the Italian freedom that remains, after which a new excommunication would only be something for the superior sovereign to laugh at? I suggest that he first performs his crusade to show what he is good for. Then we can discuss the matter further.
Berard Noble gentlemen, you accuse the emperor of treachery and unreliability. Has not the Church failed him more than once the other way around? Has he not now for four years stood outside the closed gate of Canossa and prayed? Has he not respected Rome and the Church and its peace and holiness before two papal elections, although he could then have taken the city and taken care of the pope's keys himself? Has not Innocent IV himself, our new pope, grossly deceived the emperor by promising peaceful negotiations at Narni, only to run off, flee to Genoa, and trumpet to the world that he had fled to avoid being insidiously captured by the unarmed banisheer, though there was no such possibility? Was not an imperial mission, consisting of diplomats under full immunity, severely attacked at Viterbo, and several peaceful messengers of the emperor massacred, however unarmed and innocent they were? So gross are the transgressions and violations of the law against the emperor and his party, who only want peace, that the pope himself can no longer even meet the Emperor face to face, much less condescend to negotiate with him!
Innocent That is why we are here now to conduct these desirable negotiations.
Berard, our archbishop of Palermo, I myself am completely in favour of a reconciliation with the excommunicated, if only he fulfils our conditions.
A Russian delegate (stands up and speaks forcedly in an incomprehensible Eastern language)
Innocent What is he saying
Palestrina He seems very anxious.
Innocent Speak up, man, and more clearly!
Russian (carries on his unintelligible rant)
Innocent What the deuce is the language he is speaking?
Berard It is neither Greek, Hebrew or Latin.
Innocent Is there no one here who could understand the desperate man’s wild tongue?
Patriarch of Antioch It sounds like a Slavic language. Perhaps we have some interpreter who could understand it.
Innocent Find an interpreter as quickly as possible!
(All delegates are rather perturbed.)
Several clerics What is he saying It must be something important! He appears so desperate. Perhaps he is just possessed? No, it’s probably something serious.
(An interpreter is presented.)
Innocent What does the man say?
interpreter Speak, man! Kak vy gavaritye?
Russian (starts again, a forced flow of incomprehensibilities with the greatest emphasis. When he falls silent:)
interpreter He says that the Mongols have attacked all of Russia, that they have enslaved all Russian cities, burned down all Russian churches, and are now ravaging all of Europe like vandals through Poland, Hungary and Romania. He says that on his journey he has seen only devastation and death for all Christendom north and east of the great river Danube and that these Huns will certainly cross the river and move on to the west and to the Mediterranean.
(All are extremely terrified.)
Innocent (calls out aloud) That is absolutely terrible!
cardinal Rainer It is the fault of the banned! It is he himself who incited pagan muslim Asia against Europe! It is he and no one else who has given Jerusalem to his friends, the islamists, whose religion he himself wants to convert to, which is why he wants armies to go with him to the Orient in order to acquire an anti-church empire there!
Berard You screamer, you are out of your mind. Here Europe is threatened by Mongols and Arabs who have just taken Jerusalem, and you preach war and intransigence against the only one who can help Europe against the barbaric storms! Rainer He is a barbarian himself! I have the evidence! There has been horrible news from Viterbo, which the laurel-crowned emperor has just razed to the ground by his Saracen forces only as an act of revenge for his own diplomats there being attacked! I have the letter here!
(holds up a large letter. All are greatly upset and frightened.)
Berard (embarrassed) Your Holiness, Cardinal Rainer is notorious for his bias against the emperor. If any crisis has suddenly flared up around the Viterbo intermezzo, let us investigate the matter before any wrong and regrettable decisions become the result of inappropriate exaggerated false information.
Rainer Your Holiness, here in Lyons have arrived eyewitnesses to the imperial ravages of Etruria. The Saracens of the banished tyrant have ravaged the countryside like hooligans, burning and pillaging, raping, destroying and looting even churches. Such are all muslims, and they serve the banished emperor! He must be deposed immediately in the name of the whole Church and of all civilization!
Berard I ask your Holiness to postpone this meeting for a factual investigation into what has happened.
Innocent We cannot postpone a general synod that has begun and is currently in progress. If there are eyewitnesses from Viterbo here who can confirm cardinal Rainer's account, then no further investigation is needed. We are all too familiar in the Church with the dangerous impatience of the excommunicated, his unchristian desire for revenge and the fact that he uses Arabs for his acts of terror, of which this seems to be an example. Everything fits all too well with everyone's image
of him. The issue must now be settled here once and for all. It has been requested that the banned person be declared deposed here. Who supports this claim?
(An uncertain majority raises their hands.)
That's enough. I must hereby declare Emperor Frederick of the Hohenstaufen family deposed as emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. The crown is thus offered to his son Konrad. And what do we do with his excommunication? Who supports this?
(A slightly more certain majority raises their hands.)
Thus the most important issue of our general synod is settled. Our excommunication of the now deposed emperor remains in force. Thus it is our duty to call upon Christendom to a crusade against the utterly depraved, corrupt, impossible, condemned imperial usurper. May he be utterly damned forever!
Saint Louis Excuse me, but this is most unwise. You cannot depose an emperor like Frederick who has done such tremendous services to our civilization. It simply is not not fair.
Innocent You, our son King Louis of our host country France, are now given the task of going on a crusade against Egypt and the muslims instead of the banished one. May you, with your exemplary and deep piety, succeed better than the horrible apostate....
Louis Pardon me, but....
Innocent We don’t want to hear about that.
Berard (to himself) Frederick, Frederick! Why couldn't you wait just a few weeks with your retribution! Now everything is ruined!
Thaddeus of Suessa (rises) I have to protest. King Louis, who is hosting our general synod here, is absolutely right: this is most unwise! All sense rises up against these two hasty decisions! I must remind the council that only one hundred and fifty legates are entitled to vote and present. Absent is a significant majority. Only a few of England's envoys are here, and even Germany is scarcely represented at all. Such serious decisions as have been taken here can only be taken by a full council, which truly represents the entire church. At the council thirty years ago, over four hundred bishops participated, by comparison.
Innocent We cannot alter our decision. We have to be consistent. The crusade against the emperor remains preached, and to every one who participates in the persecution campaigns against the imperial cause is to be issued indulgences. We are to set the Franciscan order against the excommunicated who in all churches, monasteries and parishes will propagate and preach effectively against the heretic who has set himself over the world.
Thaddeus There is no evidence of the emperor's alleged heresy. He has not spoken against any religion, and least of all against Christianity. He cannot be blamed for the loss of Jerusalem, nor for the ravages of the Mongols. On the contrary, he wants to go on a crusade to retake Jerusalem. He is our foremost diplomat and has offered to bridge the schism with the Orthodox Eastern Church as well. As for the tragedy of Viterbo, the emperor is not the only one who has committed crimes, abuses and broken peace agreements. It was precisely at Viterbo that a papal force attacked and
destroyed an unarmed diplomatic peace delegation from the emperor, who had been assured a free and safe passage.
Rainer Are you also a traitor against the pope?
Louis Honourable legates, cardinals, bishops and priests, I sincerely ask you to keep the peace!
Innocent We are not here to be insulted by bribed front men representing a banished person. We are all saints as servants of the Church and do not accept accusations from a party that is and remains excommunicated. To respond and to listen to such things at all is simply beneath our Christian dignity.
Berard (to himself) Now I am beginning to understand what Frederick meant when he explained that the more holy the prelates claimed to be, the less holy they would be in practice.
Russian (tries to raise attention to his case) Mongolen! Mongolen! Mongolen! (No one cares.)
A cardinal This is the introduction to the dissolvement of the church and Christianity.
Rainer (screams) The emperor is a procurer, and he messes around mostly with moslem bayadères and odalisques! He has a harem in every city in Puglia! His empire and family must be eradicated!
Innocent He can’t be more banished than he already is. We have cursed him forever.
Ludvig Peace, brothers, peace!
A few delegates (to each others) The pope is unsound. others What are you saying, traitors and hooligans?
Innocent It is every man’s duty to rebel against the emperor! May that be preached in all churches and communities! several Anarchy! Anarchy!
others This means the end to the Christian era.
Thaddeus (in despair, calls out aloud) This is the day or wrath, misfortune and misery! (throws his torch to the floor and leaves the church. Many follow his example. The commotion increases. Atrocities are becoming more imminent.
Russian (in vain, runs around) Mongolen! Mongolen! Mongolen! (the scene ends in almost total chaos.)
Scene 5. Turin, September 1245.
Frederick Now, my archbishop, most faithful and oldest friend, and best of all my indispensable counselors, what news from Lyon? Has the Pope given any rational explanation for his capricious abandonment of his emperor in the lurch in the midst of the vital affairs of Narni? I assume that he drummed up his synod to sanction Christendom's new crusade under the leadership of his emperor, who was therefore appropriately acquitted of his excommunication?
Berard My Emperor, I am sorry to carry with me from the general synod a onesided Job’s post.
Frederick What has happened?
Berard In brief, you have been deposed, and your excommunication has been confirmed and renewed.
Frederick (stunned) Why?
Berard Everything seemed to be solved, there seemed to be a universal reconciliation coming along, when the mad cardinal Rainer suddenly interrupted the meeting by angrily telling about the ruthless revenge action against Viterbo. Frederick, why do you have to go and lose all your patience just when all the longawaited order was being restored again?
Frederick So the Pope ignored my peace with Lombardy and my promise of a crusade to gloat blindly at the fact that I had carried out a just sentence against the people of Viterbo for violating a peaceful diplomatic commission? So there will be no crusade?
Berard King Louis, who is already called a saint, has got this mission instead.
Frederick (laughs hard and cold) The harmless milksop! If he ends up in the unhealthy Oriental climate, he will die immediately of a cold! The pope then intends to send Christendom's noblest and most pious monarch straight to his death! Ha! That’s just like it!! All the rotten papacy can do is sacrifice its best Christians for the ruthless propagation of Roman intolerance!
Berard Don’t blaspheme scornfully in this great calamity. Don’t make matters worse. That’s the only advice I can give you now.
Frederick Could the calamity then get any worse? The order and government of the world have been declared deposed by a one-sided fanatical and hysterical league of deluded priests! In other words, the Pope wants the world war to continue! Well, then he shall have it!
Berard Take it easy, my good emperor.
Frederick It's my own fault! I was a fool who believed anything good about this scheming, hypocritical, lying, immoral, low-minded, doomed church! Well, now his holiness will stir up all the world against me in the usual way! I again have enemies in every poor Franciscan who, obedient to the infallibility of the Pope, blindly preaches that I am the worst villain in history, and the very Mr. Antichrist, who must be mercilessly fought and rendered harmless, so that I have all the simple masses of peasants armed against me with lump sticks, pitchforks, and clubs, which then my mercenaries are forced to mow down like seed for the scythe! The pope wants blood, and since the whole world obeys the pope, he also gets blood in floods, that only drown the church in a future that is not guilty of the events of today. He is forcing us to war! I was a fool who did not immediately capture, burn, and destroy Rome, and raze the robber's den of the Vatican for all time to the ground whenever I could! This conceited self-righteous establishment, which concocts all the misery on earth, consisting of parasites, drones and backward handicapped cretins, should be purged
once and for all and every infallible eunuch dragged out into St. Peter's Square naked to be nailed to a cross as a warning to the whole world!
(silence)
Berard I understand your anger, but it will not help, and Christianity will not accept it.
Frederick It has asked for it! It buys the indulgences of the holiest church! If I know these peddlers in the Vatican correctly, all the more indulgences become all the more generous the more the indulgence buyer commits himself to fighting the emperor!
Berard It is quite true that the derailed general synod immediately resulted in a flourishing indulgence trade.
Frederick We stand almost alone, Berard, in the face of a world of stupidity and superstition that we have to fight. If in their stupidity they use any desperate means, we must, in order to defend reason and civilization, resolutely oppose them hard. Here, Christian love no longer helps when the Christian church itself only breathes hatred and destructiveness.
Berard An old word from Antiquity comes to my mind.
Frederick What?
Berard Against stupidity even the gods fight in vain.
Frederick We are no gods, archbishop. We are humans.
Scene 6. Grosseto, March 1246.
Petrus de Vinea What sort of a man is it?
Chief guard He arrived this morning with the galley from Sicily, and claims to be a messenger from Richard of Caserta, the emperor’s son-in-law.
Petrus We can’t disturb the emperor with possible bad news now just before Easter, when great solemnities are planned and already prepared.
Chief guard He gave me this for a password. (offers a big letter with the seal of the kingdom of Sicily.)
Petrus But it is the royal seal!
Chief guard Yes.
Petrus Then the matter must still have priority to all others. Something vitally important must have happened. Bring in the messenger.
Chief guard Yes. (leaves)
Petrus A poison is spread across Europe through the Pope's indulgences sold by beggar monks, Franciscans and Dominicans, and the indulgence proceeds go exclusively to bribe political figures to apostatize, rebel and go on crusade against our emperor. For the Pope, the advance of Mongols and Arabs and the devastation of Poland and Jerusalem is an insignificant trifle compared to the completely unacceptable fact that there is a person like the emperor Frederick. This is a time of constant terror of murderous plots, and our emperor with his torments and his
sleeplessness should be spared the machinations of a rotten papal world. But a letter like this must be read by the emperor.
(The chief guard returns with the courier.)
Chief guard Here is the man
messenger It is vitally necessary that I am immediately brought to your emperor.
Petrus It shall be if he so pleases. (to the chief guard) My friend, deliver this letter to the emperor personally.
Chief guard I will do so at once. (leaves with the letter)
Messenger There is no time for delay. What kind of extensive festivities are being prepared in all the city? Is there any relative of the emperor who is to celebrate a wedding?
Petrus No, my friend, the emperor will just celebrate Easter.
messenger There is no space for joy and festivities now.
Petrus Our emperor was infinitely hoping there would be.
Chief guard (returns) The emperor will see the messenger at once.
Messenger Then there is at least some faint hope.
(The doors open. Enter the emperor.)
Frederick It’s a lightning from a clear sky! Where is the fatal messenger?
Petrus He is standing here.
Frederick (to the messenger) Are you aware of the grotesque contents of my son-inlaw’s letter?
messenger I know about the conspiracy. That’s why I was exclusively entrusted with the mission of conveying the letter to you.
Petrus What conspiracy is that?
Frederick His holiness has secretly given a signal to all Europe to rise against me on the same day of Easter itself. With money, he has bribed key men in high positions from the Baltic Sea to Lampedusa. Foremost among the pack of traitors stands Heinrich Raspe, the man whom I cherished as a brother, and by whose side in Marburg I prayed and knelt at the blessed tomb of Saint Elisabeth, a kinsman of myself, our most trusted Landgrave of Thuringia! Tomorrow at the first Easter meal I myself with my sons Enzio and Ezzelino shall be attacked and murdered by our own guests, relatives and friends!
Petrus Who are the conspirators?
Frederick Responsible for the conspiracy is Orlando di Rossi, the Pope's brother-inlaw, whom I myself had elected podestá of Florence. But the other names responsible cut my heart deeper: Jacopo di Morra, Roger de Amicis, the podestá of Parma, the son of my own teacher Wilhelm Francisius in Palermo; further Pandolfo Fasanella, the general captain of Tuscany, Andreas Cicala; but Tibald Francisius is the name that crushes me like a Brutus! All these I have brought up myself as my sons, I have been like a father to them and shown them my lifelong trust, and they are all bribed by the pope's indulgences to murder me, the benefactor, the educator and the father of them all! This is too much!
Chief guard (to Petrus) I think his imperial highness is crying.
Petrus Is that so strange?
Frederick The festivities are cancelled! My chief guard, do your duty! You heard the names! None of the traitors must escape! (The chief guard hurries out.) Alas, my Peter of Vinea, how can I trust a single man any more if all my best friends are traitors? As if it wasn't enough that the pope himself was lost! He has become like a cesspool, into whose black abyss the whole world hopelessly sinks to end up in a stinking sewer!
Petrus What are your orders?
Frederick The court will immediately break up from Grosseto. The lights and festivities will have to accept never to be lighted. This will be the horrid introduction to the desolation of my gloomy old age.
Enzio (enters) Father, Pandolfo Fasanella and our faithful Jacopo di Morra have quite suddenly left their offices and escaped. There are fears they might have intrigued. Frederick My dearest son, your news was anticipated. They were already exposed as traitors.
Chief guard (returns) Your imperial highness, I am to report that the harbour, gates and roads are closed and that Tibald Francisius has been arrested.
Frederick Then the pope's right hand is rendered harmless, but thus we have also cut off our own left hand. My son, soon we will only have ourselves left to be able to trust at all, soon we will stand as a family all alone against the whole world, completely corrupted by the worldliness and power of the pope, nepotized and wrapped up in papal cobwebs.
Enzio We will fight, father, until we die.
Frederick Even if our Hohenstaufian family is banished forever from this world, what does it matter, if only we do well before the inviolable eternity? Come, my son, my court, we must move on, we can never settle down in any capital with this itinerant imperial court constantly forced to move on, we must get used to being like gypsies. Come, this city is too close to Rome! (Everyone prepares for breaking up.)
Scene 7.
Manfred Your excellence, you are my father’s oldest friend and most faithful counsellor. You know him best of all.
Berard What do you want to know, Manfred?
Manfred Everything.
Berard There is no one who could know everything about the emperor. Not even I myself know how he really feels.
Manfred Tell me what you know.
Berard I don’t know much.
Manfred Good God! The whole world could see that he is ill! He walks and suffers, worrying himself and wailing quietly when he imagines he is alone with himself, he ages faster every day, his temples become more and more silvery and the
flint is spreading, he walks bent and broken like a shadow of himself, and you are indifferent to what is going on!
Berard My son, I am not indifferent. I suffer perhaps more than anyone before the tragedy which is your father's but which affects the whole world. I will explain exactly what happened. He moved his court from Grosseto to Turin, where he soon hatched new grand plans for how everything would be arranged for the best. He planned a campaign across the Alps to capture the Pope at Lyons and force him to reconcile. From there, the campaign would continue north and into Germany. The king of France, the pious Louis, was completely on board with the plans and stood up as an ally. The pope's anarchist subversive activities would definitely be stopped and the self-righteous German princes learn a lesson. Everything was prepared, and the raiding train was just about to start, when word came of the fall and defection of Parma. Parma could not be spared for the order of Northern Italy. If you let go of Parma, all of Northern Italy would be lost. Therefore the train to Lyons had to be postponed, and instead your father besieged Parma. Close to the city he had a new city of Victoria built, which, after Parma's re-incorporation with the kingdom, would keep Parma under constant surveillance. The city became a model city with gardens, palaces and parks, the emperor had the storage of all his treasures, his books and libraries moved there, everything would be there as a strategic support point for his dominion and his troops in northern Italy. There were his chancellery, his mint, the treasury and stores for three armies. Then in their desperation Parma suddenly made an attempt to lift the deadly siege and succeeded and fought their way out. You were then with your father hunting. The Parmesans were then ordered by the pope's envoys to take care of the opportunity and attack Victoria and destroy that place. This the people of Parma did. They captured the city, burned it, destroyed it and plundered it to its last stone. Nothing remained. Invaluable archives were wasted there, your father's own library with his famous book on the art of falconry, the imperial crown with the treasury, and the inhabitants of Victoria were murdered to the last man, including the indispensable Thaddeus of Suessa, who at the Council of Lyon spoke most for your father's cause You know how it was. You were sixteen at the time, and when you came back from your hunt, the whole town was already taken, and you had to run for your lives. It was your father's greatest military defeat, and fifteen hundred of his best men and most loyal servants perished, while Parma triumphed and raised the flag of rebellion high in the name of the pope. Ravenna fell, new peace applications to the pope from the French king for your father's sake were mercilessly curtly rejected, and then we were struck by the treachery of Peter of Vinea.
Manfred How did it really happen?
Berard We don't know. He was Frederick's closest and most trusted man. We have been told that the good Peter played a double game. He received bribes from the pope which he pocketed. At the same time, he embezzled money from your father's coffers, the state coffers. With the high position he held, no one could control him except the emperor. How the truth came out no one knows. Maybe Peter didn't
betray anyone, maybe he took the pope's bribes just to make himself richer and ignore obeying the pope, but his strange embezzlement was significant. He was thrown into prison, deprived of his sight like other traitors, and in prison beat himself to death by smashing his head against the stones of the wall. And what do you think may remain more of your father? He only has his sons left. He no longer has any initiative, his policies and actions are now completely controlled by the renewed attacks of his enemies, he gets no sleep and suffers badly from headaches and internal pains that no doctor can cure, and he no longer sees any joy in his life, not even in the falconry.
Manfred How long do you still think he will live?
Berard He could make it to sixty but hardly any more.
Manfred Will the pope attack us, his sons, as relentlessly as he always attacked him, after he has left this existence?
Berard (with a sigh) Unfortunately, I don't think the now completely corrupt and overly greedy church will have anything left but blind unquenchable hatred for the entire family of the emperor. His holiness himself has declared that since our emperor has been excommunicated, all his whole family will be excommunicated for all eternity. The only thing the church lives for is to get money to bribe the lords of the world with for the one-sided fight against one single man: your father. And to be related to him is in the eyes of the pope and of the church the most outrageous crime that exists and surpasses all violence and all criminality.
Manfred His holiness will have some awful bother with extirpating the emperor’s family, since the emperor has many sons.
Berard Many wonderful handsome sons who are exemplary to all humanity. You are on the top of the list with your brother Enzio.
Manfred But none of us is likely to become an emperor.
Berard No, the imperial title already belongs to Konrad and his future family. Manfred What can we do for our father?
Berard (with a sigh) He is involved in a world war which he can’t get out of. He has no other choice than to fight, and that squeeze will neither his family or sons be able to ignore. You just have to fight until you win or die. There is only one hope, as far as I can see.
Manfred Which is?
Berard My emperor is no warrior. He never wanted war. He was dragged into conflicts by a cruel and inexorable pope, and he has had to deal with those conflicts all his life, which is why he has aged so prematurely, and he will not get away from them until death separates him from his responsibilities. Since he is not a warrior, he has not done so well in his wars. He is a poet and philosopher, a humanist and thinker, and not even really a true politician. The only hope there is, is if his sons would be better warriors than he.
Manfred We were all born with beauty and culture in our mother’s milk. But Enzio is a talented tactician, strategist and leader. With him by our side I think we have reason for some optimism.
Berard I hope you are right, my boy, for the sake of your father.
Act V Scene 1. Lyons, 1250.
Innocent At last I breathe some fresh morning air! Enzio is fallen and captured, the most dangerous of the sons of the banished! Now one of the emperor's fortresses after another is falling. Cursed brood of serpents, in vain did you try to come to the aid of Modena, which has now become a part of the papacy, your bold thrust against Fossalta was the doom of your insolent arrogance, sitting now and rotting to death in Bologna in the cell darkness of the fortress as the first of the eternally damned and vile sons of Antichrist finally justly punished! We're just getting started! Every insolent brood of that family shall be exterminated as surely as the papacy is holy and inviolable! Yes, cardinal, what news do you have now?
cardinal 1 Holy father, Ravenna has fallen.
Innocent What do you mean, you yokel.?
cardinal 1 I regret my bad news, but the city has fallen to the emperor.
Innocent Is then the banished up in north Italy again and starting anew?
cardinal 1 No, he stays down in Foggia, but Petrus Capocci is slain, and also Ancona has fallen.
Innocent But that is terrible news. Then all Romagna is lost again?
cardinal 1 Yes, everything but Bologna But that is not all.
Innocent Do you have any more unpleasant news?
cardinal 1 Yes. The admiral Pietro di Gaeta has thoroughly defeated the entire Genoese navy and taken seventeen galleys.
Innocent Has hell then taken over the world? Do you have any more bad news?
cardinal 1 Yes. Count Uberto Pallavicini, the imperial deputy of Cremona, has inflicted a crushing defeat of Cremona and taken three thousand prisoners.
Innocent Now all the world quakes, and the ground is lost under my feet. What else?
cardinal 1 Piacenza has elected a new podestá who is imperial.
Innocent So there is only Bologna, Milan and Brescia left. What else?
cardinal 1 That is all, I regret. (enter another cardinal)
Innocent Here comes another croaker. Do you also bring only bad news?
cardinal 2 Here is a letter from Egypt. (the pope snatches it and eyes it quickly.)
Innocent The crusade of Louis the Saint has failed. He has been thoroughly beaten by the Mohammedans and taken prisoner, and he dares to accuse me of his failure, because in my war against the excommunicated I have prevented him from joining and participating with his armies in the crusade!
cardinal 2 The king's captivity is already old dusty news. The emperor himself has negotiated the king's liberty. He was a good friend of the new sultan's father, and the commander of the Islamic army was his old friend Fahr-ed-Din. The emperor has a great reputation in the Orient.
Innocentius Could you never keep silent about that terrible emperor! He always pursues me by his name and his reputation! Shall I never again be spared from hearing his title and name! He has been deposed! He is not an emperor! Listen! There is no emperor! All there is, is a banished bastard who is persecuting and tormenting me! (a new cardinal appears) What is it now?
cardinal 3 A letter from the brothers of king Louis of France.
Innocent I don’t want to read it!
cardinal 3 They insist. You can’t refuse to listen to princes and dukes who still go to church and aren’t already banished.
Innocent Read it to me then!
cardinal 3 You asked for it yourself. (opens the letter and reads it out aloud)
"Holy Father, at the urgent command of our brother Louis, it is hereby our duty to request you to make peace immediately with emperor Frederick II and release him from his excommunication. If you do not comply with our wishes, you cannot expect to be able to reside as our guest any more at our expense in France."
Innocent The answer is no.
cardinal 3 The king anticipated that. Here is an enclosed letter from the English king, who writes: "Your Holiness, if you are justly thrown out by the French from your cowardly sought hiding place Lyon, you cannot count on any asylum under the English crown. If you in your stubbornness do not want to make peace with the emperor so unjustly treated by you, it is only because of your own jealousy. Only because he is now about to enter into his fourth marriage, and because your confused church consists of only inept people suffering from impotence, you are mad with envy, and you are dragging with you in your great confusion all the church and world Christendom into your ruin. Do not think that any king in the world is ready to help you when you behave so exceedingly foolishly," signed King Henry III of England, one of Emperor Frederick's numerous brothers-in-law.
Innocent Away with you, avaunt, you corrupt bribed lackeys! Is the whole church then bought by the vile emperor? Are all my accursed servants and cardinals hopelessly corrupt? Am I then the only one left to care about the holiness of the church? Out with you, blackcoats! (The Cardinals disperse.) Banished emperor, you have completely wiped out the world, bewitched my church, and completely destroyed my own life! What will be the future of such an emperor? Hopeless in his Christian ecclesiastical lack of any power! But we still have the strength to fight. As long as there is any imperial power left to fight, so long will the Church and the Pope fight it, and may they both perish in the struggle if only the emperor is defeated one day!
Scene 2. Castel Fiorentino, the end of the year.
(Frederick lying emaciated and severely ill in his bed. Manfred, Berard and some other attendance are present.)
Frederick (wakes up) Where am I?
doctor Castel Fiorentino.
Frederick Then the circle is completed. I have come here to die. doctor You could still recover.
Frederick Yes, that's what all doctors always say to all dying patients. I was once prophesied that under the sign of a flower I would meet the end. That's why I was always afraid of Florence and never visited that city. But here I am now in the Fiorentino castle instead, and here I am going to die. My son! Where are you, Manfred?
Manfred I am here, father.
Frederick What answer do you have from the Bolognese?
Manfred They will not release Enzio.
Frederick Then neither will they have any peace. Then they make us peace offers in vain. We must never give up the fight to get our Enzio free. He is the toughest of the Hohenstaufs.
Manfred We don’t give up that easily, father. We have Norman blood, you know.
Frederick Your mother, Manfred, was the only one of the women I loved whom I would only gladly have brought to the altar out of love. Unfortunately, she was of too low a birth for it to be appropriate and possible in the eyes of the world. But you should know that I still love her.
Manfred Father, she never doubted that.
Frederick When I am gone, your younger half-brother Konrad will be our family's monarch and candidate for emperor. He has a newborn son named Konradino. These you shall serve as the affairs of your own father's heart. Should these not survive, the crown goes to Carlotto. You are then number three in the order, even though your mother was never my wife. I have carefully given instructions of all this in my will.
Manfred We will follow your instructions to the letter most meticulously.
Frederick But the most important thing is the continuity, that the emperor always remains alive. An emperor must not die without another emperor immediately succeeding him. The universal monarchy introduced by Charlemagne must be maintained.
Manfred Of course, father.
Frederick Therefore, I must ask you for the following. When I am gone, delay the spread of the word about it. When the pope and his henchmen learn that I no longer exist, they will unleash hell on the earth, especially on you and my entire family. The longer it takes for the news to reach our enemy, the better for yourselves, and the more time you can gain to ensure order when I am gone, the better.
Manfred We will carefully follow your advice.
Frederick I would now wish to speak with my confessor.
(Manfred gives a sign to Berard to approach the emperor’s side while he himself retires to the background. Berard comes forth.)
Father, although you are so age-stricken you will now have to be so kind as to survive your so much younger emperor.
Berard (with tears) My son, you must not leave us already. It is far too early.
Frederick You will have to appeal my speedy departure to your pope. He was the one who gave me ulcers.
Berard Also your father was snatched away far too early by the same intestinal problem.
Frederick It does not help. We'll have to try to repair the damage sometime in eternity. But I didn't want to talk nonsense. I don't want a pompous funeral. In all simplicity, I want to be taken home to Palermo, where I want to rest with my father, mother and my first wife inside our cathedral.
Berard I will see to that.
Frederick Don’t mourn me. There will always remain an emperor with you.
Berard No emperor like you.
Frederick If I surpassed all emperors, then future emperors will be able to surpass me.
Berard But I will never see one.
Frederick Yours is the eternity. There you will find room for all possibilities.
Berard I am eighty-three years old, my son, although you are just fifty-five, you belong to eternity much more than I.
Frederick We’ll see on the other side when we’ll meet there again.
Berard We will surely meet there, my son.
Frederick Do you think so, father, although I am excommunicated?
Berard By their excommunication system the popes have only succeeded in banishing themselves from all possible community of eternity. If no other intercession for you is sufficient to get you into paradise, you must trust that I, your own confessor, will never give up until you get there.
Frederick (clasps his hand in spite of his feebleness) That comfort, father, releases me from this life and all its futility. Now I can fly home with my falcons. (dies) (Berard buries his face in the bedside, without letting go of the emperor’s hand. Everyone understands.)
Manfred Father! (wants to rush forth but checks himself. All faces immediately reflect a deep sorrow.)
Prison ward (unlocks) Prince Enzio, you have a visitor.
Enzio Who is it?
ward One of your old friends.
Enzio So let me see the poor fellow. (The young man is admitted.)
Enzio (without giving a sign of recognition) Ward, you may leave. ward In that case I have to lock the gate behind me.
Enzio Just lock us up. I will let you know when you may release the guest from my prison.
ward Very well. I will leave you then. (leaves and locks the gate with many locks and keys.)
Enzio Conrad! (wants to embrace him)
Conrad Hush! (puts his finger to his mouth)
Enzio We are safe now. We are here behind seven locks and prison walls. No one can hear us. No one here has heard me, though I have screamed louder before the whole world in my atrocious heaven-storming despair than God's own doomsday trumpets, and that longer than in all eternity!
Conrad (throws himself into Enzio’s arms, crying) Poor uncle!
Enzio Don’t cry, dear Konrad. (looks at him) But how do you dare to come here? If anyone would recognize you, you would be dead.
Conrad I live incognito. I will survive. I have been here before with you. It would be intolerable if I deserted you now.
Enzio Your visits are all my life in the world.
Conrad But you were not as rigorously closed up before as you are now. What has happened?
Enzio An effort at an escape. I tried to escape in an empty wine barrel. But my long light hair was seen through one of the fissures, I was discovered, and the alarm was sounded, and since then the Bolognese will take no risks. But what news from what remains of the free world? How is life in Sicily? How is my beloved brother Manfred?
Conrad (cries) How I wish I didn’t have to tell the truth!
Enzio Its unbearability is nothing new. We have become accustomed to that. It has been routine since eternity began here in my prison for me to daily cry my eyes out. Unfortunately, I can tolerate any torture. There is no truth that can harm me, for I am injured even beyond all annihilation.
Conrad I know. We have to face an unendurable reality that constantly is getting worse.
Enzio Your news is worse than usual. What has happened?
Conrad King Manfred has been defeated.
Enzio No! It must not be true! He was perfectly invincible, and it was confirmed!
Conrad Only evil itself, multiplied by the heightened infernality of papal calculation and supported by the Vatican's world economic monopoly in the form of inexhaustible resources of gold, was able to crush him, and that scoundrel Charles d'Anjou has thus now taken over our Sicily by rape.
Enzio And Manfred?
Conrad Manfred encountered him in a battle by Benevento. Manfred’s army was slain, and Manfred himself went down among his own.
Enzio So he is dead?
Conrad Yes. The last one of your brothers remaining in freedom, the one who best defended your father's kingdom, is now dead. But that is not all. As excommunicated, he was refused by the papal authority any decent burial. He was
left to rot on the bloody battlefield until the soldiers decided to cover the hero's corpse with stones, which they stored on his body. But a bishop then had his body laid bare again, the last of the free Sicilian kings could not in any way be shown any honour, so the bishop faithful to the pope had Manfred's body dropped into a river that carried it towards the sea and its infinite grave.
Enzio My brother! My last brother! (cries bitterly) The noblest of all! Ravished and desecrated most shamefully of all! Are we then to have an entire family, who only served our world as best we could with reason and order, beauty and culture, then be completely exterminated without a single voice rising up in the world to defend us against the unjust executioners of eternity in this triumphant annihilation by evil!
Conrad (after a delicate pause) But that is not all.
Enzio Could there be anything worse?
Conrad My dear uncle, collect yourself and prepare for the very worst.
Enzio My nephew, you puzzle me. My family is totally extirpated. There are no more heirs.
Conrad There was one last hope.
Enzio Who do you mean?
Conrad Your father’s heir Conrad’s son Conradin.
Enzio Is he not safe in Germany?
Conrad Not any more. After Manfred's death, he went down here to challenge Charles d'Anjou and take revenge and free what was his rightful inheritance, which Charles d'Anjou with the pope's help and cruelty had usurped.
Enzio And what happened?
Conrad The battle took place at Tagliacozzo. Conradin was slain and captured. Enzio Is he then imprisoned for life like me in comfortless desolation?
Conrad No. Charles d'Anjou took no chances. Conradin was decapitated in public with the blessing of his holiness.
Enzio So the Hohenstaufen family is destroyed to the last man?
Conrad We are the last two alive.
Enzio But didn’t Manfred have a number of children?
Conrad His widow Helena tried to escape to Greece with her four small children. Three of them were infant sons, but the black Charles d’Anjou, the French devil who never smiles, and who is the pope's right hand and most perfect tool, managed to track down the fugitives, captured them, and left them to die in captivity. Helena died after five years of captivity, inhumanely separated from her children. The three little sons had to grow up in dirt and darkness without any humanity and without a human being speaking to them. They died one by one. They were given no opportunity for any human life. They were forced to live like animals in captivity and died in their cages.
Enzio (after some silence) And our world don’t even get to know about it.
Conrad The obligation of silence of the Vatican is never more carefully observed than when it comes to the crimes of the Vatican itself. In the Vatican cellar everything human is buried alive.
Enzio And Charles d'Anjou may go one living.
Conrad He has turned emperor Frederick's rule of law into a hell of injustice. Never has a country been so deeply degraded and oppressed as our Sicily, which used to be the freest and happiest country in the world.
Enzio And it's all the pope's fault, who arbitrarily gave the crown of our Sicily to that scoundrel Charles d'Anjou, who therefore thought he had the right to just grab our fatherland and enslave it in order to himself appropriate all its capital and consume its resources.
Conrad The Jews and the islamites are already about to be completely exterminated by the French knights. In the emperor’s Apulia all saracens are already quite wiped out.
Enzio So all father's silk industries, exquisite carpet weavers, Europe's finest gunsmiths and premier stud farms have been destroyed?
Conrad Since the pope cannot tolerate islamites in Italy no matter how exquisite artisans they are.
Enzio And only you and others of our family who anonymously have gone underground have a possibility to survive if you live incognito?
Conrad Yes, that is how it is.
Enzio (after a pause) My dear nephew, it is enough. I can’t take any more. My chest wants to explode with an unbearable pain that wants to scream out to make the hair stand on end on every soul on earth! Don't come here to me anymore. Here I have sat now guarded, trapped, without freedom of movement and without sunlight and nature for twenty years. Soon I can't endure it anymore. I am a mummified soul, one of the blind folly of history buried alive victim of inhuman egoistic tyranny in papacy, and I see no possibility of any correction. I hoped for twenty years. Now my brother Manfred has fallen, and his corpse has been left unburied freely to be profaned, and the last Hohenstauf, with the Pope's holy blessing, has been publicly murdered. I don't want to live in this world anymore. I am asking you now to go and never come back.
Conrad You were always the one of grandfather's sons, illegitimate and genuine, who was the fairest, the most beautiful, and most like our emperor. My uncle, you are still the most beautiful and noble and best man on earth.
Enzio Have you seen all of humanity then?
Conrad I have seen enough of it to realize that my grandfather and his sons were the highest endowed, most unique and most indispensable persons on earth.
Enzio Perhaps you are right. But the people, the majority of whom are ignorant, ignore the few who are not. The salvation of these unique few was to become an imperial family, but now there must no longer be any emperors of father's kind in the world, and his sons must therefore all die in the wonderful shadow of the father. I lived the longest, and therefore my shadow became the darkest, but soon it will be no more. Live on, my nephew, in your perhaps lifesaving disguise of an incognito, in a pretense of a personality that isn’t any more.
Conrad My uncle, the truth shall not die with you.
Enzio Don’t say any more. If it will survive at all, it looks as if it will first have to go through several centuries of spiritual winter cold and darkness, in a hard and difficult hibernation. It has no realistic chance. But you remain and still alive in freedom. Cherish the only chance you have. Go out into life and don't look back. I give you life. Leave me in the dark behind you.
Conrad Our legacy of dignity, integrity and pride is more worth than all the pope’s riches and all that almighty power of the church with which it in vain runs the whole world to hell.
Enzio That is true indeed, but don’t tell it to the pope. (gives a signal that is heard to the outside.)
(embraces his nephew) Farewell, my future.
Conrad Our history will survive all the lies of the church. That much of a promise I dare to leave you to live with.
Enzio Here in the utmost despair of my darkness it is like a light left by mercy to accompany my blindness.
(The ward opens the gate from the outside. They separate. Enzio’s face returns to extreme lack of expression.)
Thanks, messenger, for your news.
Conrad I wish it could have been better.
Enzio Still, it could have been even worse. (smiles) There is still always some noble human being left on earth no matter how bad it looks.
Conrad Yes, that’s the hope that history lives on.
Enzio Farewell.
Konrad Farewell, you the finest of all men. (leaves)
(The ward locks the prison door. Everything grows dark. You only hear Enzio’s heartrending crying.)
Scene 4. Before the stage.
(Or by the imperial sarcophagus in the cathedral of Palermo.)
Berard Enzio lived as long as his father, but for twenty-three years he had to languish in the prison of Bologna. He became the last of his father's sons. With his demise, all of Frederick's fifteen children had been eliminated, and his kingdom was enslaved under the hideous, violent regime of Charles d'Anjou
Frederick was the most gifted of all emperors. He spoke Italian, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Latin, Norman and German with equal ease and understood well the mentalities of all these peoples. He was thus the most unique stroke of luck diplomatically in the time of the Crusades in that he was also born to be emperor. What would have happened if the Pope had seized such an opportunity instead of fighting this human challenge in superstitious fear and personal egotism and vanity? The empire, together with a united church, had then been able to perpetuate and spread Christianity peacefully, diplomatically and jurisprudentially. Frederick's
greatest merit was that he created a rule of law that safeguarded the rights of the individual. That construction the pope did everything to destroy, and he succeeded, for it is always a far easier and quicker work to destroy than to build up. But thereby he also succeeded in ruining the papacy and irreparably perhaps for all time. Therefore, I would like to ask the popes in the future that question: was it worth it? In particular, the popes of Avignon should carefully consider this question.
After Frederick's time, the Florentine era eventually began, which was started by Dante Alighieri, among others. This poet, building on the foundations of the Sicilian literary school of Palermo, thought it necessary to place the emperor among the damned of hell, while he gave Charles d'Anjou a place among other kings in Purgatory. Compared to my emperor's fairly advanced judicial practices and legal ideals, I unfortunately have to question Dante's right to sit in judgment over deceased souls that he did not even allow any self-defense. My Emperor was always consistent in his unrelenting effort to seek justice, whatever that entailed in the form of inconveniences not least to himself, but Dante learned from the pope and his indoctrinated Franciscans to condemn without laws. Some justice for Frederick's children and grandchildren is unfortunately no longer to be hoped for, because what was done to them is done and can no longer be undone, not even by the Pope himself.
Scene 5. Palermo, March 31st 1282.
(A Sicilian country festival outside the city walls on the River Orato. It is the Tuesday after Easter. The youth dance, all is joy and all the participants are young and beautiful, until a group of French jacks come uninvited and want to participate. These immediately drink too much, behave clumsily and brutally, disturb with their shrill voices, and the young Sicilians become increasingly restless and begin to whisper among themselves. Fewer and fewer dance and are happy. Then there is an incident. A French jackal has come too close to a young Sicilian girl and grabbed her breasts so that she passed out. Her real Sicilian cavalier gets infuriated.)
Sicilian Death, death to the French!
(There is immediate turmoil. Suddenly all Sicilians attack the French with daggers and make them all go down to the last man. Several French manage to defend themselves, and also a number of Sicilians are mortally wounded. The bloodshed is extensive.)
Sicilian (when all the French have been killed) How many have we killed?
sicilian 2 About two hundred.
sicilian 1 And our own casualties?
sicilian 2 About fifty.
sicilian 1 Let’s not stop at this! We have started a rebellion! Our only chance to manage is to get through with it! Let us kill all French in all Palermo! Let’s kill all French in all Sicily!
sicilian 2 It is true! What are the French doing here? They have taken our own land away from us. They have murdered king Manfred. They murdered Enzio after keeping him imprisoned for twenty-three years! They keep all of King Manfred's children locked up in the same way, and never intend to release them, though they have never done anything evil. Instead, the French have now, for fifteen years under Charles d'Anjou in Naples, done us every conceivable evil. They have taken away our laws, they have strangled our justice, they have exterminated our nobility, and they have impoverished our country and plundered all our families through robbery. Now is the right time! We must rid ourselves of the French once and for all, and consistently! Not a single one of them must remain!
sicilian 3 We will get the whole world against us, and the pope will excommunicate the entire island, but what does it matter? If we don’t take the law into our own hands we will never get any justice!
(One of the spectators is the young emperor Frederick, even younger than in act I scene 1. He is observed by some.)
sicilian 4 Who is it?
sicilian 5 Isn’t that our emperor?
sicilian 6 Yes. That’s what I always said. He has never left us.
sicilian 7 Didn’t he ride into the Mount Etna with his closest followers to there bide his time until it was time to come out again and settle with the church?
sicilian 8 He will always reappear and help us when we need justice. He promised that while he lived.
sicilian 2 If God is with us and the emperor is with us, who could then be against us except those doomed to perdition?
sicilian 1 Let’s attack Castellammare at once and spread the rebellion to Trapani and Agrigento and then take Catania and Messina!
sicilian 2 We have to have justice, whatever the cost!
sicilian 5 The Germans claim the emperor is asleep in a mountain called Kyffhäuser, but we know he prefers Etna.
sicilian 6 Yes, he will wait in there until it’s time to give exoneration and unity back to the Christian Europe, but he will then begin with Sicily.
sicilian 1 Forward! Down with the French!
sicilian 2 Cast Charles d'Anjou down to hell at once!
sicilian 3 Liberate Manfred’s children!
sicilian 4 May the world listen to our Sicilian vespers and forever follow our example against all arbitrary tyrants!
(The crowd intoxicated by its victory rushes on with bloody weapons while the young cleanshaved emperor is watching with satisfaction.)
The End.
(Taormina, 3.10.1990, translated first week of October 2024)