Crusades in Northern Italy in the Fourteenth Century

Abstract

Central and northern Italy witnessed numerous crusading conflicts in the fourteenth century. This chapter will provide an overview of these campaigns, examine the factors that motivated popes to launch them, evaluate their outcomes, investigate how contemporaries perceived them, and discuss the historiography related to them. Italian historiography has privileged a “traditionalist” approach to the study of the crusades which largely overlooks crusading against Christians, while Housley’s seminal book on the Italian crusades only covers the period up to 1343. Consequently the crusading aspects of the later fourteenth-century Italian conflicts have been severely neglected. The investigation of contemporary perceptions of these crusades is of particular interest because their targets (who were now mainly signori, that is the lords who had taken over the city republics) were accused of being heretics without harbouring any real doctrinal differences. In other words, these were so-called political crusades, in which opposition to the papacy was considered as tantamount to heresy. This was particularly the case in regard to lands that belonged to what was known as the Patrimony of St. Peter, over which the papacy claimed direct lordship. Accordingly, this chapter will focus especially on Romagna, which was the northernmost portion of the Patrimony of St. Peter and was placed between central and northern Italy, in the period after that of Housley’s book.

Keywords

To the memory of my mother Elena Zaffagnini (1927–2019) whose incomparable affection guided me through life.

Introduction and Historiography

The state of research on Italian crusades in the fourteenth century cannot be said to be satisfactory, either in Italy or elsewhere. The vast scholarship on the crusades¹ has only relatively recently focussed on the crusades within Christendom and, especially, the Italian crusades. In Italy there has never been a particularly strong and well-developed vocation for crusade scholarship (with the exception of Franco Cardini and a handful of others), and very little has been written about the fourteenth-century crusades launched by the popes against urban lords accused of heresy. Studies exist of the documents relating to the canonical trials that led to some lords being charged with heresy—first and foremost, the Visconti of Milan—but specific works dedicated to the repercussions of those trials, namely military campaigns presented by the curia in the guise of crusades, are very scarce. These turbulent events can be reconstructed through works dedicated to other topics from which we can gather information and, going back in time, of course through the wealth of Italian erudition for the early modern period and from the late mediaeval chronicles (Map 5.1).

Map 5.1

Northern and Central Italy [after Norman Housley, The Italian Crusades: The Papal-Angevin Alliance and the Crusades against Christian Lay Powers, 1254–1343 (Oxford, 1982), p. 259]

Therefore, in Italy the question has been barely touched on, because all those local conflicts, from Innocent III against Markward of Anweiler up to the struggles between the Roman and Avignon popes, which the curial language of the time defined as “crusades,” have in general not been regarded as such but rather as political struggles, normal wars for supremacy and power. Is this the result of a backwardness of Italian mediaeval studies on the topic? Maybe, but given that every Italian mediaevalist is well aware that the term “crusade” was used for certain repressive operations undertaken by the papacy in Italy against presumed heretics, I would see it more as an indication of scepticism.

It is well known that the crusade “as a militant and military undertaking to defend the Christian ‘faith’ (in its unique Catholic understanding) has a more articulated and complex extension than has been crystallised, or alternatively mythicised, by an asphyxiated and outmoded historiographical and cultural tradition. From Urban II’s appeal in 1095 onwards, the opportunities for crusade multiplied right up to the start of the early modern period (and perhaps beyond) with widely varying implementations and outcomes.”² Many would agree with this assertion by Giovanni Grado Merlo, but at the same time it poses a risk if sufficient care is not taken; the evident risk is that by forcing this argument even a little too far the resulting positions may weaken and become destructured to the point where the crusade tout court, the conquest of Jerusalem, becomes little more than a scholarly or textbook invention born from the need to simplify, classify and communicate a “powerful” moment in the history of the mediaeval West seen in an apologetic and/or nationalist light. And while this has happened, it is not enough to explain the complexity of the situation.

If we go beyond the construction of the myth, dating back to the start of the early modern period,³ and go back well before the huge output of work focused on the crusades that followed on from that moment this history can be seen from another perspective. To give one characteristic example, the point I make is also backed by the classification used by Jonathan Riley-Smith, the leading proponent of the “pluralist” interpretation of the crusades, which focuses on legal criteria (such as proclamation by the pope, the kind of indulgence offered, and the kind of vows taken), rather than the geographical goal of the expedition. Because of that, the pluralist school is more inclusive towards internal crusades, comprising the Italian ones, than more traditionalist approaches were, while still recognising that crusades to the Holy Land enjoyed special status.⁴ That also stretches the history of the crusade well beyond the fall of Acre in 1291, possibly up to the eighteenth century.⁵ Among other crusades, Riley-Smith identifies “political” crusades namely he feels the need to add a qualifying adjective to the term “crusade,” a self-defining category that needs no further specification.⁶ It is an admission that some crusades need an adjective to be defined, while others do not. This introduces a substantial difference: the need to differentiate rather than integrate. Certainly, it was not the case for crusades to the Holy Land, which need no adjectives because, I think, they are based on a more authentic and original ideal type of holy war.⁷

At this point, I think, we can attempt to define what the crusade is, a question that is much debated today among scholars. It is based, to my mind at least, on a papal summons and proclamation, on preaching, on the extensive response of the faithful, on a direct rather than delegated taking up of the cross, on the granting of rewards and indulgences, on the long hard journey imbued with the significance of armed pilgrimage and the aim of conquering Jerusalem and liberating the Holy Sepulchre. Jean Flori stresses the importance of “retaining the specific meaning of the word ‘crusade’,” precisely as defined above.⁸ All other events called crusades are nothing more than instrumentalization, amplification, deformation, extension or whatever one wants to call it, events that occurred for mainly political purposes after the thirteenth-century canon lawyers had developed a juridical position that was highly favourable to the papacy, justifying the use of crusade against all adversaries within Christendom, not only pagans, schismatics and heretics but also an increasingly large number of simply political enemies.⁹

A rather different tack has been taken by a segment of the international crusader scholarship, represented, insofar as concerns Italian studies, by the pluralist Norman Housley who has recognised the Italian crusades as being equal to the eastern crusades and underlined the presence of a strongly held consensus towards them within contemporary Italian society.¹⁰ The debate surrounding this approach has highlighted past divergences and, from what I can see, a continued lack of agreement among well-known scholars, such as Ernst-Dieter Hehl, Giles Constable and, again, Christopher Tyerman and Jonathan Phillips,¹¹ alongside the foremost contemporary Italian historian of the crusades, Franco Cardini.¹²

Looking ahead to the examples I will mention shortly, it is worth noting at this point that while there was enthusiasm in those convinced of the validity of these operations, as Norman Housley has argued,¹³ or in those who, by paying money, were pardoned from the tribulations of the next world or granted substantial material advantages in the present, equally they were accompanied by the embarrassment and widespread unease of those who did not approve,¹⁴ and this dissent was incomparably greater than it had ever been for the crusades in the East which rarely generated doubts or opposition in Europe.

The pluralist camp certainly can take credit for having finally demolished the mythical status of the eastern crusades, idolised by the Counter-Reformation, romantic nationalist cultures and nineteenth- and twentieth-century colonialisms, and also for having helped to expand the common understanding of the concept of crusade. It is now much clearer to many, not only to mediaevalists, that there were not seven or eight or ten crusades, or however many one wishes to count using the textbook criteria, but many more and that the Church frequently resorted to this powerful instrument of war not just against the Muslims. This is incontrovertible.

However, the pluralist approach has probably created too many parallels between the crusades against Christians and those against Islam to conquer the Holy Land, when in fact they are incomparable except in the formal definitions of canon law. From the point of view of the pluralists, this was perhaps inevitable because it is easy to emphasise a new reading of a phenomenon when comparing it to the traditional interpretation. Therefore, this sometimes-provocative proposal must be tempered in order to redress the balance as I see it.

The Crusades

As far as Italy is concerned, the device of transforming the papacy’s political struggles into crusades, thereby sacralising the resulting military action and gaining a wider consensus, dates from the late twelfth century, and it developed along increasingly clear lines throughout the course of the thirteenth century. However, it was only in the fourteenth century that the political crusade, under Clement V, John XXII— “the warmonger” as Tyerman would have him¹⁵—and Innocent VI, reached the apex of its theorisation and most frequent use. However, to talk of these struggles as crusades is seen by many as stretching the meaning in terms of content.

The crusades examined here, all clearly political in nature and not particularly appreciated by contemporaries, will include the crusade against Venice, instigated by Clement V between 1309 and 1310, whose focus was the city of Ferrara; that against the Visconti of Milan unleashed by John XXII between 1322 and 1324 and fought in Lombardy with its “appendices” some forty years later (1363 and 1368); and the crusade promoted by Innocent VI in 1356 against Francesco II Ordelaffi, lord of Forlì, and against the Manfredi of Faenza which ended in 1359. Of course, these were not the only ones, and we could include others waged under the extremely active John XXII: against Federico, Guido and Speranza da Montefeltro in 1321¹⁶; against the rebel cities of Fermo and Fabriano, in the March of Ancona, in 1324¹⁷; and lastly, against Louis IV of Bavaria and Castruccio Castracani in 1328. Later on there were also the complete ruinous and particularly incongruent (given that the papacy itself had recourse to mercenary troops) crusades waged against the mercenary companies between 1357 and 1370, not to mention the reciprocal hostilities between the Roman and the Avignon popes which should probably be set in the context of the so-called Hundred Years War between England and France.

Let us start from the early fourteenth century. Francesco Pirani, in a recent essay noted how the Avignon papacy’s policy of asserting political hegemony over Italy, with Angevin backing, as promoted in the first instance by John XXII, was keenly sustained but also destined to fail. Pirani attributes full responsibility to John XXII.¹⁸ In fact, these hegemonic endeavours began before John XXII, with the crusade against Venice waged by Clement V, and they extended long after his reign to the later crusade by Innocent VI against Forlì, although the latter was conceived as part of the more general programme to reconquer the Papal States led by Cardinal Albornoz and in a climate of realigning the top-down relations of the papacy with individual city states. This trend was undoubtedly seen as a necessity by the pragmatic and flexible Albornoz, fully aware as he was of the irreversible power of the signorie which he recognised in a series of pacts. However, that view was probably not shared by the more uncompromising Innocent VI, as his lively epistolary correspondence testifies.¹⁹

As for the crusade against Venice, it was triggered by the Este succession in Ferrara after the death of Azzo VIII d’Este in early 1308. His nephew Folco, the legitimate son of Fresco, Azzo VIII’s bastard son, was named heir. But Azzo also had two brothers, Aldobrandino and Francesco, who were excluded from the succession.²⁰ Aldobrandino was resigned to his fate, but on the contrary Francesco reacted by gathering troops and defeating Fresco’s militia in the Polesine. Notwithstanding this reversal, Fresco still succeeded, with the help of Bologna, in entering Ferrara and occupying it in Folco’s name. It is important to point out that, at the time of Azzo’s death, Aldobrandino and Francesco had already appealed to Pope Clement V to enforce their rights. Importantly this served to project the local issue of the Este succession into a much wider dimension involving the political balance across Northern Italy, with Milan still in ferment between the rival Della Torre and the Visconti factions, and Venice as the unrivalled maritime power which had now also set its sights on the terraferma and more specifically on Ferrara, just south of the Veneto. In short, Aldobrandino and Francesco’s appeal to Clement V offered the Church an opportunity to re-establish itself by finally dominating Ferrara, which had belonged to the Papal States since 1278 but had never really been subject to the full sovereignty of the Holy See because of the sharp and lasting quarrels with the Este. Fresco, on the other hand, turned to Venice and in the summer of 1308 granted them wide-ranging economic and commercial privileges.

The struggle between papal and Venetian forces raged throughout 1308 and the latter mounted a fierce defence of Castel Tedaldo, outside Ferrara, where Fresco had taken refuge, and other nearby places.²¹ Each day brought further reasons for the church to intervene, also on spiritual grounds with papal censures that inevitably fell on Venice. Finally, it became apparent that Venice would prevail and the Holy See would be incapable of imposing its sovereignty on the city that it already held, but only on paper. This was the decisive moment: the pope, in a bull proclaimed from Anagni on 27 March 1309, announced a crusade against Venice and issued an interdict on the city and excommunicated its inhabitants who were charged with heresy.²² The supporters of the pope gathered from numerous Italian cities to form a considerable army able to threaten the Venetians in Castel Tedaldo. The collegati, as they are repeatedly called by Luciano Chiappini,²³ who knows most about the event, soon got the upper hand. Castel Tedaldo fell and the Venetians were defeated in a move that, by early 1310, sealed the first full dominion of the Holy See over Ferrara. Between 5 and 28 March 1310, the entire population of Ferrara was obliged to swear allegiance to the Church. This period ended dramatically in a popular uprising in 1317, which heralded the return of a new generation of Estensi²⁴ who were also destined to undergo an inquisitorial process and eventually be condemned by John XXII as “manifest heretics” between 1320 and 1324.²⁵ This self-defined crusade was therefore successful but demonstrated quite clearly its true nature as a political war undertaken against a city whose rulers had never clashed with the papacy, that was never pro-imperial, and was instead known as a “daughter of the Church,” a constant bulwark of Christianity in the East.

The crusade against Venice was, in the last analysis, a war for territorial supremacy in which questions of faith played no part and it formed an effective precedent when, shortly afterwards, John XXII, who became pope in 1316, would attempt to destroy the Visconti and the other leading and rival lordships in Northern Italy. In a struggle that was really between the papacy and the Empire, the presence of strong—and usually Ghibelline—nuclei of seigneurial powers was particularly alarming to the interventionist pope who started to forcefully insist on the need to end those “tyrannical” regimes which he regarded as aberrant. This political action took the form of imperious interventions against the city states and their overlords, ranging from trials for heresy, the imposition of spiritual sanctions²⁶ and, lastly, the summons of the crusade. In addition, John XXII sent to Italy as apostolic legate, his nephew Bertrand du Puyet (Bertrando del Poggetto in Italian),²⁷ who set up base in Bologna, the nerve centre of the whole of central-northern Italy.

The repressive machine set in motion by Avignon moved with confidence against Milan; from their pulpits the bishops of Asti and Como pronounced excommunications against Matteo Visconti, on 4 January 1318, and then, on 6 April, against Matteo Visconti, Cangrande della Scala of Verona and Passerino Bonacolsi of Mantua, who were all anathematized because their Ghibelline affiliation was deemed a heresy to be eradicated both as a concept and as a political construction.²⁸ What particularly irritated the pope was the burning question of the archiepiscopal seat of Milan, from which his loyal ally from Avignon, Cassono della Torre, had been excluded and replaced by Matteo’s son, Giovanni Visconti. Yet the pope’s rejection of the latter remained ineffective because the legate Aicardo of Camodegia was not even allowed to enter the city which rallied in defence of its lord. But John XXII, who already had King Robert of Anjou on his side, managed to involve Philip of Valois, who arrived from France in June 1320, although his forces were no match for those of Galeazzo Visconti.²⁹

While the clash between the Guelf followers of Della Torre and Visconti moved to Genoa, which was part of the Milanese state at the time, Pope John XXII doubled down by issuing new bulls of excommunication against Matteo, Cangrande and Passerino, and also instructed Matteo to come to Avignon in order to beg for pardon. The elderly ruler was careful to avoid doing so, but in 1321 he was sentenced in absentia which by the following December had turned into the more serious accusation of heresy. On 14 May 1322 the court of the inquisition condemned Matteo as a heretic on charges—based on rumours—of denying the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the body, being a follower of Dolcino of Novara, having relations with the Devil, casting spells, being descended from a heretical mother and grandmother, having venerated the memory of the tyrant Ezzelino da Romano, being in correspondence with Spanish Muslims, having mocked the clergy and raped many women. Lastly, he was even accused of having practised the alleged necromantic arts of Dante Alighieri.³⁰

As Sylvain Parent has written, these accusations of heresy were habitually used by John XXII as political and public relations tools in order to demonise his enemies.³¹ Indeed, it laid the grounds for the drastic steps taken in Asti, in the winter of 1322/23, when Bertrand du Puyet was inspired by the pope to call a crusade that granted the same indulgences as for the Holy Land and promoted preaching and fund raising all over Europe.³² However, above all, the crusaders may perhaps have been attracted by the wealth of Milan.³³

The expedition that left from Piacenza on 25 February 1323, after Matteo Visconti’s death the year before, was led by Bertrand himself who was soon joined by the Spaniard Ramon de Cardona; following the arrival of Della Torre and his supporters, the plan was to attack the city of Milan from the north-east. Having countered an offensive by Marco, Matteo’s son, at Vaprio, the crusaders established their headquarters at Monza, hoping to attack Milan.³⁴ By mid-June, the supporters of the Church laid siege to the city, while the imperial vicar, the count of Märstetten, came to the aid of Galeazzo Visconti with an army of German mercenaries. The situation stagnated and by late July, given the impossibility of entering Milan and in view of the despondency that was undermining his supporters, Ramon de Cardona decided to retreat to his base at Monza. Marco Visconti came hot on his heels and, in turn, then laid siege to Monza. The positions had been reversed. The stalemate lasted for some months until, in February 1324, de Cardona tried to break through the Visconti lines and clashed with Marco’s troops in a furious battle fought again in the area around Vaprio. The crusaders had the worst of it but they struggled on until 10 December 1324.³⁵ This date marks the end of John XXII’s crusade, even if the war was certainly not over because subsequent events, particularly the onset of rivalries within the Visconti family between Galeazzo, Azzone and Marco and the shift of the main action to Genoa, Tuscany and Emilia, reveal a rapidly changing picture, one that was more dispersive compared to the start and, therefore, lies outside the scope of this chapter.

Now we must turn to the anti-Viscontean activities of the 1360s. At that time the Milanese state was led by Bernabò Visconti, who found himself facing the extremely capable Cardinal Albornoz in his attempt to reconquer the Papal States that had fragmented between the 1330s and 1340s. In 1361, in order to motivate and encourage the fight against Bernabò, Pope Innocent VI resorted to the usual panoply of accusations already used forty years earlier by John XXII against Matteo: Bernabò was accused of heresy for having helped Francesco II Ordelaffi of Forlì, for having posed as emperor before the archbishop of Milan, for having trampled on ecclesiastical liberties and so on and so forth, up to the actual moment of papal excommunication. This game, played on an international chessboard, also involved the Carraresi, Estensi and Scaligeri families, all vying for the favour of the German emperor and the king of Hungary.³⁶ The army raised by the pope and led by Albornoz defeated the Milanese near Bologna in the summer of 1361, but this was not decisive because, although Bernabò was condemned again in 1362 by Urban V and made the target of a crusade in July 1363, he managed to stagger on, relying on various sources of aid and alliances, until a peace was reached in 1364 which was not entirely honourable for the papacy.

The same happened again in 1368 when the opportunity arose through a Visconti attack on the area around Mantua to which Urban V responded by listing Bernabò’s crimes and calling a new crusade. Emperor Charles IV of Bohemia intervened in support of the pope, but the campaigns in Emilia, Lombardy and the Veneto were conducted badly and turned into a sort of river war around the Po and the Adige. Indeed, the rivers proved to be the real tipping point. The confederates and the imperial troops broke the banks of the Po in order to flood the Visconti army, but the ploy backfired and they were themselves surrounded by water. The Veronese did the same with the Adige when Charles IV attacked them. Everything became wretchedly bogged down in a quagmire of huge swamps which symbolically represented the hopelessness of the situation. Milan continued to exercise its hegemony over the medium-sized and small lordships of the Po valley: the Este, Gonzaga, Carrara and Scaligeri.³⁷ What is more, this also showed that if an anti-seigneurial crusade were ever to be fought, it could only hope for success within the confines of the Papal States.

In the case of Francesco Ordelaffi of Forlì, it is not possible to talk of heresy on a doctrinal level. In Forlì, for example, he enjoyed excellent relations with the Franciscans, was devoted to the memory of Blessed Giacomo Salomoni, granted protection to the sisters of the Penitenza della Ripa, and was sympathetic to the Carmelitan community in the St. Pietro neighbourhood of Forlì.³⁸ However, as a proud man inclined to use force, Francesco followed the example of the Ghibelline champion Guido da Montefeltro and opposed the temporal dominion of the popes with determination. He benefited from the unconditional support of his fellow citizens, also because he tried to break the economic monopoly of Florence that was a burden on Forlì. It is also worth adding that it is difficult to make a balanced assessment of his role because he was generally loathed by chroniclers, above all the Anonimo Romano.³⁹

Francesco’s aversion to the power of the Church, which strongly limited his dominion over Forlì, Cesena, Castrocaro, Forlimpopoli and Bertinoro, led him to accumulate as many as four excommunications, which were imposed between 1335 and 1355 by Benedict XII, Clement VI and Innocent VI.⁴⁰ It was inevitable that such an antagonistic policy would lead him to forge a natural alliance with the Visconti. As part of this network of local alliances he was supported by the Manfredi of Faenza, but the Calboli, who held various positions in the Apennines around Forlì, remained implacable enemies.

These repeated clashes with the papacy resulted in a crusade against Ordelaffi and the Manfredi which was called, soon after his election, by the warlike Innocent VI on 17 January 1356 and was accompanied by the well-known sequence of accusations and incriminations.⁴¹ The crusade was preached in Romagna, at Bologna, in the ecclesiastical provinces of Grado and Aquileja, in Germany and Hungary, and the same plenary indulgence was granted as for a crusade to the Holy Land. The response to the mobilisation was given mainly in the form of alms in order to fund a mercenary army. On Francesco’s side there were only Giovanni and Guglielmo Manfredi of Faenza, who would soon withdraw, and Bernabò Visconti who would eventually leave Francesco completely alone. It is true that Venice gave some support to Francesco Ordelaffi, while banning the preaching of the crusade within the lagoon, since it feared that a papal victory might prejudice its position towards Padua which was supported by Louis I of Hungary, captain general of the crusade.

The campaign was led on the field by Galeotto Malatesta and Malatesta Ungaro, together with Roberto Alidosi of Imola. Military operations began in the spring of 1356, although initially no major conflicts took place. Only after a new preaching of the crusade by Innocent VI in January 1357 did the key event of the entire campaign occur: the fall of Cesena on 21 June 1357, despite the heroic defence of Cia degli Ubaldini, Francesco Ordelaffi’s wife.⁴² In order to weaken his enemy further, the pope even called a crusade against the mercenary company led by the German Konrad von Landau who was then in Ordelaffi’s service.⁴³ Between 1358 and 1359, on instructions from Avignon the office of apostolic legate passed from Albornoz to Androin de la Roche, but the latter proved incapable and Albornoz returned at the beginning of 1359 in a move that would prove decisive.

With Francesco now in extremis, abandoned even by the German mercenaries, on 4 July 1359 Albornoz was able to enter Forlì and oust him. However, in an unusual turn of events for a crusade against Islam or real heretics, a political solution was offered: Forlì and Cesena would be removed from Ordelaffi’s control, but he was granted permission to retain the smaller centres of Forlimpopoli and Castrocaro.⁴⁴ However tenaciously pursued by Innocent VI, the proof that this campaign had by now become a “rearguard” crusade comes from an unexpected source: namely, Chapter 24, Book III of the Constitutiones Aegidianae which were issued in 1357 by Cardinal Albornoz. At the very moment of laying siege to Cesena, therefore, Albornoz wrote a juridical text in which he clearly expresses his inclination to regard the instrument of the crusade as outmoded and proposes more flexible alternative strategies to the massive and ideological use of force.⁴⁵

The Chroniclers

While there are those who argue that the Italian crusades were waged in response to the need to defend the Church and the faith, that the only interpretation allowed by contemporary sources reflects broad support for the papacy, and that the silent majority were convinced in their approval of the decisions taken in Avignon, this only makes sense if we limit ourselves to curial propaganda or to works of an apologetic nature. Closer to the truth are those who, like Pirani, assert that instead the canonical trials and crusades had the effect of stirring up feelings of hostility towards the church in Italy, as evinced by poets, polemicists and chroniclers.⁴⁶

Before turning to the chroniclers, we need only consider the emblematic stances taken by three eminent writers in the Italian canon, Dante, Petrarch and Franco Sacchetti.⁴⁷ For Dante, although much more could be said, it is enough to note the powerful invective, expressed by St. Peter, against the crusades waged by Christians to the detriment of other Christians in Canto XXVII of Paradise: “It was never our intention that one part/ of Christ’s fold should be seated on the right/ of our successors, and the other on the left/ ‘nor that the keys entrusted to my keeping/ should become devices on the standards/ borne in battles waged against the baptized.”⁴⁸ The meaning is quite clear and needs no further explanation.

But an acute condemnation of the harsh methods of Avignon also crops up in Francesco Petrarch’s work and is perhaps not only due to his devotion to Dante. Emilio Pasquini has singled out three eloquent Petrarchan sonnets dedicated to the corruption of the Avignonese Church and its worldly vices.⁴⁹ Throughout the collection of Familiarium rerum libri there are also “flashes of Dante each time the spectre or nightmare of Avignon is mentioned,” Pasquini writes.⁵⁰ The fact that Avignon should become a spectre or nightmare for Petrarch relied on something more than mere affection for Dante Alighieri.

That this anti-Avignon polemic showed a tendency to grow into more of a literary topos is undeniable, but on the other hand it is equally true that such commonplaces never arise from a vacuum but are always based on aspects of reality. For example, in 1365 Franco Sacchetti expressed his indignation concerning the reprehensible renunciation of the war in the Holy Land in order to make peace with the Turks and, if anything, wage war against other Christians.⁵¹

Leaving aside literary texts it is useful to observe how these painful sentiments, expressed in vaguer forms, moderated by lukewarm support, disenchantment, reticence and a veiled distrust of papal resolutions, also appear in the chronicles which, although marked by individual and inevitably partisan viewpoints, nonetheless reveal the ideas and mentalities of an era more faithfully than any other narrative source. One method of verifying this is to search for the sort of lofty vocabulary, such as officium crucis, negotium crucis, crucesignati, militia Christi—or “crusaders” (crociati), if the chronicle is in vernacular—that inevitably abounds in the narration of the eastern crusades, giving them legitimacy and also ennobling them in the eyes of readers. Let’s limit ourselves to three examples. One for the thirteenth, one for the fourteenth and one for the fifteenth centuries. According to the chronicler Tolosano di Faenza, a prominent author on the crusades,⁵² the crusaders of the East depart signum sancte cruces levantes or signo sancte crucis intus et foris signati.⁵³ According to Riccobaldo da Ferrara, in the fourteenth century, those who fight to free Jerusalem are the Christicolae crucesignati.⁵⁴ By Patrizio Ravennate, in the early fifteenth century, the fighters in the Holy Land are defined as gens christicola or Christi fideles.⁵⁵ As regards the political sympathies of these sources, the first, Tolosano, is pro-papal, while the second is pro-imperial. The third author does not show any specific political tendency.

This is exactly the kind of terminology that is lacking in descriptions of the crusades in Italy, for which much more common or even dismissive words, expressions and phrases are used, more consonant to military campaigns and ordinary wars. The above-mentioned Riccobaldo da Ferrara does not even mention the fact that the war of 1308–1310 was a crusade⁵⁶; the Benedictine Niccolò da Ferrara, as known as Bartolomeo, scrupulously informs us in his Polihystoria that Clement V “preached the Cross against the Venetians,” but afterwards immediately clarifies that this was for political reasons. However, he also condemns the duplicity of churchmen that, in his view, emerged with all its contemptible qualities when the victor Francesco d’Este temporarily ceded power over Ferrara to the papal legate Arnaud de Pellegrue who, betraying this trust, was careful not to return it to him. As for the narration of events offered by Niccolò, the term “crusaders” never once appears. For him, the armies sent by Clement V are “the Legate’s people,” a league of “Ferrarese, Bolognese and Romagnols,” the generic “people of the Roman Church,”⁵⁷ and so forth. The later Chronicon Estense takes a similar stance by almost copying Niccolò, even though it uses Latin. Clement V, it writes, “had the cross preached against the Venetians” (fecit predicari crucem contra Veneticos) but the combatants in this sacred cause are still described as “Bolognese and Romagnols” (Bononienses et Romandioli) and the troops under the crusade commander, Lamberto da Polenta, are only described as “the whole of his army, along with great many Ferrarese” (totus exercitus suus et cum magna quantitate Ferariensium); furthermore, the damages were extensive and the mills were destroyed “because of the aforementioned war” (propter guerram predictam).⁵⁸ War not crusade. What is more it was war that severely harmed the economy of Ferrara. If we move south from Ferrara to the Marches for the crusades of the 1320s, nothing changes. In Marco Battagli the typical terms used to indicate crusading activities are not found at all and what should be battles for the faith are turned into a war of conquest by the Malatesta to the detriment of the Montefeltro, furthered “with the help of the supreme pontiff” (summi pontifices auxilio) and implemented “with the support of the Church” (cum favore ecclesie).⁵⁹ Another chronicler, the mysterious and elegant Patrizio Ravennate, when describing the same events, only expresses himself in terms of “war” without any hint of crusade.⁶⁰ Similar approaches can be found in Milan and the narration of anti-Viscontean crusades is also reflected in numerous chronicles copied in various parts of Italy, although this is not the place to discuss them further. How, we should ask, did the chroniclers find it so difficult to use the same terminology that fills the papal summons to crusade? Why do those crucesignati, the Christi milites that abound in the pages of the curial documents not flow from the chroniclers’ pens? Certainly, Milan has preserved the testimonials of more than one local chronicler. For example, that of the famous Galvano Fiamma, a highly educated Dominican, a contemporary of the crusade, who left the city probably following the interdict that was imposed just before the military campaign. During the 1330s, he worked to heal the fracture between the Visconti and the Dominicans who were very active in the heresy trials against Matteo and his sons. On the other hand, however, the ecclesiological thought of Galvano Fiamma focused on rigorous theocratic positions that supported and fully justified the temporal power of the papacy.⁶¹ In the Chronica Mediolani, better known as Manipulus Florum, Galvano reconstructs the events leading up to the war, starting with the election of John XXII in 1316 which is presented as the arrival of a pope who immediately set out his theocratic programme.⁶² Galvano Fiamma is one of the few chroniclers who painstakingly informs his reader that “the cross is preached against Matteo” (Contra Matthaeum Crux praedicatur).⁶³ However, despite this premise, at the height of the narration of the years from 1322 to 1324 the term crucesignati appears only once. The crusaders of Ramon de Cardona are described as “knights and other armed men” (milites et alii viri armati), “many knights” (milites multi), “knights of the Church” (milites Ecclesiae), “army of the Church” (exercitus Ecclesiae), “most mighty army” (potentissimus exercitus) and the like.⁶⁴ As for the anti-Viscontean crusades of the 1360s, Galvano’s text, which was continued by another writer after his death in 1344, simply speaks “of various wars” (de diversis guerris) and nothing more.⁶⁵ In short, Galvano Fiamma’s differentiates between John XXII’s crusade and that of Urban V.

A similar stance is taken by Pietro Azario who, even though he came from a Ghibelline family and had served the Visconti regime on various occasions, certainly cannot be said to be a partisan of Milan. His point of view has the merit of being in constant touch with ordinary people, whose moods and feelings he reports very effectively.⁶⁶ So also for Azario, the crucesignati who attacked Milan are referred to in clerical terms as “ecclesiastics,” or with a political spin as “Guelfs” fighting, of course, “for the Guelf side” (pro parte guelfa).⁶⁷ The presumed sacrality of the crusade does not emerge from this author’s writings either. The later Annales Mediolanenses retrace the same ground.⁶⁸ Also in this very detailed text the term crucesignati is only mentioned once.⁶⁹ For the rest, the divisions of crusaders are exclusively and repeatedly described as “army of the Church” (exercitus Ecclesiae), “great army” (exercitus magnus), “wonderful army” (exercitus mirabilis), or “army in the service of the Church” (exercitus in servitium Ecclesiae),⁷⁰ while the launch of the crusade is recounted as follows: “Then the war of Monza started, which was worse than all the other wars, and lasted twenty-two months” (Tunc guerra de Modöetia incoepit, quae fuit pejor omnibus aliis guerris, et duravit vigintiduobus mensibus).⁷¹ War or worse than war, not crusade. This author was under no illusion.

This same disillusionment can also be found in the chronicles of the last crusade included in this analysis, that against Francesco II Ordelaffi. The exception is represented by the Anonimo Romano, a chronicler of considerable profundity and a contemporary observer, who talks quite naturally about crusade and shows no hesitation in calling the men who make up the papal troops “crusaders.”⁷² Although the Anonimo Romano is not a papal propagandist, on this occasion he is certainly closer to the aims of the Church than to those of Francesco Ordelaffi whom he clearly opposes. All the other chroniclers examined instead show quite a different tendency. The Florentine Matteo Villani, while not a supporter of Francesco Ordelaffi, is very bitter in his description of the preachers of the crusade: they are only profiteers, in his opinion, intent on accumulating treasure; equally severe is his judgement of the commanders of the crusade—only a “war” in his words—who are deceivers and traitors, and deserve no praise.⁷³ Closer to the actual location of the crusade are the Annales Caesenates, a contemporary chronicle with a moderately pro-papal and anti-imperial stance, which reduces the clash between Francesco Ordelaffi and Albornoz to a trial of strength of a military nature, avoiding any reference to a spiritual enterprise such as crusade.⁷⁴ Moreover, the only time that the Annales Caesenates use the unequivocal expression oficium crucis, they do so to state that this type of crusade was frequently called by John XXII, after which the chronicler immediately notes that “he accumulated an incalculable amount of money” (hic inumerabilem pecuniam cumulavit),⁷⁵ thereby allowing the reader to imagine a link between those crusades and the pope’s infamous cupidity.

There is quite an abundance of other relevant sources on the crusade against the Ordelaffi that support the conclusions mentioned above. The Chronicon Ariminense, for example, never expresses itself in terms of crusade or crusaders, but always resorts to toned-down terms like “people of the Church,” “soldiers,” “host.”⁷⁶ This is demonstrative. If the anti-Ordelaffi crusade had been seen on a par with a crusade in the East, why would the anonymous pro-Malatestian chronicler not have used a heroic-type terminology which would only have brought glory and future spiritual elevation to his lords involved in the campaign? Even those chronicles no longer contemporary to these events, like Patrizio Ravennate,⁷⁷ ser Baldo Branchi from Rimini, Leone Cobelli of Forlì and also the Annales Forolivienses limit themselves to using the usual generic terms, indicative of a normal conflict motivated by a desire for supremacy.⁷⁸ Cobelli’s text is very interesting and he writes of the crusade “that it was ordered to give money, and in God’s name this was done and a great army was ordered.”⁷⁹ Therefore, more than ideals, money was the real driver of the action. Indeed, money was ordered to be given. Better contiguity cannot be found than with the Bolognese chronicles contemporary to these events, such as that by Pietro and Floriano Villola who, regarding the second preaching of the crusade, which happened in 1357 in the cathedral of Bologna, wrote: “A huge crowd took it [the cross]: almost no man or woman was left who had not taken it in the city and contado. They collected a large sum of money. Everyone took [the cross] with cash, no one went in person; and this means they wanted it for money, as is the custom of the Church.”⁸⁰ Money again. Money that was used to enrol mercenaries to send on crusade, while no one went in person.

Conclusions

The king has no clothes as the famous saying goes. The crusade has no clothes, we might echo. If the chroniclers in any way reflected current sentiments, this was the perception of many who by necessity were not always, and by definition, enemies of the curia. This is the perspective that emerges from a verification of the terminology used by western chroniclers for both the crusades in the East and all the others, many of which were directed against Christians. The terminology, which conceals mental and psychological attitudes, highlights a clear distinction between the two types of endeavour, the one in the Orient and that against other Christians, and reserves crusading terminology for the first while describing the others simply as “war.” This, as I repeat, is based on contemporary witnesses, namely considerably earlier than the development of the modern apologetic and celebratory tradition of the Eastern Crusades.

On the other hand, even works like those of Michael Markowsky and Benjamin Weber confirm that terms like cruciata or crucesignatus were adopted, starting from Innocent III, to consciously valorize and legitimise the wars against the heretics and political enemies.⁸¹ Yet even then, the papacy often felt the need to connect those to the wars in the Holy Land, or to publicly specify that those wars were equated to crusades in the Holy Land, and specifically to the first paradigmatic one, which paradoxically testifies the weakness of that status.