Pope Honorius III - Fifth Crusade

Fifth Crusade

The Fifth Crusade was endorsed by the Lateran Council of 1215, and Honorius started preparations for the crusade to begin in 1217. To procure the means necessary for this colossal undertaking, the Pope and the cardinals were to contribute the tenth part of their income for three years. All other ecclesiastics were to contribute the twentieth part. Though the money thus collected was considerable, it was by no means sufficient for a general crusade as planned by Honorius III.

Far-reaching prospects seemed to open before him when Honorius crowned Peter II of Courtenay as Latin Emperor of Constantinople in April of 1217, but the new Emperor was captured on his eastward journey and died in confinement.

Honorius III was aware that there was only one man in Europe who could bring about the recovery of the Holy Land, and that man was his former pupil, the Emperor Frederick II of Germany. Like many other rulers, Frederick II had taken an oath to embark for the Holy Land in 1217. But Frederick II hung back, and Honorius III repeatedly put off the date for the beginning of the expedition.

In April 1220, Frederick II was elected Emperor, and on 22 November 1220 he was crowned Holy Roman Emperor in Rome.

In spite of the insistence of Honorius III, Frederick II still delayed, and the Egyptian campaign failed miserably with the loss of Damietta on 8 September 1221.

Most rulers of Europe were engaged in wars of their own and could not leave their countries for any length of time. King Andrew II of Hungary and, somewhat later, a fleet of crusaders from the region along the Lower Rhine finally departed for the Holy Land. They took Damietta and a few other places in Egypt, but lack of unity among the Christians and rivalry between their leaders and the papal legate Pelagius resulted in failure.

24 June 1225 was finally fixed as the date for the departure of Frederick II, and Honorius III brought about his marriage to Queen Isabella II of Jerusalem with a view to binding him closer to the plan. But the Treaty of San Germano in July 1225 permitted a further delay of two years.

Frederick II now made serious preparations for the crusade. In the midst of it, however, Pope Honorius III died in Rome on 18 March 1227 without seeing the achievement of his hopes. It was left to his successor, Pope Gregory IX, to insist upon their accomplishment.

But Honorius III really had too large a task; besides the liberation of the Holy Land, he felt bound to forward the repression of Cathar heresy in the south of France, the war for the faith in the Spanish peninsula, the planting of Christianity in the lands along the Baltic Sea, and the maintenance of the impossible Latin empire in Constantinople.

Of these projects, the rooting out of heresy lay nearest to Honorius III's heart. In the south of France he carried on Innocent III's work, confirming Simon de Montfort, 5th Earl of Leicester in the possession of the lands of Raymond VI of Toulouse and succeeding, as Innocent III had not, in drawing the royal house of France into the conflict.

The most widely important event of this period was the siege and capture of Avignon. Both Honorius III and King Louis VIII of France turned a deaf ear to Frederick II's assertion of the claims of the Empire to that town.