Muslims in the Horizon of Thomas Aquinas

Lucera and Decline of Christian Influence

Julie Taylor notes that “the transfer of the Sicilian Muslims resulted in the dislocation and decline of the Christian population at Lucera and in the surrounding area. Bells from at least one church were taken down and placed inside the castle that Frederick had built at Lucera. Unable to levy the tithe on Muslims, the bishop was described as living in poverty in 1296. Frederick’s call for the restoration of the Lucerine church in his last will and testament points to the extent to which Christian life had deteriorated.” J. P. Lomax explains that Pope Gregory IX charged Frederick of not protecting the churches from the destruction and profanity of Muslims. “We excommunicate and anathematize him because in the Kingdom churches consecrated to the Lord are destroyed and profaned.”

Pope's Hostility

The popes held deep-seated hostility towards the Emperor, particularly due to his challenge to the papal political authority, his establishment of a large Muslim population in Italy's core, merely 200 miles from Rome, and his incorporation of many Muslims into his military forces. The Emperor had seized the pope's affluent domains in Southern Italy and Sicily, disputed their power to nominate bishops, and completely subverted their principles of crusades and forced conversions. To Lomax “Muslim Lucera served as a metaphor for Frederick’s rejection of the papal ideal of crusades…” Instead of engaging in crusades against the Muslims and converting them by force to Christianity, the Emperor trained, armed and employed them against the central Christian authority, the popes, and their most reliable clients, the Lombard League. Frederick and his family fought almost all popes from Gregory IX (died in 1241) to Boniface VIII (died in 1303) with the help of their Muslim regiment. To the popes, Frederick had adulterated Christendom and weakened the Christian commonwealth and community of baptized from within while jeopardizing the moral authority and political autonomy of the papacy.  According to Lomax, “The bitter and inflammatory rhetoric with which the popes consistently assailed the Muslims of Lucera, and often their royal masters, reveals the depth and character of papal animosity.” The Muslim colony of Lucera had shaken the papal curia, “Gregory truly feared Frederick’s Muslim subjects, who represented a special kind of threat to the well-being of the papacy.”

Pope Gregory IX

Pope Gregory IX urged Frederick to “shatter’ the `presumptions’ of these Muslims so that they would dare not disturb the hearts of God’s faithful even a little, `especially since particular injury will seem to be done to our Redeemer if the sons of Belial, who are bound by the shackle of perpetual servitude, assail the sons’ of light within our borders or damnably imagine themselves to be equal to them in privileges.” The Pope established a special Dominican mission to convert Muslims of Lucera. In reality, the mendicant orders owed much to Gregory IX and served his religious and political agendas, especially against Frederick II, to the best of their abilities. They were considered the special protégé of the papacy. St. Thomas would join the Dominican Order later on in his early youth. Gregory IX demanded the Emperor support the Dominican mission with material swords. He urged him to terrorize the Muslims to absolute servitude and to protect the faith of neighboring Christians from the Muslim menace. The conspicuous presence of Muslims just 200 miles from Rome, with so much religious freedom and so many privileges, was a thorn in the side of many popes. They were furious that some of the closest and most trusted allies and advisors of the Emperor were either Muslims or ex-Muslims. “Uberto Fallamonaca is said to have been of Muslim ancestry, and became one of Frederick's closest advisers.”

Bone of Contention

The Muslims of Lucera were the bone of contention between the two sovereigns. Pope Gregory was as ambitious, fearless, and power-hungry as Frederick. He believed that his spiritual domain entitled him to universal political authority, and he hated Frederick for disputing such a Christendom-wide control. To Frederick’s historian Ernst Kontorowicz, Gregory was a "tiara-crowned, papal Imperator,” "drunk with hate." David Einstein observed that Gregory possessed a "fearless will and dynamic force of immeasurable power." Gregory’s universal hegemonic designs were foiled by Frederick with the help of Muslim soldiers, and he demonized them all over the Continent. To Gregory, Frederick and his Muslim soldiers were the epitome of Satan incarnate while the Emperor and his Muslim mercenaries thought otherwise; the Muslims considered the Emperor a secular and nominal Christian.

The nineteenth-century historian Joseph Francois Michaud described Frederick and Gregory as "both animated by boundless ambition, jealous to excess of their power, implacable in their revenge and always ready to employ the arms which the church or fortune placed in their hands." To Frederick, Pope Gregory was an evil manipulator and enemy of true Christianity. After his excommunication, Frederick claimed that "from him [Gregory IX] in whom all men hope to find salvation of body and soul comes evil example, deceit, and wrongdoing.” The Muslim chroniclers described Frederick as a secular ruler, bent on acquiring material gains and not believing much in the Christian faith. He was a cultural Christian defending the Christian faith and gospel whenever it suited his political interests.

Crusade against Frederick II

Gregory IX died in 1241 and his successor Pope Innocent IV declared a crusade against Frederick in 1245. The infidel Saracens’ presence in the heart of Italy and their satanic Jihad against the Pope and Christendom were among the supposed main reasons for the crusade. At the death of Frederick in 1250, the Muslim colony of Lucera and the Muslim battalion of Frederick’s army were still haunting the papal curia. Aquinas, who had joined the Dominican Order by now and had traveled a thousand miles to Paris, could not have been ignorant about the huge Muslim presence in the neighborhood of Aquino and the crucial role Muslims played in the army of the Emperor.

The Favorite of Frederick II

Lucera was indeed Frederick’s favorite place. David Abulafia well summarises the situation: “There is no doubt that Frederick came to like the place. Later, papal taunts at Lucera's very existence endeared the Saracen colony still more to Frederick. In the 1230s a fine palace was built there, and excavations have revealed the luxurious life of its occupants in the thirteenth century. Whether it was Frederick II or one of his successors who delighted in Chinese celadon ware and other Eastern ceramics it is impossible to say. But it must be assumed that the palace at Lucera was recognizably oriental in style, with its harem, its Muslim sentries and Eastern exotica amid the decor. For Frederick, of course, this was no real departure: the palaces at Palermo in which he had spent his childhood were also modeled on North African examples. What was new at Lucera was the ruler's willingness to accept that the Saracens would stay Muslim; whereas, as has been seen, William the Good discouraged open exhibition of Islam at court, Frederick, was unworried by the devotions of his Saracen servants. In the first place, he knew that they had fought hard for their faith; a hundred and fifty years of Christian rule had not converted them. They were five or ten percent of a very much larger Muslim population that had been converted or slaughtered or had left, often voluntarily, for Africa: a hard fighting core, whose military skills he could exploit. In the second place, they were his: serfs of the chamber in the same way as the Jews. They owed no other allegiance and were at his beck and call. While the Jews, skilled craftsmen and farmers, were encouraged to work in industry and specialist agriculture, the Muslims were also used as soldiers, personal servants, concubines; some attempt was made around 1240 to provide them with oxen so they could resume cultivation of the soil in Apulia. A Saracen bodyguard travelled with Frederick, even to Jerusalem on his crusade! But Saracen bodyguards had protected his Norman predecessors too. The Saracens possessed military skills, as light cavalry and archers, that could not easily be rivaled from other sources. Thus, Frederick bonded to himself the most troublesome of his subjects, by a policy extremely tough in the short term — the misery of deportation — but almost generous in the long term.” For Muslims, the Emperor was not much different than their secular Sultans.

A Vibrant Community

Lucera had a vibrant Muslim community till 1300 and played a crucial role in the imperial court of Fredrick II, his son Conard and his illegitimate son Manfred. All popes (Gregory IX, Alexander IV, Urban IV and Clement IV) issued bulls against the Muslims of Lucera, and Pope Clement IV declared a special crusade against the colony in 1268 when the Muslims supported Conardin, the grandson of Frederick. The Crusade was announced in the general chapter of the Dominican Order in Viterbo, while Thomas Aquinas was in Viterbo. Cardinal Eudes de Châteauroux, the French royal and Louis’s main crusade preacher, was assigned the preaching and recruiting task and the crusade resulted in the success of Charles of Anju’s armies against Conardin and his Muslim soldiers. The Muslims surrendered the city to Charles of Anju, making peace on mutually agreed terms. They played a major role in the military expeditions of Charles I of Anjou (King of Sicily from 1266 to 1285), especially in his Albanian and Romanian campaigns. The colony was permanently dismantled by Charles II in 1300.

Conclusion

In short, Muslims of Sicily, Lucera and Apulia loomed large in the horizons of Thomas Aquinas whose entire family including his father and two brothers served Frederick’s army along with thousands of Muslim soldiers. Thomas witnessed first-hand the struggles between the Emperor’s army and papal troops in the Abbey of Monte Cassino.