Sixth Crusade
The Excommunicated Crusader
Frederick was hardly out of the harbor before those on board his own ship began to fall ill. The Landgrave of Thuringia was sick before he left and was now near death. Then Frederick himself took sick. Malaria is a terrible, wasting disease and requires complete rest. His advisors insisted the Emperor put in to port. After three days at sea, he agreed, and his ship docked at Otranto.
Frederick immediately sent word to the Pope to explain what happened, but Gregory would have none of it. He excommunicated Frederick on the spot. The years of repeated delays had finally caught up with him.
Most of the fleet proceeded on without the Emperor. By the time he recovered, it was too late in the year to sail, but he did not let a little thing like excommunication deter him. Frederick assembled a second army the following spring and finally left on June 28, 1228. When Gregory heard that Frederick had gone on Crusade anyway, he promptly excommunicated the Emperor a second time, for setting out without having received absolution for the first sentence. This bothered Frederick no more than had the first one.
His illness in 1227 had serious consequences, nevertheless. For one thing, a great many of his soldiers were genuinely troubled by following an excommunicated leader, and many of them turned around and went home at the first opportunity. So when he finally arrived in Palestine, his army was much smaller than he had intended it to be.
Equally serious, his wife Yolanda had in the meantime died as a result of giving birth to their son. With the Queen dead, Frederick no longer had a claim to the throne of Jerusalem, or at least not according to the barons of Palestine. Being Frederick, he would of course insist on having his say in any case. As that aspect belongs more to the history of Outremer, I shall concentrate here on the Crusade itself.