Plans to use the mendicant orders as preachers of the cross in a systematic manner could not have been made until the late 1220s, when the two orders had become established throughout the whole of Christendom; in addition, Pope Gregory IX does not seem to have been convinced of the friars' usefulness and reliability as papal agents until after they had shown themselves to be faithful followers of the papacy during the struggles between the pope and the emperor in Italy at the end of the 1220s. This chapter, therefore, investigates the crucial role which Gregory IX, then Cardinal Ugolino of Ostia, played in supporting the two orders' international expansion during the late 1210s and early 1220s and how, as pope, he began to involve the friars as papal agents against Frederick II during the emperor's first excommunication.

Gregory IX and the growth of the Franciscan order

Until 1217 the Franciscans had hardly stuck their noses outside the Italian peninsula. Some friars had been on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in the early 1210s, during which they may have founded a few small communities in Northern Spain, but that was all. Nevertheless, the leaders of the order began to develop plans to capitalize on the growing popularity they had acquired on home ground by starting a conscious policy of international expansion. At the Franciscan general chapter of 1217, it was decided to send contingents of friars to Spain, France, Germany, Hungary, and the Holy Land. Francis himself wanted to join the brothers who went to France, but was stopped from going there by Cardinal Ugolino of Ostia, who was later to become Pope Gregory IX.