Battle of Giglio 1241
Recorded location from Wikidata; battle sites are often approximate.
Key facts
| Year | 1241 | Wikidata P585 (point in time) |
|---|---|---|
| Era | Medieval (500–1499) | derived from year |
| Nearest landmass | At sea (nearest continent: Europe) | Natural Earth (modern borders) |
| Continent | Europe | Natural Earth |
| War / conflict | Guelphs and Ghibellines | Wikidata P361 |
| Participants | Holy Roman Empire, Kingdom of Sicily, Papal States, Republic of Genoa, Republic of Pisa | Wikidata P710 |
| Coordinates | 43.5480, 10.2190 | Wikidata P625 |
About the battle
The naval Battle of Giglio, also known as the Battle of Montecristo, was fought on 3 May 1241 between a combined Imperial, Sicilian and Pisan fleet and a Genoese squadron carrying high-ranking ecclesiastical delegates to a council summoned at Rome by Pope Gregory IX. The engagement took place in the Tyrrhenian Sea between Montecristo and Giglio and ended in a decisive victory for the forces of Emperor Frederick II.
The battle formed one of the most dramatic episodes of the second war between Frederick and Gregory IX. The papal council had become potentially decisive in a conflict that had expanded far beyond the original dispute over the Lombard League: Gregory sought the collective support of the western Church and the European monarchies against the excommunicated emperor, while Frederick regarded the proposed assembly as a partisan tribunal capable of supplying ecclesiastical and political legitimacy for his deposition. The emperor could readily prevent the clergy of the Kingdom of Sicily and much of the German episcopate from attending the projected council, allowing him to concentrate his efforts on stopping the French, English and Spanish prelates whose arrival would give the assembly its wider European weight.
Text adapted from the Wikipedia article Battle of Giglio (revision 1373257795), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: excerpted from the article lead section; shortened by selecting paragraphs and trimming at a sentence boundary; formatting and citations removed. No text added.
Nearby battles
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Other battles of the Guelphs and Ghibellines
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- Battle of Calcinato (1201) 1201
- Battle of Cortenuova 1237
- Siege of Brescia (1238) 1238
- Siege of Faenza 1240
- Siege of Viterbo 1243
- Battle of Cassano (1259) 1259
- Battle of Montaperti 1260
- Battle of Colle Val d'Elsa 1269
- Battle of Roccavione 1275
All 22 battles of the Guelphs and Ghibellines →
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