MEDIEVAL HISTORY LIBRARY

BOOK IV.

CHAPTER I.

FREDERIC II. [1215—1220.

Council of the Lateran—Regulations touching Heretics— Church Discipline—Mendicant Orders—Earl Haymond’s Spoliation—Innocent III’s Death—Honorius III Pope— Affairs of the East—Fifth Crusade—Heath of Otho II— Election of Henry. 

Two years before the coronation of Frederic, in 1213, Innocent had issued summonses for an Ecumenic Council, the twelfth, to assemble, A.D. 1215, in the Lateran, where three had already sat; and early in the month of November of that year the Fathers of the Church appeared at his bidding. This Council was attended by embassadors from the Latin Emperor of Constantinople, from the rival claimants of the Holy Roman Empire—though it is difficult to conceive the envoy of Otho, excommunicated by the Pope, and rejected, if not actually deposed by the Princes of the Empire, presenting himself otherwise than as his master’s advocate—from the Kings of England, France, Hungary, Jerusalem, Cyprus and Aragon; by the Patriarchs of Jerusalem, Antioch, and of the Maronites, with representatives of those of Constantinople and Alexandria; by 71 Archbishops, 412 Bishops, and 800 Abbots and Priors; besides deputies innumerable from princes of inferior dignity, and from single cities. The number of persons authorized to take part in the deliberations of the Council was estimated at 2,823; and such was the consequent confusion and crowds that the Archbishop of Amalfi is reported to have been crushed or trampled to death, in the entrance court, at the first congregating of this impersonation of the Catholic Church.

Innocent opened the Council with a sermon or discourse upon a text of Scripture, selecting for the occasion, the 15th verse of the 22d Chapter of St. Luke’s Gospel: “With desire have I desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.”—“That is to say,” he added, “before I die.” With similar discourses, upon different appropriate texts, and each discourse teeming with quotations from the Bible, he opened every separate session. With any extracts from these addresses, much as they were admired, it is needless to trouble the reader: though worth while, perhaps, to state that, in the opening oration, he exhorted the Fathers of the Church to become so many Maccabees: and also, relatively to the rhetorical displays, which the important subjects under discussion called forth, to record a feat by which Don Rodrigo Ximenes, Archbishop of Toledo, astonished the whole Council. He delivered a harangue first in excellent Latin, upon the rights of the papacy; which he repeated with equal fluency and correctness, in the several languages of Spain, France and Germany, for the benefit of any unlearned natives of those countries who might be present. The Fathers of the Church admiringly exclaimed, that, never, since the days of the Apostles, had one man spoken the same oration in so many different tongues.

The subjects, laid before the Council for consideration, appear to have been nine: to wit, 1st, the doctrine of the Church; 2nd, the constitution of the Church; 3rd, the forms of Divine Service; 4th, the moral conduct of the Clergy; 5th, the legal relations of the Hierarchy; 6th, the rights and duties of the several Religious Orders ; 7th, the relation of Jew’s to Christians; 8th, the contest for the Empire between Frederic the Hohenstaufen and Otho the Welf; and 9th and last, the grand object of Innocent’s solicitude, for which chiefly had the Council been convoked, the organization of a general Crusade, to be headed by the Emperor, when crowned.

Upon the first of these points, embracing the treatment of heresy, a profession of the orthodox Roman Catholic Faith, which all Christians were bound to profess, was drawn up and published. Bishops were commanded to make yearly, if not half-yearly, investigations, into the religious opinions of clergy and laity throughout their respective dioceses. Every where selecting men of indisputably sound faith, they were to interrogate them upon oath as to the existence or the suspicion of heresy in the parish. They were to call suspected heretics before them, to reason with, convince, convert, and impose penances upon them; punishing obstinate and relapsed heretics with excommunication and confiscation of property. All orthodox sovereigns were charged to banish persons so sentenced; upon failure in which duty, their subjects were freed from the tie of allegiance, and their dominions were declared transferable to more Christian monarchs. Here is, indeed, the embryo, or more, even the nascent Inquisition; but regulated according to Innocent’s original principle; viz., the protection of the sound from contagion, by the banishment of the unsound; a punishment esteemed due to what was judged wilful persistence in error; but there is neither sentence of death upon heretics, nor any injunction to deliver them over to the secular arm, unless their banishment be so interpreted. A surprising degree of leniency, when the already mentioned burnings of heretics in divers places are recollected.

With respect to the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th points, the Council merely enacted stringent laws to inforce upon the clergy the due discharge of their spiritual functions, the observance of an austere morality, as of the rules of Church discipline, and the correct, regular, and respectful performance of all the rites of religion; with one, most stringent, against pluralities. To the previous want of such laws, both Pope and Council ascribed the alarming prevalence of heresy. That the Council enjoined the maintenance of all ecclesiastical rights, privileges, and exemptions, hardly need be said; but some of its decrees for the repression of ecclesiastical abuses deserve commemoration. For instance, the hourly increasing abuse of indulgences—which, originally, relating solely to exemption from temporal Church punishments, had been extended to the alleviation of sufferings in purgatory—was, in various ways, restricted; and annual confession with sincere repentance of all sins, was made indispensable to their availableness. Monks and the secular clergy were alike forbidden to produce relics, unless duly examined and authenticated by the Church. The degrees of affinity within which marriage was forbidden by the canons of the Church, were reduced from seven to four; trial by Judicial Combat or other Ordeal was forbidden, as a presumptuous tempting of Providence; and physicians were ordered to ascertain, prior to paying a third professional visit, that the patient had confessed, in preparation for death. As the sixth point will require to be treated at some length, the seventh may be previously despatched with these four. The decrees relative to Jews merely inforced their complete subordination to Christians, subjected them to divers marks of humiliation in dress, residence, and the like, excluded them from all public offices, and prohibited, under the heaviest penalties, their usurious dealings, that is to say, lending money at interest, however moderate.

With respect to the sixth, it will be remembered, that a great number of new monastic Orders, or, to speak more correctly, of reformed, asceticized—if such a word be allowable—and otherwise modified varieties of the Benedictine Order had arisen during the early part of the twelfth century. This appeared to Innocent to have been carried to an inconvenient excess, and the Council agreed with the Pope that no more new Orders, or offshoots of Orders, should be sanctioned. In opposition to this decree, two petitions for the institution of new, peculiar, and subsequently important, Orders were presented. Dominic de Guzman, the indefatigable converter of heretics, appeared before the Council, to solicit the sanction of an Order of monks, who should devote themselves wholly to the conversion of heretics, under the name of Preaching Brothers;—into which the before-mentioned unpretending association had developed itself—and also of the Rule he had drawn up for their government. He found himself in collision or in co-operation,—which were hard to say—with another equally remarkable individual, similarly bent upon obtaining the sanction of a different, if somewhat analogous Order, the offspring of his own devout enthusiasm. This individual was the founder of the Order of Franciscans, St. Francis of Assisi.

In the beautifully, as loftily, situated town of Assisi, in the duchy of Spoleto, A.D. 1182, a son was born to a wealthy merchant, named Bernardoni. This son he carefully brought up, directing his education with a view to making him an able assistant to himself; and as his trade was chiefly with France, the French language was to be especially studied. In this the boy early acquired such proficiency, that his townsmen called him il Francese (the Frenchman). And this nickname, modified into the proper name, Francesco, gradually superseded, even in his own family, his baptismal appellation of Giovanni.

In the spring of life, Francesco, unlike his contemporary colleague or rival, Dominic, shared in all the sports and pleasures of youth; sharing in them so keenly, that, whilst he incurred the reprobation of the mature and the considerate, by his companions he was surnamed the Prince of Revels, and the Flower of Youth. To the promotion of these revels he is moreover accused of having diverted the proceeds of some of his father’s commercial operations. But even then, during this era of wild dissipation, such pleasures did not wholly engross him. He was as charitable, if not as abstemious, as Dominic, and, to the relief of the indigent, especially of lepers, he appropriated still larger portions of that wealth, which, prospectively only, he could fancy his own. As the youthful burst of exuberant animal life and spirits subsided, his early revelries lost their attraction, overpowered by intense devotion; and now his pilferings were solely devoted to works of charity and godliness. But, for these, so much did he need, and so much did he take, that his father, exasperated at what he deemed absurdly extravagant and dishonest generosity, could no longer be appeased by the more indulgent mother, and he accused his son to the city magistrates of robbing him. They, because part of the young man’s anticipations of his heritage had been allotted to the building or repairing of a church, referred the complaint to the Bishop, who, for the same reason, decided in favour of the son.

This sentence was of course unsatisfactory to the old merchant, whose wrath was, ere long, to be yet further inflamed. Francis, one day, heard a sermon upon the 9th and 10th verses of the 10th chapter of St. Matthew’s Gospel: “Provide neither gold, nor silver, nor brass in your purses, Nor scrip for your journey, neither two coats, neither shoes nor yet staves: for the workman is worthy of his meat;” and the effect, wrought upon him, was that wrought upon Peter Waldo by the injunction, “Sell that thou hast, and give to the poor.” He immediately discarded every portion of apparel, not actually essential to decency; substituting a cord, round his waist, for the ornamented girdle which then served the purpose of a pocket—to him a complete superfluity, since he thenceforward subsisted upon alms, solicited, not in money, but in broken victuals, and only when he was hungry. He then worked for two years, as a day labourer, at the building of the church, towards which he had contributed his father’s property; and, as the Wages of his labour, would again receive only the necessaries of life in kind, not the cash wherewith to purchase them; as though he conceived there were some specific taint in coin, or in pecuniary transactions. At the same time he subjected himself to every hardship he could devise, as wearing haircloth next his skin, sleeping upon the bare ground with a stone for his pillow, wallowing in the snow in winter, scourging himself with an iron chain, and other like practices.

The Bishop of Assisi, deeming all this an exaggeration of asceticism, is said to have remonstrated with the enthusiast; especially blaming his utter rejection of property, and making a duty of mendicancy. Francis humbly answered: “To me it seems harder and more arduous, besides being very hazardous, to accept property, the care of which causes numberless anxieties, provokes strife and war, and quenches our love for our neighbour.” The prelate was silenced, and the enthusiast persevered. His brothers turned him into ridicule: he bore it meekly. His father gave him curses ; and he, if the ordinary sense of the word may be thus inverted, adopted a beggar for his father, who should bless, as often as his real father cursed him.

Such eccentric actions in the son of a rich man, became topics of general animadversion. If, on the one hand, they provoked insult and mockery, on the other, they attracted admiring imitation. With those who followed his example, Francis now lived in a sort of voluntary monasticism, giving them, for the rule of their conduct, that of his own, obedience, chastity, and poverty, which he termed the main pillars of a life consecrated to God, and the salvation of the soul. But upon poverty, absolute poverty, which he called the bride of Christ, the root and queen of all virtues, he mainly insisted, perhaps because obedience and chastity were duties common to all monastic Orders, whilst his absolute poverty was a new element of monasticism, borrowed, probably, from the Poor of Lyons; a second and more durable effort to strengthen the Church from the suggestions of her enemies. Charity— a virtue to the practice of which some little property would seem nearly indispensable—charity, limited only by their means, he made an imperative duty of his associates; so literally accepting the rule, that, at a later period of his career, chancing to meet a woman in great distress while destitute of other means of affording relief, he gave her the Bible—even then in use amongst his brethren in the church—to sell. But his notion of charity comprehended, besides alms, that which the poorest may practise, namely, kindness to all men, criminals, ay, robbers and murderers, included. Another duty which he enjoined to his followers was to bear, all hardships with smiling cheerfulness, a gloomy countenance being an offence to God. In token of humility, and, possibly, as a mode of evading the determination not to sanction new Monastic Orders, he took for his association the title, not of monks, but of Fratres, or even Fraterculi Minores, (the lesser or inferior brothers,) usually Englished by Minorite Friars, albeit, from the name he bore, his confraternity is commonly called Franciscan Friars. Their numbers increasing, he sent them forth to disseminate his doctrines; which they did so successfully, that in divers places similar voluntary associations were formed.

In the year 1210, the future Saint repaired to Rome to lay before the Pope the Rule he had devised, and very circumstantially drawn out, and solicit the papal sanction of his community, under that Rule, as the Order of Minorite Friars. There was nothing so prepossessing in the appearance of the applicant, a small, insignificant­looking man, with a low, narrow forehead, shaggy eye­brows, dishevelled hair, and ragged beard, meanly, even dirtily clad, whose Rule was, in the eyes of the enlightened pontiff, an actual caricature of asceticism, that could counterbalance Innocent’s decided objection to any farther multiplication of monastic Orders. His reception of the future Saint was unfavourable, although a traditionary account of it, extant, must be rejected as improbable, because not consonant with the Pope’s character; but not omitted, being, like other historical falsehoods, illustrative of the sentiments and manners of the times that gave them birth. According to this story, Innocent’s reply to the application was: “Brother, betake thee to the swine, to whom thou bearest more resemblance than to men, wallow with them in the mire, preach to them, and subject them to the rule thou hast devised.” Francis is reported to have, as far as depended upon himself, implicitly obeyed this strange command, and then returning, covered with filth, to the consistory, to have said: “Holy Father, I have done as thou bad’st me; now grant my prayer.” And the Pope, overpowered by such obedient simplicity, is said to have now complied, regretting his taunt.

Strong evidence, indeed, would be requisite to convict Innocent III of thus idly insulting a well-meaning, if rather extravagant enthusiast, whose extravagance he could not very much condemn, since he ultimately sanctioned the Rule. What is certain is, that, although the great simplicity of his own habits and the dedication of far the larger portion of his income to acts of charity and works of piety, or of public utility, must acquit Innocent of any predilection for ecclesiastical pomp and luxury, he did object to the excessive austerity of the Franciscan code, as too much for human nature. Francis defended it from the Bible, quoting chapter and verse. In the end, he prevailed upon the Pope, not actually to constitute his Order of Minorite Friars, but to give it a provisional, temporary sanction.

Thus strengthened, Francis despatched friars as mendicant missionaries throughout Europe, and everywhere they succeeded in establishing cloisters of their Order, except in Germany, whence a ludicrous blunder is said to have occasioned their temporary exclusion. The missionaries destined for Germany had undertaken their task, without thinking it necessary to learn the language of those whom they were to address; but soon acquired the word Ja, Yes, which they found a very satisfactory answer when asked if they wanted food or shelter. But unluckily they overrated the efficiency of the serviceable monosyllable; and to a question whether they were heretics, returned the Ja, which constituted the sum total of their German: whereupon they were of course ill-used, imprisoned, and finally expelled the country.

Nor were the cloisters, dedicated to Franciscan asceticism, occupied by the stronger sex alone. At Assisi, a young, beautiful, opulent, and high-born maiden, named Clara Sciffi, was captivated by the austerities of the Minorite Rule, and, in the year 1212, devoted herself to an analogous mode of life. She was speedily joined by maids and widows, even by wives, and became the foundress of the Order of Franciscan Nuns of St. Clare. Franciscan nunneries everywhere multiplied, nearly as fast as the houses of Friars; and, as nuns could not, consistently with their vows and law of seclusion, go out a begging like friars, the friaries were ordered to share the produce of their eleemosynary collections with mendicant sisterhoods. But mendicancy was not, in the idea of Francis himself, the exclusive means of subsistence for his Order. That he had earned his own bread, as a day labourer has been seen; and the words of his Rule are that either by labour or by begging, the necessaries of life are to be procured. The nuns might therefore support themselves within their walls. The increase of Franciscans of both sexes was so rapid, that, for the purpose, it is said, of averting the consequent depopulation of Europe, the Founder instituted a class of lay Franciscans, after the manner of the lay Templars, who married and mixed in worldly affairs, but led a sort of methodistical or quaker-like life, distinguishing themselves by their plain, grey habiliments, shunning gay scenes and amusements—though these last restrictions were, under certain circumstances, dispensed with;—never bearing arms, nor, if possibly to be avoided, taking an oath.

Franciscans next proceeded, as missionaries, amongst the Mohammedans and Heathen. A company of six, who in that character repaired to Africa, were all beheaded for blasphemy against Mohammed. They were envied by those of their brethren, who either remained in useless safety at home, or had undertaken less perilous missions; and are still honoured as the first Franciscan martyrs. Their fate acted as a stimulus to him who needed none, the Order’s founder.

Trusting in the testimony, borne to the merits of his institution, by the prodigious increase of his confraternity, even whilst so imperfectly sanctioned, Francis presented himself before the Council, to solicit the positive and final establishment of his Order. He, upon this occasion, met Dominic, and the two founders of rival Orders, conceived not merely an intense respect, but a warm friendship, for each other. It has been asserted by Franciscans, but is denied by the Dominicans, that the Spaniard was so impressed, and charmed by the superior austerity of the Italian’s Rule, as to have proposed the blending of the two projected Orders into one; which Francis declined, upon the ground, that the very diversity existing between the two, by inviting individuals different in character, disposition, and station, would augment their joint usefulness. And, in truth, the idea of blending an Order, one of whose main duties was mental cultivation, to fit the brethren for their great business, viz., preaching and converting heretics, with another that professed to despise all human learning, as idle vanity, devoting whatever time could be spared from religious duties, to manual labour for the support of life, seems too preposterous to have been entertained by Dominic. Though it must not be forgotten that the Franciscans, despite their profession of ignorance, have produced many men celebrated for their learning;—can it be necessary to name Roger Bacon, Duns Scotus, or Cardinal Ximenes, as Minorite Friars?—and that, in later times, their reputation for mathematical science procured for them the somewhat heterogeneous office, of directing the military school at Brienne. But that Dominic was much and admiringly struck with the superior austerity, and especially by the poverty, which is the very basis of the Franciscan constitution, appears from the fact, that he, who had previously accepted moderate endowments of lands and tithes for his Dominicans, subsequently, if not from this moment, adopted the principle of poverty; and not only refused all offers of the kind, but restored what he had accepted, except small endowments for nunneries, as substitutes for the begging expeditions,—to nuns impossible.

The Council refused to rescind, or to violate its recently published decree, against the further multiplication of monastic orders. But, as both the Pope and the assembled prelates recognised, in the disappointed petitioners, invaluable supporters and champions of the Church, assailed as she then was by heresy, means were sought and found of evading the absolute rejection of their services. To Francis, the provisional authorization he had obtained some years back from Innocent, was confirmed and extended ; thus leaving him and his Minorites in the same uncertain position in which they previously were, though encouraged by the repetition of the partial sanction. Dominic’s project offering less difficulty because less novelty, he was advised to adopt, with slight modifications, the Rule of some existing order of monks. He complied, making choice of the austere Praemonstratensian branch of the Augustinian Canons, to whose Rule, as before said, he superadded, amongst other things, Franciscan poverty, somewhat qualified. Thus was the institution of Mendicant Friars so far sanctioned by the Council, as to insure their future existence. And, in a general point of view, this was perhaps the most important result of its assembling; for so rapidly did these two Orders increase, that, before the end of the century, Europe contained 417 Dominican and 800 Franciscan cloisters, including nunneries. The great numerical superiority of the latter is explained, by the ranks of the studious Dominicans being almost wholly recruited from amongst the higher, and educated classes, whilst those of the ruder and more enthusiastic Franciscans, were thronged by the ignorant of lower grade: thus making good the words ascribed to their founder, respecting the value of the difference between the Orders. Both, in their several ways, made good the expectations formed of them, as able and energetic supporters of the Church of Rome; and, during the whole of this century and the next, the Franciscans were the ardent, fearless teachers of Christianity, where its diffusion was attended by most danger.

But, that which Innocent deemed the most important business to be transacted, that, for which he had in fact convened the Council, was the organizing an European Crusade for the recovery of the Holy City, and the reestablishment of the kingdom of Jerusalem, such as it was under the earlier Baldwins. To this object, he held the 8th point submitted to the judgment of the assembled Church, namely the decision between the contending claimants of the Empire, indispensable, Otho’s pretensions being an obstacle to Frederic’s leading the proposed hallowed enterprise. Otho’s right was earnestly asserted by the Milanese; nevertheless the Council, as will have been anticipated, confirmed his excommunication, and pronounced Innocent’s late ward and present favourite the lawful Emperor. This preliminary step completed, the Pope, with the full concurrence of the Fathers of the Church, called upon all Christian men, of all ranks and conditions, to take the Cross. Equally with their full concurrence, he called upon all princes and nobles who did not take it, as upon all municipalities, and even villages, to equip, and during three years support, Crusaders for the expedition, in numbers proportioned to their means. The whole body of the clergy was similarly called upon to subscribe five per cent, of their respective incomes, and the Cardinals ten per cent, of theirs, towards the expenses of the Crusade, to which Innocent’s own contribution was most liberal. Finally, Messina and Brindisi were appointed as the places of embarkation for Palestine; and at one of these the Holy Father promised to join the Crusaders in June 1217, whilst a Legate should accompany and guide those who might prefer the land journey.

The remaining business of the Council related to what may, comparatively speaking, be termed the settlement of private disputes, only one of which is worth noticing here. This was the affair of the principality of Toulouse, the final decision of which the Pope had expressly reserved to this Council. Earl Raymond, with his son and his two great vassals, the Earls of Foix and Comminges, appeared before the venerated body, bringing letters from King John, of England, entreating and urging the Council, to do his brother-in-law and nephew justice. The Earls knelt to the Pope, professed their entire submission to his injunctions, and complained of their utter spoliation by Simon de Montfort. The Archbishop of Narbonne, in his anger at the insatiate rapacity of the conqueror, spoke strongly in behalf of those who had been his own, as well as that conqueror’s, victims. But it is said to have been a Chorister (Chantre) of Lyons, whose eloquence convinced the Pope that he had been completely misled and disobeyed by his Legates. Innocent was inly moved, both by the discovery that he had been deceived, and by the wrongs these princely nobles had in consequence suffered. Kindly he raised them, and declared that his commands had been transgressed; that de Montfort had no right whatever to the dominions of the Earls of Toulouse, which, even supposing Raymond VI to be guilty, belonged to his son, Raymond VII. But the Bishop of Toulouse, with other prelates of the south of France, who had been accomplices in the transgression of the papal commands, and had not the Archbishop’s motives for changing sides, spoke vehemently in favour of the actual state of the country, charged Raymond with still tolerating heretics, and intimated, if they did not declare, that, whatever the decision of the Council, they would support Earl Simon against the world. These arguments and threats, aided by de Montfort’s gold, which is reported to have been freely distributed amongst his judges, prevailed. The Council decreed, that Earl Raymond, the father, by his sinful protection of heretics, had forfeited everything he possessed, so that only as an act of charity was a bare subsistence assigned him. To his Aragonese Countess her dower was preserved; and to his son Raymond VII, the issue of his first marriage with the Queen-dowager of Sicily—though pronounced guiltless, as having been too young to participate in the offences imputed to his father —of all that father’s extensive possessions, only those situated in Provence, fiefs of the Empire, and as yet unassailed, were allotted. Innocent—dreading beyond all other evils a schism in the Church—notwithstanding his exalted ideas of the papacy, bowed to the decision; but with a reluctance that he marked by the assurances of constant favour and protection with which he dismissed the young Earl.

Some of the old chroniclers depict a scene between Innocent and Raymond the son, of which, even if it be not a little indebted to their imagination, Barrau’s version is worth extracting. Raymond VII, then about nineteen years of age, having waited upon the Pope to take leave, after the Council had dealt thus hardly by his father and himself, Innocent raised him from his knees, seated him by his side, and said: “Listen to me, my son, and if you govern yourself by my counsels you shall always do well. Love God above all, and be careful to serve him : Never take the property of others, but defend your own if any one would deprive you of it. So acting you will never want for domains. And, that you may not meanwhile be too short of lands and lordships, I give you the Comte Venaissin with all its dependencies, Beaucaire and Provence” [this last seems to be the marquesate that the Council had allotted him], “to provide for your subsistence, until the Church shall again assemble in Council. At that new Ecumenic Council you may present yourself, and justice shall then be done you, in respect of your claims against the Earl of Montfort.” “But if in the meanwhile, Holy Father,” young Raymond, in accents of entreaty, inquired, “I can expel from my hereditary domains this general and the other robbers [larrons] who have stolen them, may I pray your Holiness not to be wroth with me?” Innocent returned no direct answer, but dismissed him with these words: “Whatever you attempt, my son, may God in his mercy give you grace to begin well and to end better!”

When the Council had terminated its labours and separated, Innocent proceeded to pave the way for the eagerly anticipated Crusade, by undertaking the arbitration of dissensions and quarrels, together with the reconciliation of enemies; such broils and feuds appearing to him, if small in themselves, to be amongst the chief impediments obstructing the holy war, which he had so much at heart. The principal of these impediments he esteemed the hostilities between the rival commercial republics of Italy, and, analogous in character though different in importance, the civil war in England, complicated as it was with a foreign war, now that Prince Lewis of France headed the insurgents. In vain had Innocent, since John’s submission to Rome, commanded the French Prince to renounce his pretensions. In this matter, momentous as he felt it, he could interfere only vicariously and from a distance; but one of the last acts of his pontificate was to excommunicate Lewis and his partisans. The mediation or arbitration in Italian dissensions he undertook in person.

In Italy, Frederic’s maternal heritage had, under the regency of Constance, remained much as he found it at his majority; the broils that had so long harassed it, gradually subsiding. The insular was, however, the earliest tranquillized, portion; for, upon the continent, only in the current year, 1216, did Naples, renouncing Otho, submit to her lawful King. It was in the other parts of the peninsula that the feuds existed, which Innocent felt called upon to appease in person. In Lombardy, Milan adhered firmly to Otho, and in consequence lay under interdict; but, since she had compelled Pavia to join the League, and fancied resistance to her domination extinguished in Lombardy, her pride had been deeply wounded. Pavia, burning for revenge, had sought the alliance of Cremona, and the troops of this last city were on their march to join those of the former, when, upon the 2nd of June, 1213, they were surprised near Castiglione, and surrounded by the far more numerous combined forces of Milan, Como, Brescia, Crema, Lodi, Piacenza, and other members of the League. It was Whitsunday, and the pious Cremonese requested that the engagement might be deferred till Monday. But the Milanese, little scrupulous, eager to profit by their very superior numbers, and fearful that their enemies might receive reinforcements during any delay, instantly attacked them. The Cremonese fought with the energetic impetuosity of desperation, invigorated, perhaps, by the conviction that God must resent the refusal to reverence a holy day; and thus, after a hard struggle they gained a victory so complete, that, besides a multitude of prisoners, the Milanese carroccio itself was taken. In the ensuing autumn the Milanese suffered a second defeat, this time at the hands of the Pavians, and lost 2000 men together with their camp. But they were irritated rather than humbled, and still in arms against the partisans of Frederic and the Pope.

Hostilities were indeed rife throughout Lombardy and Tuscany. If Venice and Genoa had made peace, whether at the Pope’s persuasion or from downright weariness of a war unprofitable to both parties, Genoa was still battling with Pisa, and many minor cities with each other. Florence, just rising into wealth and power, was, how ambitious soever, too much divided internally to take any great share in these broils of town with town, or of Guelph with Ghibeline, but was equally incapacitated to assist in a crusade. These internal divisions hardly merit the name of political, arising, as they did, out of a quarrel between two great families, in which the friends and connexions of each took part. The aggravation of this old feud to the degree that thus insulated Florence, was the consequence of an attempt made the preceding year, 1215, to extinguish it, by arranging the marriage of a son of the one house, the Buondelmonte, and a daughter of the other, the Amidei. Upon the day appointed for the preliminary ceremony of exchanging rings, a matron of the house of Donati, always hostile to the Amidei, contrived to meet the Buondelmonte bridegroom, and by taunting him with the homely features of his Amidei bride, whilst exhibiting to him the matchless beauty of her own daughter, seduced him to break his engagement, at once plighting his faith irrevocably to the fair flower of the Donati. The indignant Amidei and their kinsmen the Uberti assassinated the inconstant Buondelmonte on his way to his betrothal; on either side the vindictive passions blazed out, and the whole city embraced the one side or the other. In course of time, as Frederic favoured those who had originally been wronged, the Amidei and Uberti, they became Ghibelines; which of course made the Buondelmonti, Donati, and their friends, ardent Guelphs; but, in 1216, neither party had adulterated their private animosities with extraneous sentiments.

All these various feuds, broils, and enmities, Innocent trusted, by his personal influence, to appease; turning the minds of men freely to his own chief purposes, the recovery of the Holy places and the re-establishment of the kingdom of Jerusalem. Upon this pacific mission, doubly sanctified, in the ultimate and in the immediate object, he quitted Rome; but was not to accomplish even this preliminary object. He was detained at Perugia, by illness; alike sudden and alarming. The account of his malady given by an old chronicler, exemplifies the state of medical science in the first quarter of the thirteenth century. His complaint is stated to have been, in the first instance, a tertian ague, turned, by mismanagement into a high fever; which high fever, being increased by the patient’s obstinate persistence in eating oranges, ended in paralysis and death. It must be added, however, that another contemporary writer imputes the increase of fever to indulgence of the patient’s appetite for aliments more substantial and heating, than oranges. However caused, the catastrophe took place July 16, 1216, in the fifty-sixth year of the age of this really great Pope.

Yet, great as Innocent III indisputably was, prodigiously as he extended both the spiritual authority and the temporal power of the papacy, he died a disappointed man: conscious that he had been repeatedly the dupe of his legates, that his name had served to sanction injustice, even crime ; and defeated not only as to the object nearest his heart, namely, the organization of a Crusade for the recovery of Jerusalem, but, also, in other compensatory objects, to which he had looked for solace, under those miscarriages and mortifications. His exertions in behalf of the Holy Land had, in the first instance, been baffled by Venetian policy; and the compensation he anticipated, in the healing of the great schism, the reunion of the Greek with the Latin Church, was not achieved; nay, more, the Latin Patriarchs of Constantinople, infected with the spirit, if not with the opinions of their Greek predecessors, aimed at independence of the Pope, as complete as could those schismatic predecessors. Subsequently he thwarted himself, by diverting the crusader impulse from the recovery of the Holy Land to the conversion of European Heathen and Heretics; where, again, the expected compensatory fruits eluded his grasp; neither Heathen nor Heretic appearing to be converted. And, when at length he thought his object attained, and the Crusade, which he evidently proposed to lead in person, springing into existence, he found his active career prematurely closed. With respect to his government of the Church, the generally beneficial use made by Innocent III of all church patronage, probably spared him the pain of suspecting that his extension of the right claimed by Adrian IV, of presentation under certain circumstances, had opened the door to abuses, which, under his successors, became so gross as to alienate men’s minds from the Popedom.

Upon the very day of Innocent’s decease, the Cardinals, who had attended him to Perugia, or been drawn thither by the tidings of his danger, elected as his successor the aged Cardinal-Chamberlain, Cencio di Savelli, who assumed the tiara as Honorius III. The first care of the new Pope, Was the inforcement of all the measures of his predecessor, relative to the announced Crusade; and his name as Pope is said to have enlisted many Crusaders, inasmuch as a prophecy that the Holy City should be recovered under the third Honorius was in circulation. But many were the obstacles to be overcome ere he could hope to see even the dawn of the day, upon which, with any promise of efficiency, the hallowed enterprise might begin.

In Italy, the wars, feuds, and broils, which Innocent was labouring to appease, when cut off in the midst of his exertions and his hopes, engrossed all energies. In Germany, if Frederic II, still the most dutifully obedient son of the Church, was crowned and generally acknowledged, the ex-Emperor had not submitted. He was not, indeed, at that moment, in arms against his successful rival, because involved in Archbishop Waldemar’s feuds with both this prelate’s archiepiscopal rival and the King of Denmark. Through his support of his forsworn kins­man, Otho, apparently, projected recovering some of the Slavonian territories, forfeited by his father; but, whilst a competitor, lawfully elected and crowned, still asserted a right to the throne, the new’ monarch could not be expected to leave his recently regained patrimonial kingdom, upon an expedition of uncertain length to a remote country. Moreover, all German crusading zeal had found ample and easy vent against either the Prussians and Livonians, or the Albigenses; both which Crusades were still in action. Under colour of the last, de Montfort was still endeavouring to wrest the duchy of Narbonne from his former confederate the Archbishop, and to despoil the Earls of Toulouse of the pittance left them; whilst the Earls were as desperately struggling to recover their lost principality. De Montfort, strengthened by the sentence of the Council, now claimed the support of his liege lord, King Philip, in his enterprises; whilst Philip’s son, with underhand assistance from his father, still contended for the English throne; continuing so to do even when John’s death, in October of this same year, by removing the object of universal hatred and contempt, had recalled the Barons of England to their natural allegiance, depriving the French pretender of all English partisans. Thus were the kings of neither France nor England, any more than the Emperor, in circumstances to undertake a Crusade: even if Philip’s crusading propensities had not been abundantly satiated by his share in the siege of Acre, and if Henry III had been of man’s estate. The Spanish peninsula offered the old story, warfare against the Moors, amply discharging the duty of fighting for the Cross against the Crescent. And the only European princes in a position enabling them to prepare for a Crusade, were the, little powerful, King of Norway and the King of Hungary. But even here occurred at least interruption. The attention of Andreas was diverted, if only for a short time, to the affairs of the Latin empire of Constantinople.

There the Emperor Henry had, by about a month, preceded Innocent to the tomb; not without the ever­recurring suspicion of poison: in his case, resting solely upon his age—he had not completed his fortieth year—since no one appears to have had anything to gain by murdering him. Henry left no children by either his Italian or his Bulgarian wife, and the Latin Baronage was divided as to the choice of a successor. In adherence to the already chosen race they were unanimous, but differed as to the individual to be selected. One party declared for the sister of the two deceased Emperors, Yolanthe—who had already inherited Namur from a third brother—and whose husband, Pierre de Courtenay, Comte d’Auxerre,—a French Prince of the blood, Lord of Courtenay and other French domains in right of his mother, the heiress of the Courtenays—had personally distinguished himself in the Crusade against the Albigenses. The other party preferred a daughter of Yolanthe’s, married to Andreas II of Hungary, since the murder of Gertrude von Andechs. This party proposed, by union with that country, to prevent the war, which they judged Andreas was preparing to wage against them, for the recovery of the suzerainty over Servia, his predecessors’ imperfect possession of which had been torn from them, by the Byzantine emperors, ere Latin conquest, followed by division and subdivision had quite debilitated the Byzantine empire.

Negotiations were opened in both directions; but in Hungary external influences interposed. The Pope solemnly admonished Andreas against usurping the heritage of his consort’s parents; whilst the Venetians vehemently protested against any augmentation of the power of their neighbour and rival in Dalmatia, the King of Hungary. Whether actuated by religious reverence for the supreme pontiff or by policy, Andreas declined the Byzantine crown.

Pierre de Courtenay, on the other hand, eagerly accepted the offer for himself and Yolanthe. He sold or mortgaged most of his French patrimony to procure the means of raising troops, and at the head of 140 knights, with 5500 sergeants and archers, set forth with his Countess to take possession of their empire. Unfortunately, instead of travelling by land through Hungary—perhaps distrusting his son-in-law—he applied to Venice for means of conveyance by sea to Constantinople; and, without awaiting an answer, hurried to Italy. There he first visited Rome; and delightedly Honorius crowned him and Yolanthe Emperor and Empress of the East-Romans,—but outside the walls of the Eternal city, as a guard against any possible revived claim of Byzantine sovereignty.

This coronation, A.D. 1217, was all that Pierre was destined to enjoy of his new dignity. The demands of Venice for the use of her ships, were exorbitant beyond the amount of his remaining funds: whereupon the Republic proposed to him, as, in 1202, to the Crusaders, to pay for his passage by military service. Theodore Comnenus, who had succeeded Michael as Despot of Epirus and Etolia, had recently conquered Durazzo from Venice, and she offered the new Emperor to transport him and his to Constantinople, upon condition of his first recovering Durazzo for her. He readily agreed; and the Empress, then near her confinement, was safely conveyed to her capital, where she presently gave birth to a son, named him Baldwin, and died. The Emperor, with his little army, was, meanwhile, transported to the intended scene of action, and made the promised attack upon Durazzo, but failed. The Legate accompanying him, then negotiated a convention between him and Theodore: in direct violation of which, the Greek Prince surprised and seized Pierre. He was never heard of more.

So thoroughly had Pierre’s election, with his coronation by the Pope, superseded all thoughts of the rival candidate Andreas, that, when tidings of the expected sovereign’s death or disappearance reached Constantinople, the crown was deemed the heritage of his sons. The eldest, Philip de Courtenay, preferred his county of Namur and his French patrimony, however burthened, to the more brilliant but less secure Eastern empire, and the second son, Robert, was, in his stead, called to the throne. The warlike Theodore of Epirus soon afterwards conquered the kingdom of Thessalonica from the infant son and successor of Boniface, and, at Adrianople, he also assumed the title of Emperor.

The King of Hungary, upon renouncing his pretensions to the Latin empire of Constantinople, resumed his preparations for the crusade, for which, being short of cash, he seized the dower of his widowed sister-in-law, Queen Constance. In August 1217, not long after the time appointed by Innocent, he actually began his march; accompanied by his brothers-in-law the Duke of Meran, and the fugitive Bishop of Bamberg—the Margrave of Istria had long been in Palestine—by the Duke of Austria, the Archbishop of Salzburg, and some other German princes and prelates, Casimir, one of the Pomeranian Dukes—the title now borne by the hereditary princes—led a body of Slavonian Crusaders to join him, and a small band of Norwegians followed; whilst, in western Germany, where the crusade against the Prussians and Livonians was less attractive, a kindred spirit having been awakened, a fleet of 300 vessels sailed, about the same time, from the mouth of the Rhine, for Palestine.

There, little change had occurred. In 1210, the young Queen, Maria Yolanthe, being then deemed of marriageable age, her uncle and guardian, the Baron of Ibelin, had despatched embassadors to Europe to select a candidate for her hand, who could bring with him a formidable band of Crusaders, if not raise a regular Crusade. Their choice, guided by the Pope and the King of France, fell upon Jean de Brienne, a younger brother of that Gaultier de Brienne, who, by his marriage with Tancred’s daughter, Albina, had acquired the principality of Tarento and the county of Lecce. This younger brother was a gallant warrior; he had been one of the conquerors of Constantinople, though he had gathered only laurels, not a principality, there; and he eagerly closed with the proposal of marrying the Queen of Jerusalem. But the circumstances of Europe baffled the hopes that the chosen bridegroom would be accompanied by a powerful European host; and he brought with him a small band of French knights only, when, in September, 1210, he landed at Acre; he was, nevertheless, immediately married to the Queen. 

Tyre had been satisfactorily and permanently reunited to the kingdom by the accession of Maria Yolanthe, heiress of him who had styled himself independent sovereign of that principality. Cyprus, indeed, by the death of Queen Isabel’s fourth husband, Amalric, had again been severed from it, the island falling to his son by a former marriage; but King Hugh now married Maria Yolanthe’s half-sister Alicia, Isabel’s daughter by her third consort, Henry of Champagne; and the natural political alliance of the kingdoms was strengthened by the ties of kindred. The young Queen of Jerusalem did not very long survive her marriage; but she left a daughter, named Yolanthe; and, either as guardian of his child, the baby Queen, or retaining the crown once placed upon his brow, as Guy de Lusignan had claimed a right to do, Jean de Brienne remained de facto King of Jerusalem.

He was statesman enough to perceive that, unless the earlier Crusades were renewed, the very small kingdom which he had been called to govern, could exist only by the sufferance of its Moslem neighbours. Upon undertaking the regal office, he had found the truce, concluded between Amalric and Malek el Adel, broken ; the Templars and Hospitalers, in unusual and now mischievous union, having procured the rejection of the Sultan’s proposed renewal, and actually provoking war with his son, Isa Moadham, his Lieutenant at Damascus. But King John won the Hospitallers over to his own views, which were habitually those of the Palestine magnates; and such peace being desirable to Malek el Adel’s sons, who were embroiled amongst themselves, was soon virtually, if not formally, restored. Delighted with this re-establishment of tranquillity, John had, ever since, diligently watched over the observance of the truce, and could derive no satisfaction from such an armament as that of Andreas; which, if more considerable than a band of private, crusading pilgrims, had more of that character than of a European Crusade. For small was the number of Crusaders supplied to the King of Hungary’s land armament by the Rhine fleet. As usual, it put into the Tagus; where, also as usual, the Crusaders were persuaded by the King of Portugal to pause, at least, and fight the Mohammedans with him. Only the sturdy Frieselanders, resolutely persevering in the purpose for which they had left their homes, prosecuted their voyage and joined their Hungarian and German comrades.

The Crusaders being so far united, the two kings differed as to military operations. Marauding incursions into the provinces conquered by the Saracens,—the favourite expeditions of Crusaders,—whilst they wrought as much evil to the Christians remaining there as to their masters, naturally provoking Moslem enmity towards those whom the Crusaders came to assist, left them in increased danger. Through this disagreement as to plans, the only exploit of Andreas, was, upon one occasion, to drive Malek el Adel beyond the Jordan; thus affording to all the Crusaders an opportunity to bathe in the sanctifying stream; his only works of utility were repairing the fortifications of Caesarea and building a castle. This last was just completed, when, early in the spring of the following year, 1218, he was suddenly taken ill; he declared that he was poisoned; announced evil tidings from Hungary, peremptorily requiring his presence there; and, although the Patriarch of Jerusalem, who was ordinarily invested with legatine authority, excommunicated him for deserting the kingdom, amidst the hostilities in which he had involved it, immediately took his departure. He carried home with him a daughter of the Nicene Emperor, Theodore Lascaris, for the wife of his son, Bela. But as he passed through Bulgaria on his way, he was detained in a sort of captivity, by a second Azan, till he affianced his own daughter to his captor’s son.

Only the Hungarian Crusaders departed with Andreas; his German associates remained in Palestine, a little better to perform their vows, and were speedily rewarded by the arrival of reinforcements. The Rhinelanders, who had begun their Crusade in Portugal, had proved as useful to Alfonso II, as had their predecessors to Affonso I. But no recovery of peninsular provinces could reconcile Honorius to such a perversion of their crusading vow. Earnestly he remonstrated against this desertion of the duty they had voluntarily taken upon themselves, and, although many, allured by the Portuguese monarch’s promises of lands and lordships, adhered to his service, the Pope’s exhortations prevailed with the majority. Early in the spring of 1218, re-embarking, under the command of William Earl of Holland, they reached Palestine shortly after the departure of the King of Hungary. The Crusaders now really formed such a body as, combined with the military Orders and the Palestine forces, might achieve some important object; and John, with the full concurrence of the Patriarch, adopting the revived idea of Amalric I, that the possession of Egypt was essential to the existence of the kingdom of Jerusalem, proposed to the Duke of Austria and the Earl of Holland, the invasion of that country. They assented, and the army set forth under the King’s command.

In the earlier position of Syro-Franks and Crusaders, Honorius (apparently a mild-tempered pontiff, really attached to his former pupil) had refrained from urging the newly-crowned German monarch to proceed on his promised crusade, duly appreciating his difficulties. In the spring of 1218, simultaneously with renewed activity in the East, calling for support, a change seemed to be in progress at home, that might enable Frederic to quit Germany. His competitor, Otho, still formidable even whilst quiescent, was taken seriously ill, and his malady rapidly increased. Apprehending his danger, the ex­Emperor now submitted to all the penances enjoined by ecclesiastical authority, as indispensable preliminaries to his relief from excommunication. He commissioned his brother, Palsgrave Henry—who had, seemingly, ransomed himself from the prisons of Philip Augustus—to deliver up the regalia to the unanimously elected King, acknowledged and sanctioned by the Pope, even should the King refuse to restore him the palatinate—forfeited, by sentence of the Diet, for his adherence to his brother. This done, Otho was readmitted into the bosom of the Church; and upon the 19th of May, 1218, he died.

The principal, the generally allowed impediment, to Frederic’s Crusade being thus removed, the Pope began to press for its commencement. But still Germany was not in a state to be left, even for the brief space of time required by the Coronation-Progress; and the Pope, aware that Frederic most needs be impatient for the Imperial Crown, acknowledged the reality of hindrances suffered to impede this object. They were various. Some of the princes were still refractory to his authority; some, at feud with each other. The chief of the feuds was that of Henry of Brunswick with the Duke of Bavaria, for the Palatinate of the Rhine, with which, when pronounced forfeited, Frederic had rewarded the faithful attachment of the Head of the House of Wittelsbach. In addition to this, and other internal wars, a Frenchman was in possession of some fiefs of the Empire, his right to which the Diet denied. This case arose out of the marriage of a dowager Duchess of Lorrain to the Earl of Champagne, who occupied the fiefs—her dower, probably—in her right, whilst the Diet protested against their being held by a foreigner. This is one of the first instances met with of an objection of the kind; and whether it originated in experience of the awkwardness of such double vassalage, when the two suzerains of one vassal were at war, or simply in the widowed Duchess having remarried without seeking her liege lord’s consent, is not clear. Another circumstance detaining Frederic in Germany was the death of the Duke of Zäringen without children, whereupon a whole host of collaterals claimed, and were ready to fight for, his heritage. The extinction of a powerful and generally hostile dukedom promised increase of pow er to the sovereign; but, for the moment, presented a tangled skein of interest, which only the strong hand of the master could disentangle without bloodshed. To these public affairs, requiring the immediate attention of monarch and diet, must be added more private concerns of Frederic’s. He was determined not to undertake an expedition so distant and of duration so uncertain as a Crusade, until he should both have secured his son’s succession, and received the Imperial crown.

The weight of the public difficulties Honorius admitted, and again postponed the period fixed for the Crusader’s embarkation. But some of these gradually disappeared. Refractory princes submitted, belligerents were reconciled; and Frederic happily succeeded in negotiating a compromise of the most important feud. Palsgrave Henry, like his predecessor and father-in-law, Palsgrave Conrad, had no living son, though richer than him in daughters, of whom he had two. The eldest, a second Agnes of the Palatinate, Frederic had acknowledged as its heiress, and, by arranging her marriage with the eldest son and heir of the Duke of Bavaria, blended the two claims; prevailing upon the Duke to be content with having secured the splendid reversion to his son, and the permanent annexation—he might reasonably hope—of the Palatinate to Bavaria, and leave the Palsgrave in possession for his life. The younger daughter was, at the same time, endowed prospectively with a smaller, but still handsome portion, of her father’s forfeited estates, and given in marriage to one of the collateral heirs of the Dukes of Zäringen. This kinsman of the extinct house, having the Breisgau assigned him as his share, to which internal district of Swabia was attached the little-appropriate title of Margrave—retained by the Zäringen from the March of Verona, though merged in their higher title—rose in importance, as Margrave of Baden, amongst the princes of the Empire. The Palsgrave, who, notwithstanding Otho’s penitent injunctions, had hitherto retained the regalia, now, in token of his satisfaction and loyalty, surrendered the whole to Frederic. The bulk of the Zäringen possessions, fiefs, and allodia, were divided betwixt the late Duke’s two sisters, the Countesses of Urach and Kyburg. Zurich, and some few fiefs, Frederic claimed, as lapsing to the crown for want of direct male heirs; whilst other Swiss towns, as Freiburg, Solothurn or Soleure, and Berne, which the late Duke had ceded to him at his coronation, in return for the confirmation of his hereditary rectorship of Burgundy, were raised to the position of Free Imperial cities. The remaining property was distributed amongst remote collaterals. The rectorship of Burgundy Frederic attached to the duchy of Swabia, which he now conferred upon his little son. In this same year, 1218, Frederic answered at the font for the baby Rudolph of Habsburg,—grandson of the above-named Countess of Kyburg, by her daughter, the Countess of Habsburg, and his own distant relation;—in after years the worthy successor of the Swabian dynasty.

In the following year, 1219, Honorius pressed Frederic to fulfil his crusading vow, and carry succours to the King of Jerusalem, whom his invasion of Egypt had involved in many troubles and embarrassments. Frederic professed eager anxiety to afford the Holy Land and its sovereign the assistance so urgently needed; but represented his immediate departure as impossible, praying the Holy Father to assist in removing the obstacles, by menacing the still refractory German princes with excommunication. The Pope was so far satisfied, that he postponed the Crusade for another year; and Frederic employed the interval in effecting the object that he had most at heart, to wit, the election of his son—now about eight years old, and with his mother, Queen Constance, in Germany—as King of the Romans. Two impediments were in his way. The first was, that, being himself only King of the Romans, not yet crowned Emperor, the election would be irregular. True, Conrad III was in the same position when his son was so elected; but that son was of an age really to act as king, whilst his father was absent upon his Crusade. The second, and more serious, was the certainty, that the Pope would determinately and strenuously oppose a measure, which, so intended or not, seemed calculated to perpetuate the union of the Sicilian realms with Germany and the Empire. Whether this were Frederic’s project, his conscience being satisfied with the plea, that the promise was unfairly extorted from his boyish inexperience and absolute need of papal support, or he merely desired to retain the choice between the Sicilies and Germany in his own breast, there are no means of judging. For the moment, he was simply intent upon profiting by the glow of loyalty, probably ephemeral, which his success had enkindled amongst the Princes of the Empire. His cordial reconciliation with the Rhine-Palsgrave, the husband of his kinswoman, rendered the acquiescence of a majority of the temporal princes reasonably certain; but the question was, how to gain their spiritual brethren, notwithstanding the anticipated Papal opposition; and gain them so suddenly, as that the election might forestall such opposition. Frederic saw an opening, in the dissensions between the Archbishop of Mainz and the Landgrave of Thuringia, which made the powerful prelate desirous of gaining the Sovereign’s favour. Of this state of affairs he judiciously took advantage, and, by confirming, even enlarging Otho’s concessions to the prince-prelates—in modern phraseology the ecclesiastical interest—finally accomplished his object. The list of these concessions, in which some German writers have seen the origin of all German liberty, others that of Germany’s decline and downfall, is not a little instructive, as to the social and political state of the country at the time; and with respect to some of them, the modern reader may be chiefly inclined to wonder how, in any tolerably organized state, they could have to be granted. They were:

Neither the King nor any lay prince shall seize the property of deceased ecclesiastics, which, if there be no heir, either natural or testamentary shall belong to the successor. [This refers to the private, family property of ecclesiastics, which they were entitled to dispose of by will; their professional income, including savings therefrom, was, and remained inalienably, church property.] In the lands and jurisdictions of prince-prelates, the King shall not, without their express consent, either impose new tolls, or establish new mints, neither shall he suffer their coins to be elsewhere unlawfully counterfeited. Villeins and thralls of the church shall not be harboured in any city or by any layman; and church-lands shall not, under colour of protection, be damaged by their lay and noble Stewards (Vogte). No one shall seize upon fiefs that have lapsed to prince-prelates. Whoever does not within six weeks obtain relief from excommunication shall fall under the ban of the Empire, shall not sit as Judge in, or appear as plaintiff or witness before, any tribunal, upon condition that the ecclesiastical princes of the Empire shall, on their part, inflict spiritual punishment upon all rebels against the royal authority. No one shall build strong castles upon the lands of prince-prelates. In the towns of prince-prelates, no officer of the King’s shall exercise any authority over mints, tolls, or other matters, save and except from eight days before, until eight days after, the sitting of a Diet, holden in such town. But if the King  come in person to such town, then, during the period of his residence, the authority of the prince-prelate shall be suspended, the King alone ruling. Appeals to Rome Frederic had previously sanctioned.

Only one of these concessions appears to call for remark, i.e., that concerning church villeins and thralls; and this rather, generally, than in respect to the provision itself. The remark is, that, from the progressive changes in political relations, this concession had, in regard to wealthy and powerful cities, become a work of supererogation. If small and feeble towns still aimed at increase of riches and importance, by recruiting their population from the despised class of the unfree, the consequential burgesses of those that ranked higher in the social scale, being themselves owners of villeins, had learned to respect the rights of other proprietors of their fellow-men. The most flourishing cities appear to have even reprobated the admittance of any residents of such a class, within their walls. Some years prior to the date of these concessions, A.D. 1211, the haughty as democratic Milan had passed a law enacting that no man, who was the property of any third party, should be suffered to become one of her citizens.

But whatever may, in the nineteenth century, be thought of these concessions in the thirteenth, they answered Frederic’s purpose. In March 1220, Prince Henry was elected King, as his father’s subordinate colleague and successor.

CHAPTER II. FREDERIC II. [1220—1226.

Coronation-Progress—Affairs of Sicily—Negotiations concerning Crusade—Fifth Crusade, in Egypt—Success—Failure— Frederic’s second Marriage—Frederic and his Father-in-law—Frederic’s love of Letters.