BOOK IV.

CHAPTER III.

FREDERIC II. [1226—1228.

 

Affairs of Germany—Administration of Archbishop Engelbert— His Murder—Hostility of the Lombards—Delay of Crusade—Duke of Mazovia and the Prussians — Death of Honorius III—Gregory IX Pope—New delay of Crusade—Emperor excommunicated—Sails for Palestine.

 

Early in 1226 Frederic left Sicily, and at the head of his Apulian vassalage set forward for Cremona, where the plan of the Crusade was to be settled in a Diet, and he expected to meet his son, with the counsellors appointed to assist the young king’s inexperience. New arrangements for the government of Germany during his own possibly prolonged absence had become necessary; through the murder of him upon whom he had relied as his substitute, namely, Engelbert, Archbishop of Cologne.

That prelate’s regency had been steadily prosperous. He had energetically exerted himself, and with very tolerable success, to establish throughout Germany, as he had in his own principality, the supremacy of law. The difficulty of the undertaking was enhanced by the prodigious increase, in numbers as in audacious licence, during the recent contests for the crown, of that class of noble marauders, who, seeking strength in union, sheltered their illegal associations under the assumed title of Ganerben. They seem to have been amongst the most formidable description of banditti upon record; and to their suppression Engelbert addressed himself. Against strong castles so garrisoned, the royal train of pacific times would be of little avail, each pseudo-ganerben fortress requiring a regular siege, by an army. Despite their strength, however, the Archbishop made considerable progress in extirpating them throughout Germany; although as completely as in his own dominions, where he was really master, and had more time to effect his purposes, he neither did, nor could succeed.

Engelbert’s regency was further happily distinguished by the recovery of the northern Slavonian provinces, to wit, Holstein, Schwerin, Mecklenburg, and Pomerania; torn from Germany by Denmark, during the same troubles that had favoured the robber-knights; and of which, being already lost, Frederic had, during his hard struggle for the crown, been compelled formally to cede a part to Waldemar. Their recovery the Archbishop achieved, not by force of arms, but through the political wisdom with which he, and the Grand-Master of the Teutonic Knights, took advantage of the disaster, that the tyranny and libertinism into which Waldemar II appears, upon losing his Day-star, to have fallen, had brought upon him.

Waldemar, after expelling Adolf of Holstein from his dominions, had, during the absence of the Holstein vassal, Henry Earl of Schwerin, upon a Crusade, greatly encroached upon the lands and privileges of that nobleman and his brother; had married his own illegitimate son to the Crusader Earl’s niece; upon the death of the lady’s father, had put the young couple in possession of the domains belonging to the two brothers jointly; and, his son dying, had seized them as guardian to his infant grand­son, the heir. He had further paid illicit addresses to the absent Crusader’s Countess, and, repulsed by her virtue, had, by stratagem and violence combined, achieved her dishonour. Not the least striking anomalies in those days of strong passion and apparently ungovernable impulse, are the power—often displayed—of self-control, amounting to dissimulation, the already-noticed, comparative disregard of truth, and the taste for craft, recalling the character of the red men of North America. An outburst of passion, on the part of the despoiled prince, and grossly injured husband, is naturally looked for at his return. But no! Graf Heinrich betrayed no sense of his wrongs, until the opportunity of taking vengeance should offer; and upon the 6th of May, 1223, it offered.

The King and his son, the Crown Prince, then visited the small island of Lyoe, lying to the south of Fühnen, upon a sporting excursion, with merely the train belonging to the chase. After the fatigues of a day’s active pleasure, they and their attendants, like true Danes, sought refreshment in deep carouses at supper, and sank into the heavy sleep of inebriety. In this state of helpless intoxication, the Earl of Schwerin, with his friends and followers, surprised the whole party, and capturing father and son, carried them off to a castle of the Earl’s in Brandenburg; whence he subsequently removed them to the custody of some of his friends in Saxony; well assured that in neither principality could a kindly feeling exist towards the monarch, who had robbed both duchy and margraviate of so many Slavonian vassals. Prince Albert, Waldemar’s nephew, to whom he had given Holstein, immediately assumed the regency; and, together with the Danish nation, addressed loud complaints to the Pope, the Emperor, and the young King of the Romans, of the outrage thus perpetrated upon a crowned sovereign. The intervention of the pontiff proved wholly unavailing. The Emperor, hardly much regretting the disaster of a prince, who, in the day of his weakness, had extorted from him sacrifices so mortifying, referred them to his son and the Regent of Germany, who may be presumed to have received their instructions. The Archbishop, after two Diets had unsuccessfully attempted to mediate between the parties, employed Hermann von Salza, then in Germany upon his crusade-exciting mission, to negotiate the captive monarch’s release.

The Marian applied to the universally respected Landgrave, Lewis of Thuringia, whom he had just induced to take the Cross, to assist him in this difficult task. The Landgrave complied; and, together, they obtained from the wronged and victorious Earl, the sacrifice of his vengeance, to patriotism; in resting satisfied with a heavy ransom, and with despoiling the King, who had injured him, of all that he had wrested from the debilitated, because divided, Empire. This seemed to be the whole difficulty; for the captive King assented to everything; it is averred, with the decided intention of breaking an oath, that, as compulsorily taken, he chose to think null. Upon the 4th of June, a treaty was, therefore, concluded: in which Waldemar agreed to purchase his own and his son’s liberty by restoring all his recently acquired Slavonian provinces, with the single exception of the Island of Rügen, (making the Eyder once again the boundary between Denmark and Germany) holding Denmark itself in vassalage of the Emperor, paying the Earl of Schwerin ransom, or damages, to the amount of 40,000 marks, taking an oath never to seek revenge upon him, giving hostages for the observance of that oath during ten years, and, finally, undertaking a Crusade, with a fleet of a hundred sail. But, whether the Regent and great vassals of Denmark were unwilling to pay so high a price for their sovereign, whom they trusted to redeem more cheaply by force, or the Earl, when the conditions were to be performed, demanded double the sum fixed for ransom, thus exasperating the Regent, who had the 40,000 marks ready—the story is told both ways—the treaty, at the due moment of execution, was broken. If the Danes had hoped to wrest Waldemar from his captors by force, they were disappointed. The two Earls, of Schwerin and Holstein, had many allies, including the turbulent Archbishop of Bremen, the illegitimate Waldemar, who had taken the monastic vows to appease the Pope; but who now, eagerly left his cloister, assembled his friends, and in arms joined the enemies of the royal kinsman, whom he envied, and therefore hated. In the following year, 1225, they defeated the Danish army, taking the Regent himself; when Hamburg and Lubeck embraced the opportunity to throw off the yoke of Denmark, once more becoming, by charter, and this time permanently, Free Imperial Cities. Further hesitation as to the acceptance of the treaty being impossible, before the end of the year, Waldemar, his son and his nephew, were at liberty. In presents of horses, jewels, and furs, to the Earl of Schwerin and his knights, the King is said to have nearly doubled the sum named for his ransom. And, as if this were an equivalent for the cessions to which he was pledged, no sooner was he free, than he applied to the Pope for a dispensation from his oath, as extorted:—upon such a plea might every treaty be invalidated by the vanquished. But, strange to say, Honorius granted the dispensation, and did more; he exhorted the Emperor—not, as he might, to recollect that he had formally ceded the provinces he now claimed, but—not to let a paltry sum of money weigh in the balance against his honour. Frederic paid no attention to the exhortation, which he probably thought silly; but ordered Waldemar to be coerced, if necessary, into the fulfilment of the treaty, and gave Pomerania in vassalage to Brandenburg.

But this same year, 1225, unhappily saw the end of Archbishop Engelbert’s regency, and that, prior even to Waldemar’s release upon promising the restitution of the Slavonian provinces. The prelate’s firm repression of all lawless violence and impartial administration of justice, without regard to rank or position in the offender, had provoked the vengeance of all who profited by, or revelled in, the licence of anarchy. Amongst these, was the son of his own sister, the Earl of Altena and Isenburg, the oppressor and plunderer of a nunnery, to which he was hereditary steward. The Archbishop, in his strict impartiality, summoned his nephew before his tribunal, which pronounced upon him the regular punishment of those offences, including restitution of what had been taken. The vindictive and unprincipled nephew collected a band of ruffians like himself, surprised the prince-prelate upon his road to consecrate a new church, in a remote district of his archiepiscopal province, and murdered him; the nephew, with his own hand, striking the first blow. Heinrich von Molenark, one of the Archbishop’s attendants, carried the bloody garments of the victim to Cologne, and, like Mark Antony, by their exhibition well nigh enfrenzied the inhabitants with thirst of vengeance. Nor had they long to wait for the draught. The atrocious deed was too openly perpetrated to admit of question, as to either crime or criminal. The sacrilegious, almost parricidal nephew, was immediately excommunicated by the Legate and outlawed by the Emperor; the Diet ordered his castles to be razed, and ere many months had elapsed he was betrayed by his accomplices into the hands of Molenark, now elected Engelbert’s successor. Upon the anniversary of the murdered prelate’s obsequies, the Cologners saw his murderer broken on the wheel. The Bishops of Munster and Osnaburg, being accused of complicity in the murder, were deposed and excommunicated by Honorius, who further pronounced Engelbert a Blessed Martyr.

The Emperor had associated Lewis, Duke of Bavaria, with the Archbishop of Cologne in the regency of Germany; but the Duke, well satisfied that his colleague was fully equal to his task, had not only seldom interfered, but held himself at liberty to leave Germany for a Crusade; in which opinion Frederic so fully concurred, as to give him the command of his first detachment of Crusaders. The Duke had now, however, been for some time at home, and, seeing the altered posture of affairs, exerted himself to supply that lost colleague’s place: but many obstacles prevented his doing so effectually. The young King, having completed his fourteenth year, when thus robbed of his accustomed Mentor, was pronounced of full age to govern. His father had not been older when he took the helm of state; but Henry was in every respect inferior to his father; and, if a regent were no longer indispensable, an able and influential counsellor was much needed. The prelate, of whom so flagitious a deed had deprived him, the King was accustomed to respect and obey; and, from habit, might have continued to do so. Lewis possessed no such customary influence over him, to counterbalance a boy’s longing for the mastery of manhood; and the adulation of sycophants early interfered with his advice. They could not, however, immediately prevent its being followed, often and much as they managed to thwart the new Counsellor; and for awhile the government proceeded tolerably. Frederic was evidently conscious of his son’s incompetence to rule the turbulent German princes, although flattering himself, perhaps, that Henry’s youth and inexperience were the sole obstacles. Being unable, then, to cross the Alps for the purpose of rearranging the administration, he could merely endeavour by letter to give the Duke of Bavaria weight; and anticipate the opportunity of more efficient intervention, during the convoked Diet. Yet more to confirm the boy-monarch in his supposed maturity, he, again like his father, was at this early age, married. The wife selected for him was Margaret, eldest daughter of Leopold the Glorious, Duke of Austria; an alliance which, if it secured him the support of that powerful duchy, involved him, a few years later, after Leopold’s death, as partisan rather than Sovereign, in the “never ending still beginning” broils, wars, and feuds, of his brother-in-law Frederic the Combative. An ominous gloom was cast over the connexion by a catastrophe that saddened the nuptial festivities. From forty to sixty persons, some being ecclesiastics, are reported to have lost their lives amidst the public rejoicings upon this occasion, either from the pressure of the crowd, or in the quarrel that occurred between the Archbishop of Treves and the Graf von Truhendingen, and the consequent riot amongst their followers.

Lombardy—where the meeting between the Emperor, his son, and his German vicegerents was appointed to take place—and Tuscany, were, then, as usual, bristling with hostilities, ferocious as ever in character. There, Azzo, who had succeeded to his elder brother—who, poisoned or not, died young—as Marquess of Este, having taken Fratta, put man, woman, and child to the sword. There, still as usual, Guelph cities were striving to emancipate themselves from the slight degree of sovereignty they still acknowledged in the Emperor; Guelph and Ghibeline nobles and cities were warring with each other; Guelph and Ghibeline factions warring within the cities; and, in addition to all these ordinary sources of discord, a new one had arisen. The plebeians were, in many towns, contending with the nobles for those municipal offices, of which the latter had previously had—whether by law or by customary reverence for high birth—well nigh a monopoly. In this new civil strife the Pope had interposed his mediation; which being accepted, he at Milan effected a compromise. He allotted half of the magisterial offices and two thirds of the embassies to the nobles, the remainder to the inferior citizens, who for the moment were content with this division. Analogous, though not identical compromises, gradually took place in most of the other cities; but, wherever republicanism was preserved, the democratic share increased from day to day. Yet amidst all this growing democracy, the Podestàs were still invariably chosen from the nobility: being foreigners, individual ambitions, envies, and jealousies, did not interfere with the desire to elect the fittest for the post.

The Lombards appear to have had no taste for Diets of the Empire within their precincts, or for armed Germans, there amicably meeting armed Apulians and Sicilians; and for the moment, at least, they effectually prevented the annoyance. They seized upon the Emperor’s approach, at the head of a body of Apulian troops, to charge him with intending to deprive them, not only of their recently usurped privileges, but of all their oldest chartered rights. That Frederic II must, like Frederic I, have deemed Lombardy an integral member of his empire, is unquestionable. Equally so, that he must have felt her assumed independence, accompanied with habitual hostility, an immense obstacle to the union, and therefore to the easy government, of his widely-spread dominions: whilst the opposition of Milan, to his passage, when first invited to Germany, and since, to his receiving the iron crown, together with the contemptuous treatment the Bishops of Trent and Turin received from her, when sent to pacify Lombardy if possible, would indispose him to forbearance towards her and her dependent allies. That he must therefore have designed, when time and circumstance should cohere, to bring this province back to its pristine subjection, cannot be doubted: but who can suppose that he would select—as the opportunity for attempting, what he must have foreseen, from the determined pertinacity of the Lombards, would prove a difficult and tedious enterprise—a moment when, whilst the condition of Germany was causing him anxiety of various kinds relative to his only son, he was deeply pledged, under pain of excommunication, to lead a Crusade forthwith; to do which, since he had so pledged himself, as to a duty, had become important to his interests as King of Jerusalem?

The greatest step that Frederic can rationally be supposed to have projected taking in that direction at the present time, was effecting his coronation with the Iron Crown of Lombardy: and this, the tolerable harmony still existing with the Pope, and the improved position of the now acknowledged Head of the Lombard Ghibelines, seemed to render feasible.

Ezzelino the Monk had, in 1223, earned his surname by retiring to a monastery where he took the cowl; leaving his ambitious schemes, with his extensive domains, to his two sons, Ezzelino and Alberico. The brothers had, in the first instance, deserted their father’s politics, to join the league of Guelph nobles and cities in their north­eastern quarter of Italy. But they were presently irritated by the far superior influence of their hereditary rival the Conte di San Bonifazio, at whose instigation the League adopted resolutions prejudicial to the Romano interests. They were at the same time exasperated by the conduct of the Pope, who, charging their father with heresy, commanded them to deliver him up to the papal tribunals; and, upon their non-compliance with this unnatural requisition, included themselves in the accusation. The brothers hereupon withdrew from the League, resuming the Ghibelinism of their house. Alberico, the younger brother, who in person announced this change to the Emperor, was by him kindly received, and promised whatever assistance he or his brother should require. Soon afterwards, in 1225, Ezzelino IV, by allying himself with the Veronese Montecchi, not only achieved his own election at Verona, to the two, usually conflicting offices of Podestà and Capitano del Popolo, but was further enabled to induce or oblige Vicenza similarly to elect Alberico, and, jointly with Padua, to defray the expense of a body of Germans and of Saracens, sent him by the Emperor.

To receive the iron crown, Frederic might think an useful preliminary to his Crusade. So might he reasonably think the persuading the Lombards, if possible, to rest content with the rights secured to them by the treaty of Constance. But from conciliation alone could he hope the accomplishment of these objects; existing circumstances, as has been seen, forbidding any attempt at compulsion. Hence, the Cremona Diet has been supposed intended to feel the disposition of the Lombards towards this object. The accusation was unsupported by any description of evidence; and, assuredly, upon the Lombards lies the onus probandi, since they were the aggressors, when the Emperor had made no move towards the execution of any design, lawful or unlawful.

The first measure adopted in Lombardy, as a preparation for the assembling of this Diet, was the renewal, for a period of twenty-five years, of the Lombard League, by Milan, Turin, Vercelli, Alessandria, Lodi, Piacenza, Bergamo, Brescia, Verona, Treviso, Vicenza, Padua, Mantua, Bologna, and Faenza. A report got abroad that this step was taken at the instigation of Honorius; yet, however dissatisfied the Pope may have been with the Emperor’s seeming dilatoriness relative to the Crusade, and continued struggle for the rights wrested from his mother, how much soever he may have wished to prevent the re-incorporation of Lombardy with the Empire, which would indeed have united Frederic’s dominions into one formidable whole, he would hardly raise a new obstacle to the Crusade, by exciting a civil war between Frederic and the Lombards at that moment. The utmost of which he can reasonably be suspected, is a wish to exhibit to Frederic his own power over the Lombards. Be this as it may, the members of the League now remodelled and improved its internal organization, establishing, for the regulation of League affairs, a Committee of Rectors, consisting either of the chief magistrates, however entitled, of the cities, or of deputies elected for the nonce; and this Committee or Diet forthwith sent Frederic a long list of grievances, with an urgent demand for their immediate redress.

This revival and re-organization of the League, at the very moment of the Emperor’s visit to Lombardy, if betraying a hostile temper, was no more than known right of the cities, both by the treaty of Constance and by the spirit of the feudal system, sanctioning private wars and private alliances: but the next acts announced positive revolt. Without awaiting even an answer to their list of grievances, the League proceeded to exclude the Emperor from Faenza and Bologna—in which towns he had announced his intention of resting upon his road to Cremona; to forbid holding any intercourse with him—meaning evidently the supplying his troops with provisions—and to occupy the passes of the Alps, in such force as to close the entrance of Italy against the King of the Romans.

Henry, accompanied by the Emperor’s German vassals, was hastening to meet his father and sovereign at the Cremona Diet, with an escort befitting the young monarch’s dignity; but not with an army calculated, as the Lombards alleged, in co-operation with the Apulians, to enslave them. Had he been in such strength he must either have forced his passage, unless forbidden so to do by Frederic, which would again acquit the Emperor of hostile intentions, or have acknowledged himself a rebel against his father. Henry did neither. He and the German princes appear to have quietly awaited the Emperor’s instructions at Trent, which, at their departure, they are said to have wantonly burnt.

Frederic’s proceedings upon these hostile demonstrations indicated anything rather than a plan for enslaving Lombardy, ready to be put in execution. Having been joined on his way by the Legate whom the Pope had appointed to undertake the spiritual guidance of the Crusade he had preached, Conrad Graf von Urach—one of the Duke of Zäringen’s hostages at the anti-Swabian Diet of 1198, now a Cardinal and Bishop of Hildesheim—he permitted him, together with the Archbishop of Milan, to mediate between the League and himself. They were authorized to allay the professed alarms of the confederated cities, by offering them, in his name, the ratification of all rights and privileges recognised by the treaty of Constance, and any reasonable alteration in the time or place of the Diet’s sitting, if either really were a cause of apprehension. But these were not the objects of the Milanese. The offers were scornfully rejected; whilst few indeed of the members of the Lombard League sent deputies to Cremona, where the Diet sat, as proposed, the offered changes being refused. Upon the 11th of July, the Emperor and Diet denounced the ban of the Empire against the refractory cities, which the Cardinal Legate, with the full concurrence of the Lombard prelates present, laid also under an interdict. But Honorius, though he professed disapprobation of the conduct of the Lombard cities, at once cancelled the interdict.

Although the constrained absence of the Germans, from Cremona, prevented the Diet’s regulating the affairs of Germany, its attention, as well as the Pope’s, was called even beyond that country to the condition of the Prussian bishopric, amidst the still Heathen Prussians. Honorius had taken great interest in Bishop Christian’s missionary labours, and had sent the Bishop of Modena, a very learned ecclesiastic, to forward the good work by translating religious books, calculated to instruct the Heathen, into the Prussian language, as soon as he should have acquired it. But the success of all these exertions had latterly been thwarted by the selfish ambition of Conrad Duke of Mazovia, who aspired to the conquest of Prussia. This Polish prince was strong enough to throw off even the nominal allegiance still due to the supreme Duke of Cracow, but not sufficiently so to dispense with the assistance of which this independence deprived him; and was, in fact, every way unfit to achieve the objects at which he aimed. He was licentious, cruel, false and tyrannical. He had judicially got rid of his best general and statesman, the guardian of his own youth, for remonstrating with him upon his many vices, first privately; and, when that proved ineffectual to work his reformation, publicly, before his court. The angry Duke caused a calumnious accusation to be brought against his censor, who was thereupon imprisoned and tortured to death. Nor had Duke Conrad abilities, that could in any degree compensate his moral deficiencies, or his want of politico­physical force. His invasion and purposed subjugation of Prussia was conducted without judgment, and in a spirit too sanguinary, even for the temper of the age. He thus enabled the Heathen priests, who had seen their power endangered by the progress of Bishop Christian, to exasperate the people against the religion of their ruthless invaders. This result of the Duke’s cruelty seems to have driven the Bishop, in terror for his life, to join him, however reluctantly; whereby his little remaining influence was quite lost; and his proselytes relapsed into idolatry.

The Prussians defended themselves resolutely, expelled the Poles, with whom Bishop Christian left the country, and became in their turn the invaders.

Christian, thus exiled from his proper sphere, made up his mind that the Prussians, to be converted, must first be subjugated; and, by his advice, Conrad, who proved as unable to defend Mazovia as he had been to conquer Prussia, first attempted to found a military Order, similar to that of the Brothers of the Sword. This new Order was still in its very infancy, when, being cowardly deserted upon the field of battle by the Duke and his Mazovians, it was actually annihilated. The Duke then entreated the Fraternity he had copied to come to his assistance. But the Sword-bearers were no longer what they had been. Engaged, even from their institution, almost uninterruptedly, in wars with their Heathen neighbours, the schismatic Russians, the Swedes, and the Danes,—who one and all aspired to sovereignty over the Livonians—they had grown tired of thus incessantly shedding their blood, for the protection of the Bishop and his flock and the salvation of savage souls. They had demanded remuneration, and quarrelled respecting the division of conquests, the payment of tithes, and other topics, with the prelate to whom they owed both their social existence and the property with which they were endowed. Legates interposed in vain; and the efficiency of the Order, either for its own advantage or the safety of those it had been created to defend, was deteriorated. The Duke of Mazovia found no help in the Sword­bearers.

Again, by advice of the Bishop, supported by Henry the Bearded, Duke of Lower Silesia, Conrad now besought the assistance of the Teutonic Knights, whose services he proposed to repay by ceding the province of Kulm, then utterly devastated by the Prussians, to the Order, to be held in vassalage of Mazovia, until the conquest of Prussia should be completed, when that country was to be divided between him and the Order, and Kulm restored to him. Divers circumstances combined to render this proposal agreeable to the Grand-Master. The Order had expended much money and blood upon the defence and the culture of their Transylvanian domains. They had expelled the Kumans, had built five strong fortresses for defence against them; and under the protection of their swords, the district had become populous and thriving. Andreas had thereupon resumed his grant; Honorius had indeed obliged him to cancel that resumption; but the Knights felt their possession destitute of stability, and in 1225, Andreas had again resumed Burza. In Palestine, the Marians were harassed by the jealousy of the older Orders, of whom the Templars resented their wearing a white mantle; unappeased by the grave representations of the Pope, that the difference in form between the crosses of the two Orders, must prevent any danger of Templars and Marians being mistaken for each other.

The proposal of a new field of action, with the prospect of a principality for the Order, being therefore welcome, was by Hermann von Salza laid before the Pope and the Emperor. The latter is said to have expressed his approbation in these words: “Therefore has God raised Emperors above all Kings, and extended the Empire over several zones of the earth, that Emperor and empire may glorify and spread his name amongst the Heathen.” With the sanction of both his temporal and his spiritual Chief, the Grand-Master conditionally and prospectively accepted the offer. He postponed the effective assistance of the Marians until after the Crusade then organizing, in which the main force of his Order must be employed; but that duty performed, he cheerfully agreed to avoid collision with the ill-will of the Templars and Hospitalers, by changing the principal theatre of the Teutonic Knights’ services from Palestine to Europe. For the moment, he merely despatched two knights, with eighteen attendant horsemen and men-at-arms, to ascertain the facts of the case, the relative condition of the Duke of Mazovia, the Heathen Prussians, and the Christian missionaries, and, generally, the feasibility of the project; as also to demonstrate to the Polish Prince, by their prowess, the value of his future allies. Frederic, who highly prized this German Order, and had endowed it with lands in Alsace, even before he knew Hermann, now created the Teutonic Grand-Master a Prince of the Empire, and Honorius presented him with a costly ring, to be placed upon the finger of every Grand-Master at his election, in acknowledgment of his and his Order’s services in the late Crusade in Egypt.

Bishop Christian had, in person, brought the Duke of Mazovia’s proposals; and upon him Honorius now bestowed the see of Kulm, in lieu of his always rather unsubstantial Prussian See; which, since Conrad’s defeated invasion, was become completely what is technically termed a bishopric in partibus infidelium. From Christian, the Pope likewise learned, both, the incessant hostilities in which the Bishop of Riga and the Brothers of the Sword were involved with the schismatic Russians; and the danger to which these last had lately been exposed from the Mongols. That barbarian host was still advancing westward, and one division, taking a more northerly line, had overrun and subdued some of the heathen Tartar dependencies of Russia, and defeated the Russian army that had hastened to their aid. The Russians, not much less barbarous than the Mongols, exasperated those conquerors by murdering the messengers sent to offer terms of peace, and the conquest of the whole conglomeration of Russian principalities appears to have been deferred solely by the accident of Gengis Khan’s needing, for the moment, all his hosts united in the East. The Pope, upon learning this state of affairs in the north-east of Europe, addressed an encyclical letter to the Russian Princes, imputing their misfortunes to their heresy, and offering them assurance of protection, peace, and happiness, within the pale of the Church. It hardly need be said that the epistle, like many previous papal attempts to convert those northern schismatics, provoked only derision.

These affairs being despatched, and most of the intended business of the Diet rendered impossible by the continued refractoriness of the Lombard League, and the consequent absence both of Lombard deputies and of the Germans, it broke up. Frederic endeavoured to conciliate the Pope by admitting the five prelates whom he had hitherto rejected, and abandoning all claim to the revenues of vacant benefices; and then laid before him his complaints against the Lombard League, submitting his quarrel with them to the Holy Father’s arbitration. He trusted in the justice of his cause—the League had again displayed bitter enmity, by prohibiting the election of Podestas from any place within his dominions—and was persuaded that Honorius could no longer feel dissatisfied with him. He returned to Apulia, without further communication with his son, to invest the papal bishops with their temporalities. The Lombards, even if conscious that their conduct, as a probable obstruction to the progress of the Crusade, must have displeased Honorius, still, relying upon the inevitable anti-Ghibelinism of a Pope, readily agreed to abide by his decision. But Honorius himself, whether influenced by mistrust of his own impartiality, or by reluctance to risk incurring the resentment of either party,—and to please both must, he knew, be impossible— repeatedly declined the office of arbitrator.

At length, pressed by both parties, he, on the 9th of January, 1227, pronounced a verdict by which he really did anger both. Taking no notice of the rights usurped from, or of the insults offered to, the Head of the Holy Roman Empire, nor even of an act of such positive rebellion, as opposing the passage of the King of the Romans, summoned by. the Emperor to a Diet, the Pope treated the monarch and his revolted vassals, as upon a footing of perfect equality. He decided, that, both parties shall abjure their wrath and hatred, both releasing their prisoners; that the Emperor shall revoke the ban of the Empire, denounced against the Lombard League; which, on its part, shall equip, and for two years maintain, 400 horsemen, to serve in his crusading army, and shall, moreover, execute justice upon all heretics. The last of these required concessions being made solely to the Pope, and the former nearly as much to him as to the Emperor, they could not be considered as any sort of atonement offered to their offended sovereign; whilst the Milanese, numbers of whom were heretics, besides being little disposed to such execution of justice upon themselves and their fellow­citizens, were irritated at the very idea of contributing to the triumph of the Emperor, whom they hated, as grandson of him who rescued Lodi from their tyranny, and as the rightful claimant of authority, which they now chose to disown.

But Frederic, observant of his plighted word, submitted to the distasteful sentence; the Milanese, on the contrary, objected and delayed, till they had well nigh exhausted the Pope’s patience. He rebuked them as severely as was in his nature, and at length they also submitted; in words, that is to say, for they neither equipped their quota of Crusaders, nor prosecuted their heretics.

To receive this submission, and to appoint the ex-King of Jerusalem Papal Governor of the territories pertaining to the Matildan heritage, were about the last pontifical acts of Honorius III. Upon the 18th of March, of the current year, 1227, he died; and with him expired every, even the feeblest, spark of papal kindness for Frederic II and his family, the remotest approach to a disposition to put a candid construction upon his conduct, hitherto somewhat, if but faintly, tempering the tone of the Lateran to the ex-ward of the Roman See. For, notwithstanding such extraordinary proceedings on the part of Honorius, as dispensing with the King of Denmark’s oath, and the favour shown the Lombard League, even at the risk of impeding the Crusade, he really seems to have retained some lingering affection for his royal pupil, and did allow for his difficulties. His hostile acts were prompted by temporary dissatisfaction, skilfully worked upon, and by honest fears of Frederic’s power, should he ever be actual master of Lombardy. The loss of this feeble degree of goodwill was a serious calamity to the Emperor-King; and enhanced by the consequent correspondent change in his own mind. Nothing resembling the half-filial sentiments he entertained towards the guardian and towards the preceptor of his youth, henceforward remained, to allay the monarch’s keen sense of the advan­tage that had been taken of his mother’s embarrassments, and of his own early weakness, or to blunt his philosophic perception of the contrast between papal pretensions and even the papal title of Servant of the servants of God, to say nothing of Gospel doctrines and apostolic example.

The very day after the decease of Honorius, the Cardinals assembled to give him a successor. Their choice fell upon the Crusade-Legate, Cardinal Conrad, Bishop of Hildesheim. But, unfortunately for Frederic, the Legate was honestly devoted, heart and soul, to the furtherance and conduct of the Crusade, committed by Honorius to his care; and he positively refused to exchange the hallowed duties, imperatively assigned him by the deceased Pope, even for those of the Supreme Head of the Church. Upon his refusal, Cardinal Ugolino was unanimously elected; and with stern joy did he, then in his eighty-first year, accept the arduous office.

The new Pope, who assumed the name of Gregory IX, was a member of the Segni family, was said to be a nephew of Innocent III, although full fourteen years older than his reputed uncle:—Innocent, who died A.D. 1216, in his fifty-fifth year, would not quite have completed his sixty-sixth in March, 1227. Gregory was a man of sincere piety, ascetically austere morality, strong intellect, as strong prejudices, and indomitable will. He had been habitually intrusted with the management of the most intricate affairs by his predecessors, and had seldom failed to achieve the object in view. At the age of eighty his vigour of body and energy of mind seemed unimpaired.

The first care of Gregory was the promotion of the Crusade, to which he resolutely addressed himself. He compelled the Lombard League to fulfil the conditions imposed by Honorius, at least with respect to preparing their contingent towards this expedition; for it is by no means clear that his stern reprimand touching the lukewarm dilatoriness of the cities in quest and punishment of heresy was equally effective. He at the same time admonished the Emperor that no loitering, beyond the time prefixed for his embarkation, would be pardoned.

Frederic’s preparations had been advancing with the full approbation of Hermann von Salza, who jointly with himself superintended the naval department, and, during the delay, made frequent visits to Palestine, to keep the Emperor informed as to the country’s actual condition. That the monarch had not in person stimulated Germany to the enterprise, was because, even in the interest of the Crusade, his presence was more urgently wanted in the Sicilies; which being apparent to the Grand-Master, he had, as far as might be, supplied the Sovereign’s beyond the Alps. Frederic therefore felt the Pope’s reproachful admonition to be uncalled for; the explanatory statements of Hermann, which, when appearances were less favourable had satisfied Honorius, should, he asserted, have equally satisfied Gregory. In fact, he needed no stimulating to an enterprise, in which, independently of religious motives, he was individually interested, for the recovery and security of his wife’s heritage; a kingdom for a younger son, which, from its peculiar character and position, he valued so highly, that he gave it precedence of his own, entitling himself King of Jerusalem and Sicily. He had despatched a body of troops to Palestine the preceding year, and was sedulously urging everything forward for his own departure with a suitable army; in the task of rekindling the crusading spirit amongst the German princes, he had provided for his son as his representative, being duly assisted. These exertions were so far successful, that his kinsman, the Landgrave of Thuringia, presented himself in proper time at the head of a body of Thuringian, Saxon, Franconian, Swabian, and Lotharingian Crusaders, and accompanied by one of the most renowned German poets of the day, Walter von der Vogelweide. But the rest of the crusading army had to be gathered from yet more distant parts—no less than 60,000 from England—and, before all were assembled at Brindisi and Otranto, the month of August had arrived.

This was in every way unfortunate, for August was the last month of the final period of two years; and, according to the statements of most historians, though not Frederic’s own, either from a concourse of martial pilgrims, especially of the indigent class, beyond all expectation—Frederic had only engaged to transport and feed gratuitously 9,000 men—or by mismanagement amongst the royal officers, the vessels ready to sail proved insufficiently victualled. Some delay necessarily ensued, whilst efforts were making to remedy this deficiency; during which, the summer heat of southern Italy wrought its usual noxious effect upon northern constitutions. An epidemic broke out amongst the Crusaders. The Bishops of Augsburg and Anjou died of it, and pilgrims of inferior condition were swept away in crowds. The embarkation proceeded nevertheless, with all practicable despatch, Frederic being of course glad to send off those who were well, whilst they remained so; and divisions of the fleet appear to have put to sea as they received their supplies and their allotted number of passengers. At length, all was completed; Frederic himself went on board, accompanied by Land­grave Lewis, who was already suffering from the fatal malady, and a few other princes. The main body of the fleet now set sail.

It was not destined to reach Palestine, or at least to convey its splendid freight thither. Landgrave Lewis in a very few days died on board; and the Emperor, who was not likely to suffer from the heat of a climate in which he was born and had grown almost to manhood, having probably taken the infection, became so alarmingly ill, that the fleet put back. Frederic, upon landing, transferred the command of the expedition to the Duke of Limburg; placed all vessels that the Duke should, from the reduction of numbers, find that he did not want, at the disposal of the Marian Grand-Master and the Patriarch of Jerusalem; despatched an embassy to Rome to state the case—the actual impossibility of his then prosecuting his voyage—and having thus, as far as lay in his power, lessened the evil, he sought the restoration of his health at the Baths of Puzzuoli. But it should seem, either that the disease had fearfully indeed thinned the ranks of the Crusaders and yet more terrified them, or that the presence of the Emperor was really an essential element in the zeal of the majority; for so many had died, and so many, upon the fleet’s return, deserted the cause, departing for their homes, that, of the vessels which had seemed insufficient for the host, very many were left as supernumeraries in the port. Hermann von Salza remained behind, seemingly to await the issue of the Emperor’s malady.

Amongst those who persevered were the admired poet and a celebrated bigamist, Graf von Gleichen, both belonging to the Landgrave’s own band. The last personage having left a wife at home in Thuringia, fell into Turkish bondage in the East, won the love of his master’s daughter, was, as her bridegroom, released by her, brought her to Germany, converted, and married her; Gregory IX granting the necessary dispensation, anglicè, permission thus to violate all Christian law. The story has been denied by Romanists to save the papacy from the disgrace of the act; but is recorded as certain by German historians, and seems to be as well authenticated as most historical anecdotes. The monument of the papally-licensed sinner, upon which he is represented with his two wives, is said still to exist at Gotha.

The embassy which Frederic had, upon disembarking, despatched to Rome, was commissioned distinctly to explain to the Pope the painful, but unavoidable, discomfiture of the long-anticipated Crusade, by the terrible epidemic; that, sparing neither high nor low, had hurried thousands to the grave, and so scared the survivors, that, deserting their vow in swarms, they had fled homewards. The envoys were further to state the death of Landgrave Lewis, a victim to the same distemper which had utterly, though it was hoped only temporarily, incapacitated the Emperor for conducting an expedition or supporting a voyage: and they were to solicit the pitying sympathy of the Holy Father, as the only balsam that could soothe the Imperial Crusader’s bitter mortification at this cruel accident. The embassy was ill received.

Gregory was exasperated beyond all bounds of rationality by this disappointment of a cherished hope. A considerable body of Crusaders was, indeed, forwarded to Palestine; but they were not headed by the Emperor; and upon an Imperial Crusade had he, like Honorius, built his hopes. But in order to appreciate the excess of Gregory’s wrath, the peculiarly antipathetic opposition between his nature, feelings and opinions, and those of Frederick II, must be recollected. The one, a bigoted ascetic, having outlived the very memory of emotions, which it had been the business of his youth and manhood to subdue; holding all science, save Theology, profane foolishness,—heathen learning something worse; existing but for two objects,—it might be said, but in two ideas; to wit, the establishment of universal, papal supremacy, and the recovery of the Holy Land. The other, Frederick II, in the very spring and flush of passion and of exuberant animal life, who—even if the accusations, in colloquial phrase, hourly dinned into the octogenarian pontiff’s ears, by the vindictive ex-King of Jerusalem, be rejected as calumnies, and the most lenient view taken of the amours—must be allowed upon many points a lax moralist: at best enjoying existence with a zest, sinful in ascetic eyes. Nay, the very qualities which might be thought to offer some, if inadequate, compensation for such faults, Gregory regarded as only deepening their guilt. The sciences—chiefly derived from Moslem sources—the fine arts and literature, all of which the Emperor loved and patronized, and in some of which he displayed no little proficiency, the austere Churchman deemed devices and snares of Satan; the time, devoted to their cultivation, worse than profligately wasted. Thus the intellectual character given to the pleasures of the Imperial Court, instead of palliating its gaiety and luxury, only rendered these the more offensive to the Pope; who judged the poets and artists, drawn around him by Frederic from all parts of the known world, more objectionable than the jugglers, buffoons and jesters, following in their wake.

Thus prejudiced and angered, Gregory refused to listen to the plea of illness urged by the Emperor’s envoys; and, upon the 29th of September, fulminated, against the recreant Crusader, the sentence of excommunication, as incurred by the terms of the San Germano convention, the last concluded with Honorius. This proceeding, which later Italian writers, the most hostile to Frederick II, censure as precipitate, and which the Pope himself seems to have apprehended might possibly be so deemed, as well as harsh, his Holiness vindicated in epistles of complaint and accusation, addressed to all the sovereigns and chief prelates of Europe. This incrimination is too curiously characteristic of the times and of the Pope, as well as in itself too momentous, being generally looked upon as the source of Frederic Il’s enmity to the papacy, or, correctly speaking, to papal ambition, to be over­looked; but, being far too prolix for complete insertion, the main points shall be here partly condensed, partly extracted.

After comparing the Church to a ship assailed by all manner of tempests, and driven between, the long unfailing, Scylla and Charybdis, the Pope thus proceeds. “Whilst the Church of Christ, perturbed with anxieties, believes that she is nursing sons at her breast, she is in truth nursing fire, snakes, and basilisks, who with breath, bite, and conflagration, strive to work universal ruin. For the slaying of such monsters, vanquishing of hostile armies, laying of troublous tempests, the Roman Church has in these days most diligently fostered a nursling, the Emperor Frederic, whom, as it were, from his mother’s womb, she received into her bosom; whom she has suckled at her own breast, has borne on her own shoulders, has often snatched from the hands that sought his life; has sedulously educated, has with great pains and at great cost, reared to perfect manhood, has advanced to royal dignity, and finally to the summit of temporal grandeur, the Empire. All this has she done hoping to find in him a rod of defence, the staff of her old age. But ingratitude, beyond a child’s to his mother, has Frederic displayed to the Church.” Then follows an enumeration of the Emperor’s crusading vows, the first of which Gregory asserts he took spontaneously, without even the knowledge of the Apostolic See, and of his applications for delay, unfavourably coloured by the hostility of the writer, who proceeds. “Many thousands of crusaders, at his urgent and repeated call, hurried at the appointed time to Brindisi. But, often as our predecessor and ourself exhorted him to fulfil his promise of providing all necessaries for the expedition, they found neither victuals nor other requisites; and because the Emperor, forgetful of his salvation, detained the Christian army so long in the burning summer heats, in the region of death and pestilential air, disease swept away not only a great part of the people, but no small multitude of nobles and chiefs. Many, returning home, weakened by sickness, have found a miserable death upon high roads and mountains, in forests and caverns. The warriors, who wrung from the Emperor leave to attempt the voyage, notwithstanding the default of conveyance and provision even upon the festival of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin [the 8th of September], the advanced season at which all ships return from transmarine countries, set sail, exposing themselves to all the perils of sea and storm for the sake of Jesus Christ, and trusting to be soon followed by the Emperor. For, without the Imperial leader on whom they relied, they knew they could be of little avail in the Holy Land. But he, violating his promise, breaking the bands that fast held him, trampling the fear of God under foot, contemning the reverence of Jesus Christ, setting at nought the censures of the Church, deserting the Christian host, abandoning to unbelievers the Holy Land, which the Christian army would long ago have gotten in exchange for Damietta, had not imperial letters once and again interdicted that exchange, to his own and all Christendom's shame, he lets himself be drawn back by the voluptuous delights of his kingdom, cloaking his default with idle pretences. Attend, therefore, and see if there be any grief like the grief of the Apostolic See, your mother, so cruelly and so often deceived in the son, whom she suckled, &c.” Gregory now returns upon the benefits conferred by the Church upon Frederic; and this singular paper concludes with wishes for the conversion of the Emperor, whom the Pope professes to have, as a Cardinal, sincerely loved.

Gregory next addressed an epistle to Frederic, containing a repetition of all these reproaches, with others in regard to his government of Sicily and Apulia; but not a syllable relative to the real offence, of which Frederic’s warmest admirers cannot acquit him, namely, the evasion of his solemn, though assuredly extorted promise, to sever the Sicilian crown from those of Germany and the Empire. Could Gregory hold this engagement satisfied by the committal of the government of Germany to young Henry? Or was he reasonable enough not to expect such severance until Frederic’s death? Neither is there in these angry papers any allusion to such irregularity in the marriage of Henry VI and Constance as should render Frederic illegitimate; or to ill-usage of Yolanthe; a silence surely sufficient to refute both this accusation of Jean de Brienne’s, and the idea of Constance having been a nun.

Gregory thenceforward refused all the solicitations of the Imperial envoys for an audience; and, upon the 11th of November, more formally and solemnly, renewed the excommunication of the defaulting Crusader. It was now that Frederic, provoked at being anathematized for illness, first decidedly resisted or opposed the pretensions of the Roman See. In the course of the month he put forth, in answer to the Pope’s invectives, a manifesto addressed in epistolary form, to all the crowned heads of Europe, as also to the German and Italian princes and prelates, his own vassals. Of this paper also, in which the Emperor seems much less intent upon the historical vindication of his own conduct relative to the Crusade, than upon denouncing papal ambition, the most important parts, compressed in like manner with Gregory’s, must be given.

In his letter to the King of England (preserved by Matthew Paris), the Emperor, whilst criminating the Pope then seated in St. Peter’s chair, does not spare his former guardian. He bids Henry appreciate papal intentions by a Pope’s conduct towards his father, King John, as well as towards his kinsmen, the Earls of Toulouse, and many other princes; thus proceeding: “The end of all time is surely at hand, for the love that governs Heaven and earth seems failing, not in the bye streams, but in the main springs. Passing over simonies, extortions, and usuries [usuras], manifest and covert, hitherto unheard of. But in discourses sweeter than honey and smoother than oil, the insatiable blood­sucker avers that the Court, of Rome is the Church, our mother and nurse; whilst the acts of that Court, the root and origin of all evils, are those not of a mother, but of a stepmother; showing by her fruits what she is.” He then returns to the treatment of John, against whom his Barons were stirred up until “the enormously bowed down King, with womanish weakness, subjected himself and his kingdom to the Roman Church; when the Pope, casting aside all respect for the world and fear of the Lord, abandoned to death and forfeiture those whom he had previously stirred up and supported, in order, Rome-like, to gorge a ravening maw upon what was fattest. Behold the ways of Romans’ ravenous wolves in sheep’s clothing.” He observes that they (and Gregory most of all) send about Legates with authority to excommunicate, &c.; commissioned “not to sow the seed, that is to say the Word of God, for future fructification, but to extort money, and reap what they never sowed.” He charges them with plundering the holy churches—including, seemingly, all pious and charitable foundations—which he calls the habitations of the Saints, the refuge of the poor and the wayfarer, founded by pious and simple generations; and proceeds: “The primitive Church, teeming with Saints enrolled to perpetuity for veneration, was founded in poverty and simplicity. But other foundation can no man lay than that laid in the Lord Jesus, and by him established. Now therefore that they [the Popes], sail in riches, wallow in riches, build up in riches, it is to be feared that the walls of the Church being broken down, ruin may invade. The Searcher of hearts knows that against us they rage with unjust fury, saying that we would not set forth for the Holy Land at the appointed time.” He then explains the many hindrances—affairs of Church and Empire, the Sicilian rebellion and the epidemic, of which he speaks as prevailing prior to the arrival of any Crusaders, and unavoidably retarding the naval preparations—that had delayed him, his own illness obliging him to return, and ends by calling upon all the Princes of the earth to unite against such avarice and iniquity, because, “Your own house is in danger when your neighbour’s is on fire.

Such, indisputably, were the opinions governing the conduct of Frederic II, during great part of his reign. His struggle was not, like his grandfather’s, against individual hostile popes, but a philosophic stateman’s against the papal system of usurpation, or in other words, an effort to rescue temporal sovereignty, from the thraldom to ecclesiastical authority, which from day to day became more galling. These opinions might be as much the fruit of his gradually matured experience, as of indignant resentment at Gregory’s outrageous proceedings. And, unfortunately, in those days, when no reformed Church as a sanctuary for the deserter from Romanism, existed, opinions of this kind would naturally lead to some degree of lukewarmness, growing into indifference, if not towards religion in its spirit, yet towards its outward forms, and perhaps ultimately even towards its creeds. In Frederic’s case such a tendency would, as he advanced in life, be unavoidably and doubly promoted, by his feeling himself indebted to the Arabs for almost, if not quite, all the scientific knowledge and philosophy he so highly prized; as also by the unswerving loyalty of his Saracen subjects—after their rebellion begun in his childhood was quelled—and by the good faith of his Mohammedan allies and enemies, as compared with the conduct of many of his Christian vassals, or of Gregory IX, and his successor, Innocent IV. As yet, however, his infidelity, if to be so named, had made little progress. Enthusiastic Romanist writers, of the present day, allow that he was a faithful son of the Church, until irritated beyond human endurance, by Gregory IX. And, assuredly, if the views of his contemporaries—who, in their censures of his neglect of the Holy Land, seem never to have considered his right to the kingdom of Jerusalem as any incitement to the Crusade—be adopted, the zeal with which, even whilst publishing this bold philippic, this actual declaration of war against the papacy, he was urging forward every preparation for resuming the expedition in the spring, shews him to have still been a good Christian, as Christianity was then understood.

The Emperor now announced his intention of sailing for Palestine in May, 1228, and invited crusaders from all parts of Europe to accompany him; offering a gratuitous passage to those who were unable to transport themselves thither, but declaring that he would wait for no one. He at the same time called upon the prelates in his dominions to share in the enterprise, in purse at least, when they could not in person. But, if he thought by this late fulfilment of his vow, to appease, or at all propitiate the Pope, he was egregiously mistaken. The sternly despotic old man required humble penitence, and implicit obedience. The presumption of thinking to merit Heaven by performing a Crusade whilst under excommunication, was in his eyes an additional sin; and he forbade the Emperor’s ecclesiastical subjects, upon pain of the like doom, to contribute in any way to an attempt so sacrilegious. Many availed themselves of the prohibition to save their money; but, generally speaking, this implacability provoked great dissatisfaction, amongst clergy as well as laity. Gregory has been taxed with having so hated Frederic, as to have preferred his ruin to the recovery of the Holy City: and that, at a later epoch, after their second quarrel, he was actuated by such odious passions, seems indubitable. But to suspect him of these upon Frederic’s first offence—if offence his relanding when ill can be called—however disgracefully unchristian, as well as impolitic and unjust, were the acts to which anger impelled the self-entitled vicegerent of the God of Mercy and Long-suffering, seems hard. The idea is, moreover, inconsistent with his conduct for some years after their reconciliation. The octogenarian Pope’s irrational violence, upon the present occasion, is abundantly explained by the action of disappointment, upon his passionate and headstrong character.

The Lombards, to whom dissension between the Pope and the Emperor always promised facilities, for establishing the absolute independence at which they now avowedly aimed, seized the opportunity. They again,—and again, now with truth, alleged, in obedience to the commands of the Pope—occupied all the Alpine passes with armed bands, and obstructed the influx of German crusaders. They plundered, ill used, and drove back, all those, who, in detached parties, were hastening to obey their Emperor’s call. But if Gregory thus obtained useful partisans in northern Italy, he, whom he so virulently attacked, was not without his auxiliaries, some of whom were peculiarly annoying to the pontiff, being his own subjects. Frederic had, in the spring of that very year 1227, had an opportunity of winning the good will of the Romans, by sending ample supplies of corn to the Eternal City, then suffering from scarcity. He had likewise had a recent opportunity of earning the attachment of the powerful family of the Frangipani. That largely estated house had by some accident been much distressed for ready money; when the Emperor purchased all their palaces and estates in and about Rome; immediately granting them in vassalage to their former proprietors; in fact, he restored the whole. The Frangipani, of course, became leaders of the Ghibelines in the Estates of the Church. Confident that none of these services could yet be quite forgotten, the Emperor directed his Envoy, Roffredo di Benevento, who had been Professor of Law at the University of Bologna, as he then, seemingly, was at the Neapolitan, to read his justificatory manifesto, publicly, at the Capitol.

To believe that so violent an attack upon the papacy should have been publicly read, in the very seat and centre of the Pope’s temporal sovereignty, were difficult; nor does such an effort of faith appear requisite. The document itself not having been found, is known only through the accounts given by contemporary historians: the best authorities, among modern writers, hold the aggressive portion of the manifesto to have been appended to those copies only which were addressed to European sovereigns; not to those sent to his own vassal prelates and princes; and, if omitted in any, would of course be so in this one. The probability, indeed, seems to be that each copy of the justificatory manifesto was modified, according to the per­son to whom it was addressed.

But how much soever, or how little soever, of the Emperor’s vindication Roffredo read, both Senator and people, vehemently stimulated by the Frangipani, declared in his favour. Fiercely were the Pope and the Romans again embroiled; and when at Easter, 1228, Gregory renewed the excommunication of the Emperor, pronouncing his vassal kingdom of the Sicilies forfeited to the Papal See, by his contumacy, the people, at the call of the Frangipani, rose in rebellion. A short struggle ensued, ending in the expulsion of Gregory from Rome. He took shelter at Perugia.

When the month of May arrived, Frederic was again not prepared to embark. He despatched such troops as were ready, some 500 horsemen, under Marshal Ricciardo Filangieri, to Palestine; but did not himself follow them before August. During this interval the Empress-Queen Yolanthe gave birth to her only child, Conrad, paying for her maternity with her life. To await the birth of his child, the heir of the kingdom for which he was going to do battle, appears to have been one of Frederic’s motives for this delay, as he soon afterwards summoned the Baronage and Prelacy of Sicily and Apulia to meet him at Baroli; where, in an assembly so numerous as necessarily to hold its sittings in the open air, he announced his final arrangements, to which he required assent upon oath. They were these: providing evidently for an absence, liable to indefinite prolongation.

All the Barons and Prelates of the Kingdom of Sicily and duchy of Apulia, and their vassals, shall live in peace amongst themselves, as in the days of King William II.—Reginald Duke of Spoleto is Regent, during the Emperor-King’s absence.—Should the Emperor-King die, his son Henry is his successor in the Empire and in the kingdoms; to Henry, should he close his earthly career without issue, his brother Conrad shall succeed; should both die childless, the succession shall fall to any other legitimate son of the Emperor-King; or, failing such, the Sicilian throne to any legitimate daughter that he may leave.—All the vassals of the kingdom shall swear to observe these regulations; which shall remain law, unless the Emperor-King should see fit, by testamentary dispositions to change them. All present took the required oath; and, upon the 11th of August, Frederic finally set sail to perform his long vowed, often deferred, Crusade. So successfully had the Lombards opposed the passage of transalpine crusaders, that he was attended by only 100 knights with their men-at-arms and other followers; but accompanied by the Marian Grand-Master, who, as impartial writers observe highly exalted his character by thus braving the consequences of papal resentment, in his attachment to the Emperor. Might they not add, that he thereby acquitted the Emperor of all the more odious of the charges brought against him; since a man of Hermann von Salza’s acknowledged piety, virtue, and superior intellect, cannot be supposed to have voluntarily run such risks for the sake of a licentious and brutal atheist?

In obedience to Frederic’s orders, a new embassy, as soon as he was fairly at sea, repaired to the Papal Court, to announce the fact to the Holy Father, and solicit the revocation of the anathema, inasmuch as the doomed sinner was now a penitent, actually performing his vow. But Gregory, as before said, considered this step, unless preceded by submission, penance, absolution, and consequent papal sanction, as a new act of rebellion against his supremacy. His temper was exacerbated by his expulsion from Rome, on account of his quarrel with the Emperor; whence his view of the adverse party’s conduct was not likely to have become more lenient. He not only rejected the petition, and renewed the excommunication, but actually despatched two Franciscan friars to Palestine, with letters calculated, by thwarting all his measures, to prevent the success of the anathematized Imperial Crusader.