MEDIEVAL HISTORY LIBRARY

BOOK IV.

CHAPTER IV. FREDERIC II. [1227—1231.

Condition of Syro-Frank States—Sixth Crusade—Frederic in the East— Gregorys Machinations—Consequences— Treaty with Mohammedans—War in Apulia—Frederic’s Return— Triumph—Reconciliation with the Pope, 

And in what condition was the King of Jerusalem to find the strip of sea coast, now constituting the whole remainder of his deceased Empress’s kingdom? In what condition had Marshal Ricciardo, and his predecessor, the Duke of Limburg, found it? Still exempt from external war, in virtue of King John’s treaty with Sultan Kameel, but, as usual, distracted with internal discord. They found the laity at feud with the clergy; the different orders and classes of the clergy with each other; the Templars with the Hospitalers, and both with the Patriarch; the Venetians, Genoese, and Pisans amongst themselves—in a conflict between the last two a considerable part of Acre had been reduced to ashes;—and, finally, the Earl of Tripoli was under excommunication, on account of a quarrel with the Hospitalers.

Fortunately for the remnant of the Syro-Frank states, their Mohammedan neighbours were in too similar a condition, to profit by these dissensions, for expelling the Latin Christians from Asia. War had so long raged between Kameel, Sultan of Egypt, and his brother, Moaddham, Sultan of Damascus, that the former, always disposed to live at peace rather than in hostility with the Christians, was induced to seek their alliance against his fraternal foe. He had sent an embassy to Sicily, to treat with Frederic, as King of Jerusalem, respecting terms of alliance. The Emperor had thereupon made demands, that may be presumed reasonably high, of restoration; though the little disposition towards a general Crusade then discoverable in Europe, might lead him to think the lost portion of Yolanthe’s patrimony more likely to be recovered by negotiation, through the quarrels of the brother Sultans, than by armed invasion. But, to revive the suspicion, that Gregory’s anger against Frederic overpowered his desire for the redemption of the Holy places out of Paynim hands, papal emissaries appear to have visited Cairo, and informed Kameel that the Emperor was excommunicated and deposed. The first and veracious part of the intelligence would not much affect the Sultan; but a deposed, and consequently powerless sovereign, he would conceive to be an useless ally. He therefore declined to make the cessions demanded by Frederic, and the negotiation dropped.

When the Duke of Limburg reached Acre, he and his companions, as usual, vehemently urged the Palestine authorities to put an end to the truce; and, with unusual punctiliousness, giving the Saracens previous notice, to renew the war. But Frederic’s vicegerent, Tommaso d’Aquina, Conte di Acerra, represented that the defalcation in numbers, consequent upon the Emperor’s absence, had left the Duke’s force too small to justify him in renouncing the temporary security afforded by the truce; and peremptorily refused to commence hostilities till the Emperor himself should arrive. A large proportion of the Crusaders, transported to Palestine at Frederic’s expense, hereupon declared, that they considered the obstacle, so wilfully opposed to their full performance of their crusading vow, as a release from its obligations; wherefore, their pilgrimage being completed to the utmost of their power, they were determined to return home. This resolution both Earl and Duke of course earnestly opposed; and a sort of compromise was at length effected. Whilst many of the refractory Crusaders persisted in abandoning the Crusade, a considerable body agreed to await the Emperor’s arrival; and they even agreed further—as no one denied, that Caesarea and Joppa must be thoroughly fortified before attempting Jerusalem—to labour meanwhile at repairing the defences of those strongholds; that labour—as a necessary preliminary to the siege of the Holy City—being admitted as an instalment of the active service in the field, to which their vow pledged them. But this now, as in the third Crusade, was a mode of contributing to the recovery of the Holy Land, far less to the taste of the age, than “changing hardiment with” the Saracens; and the Patriarch, in his letters to the Pope, complains that the numbers, who chose to consider their whole crusading debt speedily thus discharged, had reduced the army, when Filangieri landed with his corps, to 800 knights or lances, and 10,000 foot.

Whilst this was passing amongst the Christians, Sultan Moaddham died at Damascus; and his surviving brothers, Sultan Kameel, and Malek el Ashraf, Prince of Khelaut in great Armenia, and of Edessa, combined to plunder his son and heir, their nephew, David, a mere boy. The boy’s guardian, Emir Aseddin, said to have been a renegade Templar, manfully resisted the nefarious attempt; whilst Malek el Ashraf grasped at Kameel’s proposed share of their nephew’s spoils, in addition to his own. Hence Kameel’s desire for Christian allies, of power sufficient to render them useful, revived in full force.

The Emperor, upon his way to Acre, invited by some of the chief Cypriots, landed in Cyprus, where his interposition was much needed. King Hugh was dead; his son Henry still a minor; and the government, in the hands of the Palestine Baron, John of Ibelin, his kins­man of the half-blood, through the second marriage of the young King’s great-grandmother, the Greek widow of Almeric I, of Jerusalem. Frederic, now, at the prayer of many Cypriots, claimed the regency; but whether in his capacity of Lord Paramount, either as King of Jerusalem or as Emperor—Cyprus, like Lesser Armenia, having lately assumed to be a vassal state of the Holy Roman Empire—or in virtue of his nearer relationship—Henry’s mother being the deceased Empress Yolanthe’s aunt—contemporary chroniclers have not explained. The Emperor likewise demanded from John of Ibelin the restitution of Beyrout, conformably to the laws of Jerusalem. The Baron made a vain attempt at resistance; but, upon obtaining from the Emperor a grant of the restored city in vassalage, submitted, and did homage for it. Frederic then appointed a regency, and prosecuted his voyage.

Hopes had been entertained of Asiatic co-operation, in this Crusade. Honorius III had, whilst it was in preparation, received a letter from Russutana, Queen of Georgia, in which she informed him that her brother, the late King, had only by an invasion of the Mongols—now steadily pouring westward, but in a line north of Syria— been prevented from joining the Crusaders in Egypt; and that, the Mongols being now expelled, although her brother was dead, she, his successor, had 40,000 men ready, under her Constable, to act with any crusading army. The Crusade was not then ready; and, when Frederic reached Palestine, the Mongols were again so threatening, that the Queen durst not lessen her means of defence at home. The Emperor-King of Jerusalem, thus thrown upon his own resources, landed at Acre on the 7th of September, and was received, with all due honours, by clergy as well as by laity. Even the arrogant Templars and Hospitalers, according to old custom, bowed the knee before him, kissing his knee; and the only unpromising circumstance was, that the Patriarch, amidst profuse demonstrations of respect and regard, refused to accept the kiss of peace from a sovereign lying under excommunication. Still, even independently of the Pope’s implacability, might the prediction have been hazarded, that this harmony would be short-lived; so many were the grounds of dissension existing. To the two Grand­Masters of the powerful and self-willed military Orders, to the Patriarch of Jerusalem, to the Palestine Great Vassals—all long accustomed to coerce the Kings, whom, by choosing them for the consorts of their Queens, they had, in fact, appointed—the presence in the kingdom of a monarch, as potent as he was able and absolute, could not but be irksome. Those kings had been glad to purchase the crown by almost any concession; whilst the Emperor deemed it his own, or at least his son’s by inheritance from Yolanthe, without reference to their assent. Hence these Magnates, wholly unused to control, were already irritated at the authority which the Conte di Acerra had, in his master’s name, asserted, and, as they complained, exercised with great arrogance. Acerra had besides involved himself in a quarrel with the Templars. Subsequently, when hostilities were renewed, they accused him of favouring the Saracens—the favourite accusation of the times, probably because scarce open to disproof—but whether they meant as a traitor to, or as the accomplice of, his King, may be a question. For the moment, however, all submitted to their Sovereign, whose exalted rank flattered their pride; and the scheme of crusading operations was discussed. The existing truce, according to its ex­press conditions, ceased by the very fact of the Emperor’s landing; but he was unwilling to begin hostilities with the small force at his disposal—so manifestly inadequate to the conquest of the kingdom. He therefore resolved to adopt and carry out the plan of the preceding year, which had as yet been executed only in regard to Caesarea; Frederic’s first proposed measure was to lead the Crusaders, together with the Palestine forces, to Joppa, where he would direct and superintend their labours upon the dilapidated fortifications.

But, before a move could be made, arrived the Minorite Friars, with the Pope’s epistles, which, when read, were found to prohibit all Christian men from obeying the excommunicated Emperor; and assign the command of his German and Italian Crusaders to the Grand-Master of the Teutonic Knights; to Marshal Ricciardo and Eudes de Montbelliard, that of all Palestine and Cypriot troops. These papal injunctions were naturally welcome to those, who felt the authority of a sovereign galling; wherefore Frederic’s endeavours to counteract this mere ebullition of papal rancour, as he considered it, were unavailing. In vain, he published the justificatory manifesto, so successful at Rome; at Acre, meeting with an audience, in great part at least, differently disposed, it proved ineffective. The Templars and Hospitalers, sacrificing their mutual animosity, united their efforts to shake off the dreaded yoke of a powerful monarch, and only the Teutonic Order, under Herman von Salza, with the Germans, Sicilians, and Apulians, as also the Pisans and Genoese, steadily adhered to the Imperial Crusader.

When the march to Joppa began, the result of Gregory’s missives appeared. Frederic issuing his orders, set forward in person, followed by the Marians and the faithful Crusaders. The Templars and Hospitalers refused to disobey the Pope, by obeying an excommunicated leader. They, indeed, marched for Joppa, where they felt their presence indispensable to the safety of the remaining provinces, as well as of the Crusaders; but they carefully marked that they did not move in obedience to the Head of the Crusade, even as King of Jerusalem. In marching by day and encamping at night, they interposed such a distance betwixt themselves and the Imperial army, as demonstrated their perfect independence of the authority by which it was governed. A procedure, that, by revealing to an enemy, no longer bound by the armistice, the disunion and consequent weakness of the defenders of the Holy Land, exposed both divisions to be separately overwhelmed. Frederic was painfully sensible of the dangers, which this wilfulness must bring upon both army and kingdom; and gladly adopted an expedient suggested by Herman von Salza. It was to issue all orders, not in his own name, but in those of God and Christendom, thus enabling the military monks to take their station amongst the Crusaders, without disobeying the Pope. And, this verbal concession satisfying the consciences of the Knights, who, how much soever they might wish their Emperor-King out of their way, assuredly desired not the destruction of the crusading army, or the consummated ruin of the kingdom, they joined the camp.

But, if such a verbal concession on the part of the Imperial Head of the Crusade were satisfactory to the two Orders, their mode of acceptance was by no means equally so to him. He could feel no confidence in them should danger threaten; and, finding himself thus awkwardly situated, as a general, naturally turned his thoughts to negotiation, rather than arms, for effecting his object. He had already despatched an embassy to Kameel, commissioned to announce his landing, by which the truce was ended, and to assure the Sultan that no lust of conquest had brought him to Palestine, but simply the duty of inforcing his son’s rights; rights which extended to the possession of those parts of Palestine conquered by Saladin, and still held by the Mohammedans, as well as of those over which the boy’s mother and grandmother had reigned. The envoys, who bore this message, were charged with valuable presents, as tokens of the sender’s amicable disposition.

Kameel’s need of a powerful ally, remaining as great as ever, biassed him in favour of Frederic, whose appearance, and measures in Cyprus and in Palestine awoke distrust of the information he had received from the Pope. Intelligence from that quarter, he could not but be aware, was designed not to benefit himself, but to harm the Emperor, or both, if possible. The reception of the Emperor-King of Jerusalem’s embassy at Cairo was, therefore, alike amicable and brilliant. The Sultan reviewed his army for the entertainment of his diplomatic visitors, or for their enlightenment touching his military power. And he sent an embassy to Palestine, in return for Frederic’s, laden with presents, consisting of the choicest produce of the East, as jewels, wrought vases of gold and silver, silks, with elephants, camels, monkeys, and other rarities. But at the same time, he led an army towards Joppa.

This diplomatic intercourse so far answered Kameel’s political purpose, that Ashraf conceived serious apprehensions of an alliance between his fraternal rival and the Imperial Crusader. He, in consequence, proposed to Kameel, as an adjustment of their differences, the division of the Damascus dominions between them, Palestine being included in Kameel’s share, and the co-operation of their powers in compelling David to rest content with his Mesopotamian provinces. But David and his Guardian, objecting to this arrangement, were now encamped at no great distance to the north, as was Kameel to the south, of the Crusaders; Ashraf, keeping aloof,—as uninterested in the Palestine question, since he had resigned his pre­tensions to that kingdom—was occupied, whether suc­cessfully or not, with the conquest of the provinces to which he laid claim. So nearly were the forces of these three Moslem princes balanced, that the union of any two must evidently insure the destruction of the third; whilst, as evidently, the existence of the Crusaders and the kingdom was contingent upon their continuing at variance. A position well calculated to produce a conciliatory temper in all parties.

Under such circumstances the negotiations between the Emperor and the Sultan made progress, and were enlivened in a manner, unique in the Middle Ages, if not in the whole history of diplomacy. Kameel’s embassadors, the Emirs Fahreddin and Shemseddin, two of the most learned Arabs of their day, when Arabs were the most learned of living men, recreated themselves after their laborious diplomatic contests, with conversations upon scientific subjects. In these, as in the diplomatic contests, their Imperial antagonist bore his part, and they were as much impressed by the general coincidence of his philo­sophic views with theirs, as they were charmed by his knowledge of their language, his pleasing manners, and his marked consideration for themselves. Frederic like­wise, in true Arab taste, sent astute questions in mathe­matics and metaphysics to Kameel, for solution; who, on his part, though esteemed a learned prince, not judging himself equal to devising parallel questions, with which to puzzle the Emperor, committed the serious task to the profoundest philosophers in his dominions.

In the midst of this unusual commerce between rivals for a kingdom, Kameel received letters from two parties, whose respective positions rendered them yet more extraordinary correspondents for a Mohammedan Sultan. Both letters incredible, did they not rest upon evidence, that must be allowed all but incontrovertible. Both melancholy instances of the degree in which prejudice and passion can supersede, not only all sense of right and wrong, but what would naturally seem to be the individual’s main interest and object; as well as the respect which every man owes to his own character, station, and profession. The Pope, meditating the conquest of Frederic’s maternal heritage, during his absence upon this Crusade, sought for means of preventing his return home to defend his property. To this end he actually wrote to the Sultan—the previous communication, if really made, was verbal, through emissaries, only half acknowledged—to dissuade him from making peace with an anathematized prince, about to be rendered powerless by the loss of those kingdoms which his crimes had forfeited. This was the first act of epistolary treason to the Christian cause. The second was committed by the Templars, who, also by letter, gave the Sultan notice of a pilgrimage to some of the Holy places, which the Emperor and King of Jerusalem was about to perform, with a very small escort; thus betraying the Champion of the Cross into the hands of the Mohammedans, with whom their vow bound them to wage uninterrupted war. The Hospitalers are averred to have been cognisant of, if not active partakers in, this flagitious deed.

Kameel was revolted by such treachery, and had no strong personal interest to counteract his better feelings. It could be no great object to him to capture a prince, who asked of him the sacrifice only of that which was hardly his, and which he had long before offered as ransom for Damietta; whilst, from that betrayed prince, he might hope for assistance, direct or indirect, in making compensatory acquisitions. He sent the Templars’ letter to the Emperor. It was not the first warning Frederic had received of the disloyalty of the two Orders; but he had been reluctant to credit so infamous a violation of the peculiar duty to which they were pledged, namely, the protection of pilgrims. Their own letter was evidence irresistible, and this proof “of the reed, the broken reed, on which he leant,” in trusting to any support that Palestine could afford him, certainly did not lessen his desire to effect the recovery of Jerusalem by treaty. He had lately received other intelligence, calculated to make him very intolerant of detention in Syria; to wit, that a Papal army, under the command of his virulently inimical father­in-law, Jean de Brienne, had invaded his dominions, and was then overrunning Apulia. Frederic now determined to accomplish the object of his Crusade, in whatever way it could be most quickly effected.

The negotiations in consequence advanced rapidly, and ere long a treaty was concluded to the following effect.

A ten years’ truce—a peace with unbelievers being on both sides still out of question—was agreed upon between the King of Jerusalem on the one part, and the Sultan of Egypt and the Prince of Khelaut and Edessa on the other; Ashraf having consented to be included in any convention Kameel might make with the European Emperor. In consideration of this truce, the Sultan engaged to restore to the King the cities of Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth, and Rama, with all the country extending from Jerusalem to Acre, Joppa, Tyre, and Sidon retaining nothing for the Mohammedans, in Jerusalem, except the mosque, named el Aksa, built by the Caliph Omar upon the site of Solomon’s Temple and a small chapel, in which to perform their devotions: and even when they desired to visit these, their sacred edifices, the Mohammedans were to enter the Holy City unarmed, and only at such times as should suit the convenience of the Christians; remaining no longer than the religious rites of their pilgrimage required, and never, upon any plea, sleeping within the walls. All Christian prisoners in the hands of the two Moslem princes were to be released.

Of this treaty no copy appears to be extant, and very different representations of the terms were made by opposite parties. The above statement is taken from Frederic’s letters to the Sovereigns of Europe, with the single modification that his description of the territory ceded, viz., “the kingdom, as when invaded by Saladin” has been changed into a specification of what he seems really to have got. If those words stood in the treaty, the Emperor must have known they were unmeaning the northern portion of the kingdom being apparently in the actual possession of David, an engagement by his uncles to restore it could only be contingent upon their wresting it from him, which, merely to give it away, they would hardly take the trouble of doing. The treaty was as distasteful to the Mohammedans, as it appears to have been to the Pope; and Arab writers limit the cession to Jerusalem and the country connecting the Holy City with Acre and Joppa, or with one of the two; whilst the Patriarch of Jerusalem makes it a mere road between the restored capital and Acre. That Frederic should represent his acquisition in the best light possible, even by a little exaggerating, or accepting, for the nonce, promises that he knew must be fallacious, is so natural in his position—success was to him an acquittal from the Pope’s accusation, a sort of proof that his excommunication was invalid—as, supposing the exaggeration to be but little, may surely be called venial. And a convention, consonant with his adversaries’ statements, the Marian Grand-Master could not have sanctioned, nor yet the Emperor’s misrepresentation of the cessions thereby obtained; without forfeiting his high character, which, even in Gregory’s eyes, he will be seen never to have done. Again, Bethlehem and Nazareth, not being hallowed in Moslem estimation, would neither be to Kameel worth obstinately withholding, nor to Moslem writers—as desirous of reducing, as Frederic of magnifying, the cession in appearance—worth specific mention. The Patriarch, upon whose statements Gregory relied, was so bitterly hostile to the Emperor from the moment of the Franciscans’ arrival, that what he says must be taken as dictated by prejudice; and so powerful is prejudice to bias the judgment, that even his misrepresentations need not always be supposed intentional. Some, however, must have been so. A rumour, originating with him, was circulated, that, by the treaty, the church of the Holy Sepulchre was to be common to Moslem and Christian. Now that this should pass current in Europe, in those days, is credible; but the Patriarch could hardly be ignorant, that Christian worship would desecrate a mosque to Moslem feelings, as much as theirs a church in Christian estimation; or that the church of the Holy Sepulchre had for them no peculiar sanctity, whilst Omar’s mosque—both as the representative of Solomon’s Temple, and as built by a highly revered Caliph—was esteemed most holy.

Frederic is said to have shrouded his negotiations with Kameel in mystery—their progress probably, the presence of the Emirs in his camp must have been known—but, when the terms were agreed upon, he laid the treaty before the Grand-Masters of the three military Orders, and four Palestine Barons, asking their opinion of them, prior to signing. They unanimously judged the conditions to be, if not as favourable as could be wished, yet as much so as, under the circumstances, could be hoped. He is said to have also sought the opinion of the English Bishops of Winchester and Exeter—probably as leading men among the Crusaders, not his subjects—and to have been advised by them, as also by the Grand-Masters, to consult the Patriarch Gerold, in his double capacity of Patriarch and Legate:—Cardinal Conrad had, of course, been forbidden to accompany Frederic. But the Emperor, who had already experienced Gerold’s hostility to himself, replied that he needed not the Patriarch’s counsels; and upon the 18th of February, 1229, signed the treaty.

The Emperor-King now set out for Jerusalem, inviting the Patriarch to accompany him, in order to purify and new consecrate the Holy Places, and the sacred edifices, about to be restored to Christian worship. Gerold had now a personal cause of ill-will to the Emperor and King, superadded to his adoption of the Pope’s enmity; and indignantly rejecting his excommunicated sovereign’s invitation, pronounced the promised restitution of Jerusalem a snare, laid by the Paynim Sultan and the anathematized Emperor conjointly, to entrap unwary Christians into Moslem slavery. He sent the Archbishop of Caesarea to lay the Holy City itself, and all the places of especial sanctity, as most hallowed by the Passion of the Redeemer, under an interdict; whilst they should be polluted by the presence of him, who had regained them for Christendom as well as for himself. He forbade pilgrims to offer up prayers at them, or even to visit them, during the same period; and indeed longer, until the Pope should have been consulted and have decided the strange question, whether, so regained, they might be esteemed holy.

Frederic meanwhile journeyed from Joppa to Jerusalem, attended, apparently, notwithstanding the patriarchal prohibitions and anathemas, by all the Crusaders and by the Syro-Frank chivalry, in fact by the whole army—some evidence that the treaty was generally approved. He was also accompanied by the Emir Shemseddin, commissioned to deliver over to the Emperor, as King of Jerusalem, all the ceded districts, and to repress whatever disorders might occur among the Moslem inhabitants, who would naturally be irritated at this transfer to Christian domination.

Upon the 17th of March, the Emperor-King reached Jerusalem, of which he was formally put in possession by the Emir. He immediately proceeded, in defiance of the Patriarch’s prohibition, to visit in pilgrim-guise the Holy Sepulchre and other hallowed spots, whether impelled by genuine piety, or by the desire to prove himself a devout Christian, in refutation of papal calumny. But as the interdict prevented the celebration of mass, or any other religious rite, unless by such compulsion as Frederic was too wise to employ, his prayers were there offered up without any of the customary ceremonies, exhibiting the Emperor as an unjustly persecuted victim. His next step exhibited him as superior to such persecution. The interdict in like manner preventing a solemn coronation with the wonted rites and ceremonies, he boldly dispensed with them. Upon the Sunday next ensuing, in imperial robes and imperial state, attended by all who had followed him to Jerusalem, he repaired to the church of the Holy Sepulchre, took the crown off the high altar, where by his directions it had been deposited, and with his own hand placed it upon his head.

Then, at the Holy Sepulchre, the Grand-Master of the Teutonic Knights read aloud, in German, an historical vindication of the Emperor’s conduct relative to the Crusade, similar to that read by Roffredo at the Capitol, and published at Acre; with the addition of a vindicatory statement of his conduct and operations, since his landing in Palestine. But this paper is strikingly distinguished from that of which an abstract has been given, by its respectfully temperate tone in regard to Gregory; whose violence and enmity are ascribed to misinformation; such as rendered excommunicating the calumniated Emperor-King of Jerusalem and Sicily a positive duty. A change designed to conciliate his Jerusalem audience rather than the angry Pope, who was even then endeavouring to wrest his hereditary kingdom from him. When Hermann von Salza had finished, Latin, Italian, and French versions of the paper were read, for the benefit of those Crusaders and Syro-Franks who were unacquainted with the German language. The acquisition of the Holy City, the army’s actual presence amongst those holy scenes, the very birthplace of their religion, for which they were indebted to the Imperial Crusader, had materi­ally altered the disposition, in which the same vindication had been listened to at Acre. Moreover, their own knowledge that much of the new narrative was correct and the high character of Hermann von Salza, the Emperor’s constant companion, a guarantee for the truth of the rest, gave weight to the preceding portion, whilst by following him to Jerusalem they had in a manner identified themselves with him. All these circumstances influencing the audience, even the statements, previously rejected, are said to have now been heard with a joy beyond the power of words to express, and the uprightness of Frederic’s proceedings in Palestine was generally acknowledged.

From Jerusalem, Frederic addressed letters to the European Sovereigns, with a relation of his operations in the Holy Land and their result; and it is from the one addressed to the King of England, that the account of the treaty with Kameel and Ashraf is given by Matthew Paris. But the interdict, and other effects of the Patriarch’s adopting the Pope’s enmity to the Emperor, would have made Palestine an irksome residence for the latter, even had his presence in Apulia not been imperatively necessary, to protect his dominions from papal invasion. His only other recorded acts in Jerusalem, were giving orders for the repair of the fortifications, and presenting the Teutonic Order with a palace adjoining David’s tower. This he did partly in acknowledgment and recompense of their unswerving fidelity, but, mainly, because, having sprung into existence after the loss of the Holy City, they had not, like the other Orders, a house of their own in the capital of the kingdom; which was the proper headquarters of monastic chivalry. He then returned to Joppa, inspected the repaired and improved defences, and proceeded to Acre, where he arrived before the end of March.

At Acre he was unwillingly detained through the month of April, the time being chiefly consumed in dissensions with the Patriarch, who persisted in representing the treaty as a gross deception, concocted between the Moslem and the pseudo-Christian sovereigns, for the purpose of deluding Europe, and betraying pilgrims into the hands of infidels. This accusation he grounded upon Sultan David’s refusal to concur in a treaty, concluded for the surrender of provinces which—if unable to defend them—he claimed as his own, by uncles at war with him; one of whom, Ashraf, was then actually besieging him at Damascus. But this alleged fictitious character was not the Patriarch’s sole objection to the treaty. Even if honest, he reprobated it as illegal; because the restored places were delivered to the excommunicated Emperor—at most, the father of the hereditary King—and not to himself, the Pope’s representative. Occupied as well as annoyed by the necessity of contending against such complaints and accusations, Frederic could do little towards pacifying the kingdom or improving the government. At length some sort of reconciliation was effected between him and the Patriarch; when, again appointing the Conte di Acerra, Viceroy, he on May-day set sail for Italy.

Much, indeed, was his presence needed there. Whether Gregory had originally projected taking advantage of Frederic’s absence upon his Crusade, to conquer his maternal heritage, as Giannone positively asserts, may, fortunately for the honour of the papacy, be doubted; but that he was far more easily, than became the self-entitled spiritual Father of Christendom, provoked to attempt that conquest, is certain. The provocation was early given. The Emperor had been unlucky, and in some measure imprudent, in his choice of a Regent. Reginald von Lützelenhard, son and heir of the German invested with the duchy of Spoleto, by Henry VI, and dispossessed of it by Innocent III, was naturally an inveterate enemy of the Roman See, enriched with his birthright. The Emperor relied upon that enmity to his persecutor, as insuring him, in the Duke without a dukedom, a vigilant guardian of his dominions and prerogatives against papal encroachment; but he forgot that this enmity might assume an aggressive character.

Duke Reginald, thus predisposed against Rome, was exasperated beyond all bounds of discretion, by Gregory’s pertinacious injustice. His treatment of the embassy, sent to announce the actual commencement of the Imperial Crusade; his refusal to relieve from excommunication a monarch at that very moment in arms for the service of the Church, performing the precise duty for neglect of which the sentence had been fulminated, was the drop that overflowed the cup. Eagerly seizing upon the occa­sion that justified him in indulging Lis inclination, he pronounced this an insult, as well as an injury, to their sovereign, in which only dastards could acquiesce; an act of hostility, rendering war inevitable: and upon this opinion he hastened to act. He concerted his movements with his brother Bertold, Imperial Vicar in Tuscany, and simultaneously and vigorously the brothers, the one from the south-east, the other from the north-west, invaded the duchy of Spoleto, which, though claimed by the Emperor, was then, as now, included in the Papal States. They farther betrayed the vindictive sentiments actuating them, by carrying on the war as savagely as they had begun it rashly, putting all prisoners, even ecclesiastics, to death, often having first tortured them.

The Pope, of course, excommunicated the brothers; but he chose to impute their aggression, not to their own anger at having lost, and desire to recover, their father’s duchy; but to the commands of the Emperor; as if a rational being would involve his dominions in war, whilst debilitated by his own absence with his best warriors. Acting upon this accusation, as though to accuse were to convict, Gregory announced his intention of re-annexing those forfeited fiefs, Sicily and Apulia, to the Roman See. He offered the Lombard League, upon condition of assisting him to accomplish this great object, the pardon of past contumacy in tolerating heresy, and withholding their allotted quota from the Crusade, in the preceding year. Again, upon this occasion, the League appears to have been re-organized; Cardinal Ottaviano engaged for the Pope’s contributing half the cavalry of the army to be raised, and more than half the money wanted for its expenses; and Milan took a third of the remainder upon herself. Gregory expected great results from this arrangement, and in hopes of rearing another equally useful ally, afforded every encouragement to the ripening Tuscan League, and a still younger sister, a similar separate federation amongst the cities of Romagna. He proclaimed a sort of Crusade against the absent Crusader, and thus accomplished the raising of two armies; to which, in order to stamp them troops of the Church, whilst fearing to profane the Cross as the standard of a purely temporal quarrel, he gave as their ensign St. Peter’s keys. Hence their Italian designation of Chiavisegnati, i.e. Key-signed, or Key-bearers, in opposition to that of the true Crusaders, Crocesegnati. But, if the Pope thus showed some respect for the sign of the Cross, he is taxed with more than neglect of its service in the Holy Land; with having expended in levying and equipping these Key-bearers, the money deposited in his hands to defray indigent Crusaders’ expenses, or otherwise contribute to expeditions for the recovery or defence of Jerusalem. One of the armies, thus raised by a breach of trust, was placed under the joint command of the ex-King of Jerusalem, and of Cardinal Colonna, and directed to expel Duke Reginald from the Papal territories; the other, led by a papal Chaplain, Pandolfo of Anagni, was destined to invade Apulia. In both armies, Sicilian and Apulian rebels held high positions.

If Gregory did, as seems but too certain, so far forget what was due to the assumed character of Spiritual Head of Christendom, as to write to the Moslem Sultan of Egypt, the letter must have been despatched about this time, when he ordered the invasion of the absent Crusader’s kingdom. He certainly now addressed letters to all Christian monarchs justifying an act, which, obstinate as were his prejudices, he could not help feeling, required explanation. In these, he repeated his former inculpations of the Emperor, with the addition, that this sacrilegious defier of the Church, had projected this attack upon her property during his own absence in Palestine. And again, upon receiving the Patriarch of Jerusalem’s new accusa­tion, of collusion with the Mohammedans, desecrating the Holy Sepulchre, &c., he forwarded them to the same princes. He despatched epistles, similar in tenor, to the German princes, whom he exhorted to cast off their allegiance to the enemy of Christians, the friend of Mohammedans, and even that due to the son, attainted by deriving his existence from a father excommunicated for pertinacity in sin. Thus freed, he hade them place a new sovereign upon the throne.

In Apulia, meanwhile, Reginald being in the Papal States with his army, the Grand-Judge, Enrico di Morra, raised troops with whom to oppose the invaders. The fortune of war fluctuated. In the first instance, Morra rapidly drove Pandolfo and his Key-bearers out of the kingdom; but a few weeks afterwards, in the beginning of March, 1229, the Chaplain being very considerably reinforced, renewed the invasion, gave battle to the loyal Apulians, and defeated them, taking the Grand-Judge himself prisoner, together with a son of the absent Earl of Acerra. He then made himself master of San Germano; and, seemingly, as the ransom of his captives, obtained the surrender of Montecassino. The disaffected, headed by the Earls of Celano and Aquila, caught at this favourable opportunity to revolt; and the country, as far as, and even beyond, Benevento, fell into the hands of the Key­bearers, and their confederates, the rebels. The Grand­Judge, when set at liberty, found the small force he could at the moment collect, scarcely sufficient to protect Capua.

Upon the eastern side of Italy, meanwhile, Jean de Brienne not only, according to his instructions, expelled Duke Reginald from the duchy of Spoleto, but pursued him into the Abruzzi, where town after town opened its gates to the invaders. One alone offered resistance; namely, Bojano, where the nursery of the infant Prince Conrad had been established. The inhabitants, proud of being the chosen protectors, to whose courage and loyalty their Sovereign’s child was confided, closed their gates, manned their walls, and there exhibiting the royal and imperial babe, thus loudly admonished his maternal grand­father: “It is thy duty to preserve his patrimonial kingdom to thine innocent grandson, not to rob him of it.” De Brienne coldly replied: “Obedience to the Pope is the first of duties.” He passed on, nevertheless, without exposing his grandchild’s life to the hazards of a siege.

Almost as efficiently noxious invaders were the swarms of mendicant friars, with whom the Pope had inundated the realm. Armed with spiritual weapons, interdict, indulgences, and absolutions, they traversed the country in all directions, preaching rebellion against the sinful, excommunicated King, the disloyal vassal of St. Peter. To assist their exhortations, or, rather, taking a different road to the same goal, they disseminated a report of Frederic’s death; and, when it was in general circulation, asked, could an infant in arms protect them against the troops of the Pope, their Lord Paramount? The loyal were indeed disheartened, the malcontents encouraged to revolt, and anarchy prevailed throughout the land; whilst Gregory, sullenly brooding over his expulsion from Rome, hoped to find at Naples compensation for that humiliating fact, with increase of power, sufficient to reduce the rebelliously Ghibeline Romans.

It was at this moment of pontifical exultation, of despondency, little short of actual despair in the hearts of the loyal, that intelligence of the Emperor’s having landed at a small town near Brindisi, fell like a thunderbolt upon his enemies, like a sunbeam after tempest upon his faithful vassals, who had scarcely dared to hope, that he was still alive. The erst dispirited loyalists resumed their courage; the waverers, who had shrunk from resisting the spiritual Head, and, as Lord Paramount, temporal sovereign of the kingdom, now flocked to the Imperial standard; the war was again vigorously prosecuted, though in a spirit purely defensive. But Frederic, whatever might be his private sentiments towards his inexorable persecutor, had too lately and too painfully experienced the evils resulting from a pope’s animosity, and the lying, however undeservedly, under excommunication, not to be most desirous of reconciliation with a foe wielding such powers. One of his first steps, therefore, was again to send an embassy, consisting of the Marian Grand-Master and the Archbishops of Bari and Reggio, to the Pope, to offer explanations of his conduct, refute the Patriarch’s calumnies, state that he had duly punished his Lieutenant’s attempt upon the duchy of Spoleto, and, having thus vindicated him, to solicit relief from the sentence of excommunication.

High as was the character, as well as the station of these embassadors, Gregory turned a deaf ear to their representations and prayers, as he had previously closed his eyes to the Grand-Master’s written statements. Herman von Salza’s letter is extant, and gives a glowing account of all that the Emperor had done for the recovery of the Holy Land. Obstinacy was the very groundwork of Gregory’s character; was innate, and found, could it have needed, support, in the pride with which he contemplated the success of his soldiers of the Keys; and in his reliance upon his fiercely anti-imperialist Lombard allies. Some trust he may likewise have felt in the effect that his epistolary attacks upon Frederic must produce upon the public mind of Europe; enhanced by the new accusation of having quitted the Holy Land, before the period, during which he was pledged to bear arms for the Cross, expired. Thus arrogantly confident of immediate and complete triumph over his contumacious vassal, the Pope treated the statements, arguments, and prayers of the prelates, and of the universally respected Marian Grand-Master—an eyewitness of all that he asserted in behalf of the Emperor—with as much contempt, as those of preceding, humbler envoys.

But all adventitious support soon failed the headstrong old man. The Emperor, as before said, had, from Jerusalem, addressed a narrative of his conduct in Palestine to the Sovereigns of Europe, and the Princes of the Empire; adding the reasons that compelled him, when in the recovery of Jerusalem, the chief object of the Crusade was achieved, to return to Europe before the time prefixed: those reasons were, the hostility of the Pope and the invasion of Apulia by the Key-signed armies. For the truth of his statements, he had appealed to the two Grand-Masters of the Hospitalers and the Marians; to the impartial English Bishops of Winchester and Exeter; and even to some Dominican friars.

The impression made by these letters annihilated Gregory’s hopes from his. No unprejudiced person appears to have hesitated in believing Hermann von Salza, and Frederic’s other guarantees, in preference to his accuser, the Patriarch Gerold. The Romans sent a deputation to congratulate the Emperor upon the success of his Crusade, and his safe return, and to assure him, as well of their constant attachment to himself, as of their reprobation of the Pope’s conduct. The Lombards, notwithstanding their treaty with Gregory, seemingly so advantageous to them, had afforded him little assistance. Not being engaged in resisting every exercise of that authority, which in words they still hardly denied to the Emperor, they were engrossed by rivalries and feuds among themselves, by factions within the several cities. Attachment to the Pope they had none, being inclined to heresy; and, in the Emperor’s absence, saw no need of interrupting their passionate internal contests, to wage Papal wars in Apulia. The few troops they did send thither, proved quite as troublesome by their insubordination and wilfulness, as useful on the field of battle. Gregory had trusted that the return of the dreaded Emperor would stimulate them to exertion; but even in this he was disappointed. Whether they were in a casually loyal mood, or dissatisfied with the Pope’s insistence upon the punishment of heretics, certain it is that the exertions of the now sanguine Ghibelines overpowered Guelph fear of the imperial power; and the League refused again to guard, at Gregory’s bidding, the Alpine passes. Hence the Germans, who—instead of deposing Frederic and Henry, and electing an anti-king—were separately hurrying, at the imperial summons, to Naples, there to congratulate the successful, but ill-remunerated Crusader, and assist him with their swords and their counsels, if not yet with their whole vassalage, crossed the mountains unopposed.

Nor was this the worst of Gregory’s disappointments. His Key-bearers were mercenaries, and their pay was in arrear. The mercenary troops of those days bore, as has been intimated, a character more resembling that of banditti, than of the soldiers of fortune of later times, or even of the intermediate Condottiere bands; and those who had enlisted under the banner of the Keys were reputed the most recklessly ruthless vagabonds of their class. Their demands were irresistible; but the funds diverted from the service of the Holy Land were exhausted; and to satisfy these formidable creditors, their leaders seized Church property, whether plate, jewels, or money, in all places under their control. Even the revered Abbey of Montecassino was plundered by the Legate, to pay the soldiers of the Keys; an act of sacrilege, which, as doubly revolting in Papal officers, provoked the most indignant resentment throughout Apulia, alienating even the clergy from Gregory. It proved, moreover, insufficient for the object; and the impatience of the unsatisfied Key-bearers threatened fearful consequences; whilst the severity, unusual in him, though habitual in his contemporaries, with which Frederic executed justice upon such of the leaders as, chancing to be his subjects, fell into his hands, alarmed the rebels and malcontents.

Thus was the Pope not only disappointed of all his expected reinforcements, but in danger of seeing his own troops turn against him. In addition to which, his generals, as might have been anticipated, were found no match for the Emperor. Jean de Brienne, who alone might have coped with him, had, during the latter part of the campaign, suffered his thoughts to be drawn off from the conduct of the Pope’s war, by negotiations relative to concerns of his own; and about this time the result of those negotiations—a flattering invitation to Constantinople—produced the resignation of his command.

In that metropolis, the Emperor Robert died the preceding year, 1228 ; and although his notorious intellectual incapacity and moral vices might have seemed to render his decease a blessing to his subjects, it assumed, for the moment at least, an aspect the very reverse. Legitimate children he had none; but this was immaterial; his little brother, a Constantinopolitan born, who had not completed his tenth year, being at once, by common consent, placed upon the throne. So far all was concord; but the boy-Emperor required a guardian, the Empire a regent and champion, amidst encircling dangers; and here all unanimity ceased. Some of the Latin Barons of Constantinople proposed marrying young Baldwin to a daughter of the mighty Azan, then undisputed, and thoroughly independent, King of Bulgaria, entreating the monarch to undertake the guardianship of his imperial son-in-law; thus securing, to the menaced and tottering empire, the friendship and efficient protection of its previously most formidable neighbour. But others, apparently the majority, dreaded the Bulgarian’s friendship and protection, more than the enmity of all their foes. Months were consumed in factious contests upon this question; assuredly very important, but of which any speedy solution was, perhaps, less mischievous than procrastination.

At length the urgent need of decision producing action, overtures were made to the ex-King of Jerusalem; the hand of the juvenile Emperor was offered him for his daughter Martha, a child of his third marriage with the Spanish Princess, and for himself, as proposed for Azan, the regency during his imperial son-in-law’s minority. But so unsatisfactorily unstable did the state of the Latin empire of Constantinople appear, that Jean de Brienne preferred the service of the Pope to the proud office of regent, even with the prospect of another imperial crown for another daughter. The negotiation languished awhile; then the Barons, agreeing amongst themselves that the abilities of Jean de Brienne were indispensable to the safety of the empire, offered him the Byzantine throne for life, deferring, until his father-in-law’s death, the accession of the already acknowledged rightful heir, Baldwin II, who should possess, in the interim, only the Asiatic provinces. The title of Emperor, how insecure soever, was an irresistible lure; Brienne deserted the Pope and his Apulian war, hastening to Constantinople to receive the crown and celebrate his daughter’s marriage.

Thus generally blamed, disappointed of the allies upon whom he relied, unable to trust his own troops, and forsaken by his best, or, rather, his only general, the Pope became, perforce, almost as pacifically disposed as the Emperor. Negotiations were, thereupon, opened at San Germano, whither princes and prelates, amongst others, the Dukes of Austria, Carinthia, and Meran, and the Marian Grand-Master, repaired, to offer their mediation. Upon the 28th of August, 1230, a treaty of peace between the Papal and Imperial antagonists was signed, by which all things were, as far as might be, restored to the state they were in prior to the first sentence of excommunication. By this treaty, Frederic acknowledged the Pope’s claim to ecclesiastical authority on either side of the Faro, or Strait, granted a general amnesty to his insurgent subjects, or vassals, under which last designation the Lombards were included, as well as the Tuscans and Romagnotes; and was received again into the bosom of the Church. But it was especially provided that, should he fail in any one point, the excommunication should, ipso facto, revive. The Pope, on his part, pardoned and granted absolution to all who had borne arms against him; and the contracting parties engaged jointly to seek for means of reducing to obedience, without detriment to the honour of the Roman See, the Apulian fortresses, Gaeta and Sta. Agata, which still refused to submit to their rightful King. From the moment the treaty was signed, not only do all papal objections to the manner in which the Emperor had recovered Jerusalem cease; but Gregory, retracting the censures, into which, he now averred, that he had been deluded by the Patriarch Gerold’s misrepresentations, pronounced the treaty with the Sultan of Egypt to be the best that could, under the circumstances, be obtained. Yet do later historians repeat the accusation, overlooking the acquittal.

One of the first consequences of the restoration of peace, between the Pope and the Emperor was, the withdrawing of papal encouragement from the Tuscan League, which, in default thereof, languished, and presently died away. The infant Romagnote League, which Gregory had only tolerated whilst courting alliances against the Emperor, was more abruptly disposed of. He now commanded its immediate dissolution, prohibiting, under heavy Church penalties, any future attempt at such confederation.

The Pope then invited his reconciled Imperial son to visit him at Anagni, where he then held his pontifical court. The Emperor hastened thither, and was received with every mark of cordial good will. The most intimate, and, apparently, amicable intercourse, taking place between these lately bitter enemies. Whether the mediating princes and prelates assembled at San Germano,—where Duke Leopold of Austria had died,—were also invited to Anagni, is uncertain; but, if they were, they were treated merely as forming, with the Cardinals, the Court of the two heads of the Christian world. The Pope and Emperor passed their time in confidential conference, to which, as to their meals, always taken together, neither Cardinal, nor Prince of the Empire, in fact no individual, was admitted, with the single exception of the Marian Grand­Master, whose exalted character, moral and intellectual, even more than his high, and, in that age, important office, marked him out as the fitting counsellor of Pope and Emperor, the fitting mediator between them. Of what passed in this privy council contemporary chroniclers were ignorant, nor is any record of its deliberations extant; but the adoption of one great political measure is known to have been there finally decided. This was the transfer of the main body of the Teutonic Order, from Palestine, to Prussia.

The Knights, whom Hermann had sent to treat with Duke Conrad, had found Mazovia overrun by Prussians, and the Duke absent, probably seeking Polish help against the invaders. At the request of the Duchess Agaphia they joined, if they did not take the command, of the Mazovian army; it was defeated, and they were left for dead upon the field. But their extraordinary prowess was the theme of general admiration; the prodigious slaughter they had made of the fierce, and previously scarce resisted Prussians, having completely decided the appreciation of the Order. The Duchess directed the Knights to be sought; and, being found alive, though desperately wounded, they were removed for tendance to her palace. Thence they despatched so favourable a report of the prospects opening in those regions, that Hermann, even prior to the Crusade, had sent a body of 100, under Hermann Balk, to occupy a wooden fort, that the Duke was building for them, and to co-operate with him in the defence of Mazovia.

The Grand-Master, since his return to Europe, had received the most satisfactory accounts from Balk, together with enlarged offers from Duke Conrad. These were, a grant, to the Order, of Kulm, with additional districts, until Prussia, or a very considerable portion thereof should be conquered; and the whole of the Prussian conquests to be held in full property, upon the single condition of constant active assistance from the Knights, in defending Mazovia against the Heathen Prussians and Lithuanians. These more advantageous proposals the Grand-Master, at Anagni, again submitted to the Pope and Emperor, requesting their sanction to his accepting them. Both approved of the now matured scheme. Gregory authorized the removal of the greater part of the Order from Palestine to Prussia, and the dedication of its future services to the conversion, by conquest, of European Heathens; granted them, in their new home, all the exemptions from episcopal superintendence enjoyed by the two original Orders—by which he at once made their original introducer, Bishop Christian, their enemy;— and facilitated their further operations, by allowing Crusaders thenceforward to perform their vows in Palestine or in Prussia, at their choice. Frederic fulfilled the promise he had made, when Duke Conrad’s first offer was communicated to him, by investing the Order, in the person of its Grand-Master, with the provinces to be conquered, and, by conquest, incorporated with the Empire. Thus fully authorized by both his spiritual and his temporal sovereign, Hermann von Salza busied himself with the transplantation of more than half the Marians to Kulm, and their temporary establishment there, where, however, he did not fix the Order’s head-quarters. In fact, the avowed head-quarters of a military monastic Order could only be at Jerusalem, when Jerusalem was in Christian hands; and those of the Marians were still nominally there, although the main force of the Order was in Europe. Neither did the Grand-Master, in person, conduct the war with the Prussians. This he committed wholly to Conrad von Landsberg, with the title of Heermeister, or Army-Master, and well did he and his knights perform their allotted parts. Nor were they unassisted. Attracted by the reputation of the Order, crusaders from northern and eastern Germany thronged to fight under their banner, in so convenient a locality; and the conquest of the country proceeded steadily, the resolute defence of the Prussians merely delaying its progress. The Grand­Master reserved to himself, as his sufficient and more dignified duty, the general government of the whole Order, the European head-quarters of which appear to have been temporarily established at Venice; and all his leisure time he, as a Prince of the Empire, employed in assisting the Emperor in his various troubles and difficulties.

From such evils Frederic was, however, for the moment, tolerably free, seeming to have really won the heart of the stern and upright, though irascible and easily-prejudiced Pope. Gregory now despatched letters to the Lombards, informing them that he had pleaded their cause, and obtained the extension of the amnesty to them, altogether effecting much in their behalf with the Emperor; and that, having thus essentially served them, he should henceforward consider every injury done to the Emperor as a personal offence to himself, to be visited with spiritual chastisement. Frederic, on his part, joyfully announced to all Christendom the glad tidings of his readmission into the bosom of the Church, and perfect friendship with the Holy Father. And of his own friendship he proved the sincerity, by taking upon himself the office of mediator between the expelled pontiff and the Romans, whom he persuaded to receive Gregory back, and submit anew to his lawful authority.

Frederic devoted the interval—well must he have foreseen that it could not be more—of tranquillity and leisure afforded him by this reconciliation, to the administration of his several realms. He appointed a Diet to be held at Ravenna, in November, 1231, to which he summoned his son Henry (with whose conduct his dissatisfaction was increasing), and the German princes, as well as the Italian vassals and deputies of cities. And now Gregory repaid Frederic’s interposition with the Romans, in kind. Not trusting in the efficiency of his recent admonition to the Lombard League, he again addressed epistles to its Rectors, forbidding them, under pain of his highest displeasure, to obstruct the passage of the German members of the Diet, whose presence was indispensable to the settlement of the affairs of the Empire. But to Milan, the motive spirit of the League, the Pope was merely a useful ally, neither the revered head of her religion, nor the beloved leader of her party; her policy was merely anti-imperialist, and a large proportion of her people were heretics, though some of the cities under her control strove to satisfy the Pope, by burning dissenters from the orthodox faith. The Emperor being now again in Italy, the master passion of Milan revived, superseding every other sentiment; and, as usual, she was imitated by all her friends and dependents. Lombard feuds were suspended; as before, an actual certainty was professed that, under colour of convoking a Diet, the Emperor was bringing down German armies upon Italy, to enslave the peninsula; to wrest from the cities all the rights and liberties secured to them by the treaty of Constance, and crush them under the weight of his despotism. All the forces of the League were assembled, and again were the Alpine passes, this time in open defiance of the Pope’s commands, strongly occupied.

Frederic’s probable views and purposes in regard to the Lombard League have been already discussed, and the present occasion seems to call for no farther remark; save that every revolving year might add a sting to the monarch’s conscience for continuously neglecting the monarchial duty of inforcing the observance of peace and good order amongst his subjects or vassals. That he had no present intention of attempting to perform this duty, may be inferred from his repairing to Ravenna without troops, without even an escort beyond his usual courtly attendants; whilst the German princes, who, had they united their vassals in martial array, could surely have forced the passage of the mountains, again obeying their Emperor’s peaceful call separately, were for the most part driven back, and returned home, unintentionally disobedient. Amongst these was King Henry; a few only of the more zealous, or more active, found means, slipping through, to reach Ravenna.

As the few Italian Ghibelines who attended, with the still fewer Germans, were insufficient to achieve any material object, the indignant Emperor adjourned the Diet until tranquillity should be re-established. For the moment, he merely, in concert with the members present, laid the offending cities under the ban of the Empire, and forbade those still professing loyalty to their Sovereign, to select their Podestas from amongst the natives of those, lying under this sentence. Before quitting Ravenna, he is said to have won the hearts of the inhabitants, by the gift of some of his Oriental acquisitions, namely, of an elephant, a couple of camels, a couple of lions, and a couple of leopards.

But not in as pacific guise as he had entered did he quit Ravenna. Genoa, if taking no part in the obstruction of the passes, had already selected a Milanese as her Podestà for the following year; and remonstrance was unavailing, to obtain the revocation of the appointment. The Genoese asserted that such an act would be an irremissible breach of their laws; and pertinaciously installed the now avowed rebel in his office. Frederic resolved to chastise the vassal republic, and summoning to his standard the Ghibelines within easy reach, proceeded to attack the Genoese territories. Hostilities ensued; but proved too injurious to the commerce of both parties,—Frederic II entertaining an unfeudal regard for the mercantile class of his subjects—to be long persevered in, and peace was in a short time restored.

In all these transactions Gregory cordially co-operated with his reconciled spiritual son.

BOOK IV. CHAPTER V. FREDERIC II. [1231.

Frederic’s Legislation for the Sicilies—And Administration— Gregory's Dissatisfaction — Neapolitan University — Frederic’s Liberality.