MEDIEVAL HISTORY LIBRARY

BOOK IV.

CHAPTER V. FREDERIC II. [1231.

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

Frederic II looked, beyond the mere exigencies and interests of the moment, to the permanent welfare of the nations committed to his charge; and to this he saw that constitutional reform, that is to say (constitutional reform not being a mediaeval idea), various essential improvements, in the shape of fundamental alterations of their laws and institutions, were necessary. For this perception of enlightened statesmanship, he may have been partly indebted to the impulse, which the favours, marking Frederic Barbarossa’s satisfaction with the doctrines taught at Bologna touching imperial rights, had given to the study of Roman or civil law. His own value for the science has been seen; and he early followed his grand­father’s example in favouring both its professors and their disciples; sedulously promoted the study at his own University; and from amongst the most distinguished jurists, teachers, or disciples, selected his ministers and counsellors.

The most confidential of these ministers, one who may almost be called the Emperor’s favourite companion, as well as minister, was Pietro delle Vigne, another of the remarkable men of the age. Pietro delle Vigne was a Capuan, born in the humblest station—from his name his family may be conjectured to have been vinedressers—with a consciousness of intellectual powers naturally awakening lawful ambitious aspiration. He studied, as a pauper, at the University of Bologna; maintained himself there, according to report, nearly, if not wholly, by mendicancy, whilst early acquiring such reputation, by his proficiency in general science, and more especially in Civil Law, as attracted the notice of Frederic. The wisely liberal monarch first supplied him with means of subsistence, thus to facilitate the completion of his course of study; and then took him into his own service. He began by placing him in inferior judicial offices; and, as he found him equal to posts of more trust and importance, gradually, if rapidly, advanced him, until in the end the Pauper Student was, Gran Giudice or Giudice della Gran Corte (Grand-Judge, or presiding Judge of the Supreme Court), and perhaps Grand-Chancellor, of Sicily, Protonotario, and, in the king’s absence, Lieutenant or Viceroy of both Sicilies.

A mind of great natural powers like Frederic’s, would be led by such companionship, superadded to the circumstances of his own position and the condition of his very dissimilar kingdoms, to philosophize upon government and legislation. And could an able man, who ever thought upon such subjects, fail to be painfully struck, when again in his southern realms, by the legal confusion and consequent disorders, unobserved by the boy, who, at seventeen, left them, to struggle for Germany and the Empire. In Apulia, Frederic now saw the different and often conflicting laws of Greeks, Romans, Ostrogoths, Lombards, Saracens, Normans, Jews, and the papal Canon law, all coexisting; every man living under the law of the race from which he descended, or, if he chanced to dislike his hereditary code, under any other at his choice. In Sicily, he saw a legal condition, only in so far less chaotic, that the island, never having been conquered by the Ostrogoths or the Lombards, had escaped two of the various codes, inflicted upon the continental provinces. The Emperor, upon his return from Germany, noticing these glaring evils, seems to have early resolved upon having the legal chaos examined, developed, sifted, and methodized; amalgamating what was good of each into one homogeneous, well-ordered whole, abrogating what was either objectionable or contradictory, and adding whatever was wanting to insure good government, and the prosperity of the country. But the Pope was then vehemently pressing him to begin his crusade; evils, more urgent than those of long standing, must perforce be remedied before the papal injunctions could be obeyed; and the business of legislation was postponed. When his Crusade was over, and his reconciliation with Gregory left him at liberty to attend to the pacific duties of sovereignty, Frederic immediately turned his thoughts to his scheme of philosophic and political legislation.

In concocting, out of the wilderness of materials before him, a code, or rather a constitution—for anachronistic as the word may sound, the system of government as well as of law produced, deserves the name—Frederic evidently had three objects principally in view. The first of these was to emancipate, as far as might be, the royal authority from the controlling power of the great vassals; the second, to protect the lower classes of the population from baronial oppression and official tyranny; the third, to establish the utmost feasible subjection of the clergy to the crown and to the regular tribunals of justice.

It was to Pietro delle Vigne that Frederic committed the execution of this task, in consonance with these views, and under his own immediate superintendence and direction. And arduous was the task of conceiving the ideal at which he aimed, of excluding, extracting, adapting, improving, arranging, and modifying, existing institutions, according to that ideal, into such administrative organization, as should raise the condition of his native country. The result was a species of Magna Charta spontaneously given, which — though the Angevine monarchs repealed some of its provisions, closing their eyes to the non-observance of others—remained the law of the land as long as Hispano-Austrian sovereigns ruled it; and even under the Bourbon sceptre, save as, again, some of its provisions either were specifically altered, or became obsolete through the gradual changes wrought by progressive civilization.

In August, 1231, the result was published in Greek as well as in Latin; a remarkable testimony to the degree in which the old Hellenic colony, Magna Graecia, still cherished traditions and recollections of Hellenic pride and patriotism. The new code was headed by an introduction, probably Frederic’s own composition, and if not, certainly suggested and approved by him. As such, partly translated and partly compressed, this introduction may here find its place. Beginning, according to the fashion of the day, with the Creation, the writer goes on to speak of— “Man, the noblest of created beings, whom God, having formed after his own image, but little lower than the angels, of deliberate counsel, set over all other creatures; whom, having taken out of the slime of the earth he quickened in spirit and crowned with a diadem of glory; to whom he gave, as a companion, a wife, part of his own body, adorning and guarding them with such prerogatives that both were originally made immortal, though under the law of one command, which, when they despised steadily to observe, in pain of their transgression, from all that had previously been conferred upon them he sequestered immortality.” But, lest the whole of Creation should, in the destruction of man, become useless,—“God, from the seed of these two, rendered the earth, which he subjected to them, fruitful in human beings; who, the sin of their parents’ transgression being propagated in them, conceived reciprocal hatreds, and divided that dominion over all things, which by the law of nature they held in common. Then man, whom God created upright and guileless, did not hesitate to involve himself in quarrels. Thus, the necessity of the case, and, not less, the impulse of divine Providence, urging, were princes of the nations created, by whom the licence of crime might be coerced: who, arbiters of life and death to the nations, and in some sort ministers of the divine purpose, should assign to every one his proper fortune, lot, and condition, that they may be able to give a good account of the whole, as of a stewardship committed to them. By the King of Kings and Prince of Princes most especially, is it required, that they suffer not the most Holy Roman Church, the mother of the Christian Religion, to be defiled by the secret trea­sons of the detractors from the Faith, and that they defend her against the assaults of public enemies, with the power of the material sword; thus, to the utmost of their ability, maintaining Peace to the nations, and to the peaceful Justice; so that these two, which are as sisters, may mutually embrace. We, therefore, exalted solely by the right hand of divine power, beyond all human hope, to the throne of the Roman Empire and of other realms, purposing to return doubled the talent intrusted to us, to the living God, in all reverence of Jesus Christ, from whom we have received all that we possess, by cultivating justice and establishing laws, prepare to sacrifice the firstling of our lips, beginning with provision for that part of our dominions, which is discerned to stand most in need of justice!”

The Idea, which Frederic—whom even the republican modern Neapolitan historian, Coletta, calls “ the miracle of his age”—had conceived, evidently was to substitute for the evils that had grown out of the feudal system, the institutions of a well-organized monarchy; with restrictions, not indeed upon the royal authority, but upon the abusive exercise of that authority, by the subordinate officers to whom it must perforce be delegated, to the injury of king and subject. For realizing this conception his means were twofold; viz., first, the abolition of all jurisdiction except that of the regular royal tribunals; or, where such abolition was impracticable, the utmost limitation feasible of the jurisdiction of any private tribunals that he was compelled to leave, and their complete subordination to the royal tribunals: secondly, the maintenance of an army unconnected with feudal service, dependent upon, and obedient to, the monarch alone. This Idea is the moving principle of his whole reign, as well in his casual legislation and in his administration, as in this Code.

In order to attain the first of these two great objects, Frederic, by his new code, required, from all the great vassals, proofs, satisfactory to a legal tribunal, of their right to exercise judicial authority; and in this investigation, a simple grant of such jurisdiction was treated as a mere personal beneficium, not heritable, unless expressly stated to be so. Those, who could produce only such simple grants to ancestors, or none, were, by the appointed tribunals, at once deprived of all jurisdiction. Those who clearly established their right to administer justice, were left in possession of the right, but not without restrictions; they were prohibited from acting as sole judges in their respective Courts, in causes in which they might have a personal interest; they were ordered to be always assisted by a royal judge, and their proceedings were henceforth to be regulated according to the uniform laws of the kingdom, as established by the new Code. A right of appeal was likewise given, in all cases, and from every private tribunal, to the highest public tribunal in the kingdom, the Gran Corte, or the sovereign’s own Court of Justice. These restrictions applied, of course, equally to the tribunals of noblemen and to the municipal tribunals of chartered cities; and this limitation of jurisdiction was the only positively innovating encroachment upon the feudal privileges of the nobility. The prohibition of self­redress by private warfare, was merely the inforcement of laws repeatedly published—whether obeyed or not—by Frederic’s predecessors. And the additional prohibitions,—as means to this end—such as, e.g., to wear arms, except upon a journey, when they might be indispensable to personal security, and to build new fortified castles, together with the injunction to demolish all built or fortified since the reign of William II, that is to say during a period of usurpation and civil war, were, in fact, mere developments of, or corollaries from, the old law against private warfare. The prohibition to great vassals and their children to marry without the consent of their liege lord the King, was merely the retention of an old feudal law, somewhat modified and restricted, as were the regulations touching the guardianship of noble minors and their property.

The grand change was, the permission to commute the burthen of military service, and all other feudal obligations, including casual pecuniary extortions, under whatever name, in short all services and contributions of all descriptions, for the annual payment of a definite sum of money; and this was an innovation very acceptable to the whole body of the nobility. That the uncertain services and contributions due by villeins to their Lords were, in like manner, regulated by law, and the commutation of them, especially of those most derogatory to the dignity of human nature, for an annual money payment was authorized, encouraged, and, as far as possible, enjoined by the code, might be less agreeable to that haughty order; but must have been felt as the inevitable carrying out of the scheme by which relief was given to themselves. Moreover, that very relief, together with the progress of luxury, was teaching the feudal lords that money, if less flattering to their pride than their arbitrary power over their villeins, was in many ways more useful. There was, besides, a sort of fashion, even in such matters. The Abbot of Montecassino had set the example of allowing such commutation; and, the Emperor-King had set one of a sacrifice to progressive civilization and humanity, so much greater, that only after the lapse of ages could he hope it should be followed. He had enfranchised all the villeins upon the crown lands, converting them into free, rent-paying peasants.

If, despite all these considerations, despite the benefit to themselves, there were still something antipathetic to the feudal nobles in these changes, Frederic sought, by meeting their wishes in another direction, to reconcile them to innovations, which he was confident must be advantageous to the kingdom at large, and ultimately to themselves, however they might for the moment personally find them disagreeable. The code extended the right of inheritance, in all fiefs, to daughters, and to collaterals, as far as the third degree of consanguinity. This concession, which was received with grateful delight, sacrificed the advantage derived by the crown from lapsed fiefs; but not to an accumulation of fiefs and domains, and only in part to the commutation of services, did Frederic look for the means of upholding his authority, by paying his future army. An organized system of taxation, of which he had perhaps caught the idea from his philosophic Moslem friends, was to be his resource. But the account of his institutions for the administration of justice is not yet completed.

For thus superseding the old feudal jurisdiction, a judicial hierarchy—to adopt the here peculiarly appropriate, familiar, modern generalization, of an originally and etymologically specific designation—was established, rising in regular gradation from the village magistrate, through district and provincial judges, to the Gran-Giudice. Each judge was controlled in his tribunal by a Council of Assessors, answering to the German Schoffen. The tribunal of the Grand-Judge, who, in like manner, had his assessors, was the Gran Corte, to which, as before said, appeals lay from every other tribunal, public and private, in the kingdom; and its decision was final. All judicial labours had hitherto been remunerated by proportionate shares of fines and forfeitures; the judges deriving more profit, it is to be feared, from the presents of those who sought undue favour for themselves or their friends, than from these lawful sources. Frederic began by very strictly regulating these proportionate remunerations; as strictly forbidding salaried judges to receive them; and finally, he assigned to every one of his new judges, from the highest to the lowest, a fixed salary, regulated in amount by station in the judicial scale; after which the acceptance of a present, upon any pretence whatever, was held a crime. Moreover, as a security against partial verdicts, influenced by kindred, connexion, or friendship, all provincial and inferior judges were subjected to restrictions and privations, analogous to, if not quite as rigid, as those habitually imposed upon Podestàs.

But, lest the gratuitous administration of justice, consequent upon his provisions for impartiality, should foster a spirit of litigation, or the indulgence of private rancour, in the form of calumnious accusations, the Code required, in civil cases, the payment into Court of a sum of money equivalent to the subject in question; in criminal cases, condemned the accuser, who failed to make good his accusation, to severe punishment, often to the penalties which he had endeavoured to bring upon the innocent. On the other hand, lest fear of the consequences of an insufficiently proved accusation should deter prosecutors, and as a spur to the repression of crime by the pursuit of criminals, a heavy fine was imposed upon every district in which a murder was committed, and the murderer remained undetected; the fine varying in amount, according, not only to the rank of the murdered and his old wehrgeld or price of blood, but also to the religion of the district thus negligent of its duty; Christians, inasmuch as good conduct was peculiarly incumbent upon them, being more heavily mulcted than Jews or Saracens.

The laws, to be administered by this series of judges, were, it must be confessed, sanguinary, to a degree that seems little consonant with the legislator’s character. But—besides the necessity of affording some gratification to the injured party, by way of vent to those vindictive feelings, which were debarred their accustomed indulgence in self-redress—that everywhere the spirit of Draco has preceded Solon’s in legislation, is no new remark; and the Draconic age was not yet over, perhaps not even for Frederic himself. But he very rarely enhanced the severity of the laws he found established; when he did, it was for the protection of the weak against the strong. The mere unsuccessful attempt to rob a peasant of his cattle, he punished with infamy, and damages to the amount of fourfold the value of the cattle. Death was the penalty of all outrages to female chastity, of the plunder or ill usage of shipwrecked mariners, and of heresy:—the last conceded increase of severity, designed probably to repay the then professed goodwill of the Pope and to earn its continuance. And with respect to the practical observance of this, to modern feelings, revoltingly atrocious law, it may here be stated, though pertaining rather to the tone of Frederic’s government than to his Code, that he steadily refused to let heresy be dealt with, in his dominions, by inquisitors of the Pope’s appointment, whether Dominicans or others. He really kept the treatment of heretics in his own hand; always committing the inquiry to prelates of his own selection; whose duty, when they found heretics meriting, in their opinion, secular punishment, was to make their report to himself. In fact, little inquisitorial severity could there well be, in a country where Mohammedans and Jews formed a considerable part of the population—the latter encouraged to settle there by Innocent III—whilst of the Christians, a large proportion belonged to the Greek Church.

Legal investigation by the examination of witnesses, and by compurgators, or persons who swore that they believed the oath of the party for whom they appeared, were imperatively substituted for all descriptions of ordeals, which Innocent III and his Lateran Council had vainly endeavoured to suppress, though they had every materially checked the recurrence to those forms. Wholly abolished, indeed, they still were not; but the code positively restricted the use to charges of high treason and murder, in which the presumption of guilt should be exceedingly strong, and the evidence deficient; whilst, as a guard against collusion, and perhaps upon the making a trade of championship for wager of battle or other ordeal, a defeated substitute champion was to suffer the same doom as the criminal, convicted by his defeat. The use of torture was in like manner very much restricted, though not abolished. The value of evidence was still estimated in the true spirit of feudalism, or of the earlier wehrgeld system, of the price of blood; the oath of one earl being held equal to those of two barons, of four knights, of eight burgesses, and of sixteen peasants, or other freemen of the lowest grade. The oaths of villeins were not admissible against freemen.

For the collection and administration of the public revenue,—the old royalties, the regular annual payments in commutation of feudal services, and any taxes or duties, the imposition of which unavoidable public expenses might render necessary—a fiscal hierarchy, analogous to the judicial, was organized. A series of officials, beginning with those to whose care village tolls and dues were committed, ascended through several grades of local and provincial officers, to the Grand-Chamberlain, alias Lord Treasurer, who had a sort of board of auditors for the examination of accounts. This class of officials was likewise charged, in their respective districts, with duties that would now belong to the police. To them were assigned the investigation and punishment of theft, and of all offences not incurring mutilation with the adjudication of trivial disputes; it was their business to prevent the sale of unwholesome food, or the employment of false weights and measures; to inforce the observance of all sumptuary laws, and to regulate the wages of labour. Civil suits, except those relative to fiefs, were likewise referred to their tribunal, the time and attention of the magistracy being required for criminal cases, as of higher importance and dignity. Or possibly—the remark has already been called for, that the duties of different departments of government were not in early times so clearly defined, and the departments accordingly separated, as at the present day—disputes about pecuniary transactions may have been thought best understood by, and therefore best referred to, financiers. Moreover, Frederic evidently avoided unnecessary multiplication of offices, or at least of officials; which may have led to assigning to one and the same individual the duties of more than one post, now deemed each amply to occupy one man’s time. Appeal from these functionaries lay, through their respective superiors, to the Grand-Chamberlain; and in the discharge of their several duties they, like the magistrates, were aided and controlled by a Council of Assessors.

The crown lands were judged, governed, and managed by an entirely distinct set of officers, judicial, fiscal, and agricultural, under the supreme superintendence of the Grand-Seneschal, whose duties appear to have combined those of a modern English Board of Woods and Forests, with those of Lord Steward of the Household, and some of the Lord Chamberlain’s. But the smaller extent of these domains requiring far less official superintendence than the realm at large, the duties of the several departments were still less definitely distinguished than in the case of the state judges and financiers. Upon small domains, one individual, of course with his Council of Assessors, is often found acting simultaneously as judge, financier, and steward or bailiff. But no mark of indifference or negligence on the part of the Emperor-King, was this. Portions of these crown lands were let to tenants, as part, it may be presumed, of Fredericks system of abolishing villenage by converting villeins into free, rent-paying, peasants. But this plan was then only beginning to be introduced, and documents still exist, shewing that, to the economical and beneficial management of the unlet crown domains,—the far larger part—Frederic devoted as much and as minute attention, as did the great prototype of the Swabian Emperors, Charlemagne. These documents are, his letters to the officers in charge of the domains, dated from all parts of his widely-spread dominions, and at epochs, when his mind might be supposed engrossed and harassed by weightier, as well as more urgent anxieties. They are replete, nevertheless, with circumstantial directions touching the cultivation of the fields, the planting, preserving, and felling of the woods, the care of the young stock, and other ordinary details of rural business.

The selection of the assessors, in all departments, was regulated with great care. In the first place, only free­men, born in lawful wedlock, were capable of the office—the sons of priests were specifically excluded, although, as a concession probably to the Greek Church, some degree of legitimacy, and a share of their father’s property, was allowed the children of priests;—these assessors were, further, to be well educated and of irreproachable conduct. They appear to have been popularly elected, but subject, in the higher grades, to the royal approbation; in the lower, to that of the immediately superior authorities. Frederic is said to have rejected, for deficient education, a wealthy merchant of Salerno, there elected an assessor, and otherwise unobjectionable. To each little Council of Assessors was attached a notary, or secretary; and to insure his independence of his masters, he was appointed by the King in person, and retained his post for life, unless judicially convicted of malpractices.

Every individual, in this carefully organized system of administration, was bound annually to deliver to his immediate superior a report, concerning all persons in authority under himself, containing their names, offices, salaries, general conduct, and the amount of business transacted by each during the year. The reports were transmitted from inferior to superior, until they reached the Heads of the several offices, the Grand-Judge or Grand-Chancellor, the Grand-Chamberlain, and the Grand-Seneschal. Each of these great officers was, similarly, bound annually to deliver to the monarch a report, faithfully and diligently abstracted from those of his subordinates; every one of whom was held responsible in person and property, for his official conduct.

These were material, and, at that epoch, extraordinary steps towards remodelling the government and neutralizing all that was noxious in feudalism. But their real importance lay in their consequences, which were not apparent to the haughty nobility, and if not quite palatable, they provoked no resistance. The next class of reforms was perhaps alike welcome to the great vassals and offensive to the Pope.

The Emperor-King had never heartily recognised, as valid, the cession of sovereign authority over the clergy, that had been extorted from his anxious, dying mother. In his new Code, he ventured to regulate by law, and, as far as prudence allowed, to restrict, the power, which, upon the strength of her concessions, the priesthood had assumed in the Sicilies. The check placed upon the accumulation of landed property in ecclesiastical hands has been mentioned; as also the recognition of the exemption of old Church lands from taxation. Frederic now first subjected the royal domains to the payment of tithes; and legally confirmed his renunciation of the old royal claim to the revenue of vacant sees and benefices; directing such revenues to be administered by three upright ecclesiastics, chosen for the purpose, who should defray all necessary charges, and pay over the balance to the new prelate or incumbent, when elected or appointed. But, on the other hand, bishops were commanded to allot one third of the tithes to the maintenance, repairs, and other expenses of the churches and chapels in their diocese, including the building of new, when and where wanted.

With respect to the other pretensions of the clergy, the Code did not deny their claim to exemption from lay jurisdiction, civil or criminal, and, in matters purely spiritual, allowed appeals to the Pope. But it limited ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the laity to matrimonial suits, breaches of the nuptial vow included; the sacramental character of marriage in the Roman Catholic Church, properly bringing questions, thereto belonging, within the competence of ecclesiastical tribunals. Disputes and differences among church vassals were left to ecclesiastical tribunals; but suits between clerks or church vassals and laymen, and capital offences of priests, other than purely spiritual sins, or canon law crimes, the tribunals of the State were authorized to investigate and to judge. Prelates, in their capacity of Barons, or immediate vassals, sat in the Court of ultimate appeal, the Gran Corte.

But to the historical student, the most remarkable of Frederic’s institutions is one devised by him and his fellow-labourer in legislation, simply as a curb upon those to whom the actual administration of the sovereign authority must needs be delegated, and a positive protection to the governed against subaltern oppression or injustice. Yet might the institution, designed for nothing more, had pontifical enmity and an usurper’s desire to obliterate all traces of the legitimate royal race not caused its virtual abrogation by desuetude, have proved the germ of a genuine constitutional monarchy; and, by its gradual development, have tempered down hot southern blood to the capacity of enjoying liberty, protected by good order.

According to the Code, twice in every year, at five several cities, were to be held separate assemblies; each presided by a royally appointed deputy, and composed, not only of all the prelates and nobles in the district, but also, of burgesses from every city, town, and village therein, not being the actual property of some prelate or baron. These burgesses were to be popularly elected, to the number of four for each city, two for each town, and one for each smaller place. At these assemblies, all official persons employed throughout the district were bound to attend, and every individual noble, prelate, or citizen was invited to denounce any act of oppression, injustice, or other, even the smallest, wrong, committed by any one of them. The accusation was immediately investigated, and, if of little moment, at once redressed by the provincial authorities; if important, referred to the King. The other business of these assemblies seems to have been the remedying local evils and inconveniences, when trifling or easily relieved; suggesting the remedy for the consideration of the King and his Council, when the affair was more serious; and voting any duties, contributions, or subsidies, that the pressure of public affairs might render necessary,—which they afterwards assessed amongst the different divisions of the district. The session lasted from a week to a fortnight, according to the amount of business brought forward, and, at its close, each assembly transmitted a detailed report of its proceedings to the King.

These separate meetings of Provincial Estates, with a very limited sphere of action, though somewhat akin to the Land Stände that, in divers German states, gradually superseded provincial diets, certainly bore little resemblance to an English parliament or the Spanish Cortes. But the very idea of an assembly, composed in part of representatives of citizens, the very admission of non-noble laity to any participation whatever in administrative concerns, is a very striking feature of Frederic II’s legislation, and would, probably, have increased in importance with the progress of civilization and the dissemination of knowledge. When Frederick II thus admitted deputed citizens and villagers to deliberate and vote with nobles, such favour to even the former was known only in Spain and Portugal—in Germany, Frederic I, if he summoned city deputies to the Diet, gave them no vote:—and not till some years later did the Commons of England, according to the best authorities, take their place in Parliament. Yet are the Emperors of the Swabian dynasty accused of a hyper-feudal contempt, if not hatred for towns, citizens, and trade. In truth they merely desired to prevent a member of the Empire from severing itself from the body.

And a tendency, towards such aspirations after independence, Frederic had to guard against, even in his southern kingdom; where a few of the most flourishing cities, governed by their old municipal institutions, were disposed to sympathize with their Lombard sisters. Palermo, Messina, Naples, Amalfi, &c., looked upon that obtrusion of a royal officer and an uniform code of laws upon all feudal tribunals, which had so prodigiously improved the condition of the towns dependent upon mesne lords, spiritual or temporal, as an invasion of their rights and privileges; resenting it accordingly. But Frederic was abundantly warned against civic ambition; and, whilst he confirmed, to all immediate cities, their chartered rights, modified, and occasionally somewhat abridged, he everywhere reserved to himself the nomination of the chief magistrate, whether Consul, Rector, or Podestà. If thus, limiting their power, he mortified their pride, as a counterpoise he most paternally studied to foster their material interests. He encouraged manufacturing industry, abolished whatever trammelled internal commerce, and established great fairs, to be annually held in seven chief towns, from April to October, both inclusive. Acting upon the then original and startling opinion, that to be really beneficial, trade must he equally advantageous to both parties, he removed nearly all restrictions upon traffic with foreign countries. He new-modelled the tolls and duties so as to render them, even when unavoidably increased, less onerous, because less inconvenient, and he cancelled, as far as was consistent with justice, the grants of such tolls, &c. to individuals, so lavishly made during his minority. Of the duties long before imposed upon the exportation of agricultural produce and of manufactured goods, he mostly reduced those which he did not suppress.

The exceptions to this veritable system of free trade were few. Whilst the exportation of corn was unrestricted, that of horses and of rams was absolutely prohibited; the object evidently being to preserve to Apulia and Sicily the possession—exclusive if possible—of a superior breed of both; of the first, upon military considerations, of the second, for the sake of the woollen manufacture. He retained the monopoly of salt, which, as the complement of the royalty of all mines and springs producing the article, seems to have been then generally claimed by European sovereigns. But this was rendered little oppressive, being without compulsory purchases, like those enjoined by the French gabelle, and the only restraint upon wholesale purchasers, an injunction to retail the salt in the district in which it was bought: a regulation deemed indispensable to the prevention of smuggling. The prescriptive royal right of preemption, at a fixed price, of a certain proportion of the corn harvested, to be afterwards sold, profitably for the royal holder, at the Grand-Chamberlain’s office, seems rather a sort of land-tax paid in kind, than a monopoly. It interfered not with the owner’s disposal of the principal part of his produce, whilst it might, in years of scarcity, afford some provision against famine: when years of unusual abundance enabled or obliged the farmer not only to undersell the treasury, but to take a yet lower price than the King had paid him, the farmer was the gainer and the royal exchequer would, but for its power of holding over to await higher prices, be a loser by its forestalling and regrating. Upon one such occasion the Grand-Chamberlain complained to Frederic of this loss, which he proposed to remedy by a second authoritative purchase of a larger quantity, at a price covering an adequate reduction at the royal granaries. The Emperor rejected the idea, saying: “ Kings are not to care solely for their own interests; but, likewise, for those of their faithful lieges. Their main study should be to have affluent subjects, whose property may increase and improve under their happy reign; for the fame of the sovereign rests upon the secure and prosperous condition of his people.”

Another restrictive law, if to be so called, related to the Jews. The Moslem African monarchs were at this epoch persecuting the Hebrew race in order to convert them to Islam; and the persecuted were in consequence flying from Africa. The proximity of Sicily, rendered that island an attractive refuge; and Frederic made it an indispensable condition of their admittance there as settlers, that they should devote themselves to agriculture. An unusual occupation for those who, save in Judea, can be but sojourners in the land. He probably wished to supply the place of the transplanted agricultural Saracens.

The laws against piracy were severe; and the Code added stringency to his earlier prohibition of wrecking, further regulating salvage, i.e., the price to be paid by owners, or their heirs, for articles saved from a wreck. So earnest was Frederic in this protection of shipwrecked sailors, that he introduced into his treaties with foreign states a mutual renunciation of the right of wrecking, as regarded ships owned by subjects of the contracting powers; and in those with Moslem princes, another for the mutual restitution of slaves and booty taken from their respective subjects, and brought in by pirates. He appears to have, in some measure, purchased consent to this last condition, by exempting, as Emperor, the Mohammedans in Corsica from Christian jurisdiction, permitting them to be governed by a Moslem magistrate, whom he should himself appoint.

All that need be added in respect to the embodying of Frederic’s views, legislative and political, in this Code, is that it more distinctly defined and regulated the several departments of the great officers of state, than had been thought requisite by King Roger at their institution: and a few points relative to this matter may be worth noting. With regard to the Grand-Constable—even the great vassals, although at home and in peace entirely exempt from his authority, were, in the field, expected to obey his orders as implicitly as the King’s; he being held there to represent the royal person : one reason, perhaps, for the willingness of those haughty barons to commute their military service for a money payment. The Grand­Constable would be quite as well pleased to turn his cares from these refractory would-be independent troops, to the non-feudal army, to which his master looked for the support of his sovereignty. The sources, whence Frederic was to derive funds for the pay of such an army, have appeared in the account of his legislative and administrative measures. Abundant materials for its formation he saw in his Saracen subjects, in his emancipated peasantry, and even in the active, enterprising youth of his cities, who, like their Lombard contemporaries, might naturally fancy a few years of stirring life and military adventure, prior to sobering down into orderly citizens and mechanics. And so freely did all these classes answer to his expectations, that, in lieu of tempting to enlist, it was found expedient to prohibit the admission of any one who could not show a warrior amongst his forefathers. The mercenary bands, ready to fight for whoever would hire them, were, when engaged, subjected to the control of the Grand-Constable.

The department of the Grand-Admiral combined those of the modern English Board of Admiralty, Navy Board, and Paymaster of the Navy, with the command of the fleet at sea. The several businesses of building, equipping, manning, and provisioning the ships, were all feudal services (to be performed under the Grand-Admiral’s directions and superintendence) save when commuted, like the others, for a money payment; which change might facilitate the Grand-Admiral’s operations, by giving him more docile shipwrights, ship-purveyors, &c., as well as crews. But it involved him in disputes with—strange to modern ideas—the Grand-Chamberlain, who claimed a control over all money to be paid, possibly over all expenses to be incurred. And this claim he might the rather advance, because Frederic’s fleets, first provided for the fifth Crusade, were throughout his reign less frequently employed in warlike operations, except against pirates, than in assisting mercantile enterprise and transporting crusaders to the theatre of their vowed duties.

The department of the Grand-Chancellor had been encroached upon, some writers say, by King Roger himself, but according to most authorities, by one of the Williams, who created a Grand-Judge, with authority inferior indeed to the Chancellor’s, but of which he omitted to define the precise character and limits. The Grand-Chancellor, who held the Great Seal of the kingdom, was said to be at the head of the administration of justice; yet the Grand-Judge is found holding a separate seal, called the judicial seal, and presiding over the highest tribunal in the land, the Gran Corte. The Grand-Judge was apparently charged with the primary examination of the mass of reports from subordinate officers, with the sorting and referring them to the heads of the several offices, to which they respectively appertained; as, appeals in civil and criminal suits, to the tribunals appointed to decide them; fiscal reports and all administrative affairs, to the Grand-Chamberlain; petitions and all matters of grace and favour, to the Protonotario, when he acted as private Secretary, or to the private Secretary, when there was such a distinct officer. The Grand-Judge was likewise charged with the examination of all charters and bye­laws of cities, and the final decision upon the validity of the former, the admissibility or inadmissibility of the latter; and in his own especial court he was, ex officio, the advocate of every pauper suitor, whether prosecutor or prisoner. From all this might be inferred, that the practical duties were mostly assigned to the Grand-Judge, whilst the Grand-Chancellor was more engaged with the legislative department and the general government, exercising merely a sort of superintendence over what may be termed the judicial executive. But whatever his duties as Grand-Judge, it was as Protonotario that Pietro delle Vigne became really Prime Minister of the Sicilies. The Protonotario—originally a private Secretary, selected from among the notaries, i.e., clerks in the Chancellor’s office, to assist the royal Chaplain, and spare him trouble—from his opportunities of constant, easy intercourse, with the King, and the necessarily confidential nature of his employment, was soon enabled so to interfere with all departments, that he became really Secretary of State, and the Grand-Chancellor’s rival for the virtual premiership.

That the publication of this Code displeased Gregory, need hardly be said. The restrictions upon ecclesiastical jurisdiction, upon ecclesiastical privileges and exemptions, could not appear to him other than impious invasions of Church rights. But this was not his sole ground of dissatisfaction. Gregory saw in the very promulgation of such a national code, an infringement of the papal system, which considers all Christendom as one spiritual monarchy, to be ruled by one Code, that of the Church. To a few additional laws for different states he had no objection, regarding them, perhaps, as the bye-laws of corporations are regarded in well-ordered kingdoms; but the systematic, national character of Frederic’s Code, was an alarming symptom of spiritual revolt. For the present, however, he did not quarrel with the Emperor, but quietly prepared to combat him with equal arms. He commissioned one of his chaplains, Raimondo de Peñaforte, a Catalan, to revise, remodel, and improve the collection of Canons of the Church, known by the name of Decretals, adding Gregory’s own decisions to those of his predecessors.

So much of the general tenor of Frederic’s government has unavoidably become interwoven with the account of his Code, that one or two points relative thereto, which seem to have no specially appropriate place, may as well be introduced here. The one, is his reform of the greatly debased and depreciated coin of his southern kingdom. This measure—offering a strong contrast to the conduct of other mediaeval sovereigns, who, when straitened for money, frequently sought relief in lowering the intrinsic value of their coin—is said to have much conduced to the realm’s prosperity, agricultural, manufacturing, and commercial. Nor was this the only advantageous result. Combined with the Emperor-King’s punctuality in all pecuniary transactions, it so established his credit, that, upon one occasion, his resources being nearly exhausted, he was enabled to pass pieces of stamped leather for coin of any value that he chose to assign them; a species of paper currency—may it be called?—perhaps the first known. But the reform, thus beneficial in its effects (so little were the statistic and economic details, that now supersede higher considerations, then thought of), is chiefly noticed by old historians for the beauty of the gold coin, as though pertaining rather to the monarch’s patronage of the arts than to his polity. This coin, called an Augustale, or Agostare, containing ninety grains of pure gold, might, in current value, be worth about thirteen shillings, and was of beauty previously unexampled, as it remained, for centuries, unrivalled. The die was prepared by Nicoló Pisano, celebrated as one of the early resuscitators of the reputed defunct, Fine Arts, Frederic’s architect, engineer, and sculptor, of whom more hereafter. The Augustale bore, on one side, Frederic’s head, with the words, “Caesar. Aug. Imp. Rom.,” as the encircling legend; on the other, an eagle, with the name,“Fridericus.”

Upon his return from Palestine, Frederic found that nothing had suffered more from the war than his newly founded University. It was well nigh annihilated by the total dispersion, whether through force or inclination, of both professors and students, most of them enlisted into the ranks of the one or the other of the contending parties. When peace with the Pope was restored, vigorous were the royal exertions to remedy these evils.

The professors were speedily re-assembled, and Frederic endeavoured to raise the reputation of their body still higher, by offering salaries yet more liberal than before. And earnestly he invited the most admired teachers of various sciences to accept those salaries; whilst retaining his own preference of Dominicans, notwithstanding their subserviency to Rome, for the chair of civil law. In order to secure pupils to these able instructors, though discovering no mean jealousy of other Universities, he compelled such of his own subjects, as desired education, to study at the Neapolitan University, by forbidding them to frequent those of Paris and Bologna, which had previously been their resort; and by restricting the practice of the medical profession to persons whose sufficiency was attested by a diploma, bearing his own signature or the Grand-Chancellor’s; and this was granted only upon a certificate of due qualification, by the prescribed course of study—a course not professional merely, logic, in addition to medical science, being especially required—at the Neapolitan or, for this branch, the Salernitan University.

But Frederic wished to allure as well as to compel students, and to allure foreigners as well as his own subjects. Hence he made laws to protect inexperienced youth from extortion. For instance, the price of lodgings for students was to be fixed, not by bargain between the landlord and the juvenile tenant, but by two respectable citizens and two already domiciliated students; and, with more questionable kindness, he afforded them facilities for borrowing money upon pledges. He assured to foreigners security of life and property—the property of deceased foreigners was then, almost everywhere, confiscated by the state—he exempted the whole body of the University from such con­fiscation, from military service, from taxation, and from all Apulian jurisdiction except that of the University tribunal, over which an especial Judge presided. In this last point he, indeed, only half followed the examples of his grand­father, Frederic I, and of Philip Augustus; but on his part, even thus much was remarkable, as a deviation from the one uniform system of law and jurisdiction, that he was so sedulously establishing throughout the kingdom. He promised advancement to all students who should deserve it by distinguishing themselves, and ample pecuniary assistance from his private purse to indigent students of marked ability. In proof of his high value for learning and the learned, he, upon the death of one of his able professors, addressed an autograph letter of condolence to the University. And so successful was the Emperor-King in raising the character of his Neapolitan University in Civil Law, that at an early epoch of its existence his Law Professors were the tribunal, appealed to by a party of French nobles, who had projected wresting the regency from Queen Blanche, respecting the legality of their scheme, and to whose verdict of illegality they at once bowed.

Books for the use of the University, in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, the royal and imperial founder collected from all quarters, with great diligence and regardless of expense; and he caused many works in the last three languages to be translated into Latin. The Latin versions of some of Aristotle’s writings were executed by his astrologer, said to have been the wondrous Michael Scott. But the most remarkable fact relative to the University library, is perhaps the extraordinary liberality, taking the word in its largest sense, with which Frederic gave copies of the translations of the works of Aristotle, made at his desire by the best scholars he could engage in his service, to the more than rival, the generally hostile, because intensely Guelph, University of Bologna. The gift was accompanied by a letter, in which the feelings of the man and the monarch far outweigh something of pedantry in the style; a pedantry, moreover, so characterizing the age, that the imperial writer could not possibly escape the infection. Some passages of the letter may suitably end this chapter.

The Emperor says: “Of the exaltation to which laws and arms, working concurrently, raise the regal functions, we hold science a necessary condiment, lest, amidst the sweet and alluring paths of this world, overshadowed by the cloud of ignorance, energy should revel in uncurbed wantonness beyond all lawful bounds; and justice, her laws neglected, languish. Therefore did we, who by the divine bounty preside over nations, in our youth, before we took upon ourself the burthen of government, ever seek both general culture, and the especial enjoyed by few, unceasingly loving its form and inhaling its fragrance. Since we assumed the care of our kingdoms, though the multitude of our laborious affairs often divert our attention, claiming a large share in our solicitude, never have we suffered any part of time that we could withdraw from business of state, to slip away in idleness, gladly expending it in reading, that the soul might be invigorated by the acquisition of science, without which the life of mortals cannot be generously governed.” He next explains that he had thought it good to have the works of Aristotle and other philosophers translated from less known languages into Latin, by chosen scholars, and proceeds: “But forasmuch as the noble possession of the sciences does not perish by dispersion amongst many, suffering no deterioration by the distribution of its parts, but the more widely it is published, the more it is perpetuated, we will not conceal the guerdon of our toil, or deem the possession thereof pleasant, unless we make others participators with ourselves, in so great a good.” Then, after complimenting the University upon its learning and its mode of imparting that learning, he proceeds: 6i You therefore, men who from old cisterns discreetly draw forth new waters, offering the mellifluous streams to thirsty lips, cheerfully receive these books as the gift of your friend the Emperor:” and concludes with a little more compliment.

BOOK IV.

CHAPTER VI.FREDERIC II. [1227—1232.

Affairs of Palestine—Of Germany—Thuringian Court—St. Elizabeth—Landgraves—Heresy in Germany—King Henry’s Conduct—Diet of

Aquileia.