CHAP.

XII.

an army in France, which delayed his ruin for a short time.* The Pope sent one of his notaries, Gregory 1237-1239. of Romagna, with letters to Frederick, exhorting him

to grant a free passage to the Latin Crusaders, the
husbandmen to whom the Lord had delivered His
Greek vineyard. Vataces and his adherents were
excommunicated once a year, in consequence of
their blind resistance to the claims of St. Peter and
his successors.
Frederick had thrown difficulties in
the way of the new enterprise; he was now re-
minded that the Church could not connive at any-
thing which aimed at the overturn of the Catholic
faith. This is a very mild remonstrance, if we
compare it with former ones. It seems to have had
no effect upon the Emperor, who was soon after-
wards aided at the siege of Brescia by the soldiers
of the perverse Vataces.

This siege at last proved to the world that Frederick was not invincible. The Pope and his friends throughout Italy began to bestir themselves. The Emperor's partizans in the Trevisan March were tampered with; his excommunication was openly debated; and he found himself under the necessity of making humble overtures to Rome, a step which he took by the advice of his nobles.†

Dates here become important. On the 9th of October, Frederick left the stubborn walls of Brescia, and thus acknowledged himself beaten. On the 28th of October, four Prelates, acting under a Papal commission, were putting the once-dreaded Emperor through an examination. Two of the Inquisitors were Germans, two of them Italians.

XII.

1237-1239

They were not likely to be very hard upon CHAP. Frederick; the first of them was Landolf Bishop of Worms, who had once been a rebel, but who had redeemed the past by following the Kaiser across the Alps to the field of Cortenuova, when all the other high Princes of the Empire had hung back. He was rewarded by two Charters shortly after the examination. The second was the Bishop of Wurzburg, who had been sent by the rebel party in 1235 to enlist King Louis of France on their side, but who had wiped out his disloyalty by bearing arms at the siege of Brescia. Martin of Colorno, the Bishop of Parma, was probably not a very stern Inquisitor, since he was too apt to allow the laity to encroach upon his privileges, and had incurred a rebuke from Rome on account of his unseasonable mildness. The Bishop of Vercelli was the fourth of the Papal Commissioners. They appeared, not without fear and trembling, before the Emperor at Cremona. Some Sicilian and Lombard Prelates, and several Dominican and Franciscan friars, were also present. Frederick behaved with great submission, and made answer to each accusation preferred against him by the Church, having first been furnished with a copy of the indictment. Many of the charges brought forward in 1236, but suppressed after the sack of Vicenza, were now once more placed before the world.

The Sicilian cathedrals and monasteries were said to be despoiled, but Frederick replied that he had sent his own Notary into the Kingdom to redress all grievances; the state of Monreale, Cefalu, and Catania

VOL. II.

* Ann. Argent.

† Affo.

H

CHAP.
XII.

1237-1239.

was satisfactorily explained; it was true that a few exchanges had been made, but always with the consent of the Church authorities. It might be alleged that the Templars and Hospitallers had been deprived of part of their goods, but this had been done in accordance with the old laws of Sicily. It was not true that ecclesiastical dignities were left vacant, or that illegal taxes were laid on

The Church of

Church property. A new Imperial decree had
been issued against usurers. If clergymen were
proscribed and executed, this was in consequence of
their treason and crimes. The Bishop of Venosa had
been killed by one of his own clergy, and an instance
had been known of monk slaying monk without any
canonical punishment following.* The Church of
Lucera might be repaired, and the Emperor himself
was ready to help in rebuilding it.
Sora might be rebuilt, but not the city. All those
who had taken part against Frederick at the time of
his Crusade might dwell in peace in the Kingdom,
if they would only give satisfaction to those who had
complaints against them. The nephew of the King
of Tunis might be baptized, if he chose. Peter the
Saracen had been imprisoned, it was true, as a slanderer
of the Emperor, in spite of letters from the King of Eng-
land; orders had been given to set Brother Jordan free,
though he had defamed the Emperor in his sermons.
No sedition against the Pope had been excited in
Rome by Frederick's agents. The Emperor had
never ordered the detention of the Bishop of Pales-
trina. It was the fault of the Lombards that peace
had not been made in Italy, and that the Crusade

*This may remind us of the age of Becket.

had been hindered. The Sicilian Archbishops, whom Frederick had lately sent as his envoys to Rome, had been trifled with by the Pope; still the Emperor was ready now, as he always had been, to protect the Church in all her rights.

This was the substance of the examination into Frederick's conduct, instituted by the four Prelates at Cremona. But Gregory was unwilling to pause in his new policy; he had already foreshadowed his future enmity by forbidding the Anconitans and Spoletans to help the Emperor in the war, by countenancing the rebellious Venetians, and by giving the Legatine office in Lombardy to his warlike Chaplain, Gregory of Montelongo, who had been once before recalled from that province at the Emperor's request.*

In vain did Frederick keep the highest dignitaries of Sicily running to and fro between the Papal and Imperial Courts throughout November and December. He gave fresh cause for scandal by forbidding the Bishop of Palestrina, who had been charged with a mission against the Albigenses, to pass through the Imperial dominions.

Towards the end of the year, Frederick's good name was assailed by various reports. It was said that he was wavering in the faith; in proof of this the light speeches attributed to him were repeated, and probably lost nothing in the telling. He was at one time called a Mohammedan; at another time he was said to class Mohammed with Moses and Jesus, all three being in his view impostors. It was averred that he was in league with the Saracens, whom he favoured more than the Christians; his harem was

* See Frederick's letters for 1240. † Ric. San Germano.

CHAP.
XII.

1237-1239.

CHAP.

XII.

1237-1239.

said to be full of Saracen harlots. The monk of St. Albans, who sets down these calumnies, cannot believe them to be true of so great a Prince, and leaves Frederick's character in the hands of God.

The year 1239 came at last, and the great plunge was to be made. The efforts of all, who understood the real interests of the Holy See, were to be directed to bringing back the old state of things; the separation of the Empire and the Kingdom. In happier times, Rome had been able to balance the German rulers of Northern Italy and the Norman rulers of Southern Italy against each other, sitting as arbitress between the rival powers. Italy seemed to have been sundered in twain for the welfare of the Papacy and of the whole Christian world. In the middle of the Eleventh century, Pope Leo the Ninth had led the warriors of Suabia against the brethren of Guiscard. A few years later, that brave Duke had been called in by Hildebrand against the German tyrant, and had sacked Rome with unheard-of ferocity. In the next century, Pope Innocent the Second had relied upon the Emperor Lothaire as the chief bulwark of the Holy See against the Normans, who were upholding an Antipope. Still later, Alexander the Third, after assuring himself of the protection of the Sicilian King, had thwarted the mighty Barbarossa. The baneful match, which placed the Crowns of Aix-laChapelle and Palermo on one head, all but proved the downfall of the Papacy. But when these evil Hohenstaufen times were overpast, Rome once more returned to her old balancing policy. She approved the election of the first Habsburg, in order to counteract her former ally, Charles of Anjou. She found in the grandson of Charles of