 Section 1 of Stupor Mundi, The Life and Times of Frederick II, Emperor of the Romans, King of Sicily in Jerusalem, 1194-1250 by Lionel Alshorn. This is the LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, recording by Pamela Nagami. Section 1, A Heritage of Strife, Part I. The arrogant and defiant assertion that man is the supreme controller of his own destinies can hardly be applied, even by the most rebellious intelligence, to those mortals who rule over the kingdoms of the world. However great the personality of a monarch may be, the success or failure of his reign and the magnitude of his power are governed by the temper and tendencies of his age. Our own Henry VIII owed the enjoyment of his absolute authority, not primarily to his profound sagacity and dominating will, but to the fact that the men of his century were eager to secure the peace and order that a benevolent despotism brings in its train. And the unhappy Charles was the victim not so much of his own unstable mind and wavering purpose, as of the gradual revulsion of feeling in a nation which grown strong and self-confident unto the good governance of the Tudor dynasty, was now eager to free itself from the controlling power which had led it into the haven of peace. Amid the countless examples which history furnishes of this subjection of kings to circumstances, there is none more striking than the career of the emperor, Frederick II. This magnificent prince, whom his own contemporaries regarded with amazement inhaled as the wonder of the world, and whom a historian of our own age has signalized as, the most gifted of the sons of men, by nature the more than peer of Alexander, of Constantine and of Charles, is denied by posterity the title of great which has been frequently bestowed upon lesser men. His enlightened mind, his energy, his strength, and his genius should have resulted in a reign of glory rarely paralleled in the history of mankind. Yet through the heritage of strife to which he succeeded, through the formidable power, the overweening ambition and the implacable hatred of the papacy, he was denied the part of a builder and compelled to do the work of an architect, who seeks to maintain a crumbling edifice and uphold it against the assaults of time. Throughout his life he was occupied in defending the rights of the empire against the power that assailed it, and thus he was prevented from that work of construction which history demands of those whom she will honor with a verdict of greatness. In order to comprehend Frederick's position and the power and pretensions of his enemy, it is necessary to recall to mind the development of the medieval empire and the papacy and the gradual enmity which arose between them. In the year 476 the throne of the Western Empire became vacant through the deposition of Romulus Augustulus by Otto Aquer, who sent the imperial insignia to his patron the Eastern Emperor at Constantinople. For over three centuries there was no emperor at Rome, until there arose in the West a giant whose power qualified him to fill with dignity the ancient throne of the Caesars. Pippin, king of the Franks, had defended the Pope of Rome against the Lombards and had bestowed certain rich lands on the spiritual power. In 768 Charlemagne succeeded Pippin and extended his sway over many of the nations that had once acknowledged Rome as their master, converting reluctant pagans by the argument of the sword. In 800 this conqueror of the heathen appeared in Rome to rescue the Pope from a hostile faction of the populace. In admiration for his militant Christianity and in gratitude to his house, Leo III crowned him with the imperial crown in the Church of St. Peter and proclaimed him Caesar and Augustus. The initiative of the revival of the empire thus belonged to the Pope and the crown of empire was bestowed by him. His successors were not slow to assert that what the Pope had given the Pope could take away. Here then were already two factors which contributed to the aggrandizement of the papacy and to the strife of later centuries. Pippin had laid the foundation of the temporal power of the papacy and thus inoculated the pontiffs with the desire for territorial expansion. Charles by accepting the crown from Leo had made possible the claim to the power of deposition and the superiority which that power implied. Charles added yet a third by freeing the whole body of the clergy from the jurisdiction of the temporal courts in criminal as well as civil cases. The ecclesiastical courts thus strengthened, gradually extended their jurisdiction over the laity and acquired the power to try all cases related to marriage, wills, perjury or concerning widows, orphans or crusaders on the ground that all such cases were connected with religion. Further, since all crime was sin and therefore a spiritual matter meet to be dealt with by the Church, they claimed the right to try all criminal cases. Thus by the end of the 12th century the Church had absorbed a great part of the criminal administration of both laity and clergy. Naturally the pope as the head of the Church became the supreme court of appeal in all cases amenable to ecclesiastical jurisdiction. He thus assumed the attribute of the fountain of justice for the whole of Christendom, while emperors, kings and princes bore the sword according to this ambitious conception simply as his ministers to carry into effect his sentences and decrees. Soon after the death of Charlemagne the empire fell into decay and was not revived until 962 when Otto the Great secured the imperial crown to the German race. It henceforth became the rule that whoever was elected by the German princes as their king had a right to the crown of Italy and also to the imperial title. A century after this revival the papacy which had also sunk into degradation and discredit was rescued from a humiliating bondage to the various factions in Rome by Henry III. This emperor, forgetting his worldly wisdom and his zeal for Christianity, determined to put an end to the line of vicious and dissolute popes who had long occupied the throne of St. Peter. Exerting his authority as protector of the Church he nominated for the Holy Office a series of devout and strong-minded men and thus restored the moral repute of a power which was to bring his successors to ruin. In 1073 Gregory VII Thor Hildebrand was elected to the papal chair and flung down the gauge of battle with the secular authority. Discarding with scorn the theory that the pope and the emperor were two co-equal world powers ordained to act in conjunction for the general good of Christendom he asserted that the spiritual power was to stand related to the temporal power as the sun to the moon. He conceived the ambitious ideal of an universal theocracy with the pope at its head as God's vicar on earth. For the attainment of this ideal he instituted two reforms to strengthen his influence, the enforcement of clerical celibacy and the suppression of Simoni. It was inevitable that this latter reform should result in conflict with the monarchs of Europe. The evil of Simoni had grown up side by side with feudalism. Abbot and bishops had secured the protection that was so necessary in those turbulent times by becoming the vassals of powerful barons and princes, when once a prelate had paid homage for his estates and temporalities, these became a permanent thief of the overlord, were subject to the same feudal obligations as a lay thief, and were at the disposition of the patron when the office became vacant. The temporal rulers throughout Christendom were thus securing the control of the most important ecclesiastical appointments, and it frequently resulted that a vacant bishopric would be virtually sold to the highest bidder or bestowed without any regard to the moral character of the recipient. Moreover, the authority of the pope was naturally weakened by this dependence of his prelates on feudal lords and by the acquisition of those lords of the power of nomination to vacancies. Hildebrand, ever scornful of moderate measures, struck fiercely at the root of the evil with a reform which was as impracticable as it was subversive of established order. The issue decreased, sternly forbidding the clergy to receive investiture for a church abbey or bishopric from the hands of a temporal lord. This was nothing more or less than an attempt to rest out of the hands of the lords and princes of Christendom their authority over the vast ecclesiastical domains that lay within their territory. When it is remembered that the church was then in possession of nearly one-fourth of the lands in the great countries of the West, the magnitude of this attempt to change becomes clear. The success of the reform would make the pope the actual overlord of all these wide territories and would fatally weaken the authority of every temporal ruler in Christendom who would see their diminished possessions interspersed within numerable estates owing allegiance to an independent power. The immoderate attempt of Hildebrand aroused opposition on every side, but the fiercest conflict raged in Germany. The emperor-elect, King Henry IV, threatened with excommunication and deposition for his opposition to the reform, gathered a council of such of the prelates of the empire as dared to answer to his summons, and ordered Hildebrand to descend from the papal throne. The infuriated pope gathered a council in his turn at Rome and issued the dread sentence of excommunication and deposition. In the name of Almighty God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, ran the solemn decree, I withdraw through St. Peter's power and authority from Henry the King, son of Henry the Emperor, who has arisen against the church with unheard of insolence, the rule over the whole kingdom of the Germans and over Italy. And I absolve all Christians from the bond of the oath which they have made or shall make to him, and I forbid anyone to serve him as king. If in later days the frequency of the sentence deprived it of some of its terrors, this first deposition of a monarch was salutary in its effects. Henry's authority seemed to slip entirely out of his hands. Encouraged by the papal sanction, a large number of his subjects revolted, and they were shunned by many of his firmest friends and supporters as a man accursed of heaven. There ensued the memorable scene at Canossa. Henry followed Hildebrand and Penitence to a stronghold in the Apennines, and for three days clad in sackcloth and with feet bared to the snow, the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire and the successor of Charlemagne and the Caesars, awaited the pope's forgiveness in the courtyard of the castle. On the fourth day the Penitent was admitted to the papal presence and the sentence which had brought him to this abject submission was revoked. Henry was soon able to revenge himself upon Hildebrand, but the humiliation at Canossa struck a severe blow at the imperial prestige, and increased that of the papacy to a corresponding degree. The successors of Hildebrand continued the struggle with the unrepentant emperor and incited his own son to rebel against him. Henry finally died of a broken heart. After further strife between the representatives of the rival powers, this first stage of the great struggle known as the Investiture Contest was brought to a close in 1122 by the Concordate of Wilms which applied a reasonable remedy to the evil which Hildebrand had attempted to eradicate in so drastic a fashion. There followed a few years of peace, and then the great house of Hohenstaufen appeared upon the scene and took up the gauge against the aggressor of the imperial rights. End of Section 1. Section 2 of Stupor Mundi, the Life and Times of Frederick II by Lionel Alshorn. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Pamela Nagami. Chapter 1. A Heritage of Strife, Part 2. In the meantime the papal influence was gaining great strength from another source. The crusades, which commenced at the end of the 11th century, were initiated and directed by the successors of St. Peter. The prominent part which the popes took in these enterprises naturally fostered their authority and enhanced their prestige. The resources of Christendom were placed in the hands of the papacy, and the vast wealth collected for the maintenance of these costly expeditions was, to a large extent, at the disposal of the pope, who was not always too conscientious to employ it against his Christian enemies. Moreover the call to a crusade was a formidable weapon, which the vicar of Christ frequently wielded against a monarch who was growing too powerful and too independent to please him. If the unhappy sovereign refused to squander his wealth and endanger his life by embarking for the holy land at the papal summons, the dread sentence of excommunication was his punishment. If he obeyed the call and met with disaster and the shame of failure that so many crusaders encountered, he returned with reduced power and prestige, and was less able to resist the papal encroachments. It was thus, writes Millman, by trampling their adversaries with vows which they could not decline and from which they could not extricate themselves, by thus consuming their wealth and resources on this wild and remote warfare, that the popes who themselves decently eluded or were prevented by age or alleged occupations from embarkation in these adventurous expeditions broke and wasted away the power and influence of the emperors. The Hohenstaufen suffered again and again from this unsanely policy of the popes. The founder of the greatness of the house of Hohenstaufen was one Frederick a knight of Shfabia who served the unhappy emperor Henry IV. In return for a rare and unswerving loyalty, Henry bestowed upon Frederick the hand of his daughter Agnes with the duchy of Shfabia as her dower. Frederick built himself a new abode high on the hill of Staufen and hence the family took the name of Hohenstaufen. The next generation of the house, which consisted of two sons, Frederick and Conrad, served their uncle, the emperor Henry V, and on his death in 1125 inherited all his ancestral possessions including a deadly enmity with the house of Gvalph. Footnote from which our present king traces his descent and footnote. Thirteen years later Conrad the Hohenstaufen and Henry the Gvalph appeared as rival candidates for the imperial throne. Conrad succeeded in gaining the suffrages of the electors and was crowned by the Pope's legate at Ex-La-Chapelle 1138. Footnote. The disappointed Gvalphs soon came to blows with the successful Conrad. In the conflicts which ensued the two battle cries, Hoh for the Gvalph and Hoh for the Weiblingen, a castle of the Hohenstaufen, were used. These names, the latter corrupted into Gi-Balene, were afterwards carried into Italy, where they were employed to describe the two factions whose struggles disturbed the peace of Italy for three centuries or more. The Gi-Balene's were the supporters of the imperial party, and the Gvalph's the supporters of the anti-imperial or papal party. Every Italian city had its Gvalph and Gi-Balene faction, who were constantly at strife with one another. And footnote. The first Hohenstaufen emperor was not allowed the leisure to build up two formidable a power. Five years after his election he was called to a crusade. Reluctant to neglect the task of consolidating the imperial authority in Italy, Conrad at first refused. He was however reduced to obedience by the threat of excommunication, and in 1147 led a vast German host toward the east. Cheated and starved by their Greek allies and harassed unceasingly by their Turkish enemies, the crusaders were compelled to retreat, after over sixty thousand of their number had succumbed to heat, famine, pestilence or the sword. The next year Conrad was again urged to journey to the Holy Land. He joined King Louis of France at Jerusalem, and though he gained great renown for personal valor, he was again unsuccessful. He returned to Germany and died in 1152. Although he had led his subjects to disaster, Conrad had earned the admiration of Germany by his courage and strength, and his nephew was elected in his place. The red-bearded Frederick I, or Barbarossa, as he is more commonly called, is one of the national heroes of the Fatherland. During a reign of forty years he brought an internal peace and order to Germany, greater than she had known since the days of Otto the Great. He secured the homage of the dukes of Denmark, Poland, Hungary and Pomerania, and the great diet which he held at Mayance in 1184, and which was attended by forty thousand knights, was a striking demonstration of the might of his German sovereignty. With all his power was unable to secure for him an effective control over the turbulent cities of northern Italy. Influenced by lofty ideas of the imperial authority, he made repeated efforts to revive the more substantial dominion of Charlemagne and Otto. The great Italian towns headed by Milan and assisted by the Pope, Alexander III, finally formed themselves into the Lombard League, which in 1176 inflicted an overwhelming defeat on Barbarossa and his German host on the field of Leniano. A truce for six years was made after this battle and was followed by the Treaty of Constans. The emperor was compelled to grant the right of private war and the privilege of self-jurisdiction to the untameable cities, unconditioned that their respective Podestas should receive investiture from his deputy and that they should furnish him with provisions whenever he should pass through Italy. They thus became Republican states with only a nominal subjection to the empire. It is needless to say that Barbarossa incurred the violent enmity of the papacy. The state of tension that always existed between the two parties was well instanced by an incident which occurred at the died of Besançon, held in the early part of Frederick's reign. Two papal legates appeared with complaints from Pope Adrian. In the course of the argument which followed one of the legates hotly inquired, from whom does the king hold his power if not from the pope? Whereupon a German baron sprang up and was with difficulty prevented by the emperor from striking the papal official down with his sword. When the feeling between the two parties was as bitter as this it was not likely to be long before they drifted into open strife. Barbarossa was unwise enough to give the occasion for a rupture. Adrian died in 1159 and the Cardinals could not come to a unanimous decision in electing his successor. 14 voted for Alexander III and 9 for Victor IV. Frederick called the general council to settle the matter, but Alexander, who considered himself to be duly elected by the majority, resented this interference, and as the emperor persisted in his refusal to recognize him, the sentence of excommunication was again proclaimed. Frederick therefore openly espoused the cause of Victor, and for some years Europe was bewildered by the existence of two popes. Barbarossa was at this time at the height of his power, and his successes against the Lombard city so alarmed Alexander that he fled to France. There was open enmity between pope and emperor for fourteen years, until Frederick was finally brought to submission by the victory of the Lombard League, the pope's allies at Lignano. The two enemies met at Venice, and once again the successor of the Caesars humbled himself before the successor of St. Peter. Overcome by some outburst of emotion, Frederick cast off his purple mantle and flung himself on his knees before the venerable pope who raised him and bestowed the kiss of peace. There was no further breach with the papacy during Barbarossa's lifetime. Since all Christendom was brought into temporary unison by the news which arrived in Europe in 1187, that the sepulchre of Christ had once again fallen into the hands of the Infidels. Richard of England and Philip of France took the cross and set out by sea for the Holy Land. Barbarossa, though well stricken in years, was not one to linger at the call of duty. The grand old warrior girded on his sword, summoned his vassals around him and marched overland to join the monarchs of England and France at Ochre. Much might have been accomplished had his life been spared, for the mutual animosity of Richard and Philip would have been subdued by the presence of the renowned emperor. But almost at the threshold of Syria a tragic death overtook him. His army was slowly crossing a river by a narrow bridge, and the impatient hoe and stalfen plunged into the swiftly flowing stream to gain the opposite bank. The tide overpowered his aged limbs, and he was brought to land a lifeless corpse. His sorrowing followers bore the remains of their father-in-lord to Antioch, and disheartened and saddened by his loss only a remnant reached Ochre. Three the Sixth, who succeeded him, had many of his father's virile qualities, and a double share of the hoe and stalfen taint of cruelty. To him belongs the odium of having participated in the imprisonment of Richard Coeur de Lyon on his return from the Crusade. We can imagine that Barbarossa, had he been alive, would have acted very differently toward the impetuous and dauntless English hero who in so many ways was a man after his own heart. Henry added to the hoe and stalfen dominions those lands which were to be the chief delight of his imperial son. By his marriage with Constance, the rightful heir to the crown of Sicily, Henry had a lawful claim, not only to that island itself, but also to the southern half of the Italian peninsula. Soon after his accession to the imperial dignity, he led a German host into his new dominions which had been seized from the usurper Tonkred. His first campaign, though not entirely successful, was followed by another, which reduced all opposition. The cruelties which he practiced toward his defeated enemies were so barbarous that he was laid under the sentence of excommunication. Celestine, however, who at this time occupied the chair of St. Peter, was a feeble character, and Henry's only answer was to seize many of the lands which the church claimed in the south. The acquisition of the lordship of Sicily in Naples was to prove a doubtful blessing to the imperial cause. Hedged into the north and south by the hated hoe and stalfen power, the bitter enmity of the papacy was now rendered doubly persistent by the fear for its independence. There was henceforth to be no chance of a lasting peace until one of the two warring powers should be crushed into the dust. It was thus to no heritage a fair peace that the son of Henry was destined to succeed. But to a crown made heavy with a weight of hatred. A hatred that could cloak itself under the mask of religion, could enlist in its service all the fanaticism and superstition of the age of faith, and that could drown the defensive cry of render under Caesar the things that are Caesar's with the sanction of supreme power. See, I have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, to build, and to plant. CHAPTER II The Child of Mother Church, Part 1 On the twenty-fourth day of December in the year eleven ninety-four treachery and vengeance were abroad in the land of Sicily. Henry the Emperor had given fair promises to the wife, the children, and the followers of the usurper-tancred, and enticed them into his power. There followed a mockery of judgment and a bloody assize. The boy William, the usurper's son, was deprived of his manhood by mutilation, blinded with hot irons, and sent with his mother and sisters to a dungeon in the Alps. The prelates and barons who had fallen into the snare of the Fowler were tortured, burnt, buried alive, or more mercifully hanged. On the same day that the Emperor was enjoying this barbarous revenge, a man-child was born to him in Yezi, a town of Apulia. The Empress Constance, who was now forty, had been married to Henry eight years, and there had been no former child of the marriage. In anticipation, therefore, of the columnese, which might arise, she gave as much publicity to the actual entrance of the child into the world as decency and her imperial dignity would allow. This, however, was not sufficient to silence lying tongues, and the rumour was spread that the Empress had passed the age of childbearing in that the son of a butcher of Yezi had been brought into her bed and passed off as her own child. Unwilling to allow her son Frederick to be burdened with the weight of this slander, the Imperial Mother laid aside her pride, and before an audience of Italian matrons underwent a humiliating ordeal to prove that she was still capable of the honours of maternity. Her brave conduct was rewarded by the virtual suppression of the enemy, though once or twice it was raised from its obscurity by the more hysterical of Frederick's enemies. The child's birth was hailed by Henry with considerable joy, and the court-poet poured forth a torrent of verses on the auspicious occasion. The parents were, however, too busy with affairs of state and constant journeyings to and fro, to attend to the rearing of the Babe, and he was left at Foligno in the care of a noble Italian lady. Before he had attained his third birthday his father died, and the prospects of the young Frederick assumed a precarious aspect. The electors of Germany, in spite of an oath which they had sworn to Henry, ignored the child entirely in their election of a new Emperor. The crown of Sicily, as a hereditary possession, was not disputed, and he was crowned at Palermo in 1198, but the kingdom quickly relapsed into anarchy and the royal authority was of little account. Constance realized the urgent necessity of a powerful protector who would guard the child's interests, and in spite of many misgivings, she was compelled to apply to the Pope. The present holder of that dignity, innocent the third, was the most vigorous character who had occupied the chair of St. Peter since the days of Hildebrand. He raised the power of the papacy to a height that it had never before attained and never afterwards excelled. Before his death in 1216 he had secured the complete vassalage of the king of Arajón. He had gained a signal triumph over the proud Philip Augustus of France, and compelled him after a protracted excommunication to reinstate his divorced wife. He had become the overlord of the crafty John of England, and although the sturdy patriotism of the English barons saved that country from becoming a mere thief of the papacy, she continued for sixty years to be the treasure house of Rome and was drained of her wealth to provide the popes with the resources for their struggle with the emperors. Innocent therefore seemed a powerful protector for the young Frederick, and he was perfectly willing, in his capacity as the father of orphans, to take the child under his protection. His motives, however, were very far from disinterested, and he seized the opportunity offered by the friendless position of the child and his mother to drive a very hard bargain with Constance. He revived a baseless claim which the papacy had long made to the overlordship of Sicily and Apulia, and granted them back to the empress and her son as his vassals. The lands were thus detailed in Innocence's letter, the kingdom of Sicily, the Duchy of Apulia, and Principality of Capua, with all its appurtenances, Naples, Salerno, and Amalfi, with their appurtenances, Marcia, and the other lands beyond Marcia, to which the royal pair have a right. A legate was sent to receive the oath of fealty and homage from the new vassals of Rome. They were further required to pay a yearly tribute, and this was to be supplemented during Frederick's minority by a payment of thirty thousand golden tarans and whatever the pope might expend in the defense of the kingdom. The crown was to surrender its claim to the nomination of bishops, who were henceforth to have the right to appeal from the king to Rome. Lastly, the clergy were to be judged by their own courts in all cases except high treason. The protection bought at so heavy a price was soon urgently needed. Constance died at the end of 1198 and bequeathed the four-year-old orphan to the guardianship of Innocent. The pope wrote a letter of consolation to his young ward wherein he said, God has not spared the rod. He has taken away your father and mother. Yet he has given you a worthier father, his vicar, and a better mother, the church. In days to come, the church, as Milman remarks, was to act rather as the stepmother than the mother of Frederick. For three years after the death of Constance, the confusion in the kingdom, footnote, the kingdom of Sicily comprised the southern half of Italy, as well as the island, and footnote, was so great that Frederick was without a home. One chronicle tells us that he was passed between the houses of the burgers of Palermo, staying a week at one, a month at another, according to the means of his hosts. It was in one of these houses that he was visited by a strange and prophetic dream that seemed to foreshadow his future struggles with Rome. He was heard one night to cry out loudly in his sleep, I cannot, I cannot, and when he was questioned the next morning he replied, I seem to be eating all the bells in the world, and I saw one great bell which I tried to swallow, but it seemed to kill me, and on that account I cried out. Meanwhile, innocent the third was not idle in Frederick's cause, which through his overlordship had now become largely his own. The first enemy to be subdued was Machvalt, who had followed Henry from Germany into the south, and had afterwards with many other German barons betrayed an active reluctance to leave these fairlands, which afforded so tempting a prey to the adventurer. On the death of Constance he had claimed the regency of Sicily, and gathered around his banner all the German intruders. Innocent X communicated him and his robbers in vain. The Saracens of the mountains allied themselves with Machvalt in the cause of anarchy, and the pope was compelled to send an army into Sicily. In 1200 the two forces met before the walls of Palermo from which the child Frederick was an anxious spectator of the bloody battle that ensued. Victory fell to the pope's general and was followed by a further success. Two years later the death of Machvalt freed Frederick from one of his enemies. The young king was now installed in the royal palace of Palermo and his private education commenced. The Archbishop of Taranto and the notary John of Trajeto were entrusted with the general supervision of his studies. Strangely enough, Muslim scholars were appointed to instruct him in various branches of learning. They were undoubtedly the most learned and men of the day, but it is some cause for wonder that the education of the pope's ward should have been entrusted to ring his tender years to the care of infidels. The result was that Frederick's mind was so broadened that he was unable in future years to adopt the prevailing attitude of narrow and fanatical hatred toward the followers of Islam that was essential to the orthodox and complete Christian. The young king had now a royal palace for home and servants around him, but in other respects his position was still unhappy. He was king only in name and was desperately poor. He was surrounded by intrigue. His person was the objective of every ambitious adventurer who sought to assume the title of regent. His dominions were devastated by anarchy. It would be tedious to relate all the conflicts which raged through Sicily and southern Italy for several years, but some idea of the miserable state of affairs by which the child was surrounded may be gathered from this quaint and pathetic letter which he addressed to the kings of Europe in his tenth or eleventh year. To all the kings of the world and to all the princes of the universe from the innocent boy king of Sicily called Frederick, greeting in God's name. Assemble yourselves ye nations, draw nigh ye kings, hasten hither ye princes, and see if any sorrow be like unto my sorrow. My parents died ere I could know their caresses, I did not deserve to see their faces, and I, like a gentle lamb among wolves, fell into slavish dependence upon men of various tribes and tongues. I, the offspring of so Augusta Union, was handed over to servants of all sorts who presumed to draw lots for my garments and for my royal person. Germans, Tuscans, Sicilians, barbarians conspired to worry me. My daily bread, my drink, my freedom are all measured out to me in scanty proportion. No king am I. I am ruled instead of ruling. I beg favors instead of granting them. My subjects are silly and quarrelsome. Since therefore my redeemer liveth and can raise me out of such a pool of misery again and again I beseech you, O ye princes of the earth, to aid me to withstand slaves, to set free the son of Caesar, to raise up the crown of my kingdom, and to gather together again this gathered people. Unless you avenge me, you yourselves will fall into like dangers. CHAPTER II. THE CHILD OF MOTHER CHURCH, PART II By twelve o' eight, however, a measure of peace was restored to the unhappy kingdom, and the pope determined to secure a matrimonial alliance for his ward. Frederick had narrowly escaped the bonds of wedlock when he was only eight years old. Innocent had attempted to gain for him the hand of a sister of the king of Arajon, but the negotiations were prolonged for several years until finally the proposed bride died. Her elder sister was then chosen in her place, and in twelve o' eight Innocent wrote to Pedro, urging him to delay the match no longer. Your sister, ran the papal missive, will have a noble husband, the offspring of emperors and kings. He is of royal blood, both by father and mother. He is endowed with virtues beyond his years. He is passing from the gates of boyhood into years of discretion at a quicker pace than usual, once we may expect the happiest results. His kingdom is rich and noble. It is the naval and harbor of other realms. It will be of advantage to Arajon, and is especially beloved by us, being the peculiar possession of the successor of St. Peter. The proposed match was one that is curious enough to modernize. The boy Frederick was only fourteen and a half years of age. The Lady Constance was at any rate ten years his senior and was a widow. She had married the King of Hungary and born him a child when her second husband was only nine. The disparity in age was, however, ignored by Innocent and Pedro, though we are unacquainted with the sentiments of the two persons who were most intimately concerned in the matter. In twelve o' nine all obstacles to the alliance were overcome, and Constance attended by five hundred knights, sailed to Palermo, and was united to her youthful bridegroom amidst great rejoicings. In spite of the fact that their own inclinations had not been consulted, the royal pair seemed to have quickly adapted themselves to circumstances, and a very real affection grew up between them. It must have been of great advantage to Frederick to have a wife of mature years and considerable experience to counsel him in his difficult position. He also secured a more tangible gain. The Lady not only brought a handsome dowry with her, but the knights who had conducted her from Atahon were employed by the young king to establish a more effective sway over Apulia. The improvement of his prospects, the dignity of matrimony, and the change from childhood to adolescence, now made Frederick yearn for a little more independence and power. The new queen, moreover, was apparently a lady of considerable spirit and encouraged her husband in his increasing dislike of the pope's too officious overlordship, which was very much in evidence at the Sicilian court. Soon after his marriage we hear of the first acts of rebellion on the part of Frederick against his guardian's authority. The bishopric of Palermo became vacant, and the cannons for some reason betrayed a great reluctance to proceed to the election of a successor. Frederick urged them to fulfill their duty, and as they still delayed, commanded them to elect his own nominee. The cannons refused and appealed to the pope, whereupon the young king flew into a royal passion and banished them from the kingdom. This act called forth a strong letter of rebuke from innocent. We are amazed, he wrote, at the conduct of your advisors. Do not usurp our office in things spiritual. Be content with the temporal power which you hold from us. Beware of the doom of Uza and Uzaya. Lay not hands upon the ark. It is quite a mistake on your part to think that we conferred to your mother that privilege concerning appeals to Rome by the Sicilian clergy of which you speak. We refused it on her sending ambassadors to us. Do you persevere in your reverence to Rome and recall the cannons? We do not know whether Frederick yielded to the demand of innocent, but next year he again displeased the pope. Queen Constance urged him to dismiss the chancellor of the kingdom, who had been appointed by innocent, and betrayed to great an anxiety for self-aggrandizement. He was accordingly banished from the court, and another letter of admonishment was the result. As you are now past the age of childhood, wrote innocent, you should put away childish things. The bishop of Catania, chancellor of the realm, has been your guardian hitherto, and has undergone many toils and sorrows on your behalf. But now, forgetful of his services, you take no notice of him. Recall the chancellor forthwith, and take his advice, henceforth. Let no one assail him, or we shall take it, as an outrage done to ourselves. Frederick, however, refused to obey these haughty commands, and the chancellor was not recalled. Early in the year 1212, the young king, who is now 17, was presented by his wife with a son. The infant was named Henry, and was crowned at Palermo as joint ruler of the kingdom with his father. Frederick's position was now daily improving, and his authority was respected throughout Sicily, if not on the mainland. He was able to reward faithful followers with grants of various kinds. The church in Sicily and Apulia was specially favored. The Teutonic Order of Knights, which had been formed shortly after the death of Barbarossa to succor the sick and wounded German crusaders and pilgrims, received various lands and privileges. This order was to be Frederick's loyal supporter and constant friend throughout his life. Some few weeks after the birth of his son to Frederick, a summons came from Germany, which was to effect a rapid and considerable change in his fortunes. On the death of the Emperor Henry VI, and the election which ensued, Frederick, the infant son of that Emperor, had been entirely ignored as the possible claimant to the throne, in spite of an oath which had been sworn to Henry by many of the electors. The votes of the majority had been cast for Philip, the brother of the late Emperor, in those of the minority, for Otto of Brunswick, the head of the house of Gvelf. A civil war immediately broke out between the two rival claimants and raged with extraordinary violence for twelve years. It was an age of cruelty, and the mutual hatred of Hohenstaufen and Gvelf found expression in the most barbarous reprisals, in which neither age nor sex was spared. A young nun who fell into the hands of some Gvelf soldiers was stripped naked, smeared with honey, rolled in feathers, and paraded to the streets on horseback with her face to the tail. These same soldiers were then captured by Philip's supporters and boiled in hot water for punishment. The abbot of Gaul seized six of the principal burgers of Arban and cut off their feet, in revenge for a similar mutilation inflicted on one of his servants, whose only offence was that he had been found stealing fuel in a forest. These are merely instances of the savagery with which the war was pursued. Innocent was the only power who might have brought this devastating strife to an end by definitely throwing the moral weight of the papal approval on the side of one candidate. It suited his plans, however, to see Germany wasting her strength in an internecine war, and he held his hand, unwilling to support the Hohenstaufen's and afraid to incur their anger when they seemed the more likely to succeed. Finally, however, Philip gained the advantage, and Innocent was compelled to recognize him as Emperor. The Gvelf seemed thoroughly disheartened and broken, when the crime of one man intervened to wrest the fruits of success from Philip's hands. He was assassinated by a private enemy, and his leaderless party lost heart. Otto gained a rapid ascendancy, journeyed to Rome and was joyfully crowned by Innocent in 1209. If the pope exalted at the defeat of the Hohenstaufen Party, he soon found that the Gvelf Emperor was to prove just as refractory as any of the Hohenstaufen's had been. Otto had taken various vows of obedience to Innocent at his coronation, and immediately commenced to break them. Among other engagements he had promised to work no harm to the pope's ward, Frederick. In 1210, however, he led an army into the young king's Italian dominions and was joined by several turbulent nobles. Within a year he had conquered the greater part of the mainland and was threatening Frederick in Sicily, when he was summoned back to Germany by the news of a sudden reversal of his fortunes in that country. The flouted pope had excommunicated him for his broken vows, and the Hohenstaufen Party, reinforced by many of Otto's former supporters whom he had alienated by his arrogance or by his excommunication, had again taken the field. The princes of the empire now but thought themselves of the neglected scion of the House of Hohenstaufen, the grandson of their old Lord Barbarossa, and the son of their former Emperor Henry. They had had their fill of anarchy and civil war and thought with regret of the days when the emperors of that House had made Germany strong and glorious. The child of Sicily, as he was called in Germany, must now be nearing manhood, and rumours spoke of the high qualities that promised to develop with advancing years. Accordingly the princes gathered themselves together. The Archbishop of Mions, the prelates of Magdeburg and Trev, the King of Bohemia, the Laungrav of Turingia, and the Dukes of Austria and Bavaria. All these high dignitaries assembled at Nuremburg in the October of 1211. They deposed Otto as a heretic and decided to elect the young Frederick of Sicily. The document they drew up to record this resolution is interesting for two reasons. It gives the Germans own conception of the Holy Roman Empire, and it voices the reports which had reached Germany of the character of their future Emperor. God Almighty, seeing by Adam's fall that mankind would abuse, for you will, and would become involved in the nets of contention, set up the Holy Roman Empire that its Lord like a God upon earth might rule kings and nations and maintain peace and justice. After the Greek Emperor ceased to do their duty, Holy Mother Church and the Roman Senate and people, recalling the said Empire, transplanted its roots into mighty Germany, that this dominion might be propped up by our stately princes, our vigorous knights, and our most brave warriors. The Empire, without a head, is like a ship in a storm without a master pilot. Heresies are springing up in the universal churches being harassed. Bees are scattered when they lose their queen, so kingdoms if unrestrained by a bit go to ruin. The sun is eclipsed, the world needs an emperor to check disorders. The nations have cried aloud to God, who has awoke from sleep and withought him of the Empire. He has inspired us, the princes of Germany, who have the right of election, to draw an eye to the throne and to meet together in one place as is our duty. We have been each of us examined as to his will. We have invoked the Holy Ghost and gone through all the customary rites. We have all in common turned our eyes to the illustrious Lord, the King of Germany and Sicily, the Dukas Fabia as being worthy of the honor. Though young in years he is old in character, though his person is not full grown, his mind has been by nature wonderfully endowed. He exceeds the common measure of his equals. He is blessed with virtues before his day as becomes one of the true blood of that August stock, the Caesars of Germany, who have been unsparing of their treasures and persons in order to increase the honor and might of the Empire and the happiness of their loyal subjects. So ran the manifesto of the Imperial electors. No time was lost in carrying it into effect. A deputy was sent to the Ghiblien towns of Italy to prepare them for the coming of the new Lord. Anselm von Jostigen journeyed to Rome and gained the ascent of the Pope and the citizens to Frederick's Elevation. He then made his way to Sicily in the court of Palermo. There he spoke the message of the electors and invited Frederick to leave his kingdom of Sicily and assume the dignity and crown of his Imperial forefathers. End of Section 4. Section 5 of Stupor Mundi, the life and times of Frederick II by Lionel Alshorn. This Librivox recording is in the public domain, recording by Pamela Nagami. Chapter 3 The Adventure and the Goal, Part 1 What youth of gallant spirit and royal ambitions could turn a deaf ear to the invitation which was laid before Frederick at his court at Palermo? Here were high adventure and romantic effort, perilous journeyings, and a great prize for goal. The soft arms of his wife, who pleaded with him not to leave her and her babe for so dangerous a quest, the discouragement of the Sicilian nobles who had no love for Germany and no desire to see their kingdom become a mere apanage of the German crown, were powerless to combat the allurements of the new enterprise. High destiny called Frederick to the throne of the Caesars, and with a stout heart but a scanty following, he started on his journey northwards in the March of 1212. It was natural and seemly that the young king should seize the opportunity offered by his northward voyage to proceed to Rome, and there pay his respects to his guardian the pope. Accordingly he sailed from Palermo to Ostia, stopping only once on the journey at Galletta, and made his way up the Tiber to Rome. The meeting which followed between Frederick and Innocent seemed of happy augury for the future peace of Christendom. The youthful monarch was complacent and respectful, the venerable Pontiff was benevolent and affectionate. Frederick placed his hands between those of Innocent in token of vassalage, and exceeded two various claims to lands in Sicily which were put forward by the pope. In return he was supplied with a store of money to help him in his wanderings. There seemed no trace of that enmity which had so long raged between pope and Hohenstalfens, and the interests of the two appeared to be identical. The young adventurer was eager to secure the power that his fathers had held before him, and Innocent was fondly anticipating the accession of an emperor who should overthrow the disobedient Otto, and himself become the grateful and dutiful son of Mother Church. After a few weeks sojourn in Rome, Frederick continued on his way. The path now was beset with perils. Northern Italy was sewn thickly with gvelfik towns, who were the partisans of Otto, and his landward passage across the Arno was barred by the powerful city of Pisa. Fortunately, however, Genoa was sure to embrace the cause with which Pisa was at strife, and four Genoese galleys were sent to convey Frederick to their city, which was the northernmost point of his journey which he could reach by sea. The peasants sent out galleys in their turn to rout their Genoese enemies and capture the emperor-relect, but the convoy safely eluded them, and reached Genoa on the 1st of May. Here he was entertained for more than two months, while his partisans in Lombardy were endeavouring to ensure him a safe passage into Germany. It was impossible for him to proceed directly across the Alps by the most direct road. Milan, most implacable enemy of the Hohenstalfens, lay in that route and several other hostile cities. He must march, by devious ways, therefore, proceeding from one friendly town to another, and giving his enemies as wide a berth as possible. He accordingly set out from Genoa, accompanied by the Marquis of Moferra and the Marquis of Este, two Lombard nobles who had joined him there, and made for Pavia. A royal reception was accorded him in this city, and he rode in triumphal procession through its streets with a canopy born above his head. Cremona was his next objective, but the path there was a perilous one. It lay between Milan and Piacenza, both bitterly hostile to the Hohenstalfen race. He was compelled to go stealthily by night, escorted half the way by an escort of Pavians, and then handed over to a body of Cremonese soldiers. He escaped death or capture by less than an hour, for before he had left his Pavia and friends two miles behind, they were attacked by a strong force of Milanese and completely routed. He gained Cremona in safety, and was received with every evidence of friendship. He was then passed on to Mantua, and escorted from there to Verona. The Veronese citizens conducted him northwards as far as the borders of Bavaria, and then left him to proceed on his journey with the little handful of followers that now remained with him. He had accomplished the passage of Italy without mishap, and was now on the threshold of Germany. Here there was Otto to be reckoned with, for the excommunicated Emperor had hurried back into Germany when he heard of Frederick's election, and his remaining supporters had rallied around him. Frederick advanced into Bavaria as far as Trient and then received alarming news of Otto's proximity. It was impossible for him to advance further in that direction, and equally impossible to a youth of Frederick's metal to slink back into Italy. He chose the only remaining alternative, turning sharply aside to the west, and commenced an arduous march through the almost untrodden passes of the Alps. Fortunately it was late summer, and the hardships of cold were not so overwhelming as they might have been, but it was a perilous enough venture across the trackless Alpine snows, and it must have been with a glad heart that he reached Kur in his ancestral duchy of Shvabia. He was there joined by two high dignitaries of the neighborhood, the Bishop of Kur and the Abbot of St. Gaul, and his slender retinue was reinforced by a band of sixty knights. The courage and resolution he had so far displayed was again exercised in the next move. The mighty city of Constance lay to his north, and its bishop was undecided whether to support the Hohenstaufen or the Gwelf. News was brought to Frederick that Otto was making hot haste toward the city, hoping by arriving first to decide the wavering bishop in his favor and arrest the progress of his rival. Had he succeeded, the way north would have been closed to Frederick, and with his handful of followers he would have been driven back into Italy by Otto's forces. The young king of Sicily, however, had no mind to see his venture close so disastrously. Immediately the news reached him of Otto's intention, he made a dash for Constance. Otto's lackeys had already arrived and had been admitted, but their master was three leagues behind. Frederick thundered at the gates and appealed to the ancient loyalty of Constance to the house of Shvabia. The Abbot of St. Gaul seconded his persuasions, and at length, after much paroling and hesitation, the bishop decided to espouse the cause of the grandson of Barbarossa. Otto arrived some three hours afterwards, with a force of three hundred knights, to find the gates closed in his face, and his rival safely lodged within the city's walls. This rapid move won Frederick the Empire. Otto, seeing in the Hohenstaufen success at Constance a more serious reverse to his own cause than is easily apparent, disbanded his army and retreated into the north. Frederick's way was henceforth no longer a perilous adventure but a triumphal progress. He marched to Baal and was joined there by several princes and nobles, some eager to offer their services, many eager to sell them. From Baal he advanced northwards to the Hohenstaufen stronghold of Haganau, which had fallen into the hands of Otto's partisans and quickly reduced it to surrender. All who flocked to his support or had taken a hand in his election received lavish rewards. The King of Bohemia, the Archbishop of Mayons, the Bishop of Metz and Shbaya, the Bishop of Hulmes, and many lesser supporters obtained welcome grants and gifts. He now proceeded to strengthen his position by a foreign alliance which might be of great service, should Otto prove a more formidable enemy than was anticipated by the Hohenstaufen party. He accordingly marched to Vaux Couleurs on the French boundary and there held a conference with the eldest son of Philip Augustus. The outcome of the meeting was that Frederick promised to make no peace with Otto or his supporter, John of England, without the consent of Philip. The French monarch in return engaged to aid Frederick if such aid should become necessary, and in earnest of his goodwill, presented the young emperor-elect with the princely sum of 20,000 marks. With an equally royal munificence, Frederick ordered the sum to be distributed among the princes of the empire and thereby earned loud praises for his generosity. His next move was to Mayons, where he held his first diet and received the homage of as many of the princes as were present. The end of this year, whose beginning had witnessed the departure of the boy king of Sicily on his dangerous venture, now saw the consummation of his hopes and the prize of his daring. On December 5th, 1212, a great assembly gathered at Frankfurt. The spiritual and temporal electors of Germany, the envoys of the king of France, the papal legate, and a band of 5,000 knights with one voice acclaimed Frederick as their king and emperor. He was conducted to the old cathedral and their crowned by the Archbishop of Mayons. From the position of a petty king, he was now elevated, at the age of 18 years, to that of the first monarch of the world, the successor of Charlemagne and the Caesars, the temporal head of Christ's kingdom on earth. The claim implied by the last title was it is true not one that could be practically carried into effect. It was a claim that was suffered because it was never actively asserted. Actually, the position of the emperor in relation to the other kings of Europe was that of Primus Interparis. He was the senior monarch of Christendom and not the overlord of all other monarchs. Nevertheless, that there was such a theoretical supremacy and that it was generally recognized, is demonstrated by the words of the English chronicler, Roger de Wendover, who speaks of Frederick as the emperor who was, as it were, the lord and governor of the whole world. In any case, it was a proud enough position to be held by a youth who in the early days of his infancy had been dependent for his existence upon the charity of the burgers of Palermo. The territories over which he was now the suzerain were wider in extent than the total areas of the kingdoms of England, Scotland, France and Christian Spain. The lands of the empire comprised the whole of modern Germany, Austria and Holland, the greater part of Belgium, a portion of France extending westwards as far as the Rhône, which was known as the Kingdom of Arles and the northern half of Italy. The kings of Poland and Hungary were tributary monarchs. The island of Sicily and the southern half of Italy were Frederick's by hereditary right. Sardinia, Cyprus and the Kingdom of Jerusalem were added during his reign. The title of emperor was therefore no empty one at this time, though Frederick was the last to enjoy an effective control over the wide territories that were attached to the imperial crown. Frederick spent the next two years, 1213 and 1214, in traveling through his dominions and subduing the remaining partisans of his deposed rival Lotto. At his side were nearly all the great magnates of Germany—Dukes, Prelates, Counts, Margraves and Landgraves. He proved himself most grateful to his supporters, and continued to be lavish with his favors. As yet he showed no signs of disappointing the pope's conception of him as a dutiful son of Mother Church. In July 1213 he issued an instrument which must have given considerable satisfaction to innocent. He acknowledged the services which Rome had rendered him, and he surrendered various rights which the crown had long exercised over the church in Sicily. He gave up Angona, Spoleto, Ravenna and other territories in central Italy to enlarge the patrimony of St. Peter. He ceded certain lands in Tuscany, the estates of the Countess Matilda, which had long been a cause of dispute between popes and emperors. Lastly he took the oath of obedience to Rome in the presence of the German princes. CHAPTER III He then turned his attention to Otto, who from his ancestral Duchy of Saxony had been ravaging the neighboring province of Turingia. Frederick led an army into Saxony and drove Otto into his fortress of Brunswick. He then retired to Spears, and kept Christmas in state. The ruin of Otto was accelerated by his own rashness, realizing that alone he could not withstand the rising power of the young emperor, he hoped to secure the active support of John of England by aiding that monarch in an attack upon Philip Augustus, Frederick's ally. He advanced into France and met the forces of John and the Count of Flanders. Philip summoned the chivalry of France to his side and marched against the invaders. There followed the memorable battle of Bouvine, which not only resulted in England's loss of Normandy, but completed the overthrow of the Gvelf hopes. He retired again into Saxony and occasionally led predatory attacks into the neighboring provinces. Frederick, however, having crushed the Gvelf party and other parts of Germany, felt secure enough to ignore Otto, and he was allowed to live out his days in his own territories, comforting his soul with assemblies of the imperial dignity he had lost and surrounded by a little court who still hailed him as emperor. He died in the year 1218 and was buried in his purple robes. Frederick's triumph was completed in 1215 by the surrender of Ex-La Chapelle, the favorite city of Charlemagne, which had clung to Otto's cause as long as there was any prospect of his success. On the 24th of July his coronation was repeated in the royal city. He was anointed with holy oil and placed on the throne of Charlemagne. After a religious ceremony he was invested with the royal insignia and the silver crown of Germany was set on his head. The multitude of dignitaries that filled the church acclaimed his coronation with a thrice-repeated cry of assent. He then made a rash vow, which was to involve him in many troubles in later years. Moved by an eloquent sermon exhorting all the faithful to undertake another crusade and influenced, no doubt, by an emotion of gratitude for his success which the ceremony of his crowning had evoked, he took the cross and swore to lead an army into the Holy Land. Thirteen years were to elapse before he fulfilled this solemn engagement, but there is no reason to doubt the sincerity in which he contracted it. It was taken, however, by a young man of twenty, under the influence of a mental exaltation, and each year as it went by brought fresh tasks to be performed which must take precedence of this chivalrous enterprise. He had to restore peace and order in Germany, to secure and confirm the loyalty of his new subjects, and to ensure the succession of his son to the dignities which death might rest from him when he should embark upon this perilous war against the infidel. After Germany there was Italy to demand his attention. The royal power must be made of more effect in turbulent Lombardy, and his kingdom of Sicily and Naples must be restored to the peace and good governance of which it had known so little since the Emperor Henry VI, first led his German warriors into the south. All these matters, the duties of his kingship, must be ordered before a crusade could be undertaken, or else Anarchy would inevitably raise its head as soon as he had turned his back upon his dominions and taken ship for the east. The Popes, however, in their enthusiasm for the crusades, which were downed so greatly to their influence and prestige, were not likely to appreciate the reasons for Frederick's long postponement of the fulfillment of his vow. It was fortunate for the Emperor in this matter of the crusade, as in others, that the stern and imperious Pope Innocent died in the following year. His successor, Honorius III, was a man of comparatively gentle and tolerant nature, qualities which rendered him ill-fitted to guide the bark of St. Peter along its ambitious course. The successful medieval Pope was a creature of sterile heart and petrified humanity, expediency his only guide, the aggrandizement of the papal power his single purpose. Honorius was too mild of disposition, too charry of harsh measures, and Frederick was thus allowed a grace of eleven years, were in to develop his power, before another militant pontiff arose to lay jealous hands upon the imperial edifice which he had restored. Even Honorius, however, was not minded to let the prolonged delays of the laggard crusader pass on rebuked. Frederick was willing enough to assist him in spurring the barons and knights of Germany into activity, but postponed his own departure year after year. Youth, power, fame, your vow, the example of your ancestors, summon you to fulfill your glorious enterprise, wrote Honorius in 1220. That which your illustrious grandfather, Frederick I, undertook with all his puissance, it is your mission to bring to a glorious end. Three times have I consented to delay, I will even prolong the term to the first of May. The first of May passed, however, and no wrathful maledictions fell upon Frederick's head. The following November saw him at Rome in perfect amity with the Pope. Meanwhile Frederick spent the period from 1215 to 1220 in fulfilling the duties of his kingship of Germany. They were years of constant activity. He travelled from town to town, from province to province, holding diets, bestowing charters, writing the wrong with rough but impartial justice, regulating trade and granting favours. He displayed an energy and aciduity which were all the more admirable because they were contrary to his inclinations. His was not the feverish and unnatural restlessness of a Justinian, but the grim determination to leave nothing undone that ought to be done, to let nothing be sacrificed to the elegant ease and luxury which his soul loved. The fame of his beneficent rule spread far and wide. The merchant could travel in peace, the widows and the fatherless were secure from oppression, evil doers had to hide their faces before his vigorous justice. Side by side with this common round of duty, he was occupied in maturing a scheme for the transmission of all his dignities to future members of his house. His wife Constance rejoined her lord in Germany in 1216 after a separation of four years, and brought with her their young son, Henry. It was Frederick's intention to secure the election of the child who had already been crowned as joint ruler of Sicily to the throne of Germany, so that on his death Henry should succeed to both empire and kingdom. This was not at all to the liking of the papacy who saw in the union of the two powers a menace to its own supremacy and independence. Innocent indeed had been impelled to sanction Frederick's election to the empire by the necessity of raising up a rival to the rebellious Otto. It was a step which he had afterwards regretted and had endeavored to rectify by compelling Frederick to renounce his own title to the kingdom of Sicily in favor of his son. Frederick had actually promised to carry out this renunciation as soon as he should have been crowned emperor at Rome, when the death of Innocent and the accession of the less formidable Pope Honorius released him from the necessity of fulfilling his agreement. He then set actively to work to prepare the way for the attainment of his purpose. He associated the name of Henry with his own in all charters and grants, and gave him the title of ruler of Burgundy and Duke of Schwabia. He ingratiated his powerful subjects by generous gifts and contrived to acquaint them with the wish he had at heart. The scheme came to fruition at the great Diet of Frankfurt, which assembled in April 1220. The princes of the empire, while declaring their objection to the union of the empire and the kingdom of Sicily, proceeded to accomplish that union by electing the young Henry as the future king of Germany. This was a great triumph for Frederick, who could now anticipate the undisputed succession of his son Henry to the dual sovereignty of empire and kingdom. It was a triumph, however that was not gained without cost. It needed something more than his great popularity to induce the electors to grant what he so much desired. Whether the price had been agreed upon beforehand, or whether it was a spontaneous act of gratitude we do not know, but after the election of his son Henry, Frederick granted a charter of liberties to the princes and prelates of the empire. The disruptive tendencies of this charter have been considerably exaggerated by historians. It merely confirmed to the princes, in the enjoyment of certain privileges such as the right of coinage and tollage, which they had long claimed, but which such powerful sovereigns as Barbarossa had not allowed them to practice. It is true that such privileges were derogatory to the royal authority, but the princes had become so independent and despotic during the Civil War, which followed on the death of Henry VI, that Frederick had not the power to compel them to return to the subjection of Barbarossa's rule. The grant of this charter of liberties was therefore little more than a graceful concession of certain rights which had already become established by practice. In return he obtained not only the suffrages of the princes for his son, but also an increased popularity and devotion for himself. Frederick has frequently been saddled with the responsibility for the disruption of the German kingdom into a number of sovereign principalities and the fatal weakening of the imperial authority. In reality this disruption was not due to Frederick's charter, but to the Civil Wars which preceded his accession and the long confusion that ensued on his death. It must also be regarded as the triumph of the policy of the Popes. The election of the young Henry to the German throne without the consent of the Papacy was an affront and a menace which aroused the wrath of even the gentle and aureus. Frederick hastened to soothe the ruffled feelings of the Pontiff by an explanation whose sincerity we cannot entirely approve. He declared that the election of his son was the spontaneous action of the electors taken in his absence and without his knowledge. The electors had realized, from a quarrel which had broken out between two of their number, the absolute necessity of a king to maintain order during Frederick's absence in his other dominions or in the Holy Land. He had no intention, he assured Honorius, of uniting the kingdom with the empire. Even if the church had no right over the kingdom of Apulia and Sicily, he wrote, I would freely grant that kingdom to the Pope, rather than attach it to the empire, should I die without lawful heirs. Honorius was reluctant to offend the emperor because of his anxiety to see the latter organize a crusade, and consequently he accepted Frederick's explanation with the best grace he could. The young emperor elect had by this time restored order throughout Germany and established his authority as firmly as he could hope. He trusted to the personal popularity he had secured to maintain the princes in their loyalty. He now resolved to turn his attention to his Italian dominions and also to receive the final confirmation of his imperial office by his coronation at the hands of the Pope in the city of the Caesars. He had already sent an ambassador to the Roman senate and received the following reply, written by the senator Parencio in the name of the whole Roman people. The letter sent to us by your serenity, when read in the capital rejoiced the hearts of us all. Your worthy ambassador, the abbot of Fulda, has told us how you are disposed to cherish the Roman senate and people. We beseech the most high to continue this disposition in you when you are raised to the empire. We are all longing for that happy day when we shall hail your coronation. You warn us to obey the pope and to set an example of devotion to the Christian world. We are resolved to bind ourselves to the Roman church which has been founded in the city, not by men but by Jesus Christ himself. It is our special mother and we are at special bulwark against foes. We will take care that peace is kept at your coronation. Honorius himself, in spite of the displeasure which Frederick had incurred through his postponement of the crusade and the election of his son Henry, was quite ready to lay aside his grievances and receive the emperor elect with all due honour. He wrote to the German princes, commanding them to respect the royal authority during Frederick's absence, and he expressed the gratification that it would afford him to welcome the emperor and empress to Rome. Frederick therefore, after having held a final court at Augsburg and entrusted his son who was to stay behind to represent him into worthy hands, turned his back on Germany in the August of 1220. He was not to return for the space of fifteen years. End of section 6 Section 7 of Stupor Mundi, The Life and Times of Frederick II by Lionel Alshorn This Librivox recording is in the public domain, recording by Pamela Nagami, Chapter 4, King and Emperor, Part I. At the age of 18 the boy of Sicily had crossed northern Italy, stealing furtively by night from town to town with his handful of followers, dependent upon friendly cities for protection and escort, braving constant perils from men in the hardships of the alpine snows. He returned, at the age of 26 in royal state, the most powerful and popular sovereign of Christendom with many of the mightiest prelates and princes of Germany in his train. Among them were the archbishops of Mainz and Ravenna, the patriarch of Aquileia, the bishops of Mess, Passau Trent, Bricson and Augsburg, the Duke of Bavaria, the Count Palatine, the Margrave of Hohenburg and the Duke of Spoleto. Ambassadors from the great cities of Italy flocked to his camps. From Apulia came the Counts of Cialano, San Severino, and Aquila. Padua, Verona, Venice, Genoa, Como, Pisa, and Fajenza sent their deputies to gain his favor or to follow him to his coronation at Rome. Milan, of course, held sullenly aloof, from any sign of welcome to the head of the detested Hohenstaufen race. The eight years of Frederick's absence in Germany had been spent by the cities of northern Italy in abusing their liberty in their customary manner. City warred against city, faction against faction. Milan and Parma had turned their rancor against the church and had expelled the prelates and seized their goods. Frederick had not a strong enough force with him to commence a general chastisement of the unruly towns, and he was anxious to reach Rome. He accordingly passed on his way southward, adjudicating such differences as were brought before him and remedying the wrongs of the church wherever he encountered them. To certain cities he showed a special favor. Genoa, which had helped him eight years before with her galleys and had entertained him for two months, received an extension of territory and a charter of privileges, but was not altogether contented with such liberality. Pisa, on the other hand, which had displayed enmity against him in his former adventure, received grants which attached her loyalty to Frederick's cause throughout his life. In November of the year 1220, the young Hoennstaufen arrived at Rome, and on the 22nd of that month he was crowned emperor in the ancient Basilica of St. Peter, among the universal acclamations of his German and Sicilian followers, the Italian deputies, and the populace of Rome. The popes were accustomed to exact certain marks of humility at the coronation of an emperor, and we can be sure that Frederick was not released from these ceremonies. He kissed the foot of the pope and presented his shaven chin to receive a return of the salutation. He underwent a catechism in his religious beliefs. He held the stirrup of the pontiff and rode behind him in procession to the city. He sat at the pope's right hand during the coronation banquet. The religious ceremony in the cathedral must have been singularly impressive. Surrounded by a glittering company of princes and prelates and nobles in their gorgeous robes or burnished armor, himself clad in priestly white, Frederick received from the hands of the Vicar of Christ the insignia of the Holy Roman Empire. The cross, the sword, the scepter, the lance, the golden apple surmounted by a cross, were handed to him one by one. The gem encrusted golden diadem was placed upon his head and then upon the head of the emperor's constants. High mass was then performed and while the lighted candles were quenched in the altar plunged in gloom, the curse of God was pronounced upon all heretics. Frederick then took the cross from the hands of the cardinal Ugollino, who was in later years to become Pope Gregory IX, and vowed to sail to the Holy Land in the following August. After the coronation, the Pope received further evidence of the emperor's gratitude and goodwill. Frederick confirmed the grant of those territories which he had ceded to Innocent III in 1213 and ordered the cities of the various provinces to transfer their allegiance from himself to the Pope. He then issued nine edicts in favor of the church and for the suppression of heresy, which was at that time very prevalent especially in Northern Italy. All laws, customs, and usages employed by cities, communities, or rulers which were derogatory to the liberties of ecclesiastics or in discord with the laws of the church and the empire were annulled. The continued practice of such usages was to be punished by heavy fines, persistent offenders were to be deprived of all their possessions, churches and churchmen were to be immune from taxation and amenable in matters of jurisdiction only to their own courts. All heretics were placed under the ban of the empire and pronounced incapable of holding honors or offices. Their goods were confiscated, their abetters prosecuted, and their persons sentenced to various pains and penalties. Four runs the edict, outrages against the Lord of Heaven are more heinous than those against a temporal Lord. Other laws of a more general character were included in the edicts, prohibiting the plunder of wrecks and protecting pilgrims and the cultivators of the soil. Frederick stayed for some weeks in the neighborhood of Rome and transacted a vast amount of business, sending forth promulgations to every part of Germany and Italy, appointing vickers to various portions of his dominions. He departed for his southern kingdom early in December. His meeting with Honorius had passed without any unpleasant references to the separation of the empire and the kingdom or to the election of the young Henry. Pope and Emperor, in spite of minor differences, parted on excellent terms. We do not think, wrote Honorius, that ever Pope of Rome loved Emperor more heartily than we love you, as we hope to prove to you with God's help hereafter. Frederick found his kingdom of Sicily in a sad state of confusion. During his minority he had been powerless to exert his authority over the mainland, though he had reduced the island to some degree of order. Innocent the Third, as feudal Lord of the realm, had to disdroomate efforts to subjugate Apulia. But where he had succeeded, the result had not been to Frederick's advantage. The Pope had appointed his own creatures to whatever territories he had subdued, and these paid little respect to the royal authority. Matters had not improved greatly during the young king's absence in Germany. The nobles, whether descendants of the old Norman invaders or German adventurers who had obtained grants from Frederick's father, or creatures of the papacy, had rent the land with their private wars, built unlicensed castles, and seized fresh estates for themselves. The lower classes suffered from the quarrels and oppression of their superiors, and looked eagerly forward to the coming of one, who, if reports spoke truly, was likely to restore to them the blessings of peace. Certainly the emperor was not minded to suffer in his hereditary kingdom the state of things that he was compelled to accept in Germany. The independence and exorbitant power of the great German nobles, which had become too firmly established for him to overthrow, and which must have fretted his proud spirit grievously, was probably one of the reasons that induced him to adopt his southern kingdom as his chosen abode. Here he might hope to enjoy an absolute and untrammeled authority, and he immediately set to work to bring about this desirable end. The task was to prove a longer one than he anticipated. The first instrument for the subjugation of the nobles was the foundation of a new tribunal in the city of Kapua called the Kapuan Court. A general inquisition, similar to the later statute, Quo Waronto, of our English king Edward I, was established into the titles by which nobles, churchmen, and corporations held their lands and privileges. The death of Frederick's maternal grandfather, King William the Good, was fixed as the latest date previous to which titles were recognized as unquestionably valid. All charters granted since that date were open to the suspicion of having been bestowed either by Tancred the usurper, by the various German adventurers who had struggled for the regency of the kingdom during Frederick's childhood, by Otto during his invasion, or by Innocent III. They were consequently subjected to a rigid examination. All nobles who did not send in their charters to the court for revision before a certain date were held to have forfeited their honors. The result of the inquisition was that many nobles and ecclesiastics were deprived of all or a portion of their illegally acquired territories. Many fearing chastisement for their past misdeeds fled from this unpleasantly energetic monarch to Rome, whereas Frederick complained they were too warmly welcomed by the pope. A system of taxation was also commenced from which the clergy were not immune. Frederick also commenced to interfere in elections to vacant bishoprics and to banish or imprison refractory prelates. Such high-handed conduct naturally called forth an indignant protest from Honorius who reminded the emperor of the compact made by his mother Constance with Innocent. But Frederick was determined to maintain the royal authority and to rescue it from the decrepitude into which it had fallen. He replied that he was not bound by a treaty which had been entered into by a woman. He complained that Innocent had made havoc with the royal power during his minority, and he recalled the old privileges of the Sicilian kings. How long, he haughtily inquired, will the pope abuse my patience? What bound will be set to his ambition? He begins to despise the majesty of the emperor. I would rather lay down the crown than lessen my authority. The work commenced at Capua continued for seven and a half years. Slowly but surely Frederick gathered the scattered fragments of the royal power into his hands and welded them into despotism. The lawless nobles of Apulia were controlled with a vigorous severity, and the great ecclesiastics were chastised as impartially as their lay brethren. The emperor was determined to restore order throughout his kingdom, and such order could not be enforced if the king's only means of securing redress from ecclesiastical turbulence was a complaint to the biased tribunal of St. Peter. We can hardly blame him for refusing to recognize a treaty which emasculated the royal authority and which had been wrung from his distressed and friendless mother by a hard and unscrupulous pope. No man, runs the preamble of a charter, dares now to put his trust in iniquity. We will introduce justice into all things subject to us. The justice was necessarily of a harsh and somewhat barbarous kind, and was enforced against powerful offenders with the aid of the sword. Criminals were broken on the wheel or mutilated. There was no room for sentimental humanitarianism in medieval Italy. The license of the nobles was not the only enemy with which Frederick had to contend. The Saracens had established themselves in Sicily soon after the death of Charlemagne and had retained their hold of the western mountains in spite of the continued efforts of the Norman kings to dislodge them. They had always been a disturbing element in the island. They continually ravaged the adjacent territories, practiced piracy, and were always ready to aid a Christian rebel against the reigning monarch. Frederick took the field in person against them in 1222 and inflicted a heavy defeat upon their forces. Their amir was hanged on a gibbet at Palermo, and the wild tribes were forced to leave their mountain fastnesses and dwell in the plains. A further measure was executed which reveals the bold quality of his statesmanship and recalls the measures of the tyrants of Grecian history. Twenty thousand of their ablest fighting men, henceforth to become his own soldiers, were transported to the mainland and settled at Lucera in the broad plains of Apulia. The city was emptied of its Christian inhabitants and repealed with infidels. The cathedral was turned into a mosque and a mighty castle whose ruin still endure was built to overall the new colony. Such a daring innovation, such a fast undertaking conceived and executed in so lordly a manner, and so lofty a disregard of the religious prejudices of the day, called forth a gasp of astonishment throughout Europe and a shiver of pious horror from the ecclesiastics. A shocked remonstrance from the pope was met by a most plausible argument. We can't imagine a sly smile on Frederick's lips as he dictated the excuse to his secretaries. The emperor, he said, was compelled to wage many wars, in which numbers of the soldiers must die. It was surely better that Muslims, whose souls and bodies were of less consequence than those of Christians, should be employed in these wars, than that Christian blood should be shed. The specious explanation was accepted by Honorius. The wisdom of the measure was undoubted. In Sicily the Saracens were a constant menace to the royal authority. Isolated in Apulia they became the emperor's loyal warriors, who would serve him against all enemies, and were not affected by the papal curses and maledictions which Frederick later incurred. The remnant of the infidels remaining in the island thus weakened in their fighting strength and overawed by such masterful measures gradually resigned themselves to good behavior. One or two outbreaks afterwards occurred, but by the year 1226 the taming process was complete. The ordering of his disturbed kingdom and the constant journeyings and expeditions it entailed left Frederick little time for rest and recreation. Nevertheless he was able to snatch brief periods of leisure when he would hunt the wild boar or pass his days in luxurious idleness and cultured ease. His court was attended by many great nobles from Germany, Northern Italy, and his southern kingdom, and many distinguished crusaders would break their homeward voyage and pay their respects to the emperor, who was always ready to entertain them with lavish hospitality. An amusing legend throws some light on the character of the court which was evidently not remarkable for puritanical sobriety of morals. The famous St. Francis came to Bari, where Frederick was so journeying and preached a denunciatory sermon against the vices of the emperor and his court. The sin of licentiousness was especially condemned. Frederick received the reproof with perfect good humor but determined to satisfy himself with regard to the reputed asceticism of the saint. Francis was therefore invited to supper and afterwards led to a sleeping chamber wherein to pass the night. At midnight a lady of light virtue but remarkable charms was introduced into his rooms and commenced to exercise all the blandishments of her profession to induce him to descend from his pedestal of sanctity. The contest was unequal, however, for the friar was aided by supernatural powers and put the temptress to flight with a fiery shield. Frederick, who with his courtiers had witnessed the scene through convenient chinks in the wall, was thoroughly convinced by this proof, apologized to Francis for his skepticism and the practical joke it had inspired, and spent some hours in spiritual discussion with his saintly guest. Meanwhile, what of the crusade during these years, and of the vow that Frederick had made at his coronation to lead an army into the Holy Land in the following August? The appointed day passed by, and year after year succeeded, but still he lingered in his kingdom, determined to bring his work there to some measure of completion, before he would turn his eyes to the east. Honorius chafed under the delay and entreated and threatened in turn, but death overtook him before he could see the attainment of his cherished desire. Immediately on his arrival in Apulia Frederick realized that it was impossible, with his kingdom in such a state of disorder, to fulfill the promise made at his coronation. Oh, that you would consider, Rodonarius, how wistfully the Christian host awaits you in the east, believing that you will postpone all to Jerusalem, especially since the Lord hath granted you such means for the Enterprise. The Emperor replied that those means were not so plentiful as the Pope supposed, that his treasury was so depleted by the expenses of his coronation, and by the constant supply of men he was sending to the east, that it was not possible to set out himself in August. He asked for a further respite until the March of the Year 1222. Meanwhile he sent a fleet of forty galleys to aid the Christian host, which had already accomplished the capture of Damietta. The fleet tarried on the way and arrived too late. Urged on by Cardinal Pelagius the papal legate, the Crusaders had advanced into Egypt with the intention of besieging Cairo. Their army consisting of six thousand knights and forty thousand infantry, and headed by King John of Jerusalem and the grandmasters of the militant orders, was lured into the pursuit of the sultan's forces which had encamped on the banks of the Nile. Had they awaited the arrival of Frederick's galleys, which could have supported them on the river, they might at least have averted disaster. But without adequate supplies or an open way of communication by water, they were gradually enmeshed and isolated by the sultan's horsemen and compelled to submit to an ignominious treaty. Damietta which had engaged the efforts of the Christians for an entire year before it surrendered, and before whose walls so much Christian blood had been shed, was now yielded back to the infidels. The sultan was gracious enough to grant his humiliated enemies a sop to their wounded self-esteem in the shape of the restitution of the true cross. A truce was agreed upon which should endure for eight years unless a crowned head should come from Europe to lead the Christian host. The surrender of Damietta caused a profound gloom throughout Europe and plunged Honorius in grief. Although the impatience of the legate Pelagius was responsible for the disaster, the pope vented his indignation upon the emperor. For five years, he wrote, men have been expecting your crusade. They now throw the whole blame of the disasters in Egypt on the pope and not without reason. We have been too easy in sanctioning your delays. Owing to the solemn vow made by you at your coronation, and owing to your letters to the crusaders announcing your speedy arrival, they rejected the proffer of Jerusalem. We shall spare you no longer if you still neglect your duty. We shall excommunicate you in the face of the Christian world. Take he then, like a wise man, and a Catholic prince. In the April of the next year, pope and emperor met at Veroli. They agreed to proclaim a great assembly at Verona in November, at which all the great princes and prelates of the empire should attend and debate with the temporal and spiritual heads of Christendom, upon the ways and means for a united effort to redeem the loss of Damietta. November came and found the pope stricken with illness, and the emperor immersed in Sicilian affairs, and the assembly was postponed. Another meeting between Honorius and Frederick took place in March 1223 at Ferentino, at which the veteran crusader, King John of Jerusalem, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, and the Grand Master of the Knights Templars were present. Here the emperor explained the various causes which had hindered him from fulfilling his vow, and declared that the state of his kingdom was still too disturbed to allow him to absent himself or even to dispatch a sufficient force to the Holy Land. Supported by King John, he urged a further delay of two years, which should be spent in the endeavor to arouse Europe to a supreme effort. Honorius was reasonable enough to accept the proposition, and once again the crusade was postponed. At the same time Frederick burdened himself with a more intimately personal interest in the matter. His wife Constance had died in the previous year, and he now betrothed himself to Yolanda, the young daughter of King John. Yolanda was the rightful heiress through her mother of the kingdom of Jerusalem, and Frederick might thus expect to add yet another crown to his sovereignty. The two years of delay passed away and left the prospects of the crusades no brighter than before. The days of the old enthusiasm were gone. England, Germany, France, and Spain could not be roused to ardor even by the personal exhortations of King John. Northern Italy was coldly indifferent to the expostulations of Cardinal Ugollino. Frederick himself was still busy with the ordering of his kingdom. Once again the disappointed Pope had to bow to the force of circumstances, and an agreement was framed at San Germano, by which the crusade was deferred for two years longer until the August of 1227. The Emperor bound himself by severe penalties to start for the east by that date, and to maintain a thousand nights in the Holy Land for two years. As a guarantee for the fulfillment of this pledge, he undertook to pay one hundred thousand ounces of gold and installments to King John and the Patriarch, which amount was to be forfeited to the Pope if he failed to embark on the enterprise. Any breach of the treaty was to be followed by his immediate excommunication. Honorius might well think that at last he had bound the Emperor hard and fast. Soon after the meeting at San Germano the Emperor took unto himself a second wife. As a boy of fourteen he had wedded a woman of twenty-four. Now as a man of thirty he espoused a bride of fifteen. If at first sight the marriage of the little Yolan at such a tender age seems revolting to our English notions, it must be remembered that womanhood ripens quickly in the south, and that fifteen is regarded as a perfectly marriageable age in modern Italy. The direct result of the wedding was a violent quarrel between Frederick and the bride's father. King John asserted that he had consented to the match under the impression that he would be allowed to retain the crown of Jerusalem, which he wore only by virtue of his marriage with Yolan's mother the Queen of Jerusalem during the remainder of his life. The Emperor however insisted that as the husband of Yolan the crown and all its rights legally reverted to him. The old warrior was forced to yield and departed from the Emperor's court in high wrath shorn of his royalty. Two stories were told to account further for the bitter hostility John hereafter displayed, but both were obviously concocted by Frederick's unscrupulous enemies. The first relates that John had in his follower his nephew Walter, who through his mother was the grandson of the usurper Tancred. This Tancred it will be remembered had dispossessed Frederick's mother of the crown of Sicily until Emperor Henry VI had regained his wife's inheritance. Frederick, it was asserted, looked on Walter with no friendly eye and determined to be rid of him. He invited him to a game of chess and arranged to have him stabbed while absorbed in the game. King John heard of the plot, dragged his nephew away from the board, cursed the Emperor for the son of a butcher of Jay-Z and departed with all possible speed. There is no shadow of credibility in the slander. Not only was such a dastardly assassination entirely incompatible with Frederick's character, but there was no motive for such a crime. It was not possible that the powerful Emperor, who was King of Sicily, both De Jure and De Facto, should regard the grandson of Tancred the usurper as a dangerous rival, whose existence was a menace to his own safety. The other story is, unfortunately, slightly more probable in one of its features. It asserts that soon after Yoland had been crowned Empress, King John found her in tears in her chamber. He inquired the cause, and she sobbed that her husband had denied her the embraces that were her due, and had taken her cousin into his bed in her place. The old crusader at once bearded Frederick in his chamber, and after speaking his mind very freely left the court. The Emperor was so ruffled by John's tirade that he threw Yoland into prison. The story is plausible insofar as we may be sure that Frederick, whose ideas on matrimonial fidelity were entirely oriental, did not give to his young wife the monopoly of his embraces. At the same time it is very unlikely that a man of his amorous character would neglect a girlish and beautiful bride at the very outset of their matrimonial career, still less likely that he would cast the child into prison in his wrath against her father. Moreover, the fact that two years afterwards she bore him a son, and that they always appeared to be in perfect amity, shows that there was no deliberate and sustained neglect or dislike on Frederick's part. Whatever the cause of John's enmity, and the loss of his crown is sufficient to account for it without the support of these two spurious stories, the rupture between the most powerful sovereign of Christendom and the most prominent crusader of the day was not likely to be conducive to the success of the efforts that were being made to arouse Europe to united action. Moreover, relations between Frederick and the Pope were dangerously strained. In 1226 Honorius threatened excommunication for various offenses against the Church in Sicily, which the Emperor had committed in pursuit of his policy of reducing all classes in his kingdom to obedience. Frederick was just then starting on his expedition into northern Italy, and he considered it advisable to calm the Pope's anger, as the papal influence was so strong in Lombardy. He accordingly addressed a conciliatory letter to his holiness which averted the threatened storm. The Emperor's journey into the north was prompted by the most peaceful motives, if any matter connected with the Crusade can be termed peaceful. At any rate, he meditated no aggressive action against the Lombards. He had resolved to hold a great diet at Cremona as a last preparation for the Crusade that must start in the following August 1227. He sent a circular to the Italian cities ordering them to send their warriors to Cremona, and summoned his son Henry to bring the German chivalry to the meeting. The reply of the Lombards was a long series of insults, vexations, and open hostilities. Cremona, Parma, Reggio, and Modena alone sent their deputies to pay their respects to the Emperor. Bologna shut her gates against him and with Milan stirred up Piacenza, Verona, Brescia, Fienza, Mantua, and many other towns to renew the Lombard League. It had been originally formed against Barbarossa to defend the liberties of the Lombard cities. It was now renewed against his grandson in an aggressive spirit which was entirely unwarranted by Frederick's peaceful mission. King Henry, advancing southwards with his Germans to join his father, found his way barred by the impregnable walls of Verona and he returned. A meeting between father and son at this time might have averted the unfilial conduct which Henry later displayed, and the Emperor never forgave the city that had rendered such a meeting impossible. The proposed diet of Cremona was rendered entirely abortive by the wanton hostility of the Lombards. The Emperor had not come prepared for a military campaign and was not able to enforce good conduct upon the sullen cities. He had therefore to content himself with words. He pronounced the ban of empire against the Lombards, depriving them of their laws, corporations, and all the rights they had gained by the Treaty of Constance which they had rested from Barbarossa. The Pope, indignant at the obstacles they had placed in the way of the Crusade by preventing the diet, empowered the Bishop of Hildesheim to support the Imperial ban with the papal excommunication. Frederick returned to his kingdom, compelled to retire before the menacing attitude of the League. God, who knows all secrets, he wrote to Honorius, is aware that we postponed everything to his service, that we attended the diet and the spirit of love and graciousness to all men, and that we showed hatred to none of those who had offended us and our empire. We showed ourselves merciful, and we did and bore many things which we should have neither done nor borne, had not the holiest of all causes been at stake. But instead of peace, we found uproar. Instead of love we found malice, and all our efforts could not tempt the Lombards from their unrighteous course. Moreover, owing to their wickedness the late diet had no results, although summoned on behalf of the holiest cause. How they have sinned against God, how they have damaged the honor of the Church and that of the empire, your holiness will easily estimate. We entrust the whole affair to you and to the Cardinals. This amounted to a request, that Honorius should act as arbitrator between Frederick and the Lombards. The emperor was anxious for the success of the coming crusade, and was willing to forgo his revenge rather than hinder the cause. The Lombards also consented to the papal arbitration, and in January 1227 Honorius pronounced his decision. The emperor was to release his enemies from the imperial ban, and both sides were to restore all prisoners. The Lombards were to maintain four hundred knights in Palestine for two years, and to cleanse themselves of the taint of heresy. The date fixed for the departure of the emperor for the east was rapidly approaching. In the August of this year he must at last redeem his long postponed vow, or suffer the penalties in which he had himself concurred. Honorius might at last believe that he would see the fulfillment of his long cherished desires. But the hand of death intervened, and in the March of 1227 the aged pope was born to the tomb. With his gentle soul there passed that precarious peace that for 17 years had endured between the empire and the papacy. End of section 8