up Jerusa courteously sent by the Sultan to his friend, who, it is said, was not insensible to the witcheries of the Oriental beauties. He wore a Saracen dress. In his privacy he did not hesitate to say, "I came not here to deliver the Holy City, but to maintain my estimation among the Franks." To the Sultan he appealed, "Out of your goodness, surrender to me Jerusalem as it is, that I may be able to lift up my head among the Who gives kings of Christendom." Accordingly, the city was surrendered lem to him. to him. The object of his expedition was accomplished. But the Pope was not to be deceived by such collusions. He repudiated the transactions altogether, and actually took measures to lay Jerusalem and the Saviour's sepulchre under inThe Pope terdict, and this in the face of the Mohammedans. While the Emperor proclaimed his successes to Europe, the Pope denounced them as coming from the union of Christ and Belial; alleging four accusations against Frederick:-1. That he had given the sword which he had received from the altar of St. Peter for the defence of the faith, as a present to the Sultan of Babylon; 2. That he had permitted the preaching of the Koran in the Holy Temple itself; 3. That he had excluded the Christians of Antioch from his treaty; 4. That he had bound himself, if a Christian army should attempt to cleanse the Temple and city from Mohammedan defilements, to join the Saracens. denounces him Saracen Frederick crowned himself at Jerusalem, unable to find any ecclesiastic who dared to perform the ceremony, and departed from the Holy Land. It was time, for Rome was intriguing against him at home, a false report of his death having been industriously circulated. He forthwith prepared to enter on Frederick his conflict with the pontiff. His Saracen colonies at Nocera establishes and Luceria, in Italy, could supply him with 30,000 Mussulman soldiers, with whom it was impossible for his enemies to tamper. He managed to draw over the general sentiment of Europe to his side, and publicly offered to convict the Pope himself of negotiations with the infidels; but his antagonist, conveniently impressed with a sudden horror of shedding blood, gave way, and peace between the parties was made. It. lasted nearly nine years. posts in Italy. Institutions of Frederick. cal institu 67 In this period, the intellectual greatness of Frederick, and His politithe tendencies of the influences by which he was enveloped, tions. were strikingly manifest. In advance of his age, he devoted himself to the political improvement of Sicily. He instituted representative parliaments; enacted a system of wise laws ; asserted the principle of equal rights and equal burdens, and the supremacy of the law over all, even the nobles and the Church. He provided for the toleration of all professions, Jew and Mohammedan, as well as Christian; emancipated all the serfs of his domains; instituted cheap justice for the poor; forbade private war; regulated commerce-prophetically laying down some of those great principles, which only in our own time have been finally received as true; established markets and fairs; collected large libraries; caused to be translated such works as those of Aristotle and Ptolemy; built menageries for natural history; founded in Naples a great university; patronized the medical college at Salernum; made provisions for the education of promising but indigent youths. All over the land splendid architectural triumphs were created. Under him the Italian language first rose above a patois. Sculpture, painting, and music were patronized. His chancellor is said to have been the author of the oldest sonnet. denounced. In the eye of Rome all this was an abomination. Were human laws to take the precedence of the law of God? Were the clergy to be degraded to a level with the laity? Were the Jew and the Mohammedan to be permitted their infamous. rites? Was this new-born product of the insolence of human intellect this so-called science-to be brought into competition with theology, the heaven-descended? Frederick and his They are parliaments, his laws and universities, his libraries, his statues, his pictures and sonnets, were denounced. Through all, the ever-watchful eye of the Church discerned the Jew and the Saracen, and held them up to the abhorrence of Europe. But Gregory was not unwilling to show what could be done by himself in the same direction. He caused a compilation of the Decretals to be issued, entrusting the work to one Raymond de Pennaforte, who had attained to celebrity as a literary op Outbreak of his quarrel with the Pope, ponent of the Saracens. It is amusing to remark that even this simple work of labour could not be promulgated without the customary embellishments. It was given out that an angel watched over his shoulder all the time he was writing. Meantime an increasing vigilance was maintained against the dangerous results that would necessarily ensue from Frederick's movements. In Rome, many heretics were burned; many condemned to imprisonment for life. The quarrel between the Pope and the Emperor was again resumed; the latter being once more excommunicated, and his body delivered over to Satan for the good of his soul. Again Frederick appealed to all the sovereigns of Christendom. He denounced the pontiff as an unworthy vicar of Christ, “who sits in his court like a merchant, weighing out dispensations for gold,―himself writing and signing the bulls, perhaps counting the money. He has but one cause of enmity against me, that I refused to marry to his niece my natural son Enzio, now King of Sardinia." "In the midst of the Church sits a frantic prophet, a man of falsehood, a polluted priest." To this Gregory replied. The tenor of his answer may be gathered from its commencement: "Out of the sea a beast is Who rouses arisen, whose name is written all over 'Blasphemy."" "He dom against falsely asserts that I am enraged at his refusing his consent to the marriage of my niece with his natural son. He lies more impudently when he says that I have pledged my faith to the Lombards." "In truth, this pestilent king maintains, to use his own words, that the world has been deceived by three impostors-Jesus Christ, Moses, and Mohammed; that of these, two died in honour, and the third was hanged on a tree. Even now, he has asserted, distinctly and loudly, that those are fools who aver that God, the Omnipotent Creator of the world, was born of a woman." This was in allusion to the celebrated and mysterious book, 'De Tribus Impostoribus,' in the authorship of which Frederick was accused of having been concerned. Christen him. The pontiff had touched the right chord. The begging friars, in all directions, added to the accusations. "He has spoken of the Host as a mummery; he has asked how many gods. might be made out of a cornfield; he has affirmed that, if the princes of the world would stand by him, he would easily make for mankind a better faith and a better rule of life; he has laid down the infidel maxim that 'God expects not a man to believe anything that cannot be demonstrated by reason."" The opinion of Christendom rose against Frederick; its sentiment of piety was shocked. The pontiff proceeded to depose him, and offered his crown to Robert of France. But the Mussul- Frederick uses his Sarman troops of the Emperor were too much for the begging acen troops, friars of the Pope. His Saracens were marching across Italy in all directions. The pontiff himself would have inevitably fallen into the hands of his mortal enemy had he not found a deliverance in death, A.D. 1241. Frederick had declared that he would not respect his sacred person, but, if victorious, would teach him the absolute supremacy of the temporal power. It was plain that he had no intention of respecting a religion which he had not hesitated to denounce as a mere absurdity." Whatever may have been the intention of Innocent IV.— who, after the short pontificate of Celestine IV. and an interval, succeeded-he was borne into the same policy by the irresistible force of circumstances. The deadly quarrel with the Emperor was renewed. To escape his wrath, Innocent fled to France, and there in safety called the Council of Lyons. In a sermon, he renewed all the old accusations-the heresy and sacrilege--the peopling of Italian cities with Saracens, for the purpose of overturning the Vicar of Christ with those infidels the friendship with the Sultan of Egypt—the African courtesans the perjuries and blasphemies. Then was pro- Excommu. claimed the sentence of excommunication and deposition. Frederick. The Pope and the bishops inverted the torches they held in their hands until they went out, uttering the malediction, "So may he be extinguished!" Again the Emperor appealed to Europe, but this time in vain. Europe would not forgive him his blasphemy. Misfortunes crowded upon him; his friends forsook him; his favourite son, Enzio, was taken prisoner; and he never smiled again after detecting his intimate, Pietro de Vinea, whom he had raised from beggary, in promising the nication of The triumph at his death. Power of at this mo the Church ment. Vitality of monks that he would poison him. The day had been carried by a resort to all means, justifiable and unjustifiable, good and evil. For thirty years Frederick had combated the Church and the Guelph party, but he sank in the conflict at last. When Innocent heard of the death of his foe, he might doubtless well think that what he had once asserted had at last become true: "We are no mere mortal man; we have the place of God upon earth." In his address to the clergy of Sicily he exclaimed, "Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad; for the lightning aud tempest wherewith God Almighty has so long menaced your heads have been changed by the death of this man into refreshing zephyrs and fertilizing dews." This is that superhuman vengeance which hesitates not to strike the corpse of a man. Rome never forgives him who has told her of her impostures face to face; she never forgives him who has touched her goods. The Saracenic influences had thus found an expression in the South of France and in Sicily, involving many classes of society, from the Poor Men of Lyons to the Emperor of Germany; but in both places they were overcome by the admirable organization and unscrupulous vigour of the Church. She handled her weapons with singular dexterity, and contrived to extract victory out of humiliation and defeat. As ever since the days of Constantine, she had partisans in every city, in every village, in every family. And now it might have appeared that the blow she had thus delivered was final, and that the world, in contentment, must submit to her will. She had again succeeded in putting her iron heel on the neck of knowledge, and had stamped upon it amid the hatred of Christendom, reviling it as the monstrous but legitimate issue of the detested Mohammedanism. But the fate of men is by no means an indication of the fate principles, of principles. The fall of the Emperor Frederick was not followed by the destruction of the influences he represented. These not only survived him, but were destined, in the end, to overcome the power which had transiently overthrown them. We are now entering on the history of a period which offers to us not only external opposition to the current doctrines, but, |