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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 heavenThey are descended? Frederick and his parliaments, his denounced. 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, intrusting the work to one Raymond de Pennaforte, who had attained celebrity as a literary opponent 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 Pennaforte's shoulder all the time he was writing.

Outbreak of

Meantime an unceasing 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 his quarrel life. The quarrel between the pope and the with the pope, emperor was 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 arisen, whose name is

who rouses

written all over Blasphemy."" "He falsely Christendom 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

against him.

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.

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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 corn-field; 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, Frederick uses and offered his crown to Robert of France. But his Saracen the Mussulman troops of the emperor were too troops. much for the begging 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

Excommu

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 proclaimed nication of 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 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 sunk 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 The triumph clergy of Sicily he exclaimed, "Let the heavens at his death. rejoice and let the earth be glad; for the lightning and 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 Power of the vigour of the Church. She handled her weapons with singular dexterity, and contrived to exthis moment. tract victory out of humiliation and defeat. As always since the days of Constantine, she had partisans in

Church at

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, had invoked against it the hatred of Christendom, and reviled 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 of principles. The fall of the Emperor Frederick was not followed by the destruction of the influences Vitality of he represented. These not only survived him, Frederick's but were destined, in the end, to overcome the principles. power which had transiently overthrown them. We are now entering on the history of a period which offers not only exterior opposition to the current doctrines, but, what is more ominous, interior mutiny. Notwithstanding the awful persecutions in the South of France-notwithstanding the establishment of auricular confession as a detective means, and the Inquisition as a weapon of punishment-notwithstanding the influence of the French king, St. Louis, canonized by the grateful Churchheresy, instead of being extirpated, extended itself among the laity, and even spread among the ecclesiastical ranks. St. Louis, the representative of the hierarchical party, gathers influence only from the circum- St. Louis, stance of his relations with the Church, of whose interests he was a fanatical supporter. So far as the affairs of his people were concerned, he can hardly be looked upon as anything better than a simpleton. His reliance for checking the threatened spread of heresy was a resort to violence-the faggot and the sword. In his opinion, "A man ought never to dispute with a misbeliever except with his sword, which he ought to drive into the heretic's entrails as far as he can." It was the signal glory of his reign that he secured for France that inestimable relic, the crown of thorns. This peerless memento of His superour Saviour's passion he purchased in Constanti- stition, nople for an immense sum. But France was doubly and enviably enriched; for the Abbey of St. Denys was in possession of another, known to be equally authentic! Besides the crown, he also secured the sponge that was

dipped in vinegar; the lance of the Roman soldier; also the swaddling-clothes in which the Saviour had first lain in the manger; the rod of Moses; and part of the skull of John the Baptist. These treasures he deposited in the "Holy Chapel" of Paris.

and crusade.

Under the papal auspices, St. Louis determined on a crusade; and nothing, except what we have already mentioned, can better show his mental imbecility than his disregard of all suitable arrangements for it. He thought that, provided the troops could be made to lead a religious life, all would go well; that the Lord would fight his own battles, and that no provisions of a military or worldly kind were needed. În such a pious reliance on the support of God, he reached Egypt with his expedition in June, A.D. 1249. The ever-conspicuous valour of the French troops could maintain itself in the battle-field, but not against pestilence and famine. In March of the following year, as might have been foreseen, King Louis was the prisoner of the Sultan, and was only spared the indignity of being carried about as a Its total fail- public spectacle in the Mohammedan towns by a ransom, at first fixed at a million of Byzantines, but by the merciful Sultan voluntarily reduced one fifth. Still, for a time, Louis lingered in the East, apparently stupefied by considering how God could in this manner have abandoned a man who had come to his help. Never was there a crusade with a more shameful end.

ure.

to arrest the

revolt.

Notwithstanding the support of St. Louis in his own dominions, the intellectual revolt spread in every direction, The Inquisi- and that not only in France, but throughout all tion attempts Catholic Europe. In vain the Inquisition exintellectual erted all its terrors-and what could be more terrible than its form of procedure? It sat in secret; no witness, no advocate was present; the accused was simply informed that he was charged with heresy, it was not said by whom. He was made to swear that he would tell the truth as regarded himself, and also respecting other persons, whether parents, children, friends, strangers. If he resisted he was committed to a solitary dungeon, dark and poisonous; his food was diminished; everything was done to drive him into insanity. Then

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