Chapter IX. The Popes and the Emperors

At first, as we know, the popes were only bishops of Rome, without any power in the world, save over their clergy and congregations. But as the Christian Church grew, and Christians became numerous, the bishop became master of the considerable moneys of the Church, and of the increasing property in land and goods. So that soon he was important in Rome, having great authority over the people in the city.

After the departure of the emperors from Rome, the bishops were left supreme in the capital. They claimed that they were the successors of St. Peter, and that Jesus had put the government of the souls of men into the hands of Peter: therefore they, the bishops of Rome, were governors of the spiritual life of Christians. And as the spiritual life is much higher than the temporal life, so the governors of the spiritual realm are much greater than the governors of the world: thus the Bishop of the Christians, the Papa, or Pope, as he came to be called, was much higher in authority than an emperor. So the Pope Leo preached in 446, and so the Pope Gelasius plainly wrote to the Emperor Anastasius at Constantinople, in 494.

In the time of Gregory the Great, 590-604, the Roman world in Italy was already in ruins, and the Christian Church was the only organised power. In Italy, in Sicily, even in farther provinces, the Church had acquired rich lands, looked after by deacons or subdcacons, and ruled by bishops. But as yet the bishops were ministers of peace. The rents and produce of the Church estates were brought to the mouth of the Tiber, and on the four great sacred festivals, the Pope divided their quarterly allowance to the clergy, to his domestics, to the monasteries, the churches, the places of burial, the alms-houses, and the hospitals of Rome and of the diocese of Rome. On the first day of the month he distributed to the poor, according to season, their allowance of corn, wine, cheese, oil, vegetables, fish, cloth, and money, and such was the misery of Italy at that time that many nobles were glad to accept the Pope’s bounty, for they had nothing left of their own. The sick, the helpless, pilgrims, and strangers were relieved every hour, and Gregory was not in vain called the Father of his Country. For he had to stand alone against the terrible attacks of the Lombards on Rome, reasoning with them and persuading them. Besides all this, he sent out missionaries, and England was converted by his means.

But as the years went on, the civil life of Italy grew more chaotic. The city of Rome had no defences, and no real government. The senators and chief citizens elected the Pope, and when they were displeased with him, murdered him or drove him out or forced him to his knees. The country round Rome was turned into wilderness.

The Church of Constantinople, moreover, now called the Greek Church, was very antagonistic to the Roman Church. The Patriarch of Constantinople proudly called himself the Universal Bishop, and tried to make the Bishop of Rome submit to his authority, which the popes of Rome refused to do. At the same time the emperors at Constantinople still claimed to rule over Italy, incapable as they often were. About 730 the Emperor in Constantinople began a great quarrel with the Italian Church, about the use of images. The Roman Christians loved their statues of the Mother of Jesus, and the Infant, their statues of Jesus, and their Crucifixes. The Byzantine rulers wanted these images abolished and destroyed. There was a tremendous struggle again between East and West, religious this time. The bishops of Rome stuck to their images, crucifixes and shrines, and the western Christians loved them for it. So the Roman Church triumphed, the Byzantines were driven back, to spread their Greek Church up the Black Sea to Russia, leaving Western Europe alone.

The popes became more popular, the bishops grew stronger. But the times were wretched, there was no security anywhere. The rich bishops in Gaul, ruling like princes, often forgot or ignored the distracted popes at Rome. Then the Mohammedan power rose up. It had begun its first attacks on Eastern Christendom in 630, and it spread victorious along the Mediterranean. Christians must fight Moslems, and the Pope, the great head of Christendom, must stand clear to his people. Again, the Frankish princes, Charles Martel, Pippin, Charlemagne, found that they needed some support, some stay in the disordered world. They made themselves firm friends with the tempest-tossed popes of Rome, and the popes helped the princes in return to the kingly and the imperial crown. So the popes became established as powerful heads of Christendom.

After Charlemagne, however, the Frankish Empire went to pieces, and the Frankish emperors dwindled and became more foolish and feeble till they ended in the insane Charles the Fat, and then the imperial name more or less died out. France became a welter of princes and dukes. The remains of Charlemagne’s empire continued in the dukedoms of Germany, Franconia, and Lorraine.

The disappearance of the Carolings, as the House of Charlemagne was called, had a disastrous effect on Italy, where the Frankish emperors had ruled and kept some sort of connection with the Pope. Popes were set up and thrown down by the robber knights of the Campagna, who called themselves senators or consuls, till the power of the papacy even came into the hands of loose women, and popes were the creatures of rich, reckless mistresses.

Germany at this time consisted of six great duchies:

Saxony, Franconia, Thuringia, Suabia, Bavaria and Lorraine. These duchies were practically independent, but they recognised a king. The House of Charlemagne had come to an end. There was no heir to the old Frankish name. In 919, at an assembly of the Saxon and Francon- ian peoples, Henry, Duke of Saxony, was chosen King of the Germans. He is usually called Henry the Fowler. He was a strong, active man. He fought against the Norman Vikings, and against the Slavonic peoples who threatened Germany in the east, but chiefly against the wild Huns and Magyars who came up from the Middle Danube, invading Europe about this time. Henry the Fowler won the allegiance of the other great dukes of Germany, so that when he died they elected his son Otto, king. Otto fought against the Slavonic Prussians, pushed his power over the Elbe, and established the great bishopric of Magdeburg as a strong centre in the cast. He also established border-governments called Palatinates and Marks. In 955 he inflicted a crushing defeat on the Magyars, so that they retreated to Hungary, where they live to this day.

Otto was never safe from the great dukes of Germany, who were jealous of him. So he made friends with the bishops. The bishops of Germany were far from Rome. They were the only educated people in the land. They were rich and powerful as princes. So into their hands Otto put the administration of the land, and the great bishops of Cologne, Mainz, Worms, Magdeburg were now collecting taxes, holding law-courts, and organising armies in Germany, whilst the dukes fought and plundered and made havoc.

But Italy has always had a fatal fascination for the Germans, ever since the first barbarians came against Rome. Otto could not bear to think of the degradation and shame of the popes. He depended on the bishops of Germany. And how could any bishops be respected if their chief, the Holy Father, were a creature of shame?

Moreover the powerful Archbishop of Mainz already refused to serve Otto very willingly. So the king thought that if he marched into Italy and set the Pope straight there, he should be master of his clergy at home.

He came down over the Alps and easily mastered North Italy. He occupied Rome, and rescued the Pope John from his enemies. In 962, Otto was crowned Emperor of Rome, by the grace of God and the Pope. And so the Holy Roman Empire was really established. It became one of the greatest institutions of the Middle Ages. And so also began the most important relationship between Pope and Emperor. Henceforth the German kings were filled with the fatal passion to rule in Italy, to stretch a great empire from the Baltic over the Alps to the extremes of Sicily and Calabria. And this was never possible, for the peoples of Italy and Germany are so vitally different. If Rome could not rule Germany, how could Germany rule Rome? Yet the two extreme nations of Europe never ceased to be fascinated the one by the other, pitched against one another.

Another sign of the fascination which Italy exerted over the Germanic mind is seen in the conquest of Sicily and South Italy by the Normans. We know that the Normans from Norway and Denmark, fierce Vikings, raided Europe and England in the time of Charlemagne. We know that they settled in the Seine valley, and established the Dukedom of Normandy, soon becoming more French than the French. We know that from Normandy they conquered England in 1006. In 1040 a little band of Normans were fighting as free lances in the south of Italy. In Normandy, in the castle of Hauteville, was a Norman knight named Tancred, who had twelve sons. These sons must ride to seek their fortune. Some came south to Calabria. One of these sons was called Robert, Robert Guiscard, or Wiscard, Wiseacre. He was a tall, splendid Viking with long, flaxen beard flying, and blue eyes sparking fire. He joined his countrymen in the south, where the Greeks from Constantinople were fighting the Pope. Ultimately the Pope made Robert Guiscard Duke of Apulia and Calabria, and of such lands in Sicily and Italy as he could win from the perfidious Greeks. This was in 1060, six years before the Conquest of England. And this was the beginning of the famous Norman kingdom of Sicily and Naples, which lasted so long, and was such a power in the Mediterranean and such a thorn in the side of the popes. Normans emigrated in great numbers, in their ships, like Vikings of old, and settled in Sicily under Robert. So that once more the North settles and possesses the South.

On the one side the Pope had the Normans for neighbours. To the north of him lay Tuscany, and beyond that the great towns of Lombardy, just rising to new independence and new strength — Milan, Bologna, Florence, Verona, Pisa, Genoa.

In 1073 Hildebrand, a monk, was raised to the papal throne, becoming Gregory VII. He was a small man, but impressive. The people loved him, the monks and many of the bishops and nobles were on his side. And he was determined to be the chicf power in Christendom. ‘ The Roman Pontiff is unique in the world. He alone can depose or reconcile bishops. He can be judged by no one. The Roman Church never has been deceived and never can be deceived. The Roman Pontiff has the right to depose emperors. Human pride has created the power of the kings, God’s mercy has created the power of the bishops. The Pope is the master of emperors.’ This is Hildebrand’s declaration.

There was bound to be trouble between him and the Emperor. Henry iv. was a clever emperor. It was his custom, and the custom of the nobles, to create bishops in Germany, giving them the ring and crozier as symbols of their office. This distinctly meant that the bishops were to obey the Emperor first, and the Pope afterwards. To this Hildebrand could never agree.

In 1075 Hildebrand declared that ‘ If any emperor, king, duke, marquis or count, or any lay person or power has the presumption to grant investiture, let him know that he is excommunicated.’ So the Pope announced his intention to take away from the Emperor the bishops, on whom the Emperor depended for the administering of his kingdom. Henry soon answered.

‘ Henry, King, not through usurpation but through the holy ordination of God, to Hildebrand, at present not Pope but false monk — descend and relinquish the chair which thou hast usurped. Let another ascend the throne of Saint Peter, who shall not practise violenee under the cloak of religion, but shall teach the sound doctrine of Saint Peter. I, Henry, King by the Grace of God, do say to thee descend, descend, to be damned throughout all ages.’

The Pope’s reply begins: ‘ O Saint Peter, chief of the apostles, incline to us, I beg, thy holy ears and hear me, thy servant, whom thou hast nourished from infancy and whom until this day thou hast freed from the hand of the wicked who have hated and do hate me,’ . . . and it ends, ‘ I absolve all Christians from the bonds of the oath which they have made to Henry, the Emperor, and I forbid any one to serve him as king. And since he has scorned to obey as a Christian, and has not returned to God whom he deserted, I bind him with the chain of anathema.’

Nearly all Italy came to the side of the Pope, the Normans, Matilda of Tuscany, and the great Lombard towns. Hildebrand made friends even in Henry’s Germany. Henry had to struggle against his own nobles. In a council or diet of the empire of Germany, in 1077, they spoke against him to his face, hoping that the Pope would come to Augsburg, to attend the next diet, and depose Henry from the throne.

The Emperor thought he had better make himself safe. He crossed the Alps in winter-time. Hildebrand was residing at the castle of Canossa, guest of Matilda of Tuscany. Canossa is on the northern slopes of the Apennines. The weather was cold, snow lay on the ground. The Emperor sent messengers, asking to be allowed to present himself before the Pope, to sue for pardon. Hildebrand refused. On three consecutive days the Emperor came humbly to the door of the castle, barefooted and penitent in the snow, and three times Hildebrand had him driven away. But at last Matilda persuaded the Pope to receive the Emperor. Henry was admitted. He threw himself at the feet of Hildebrand, was raised and pardoned. ‘ Conquered by the persistency of his compunction and by the constant supplications of all those who were present, we loosed the chain of the anathema and at length received him into the favour of communion, and into the life of the holy mother Church.’ So says Hildebrand, Pope Gregory vn.

But Henry was not as humble as he seemed. He had saved himself in Germany by this submission. He went home, gathered his power, and again defied the Pope. He was again deposed. Then Henry in his turn declared Hildebrand to be no longer pope, and bestowed the title on a German bishop. Then he marched with a great German army over the mountains and passes of the Tyrol, entering Italy by way of Verona. He advanced to the walls of Rome, but owing to malaria in his army was forced to retire. But three years later, in 1084, he was again before the gates of Rome. He took the city, and besieged the Pope in the castle of St. Angelo. Hildebrand appealed wildly to Robert Guiscard and the Normans. Robert, who did not want an emperor in Rome, hastily advanced from besieging Durazzo on the Adriatic, and saved the Pope. But the German host of the Emperor plundered Rome as it had never before been plundered, neither by the Goths under Alaric nor by the Vandals under Genseric.

For bringing this upon them, the Roman people turned with hate on their Pope, so he departed, and shortly died in Salerno. ‘ I have loved righteousness and hated iniquity,’ he said, ‘ and therefore I die in exile.’

Henry iv. died in 1106, but the struggle went on. In the Concordat of Worms, 1122, it was agreed that the election of the bishops should be left in the hands of the Church, that the ring and the crozier should be bestowed by the Pope. But the Emperor or his representative was to be present at all elections, and disputed elections were to be referred to him. All bishops, moreover, were to do homage to the Emperor for the lands they held in his dominions. This left the Emperor, in Germany at least, lord of his bishops still.

This, however, was not an end to the struggle between Pope and Emperor. The Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire claimed, by his very title, a sort of universal sovereignty. And the Pope claimed the highest authority of all. So how could these opposite claims be settled by settling this investiture of bishops? And yet the early emperors were good Catholics, they loved the popes, in their way; and the popes respected the greatness of the emperors. It was again the great power of Germany balancing the power of Rome. But this time it was not nation against nation, but the spiritual power against the military. Hildebrand had united his Church over the whole of Europe, as if it were one great monastery which he governed. The clergy owed their allegiance to God and the Pope, nothing to the Emperor, the kings or barons. All over Europe one language, Latin, was spoken by the clergy, one doctrine taught. At the same time the church lands were wide and rich as the lands of the empire, though the estates of the Church were scattered over every country. It was Hilde- brand’s idea to use kings and their soldiers, all the kings of Europe, as servants of the Church. It was Henry’s idea to make the clergy serve the interests of the empire.

We must not imagine that Germany was a kingdom such as we understand kingdoms. It was a confederacy of great independent dukedoms. When one king died, the next was chosen by the great dukes, from among themselves. And just as the king was chicfly a duke, so the emperor was, in the first place, duke of his own lands, then elected king of Germany, then crowned emperor by the Pope. Germany was growing. Austria was the great Mark or border province to the east, Brandenburg to the north. New dukes, margraves and counts arose, new electors.

In 1152 Frederick, called Barbarossa, or Red Beard, was elected King of Germany and then crowned Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. He was, in the first place, Duke of Franconia and Suabia: that is of South Germany, from the Lake of Constance northwards to Lorraine. He was Frederick Hohenstaufen, of the Castle of Wibelin, in Suabia. His House was called the Hohenstaufen, his faction was called the Ghibelin by the Italians, who could not pronounce Wibelin. Another great man in Germany at this time was Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony. He came of the Bavarian House of Welf, called Guelph by the Italians. Frederick and Henry represent the two great factions of Guelph and Ghibelin, which fought one another for so many hundreds of years in Germany and Italy.

Frederick, when he became emperor, knew he must keep Henry the Lion friendly, otherwise this fierce duke would cause a revolution in Germany. So he gave him the dukedom of Bavaria, and Henry remained true to the cause of the Emperor. To the north Saxony was shut off from the Baltic. Henry, who was powerful and practically an independent king, seized Bremen from its owners, the military archbishops, and secured Lubeck from Adolph of Holstein. In these and other cities of the Baltic seaboard he started the great Baltic trade, with Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and even England. The land edging the Baltic was marshy: he invited hosts of settlers from Flanders and Holland, and set them to work draining and clearing the land, for farming. Then he united with the king of Denmark and smashed the Slavonic pirates who preyed on the Baltic trade. Wherever he could he ousted the Slavs from North Germany. When he could not oust them, he converted them to Christianity, sending the monks to preach to them. Thus the Slavs in Prussia and Mecklenburg and Pomerania became subject. He captured the Holy Isle of Rugen, which was the centre of the mysterious Slavonic worship, and destroyed its most sacred temple. Then he created bishoprics in his new towns, Schwerin, Mecklenburg, Oldenburg, etc., and the bishops were fighting vassals of his. Thus he had a vast kingdom in Germany, many towns he owned, active in trade, and an important sea-power. But the people hated him, because he trampled over them brutally. He became so proud, that when the Emperor Frederick called to him for help, he calmly refused to send any men to Italy, in answer to the summons. But in 1181 he had to submit to the Emperor, because the other dukes and counts went against him.

In Germany Frederick Barbarossa tried to make some order. The dukes and counts and nobles were always fighting among themselves. Along the Rhine, that great river of commerce, and along the chief roads rose impregnable castles of robber knights who preyed upon the surrounding country. He issued a General Peace Constitution, establishing agreements among neighbouring lords to keep the peace. He cleared away many robber knights, he encouraged trade, he held great Diets or Councils to establish laws. The country became more prosperous, education began to spread, poets sprang up, and the new songs and ballads were sung, in the German tongue, from one end of the land to the other. Then Frederick, who had gathered large estates for himself, had his son crowned King of Rome, so that the empire should pass from father to son, and not be subject to election.

None the less, Barbarossa could not stay in Germany, he must try to rule Italy. Over the Alps he went, with his train of attendants and soldiers, and in 1154 descended with his numerous host in Lombardy. He still imagined himself ruler of the great Roman Empire of Hadrian or Diocletian. Frederick was crowned in Rome by Adrian iv., once called Nicolas Breakspear, the English Pope. All was very fine and splendid. But before Frederick left Italy, Pope and Emperor had definitely quarrelled, over the question of precedence. Would Frederick hold the bridle of the Pope’s horse? Barbarossa said no, for he was greatest. The Pope claimed supremacy for himself. The old quarrel at once began.

Adrian died, and the Pope Alexander m. was set up. Alexander had insulted the Emperor. Therefore Barbarossa refused to acknowledge him, and set up Victor iv., the anti-Pope. War followed. The Pope Alexander was chased about Italy by the armies of Frederick. But the great Lombard cities stood solid against the Emperor. He besieged Milan for three years, till it yielded to starvation. Then he razed it to the ground, in 1162. He drove Alexander into France, after which he himself departed for Germany. Alexander at once returned to Rome, Milan was rebuilt, and in 1166 Frederick was once more forced to march down with a great army to Italy.

Again he drove the Pope from the Holy City. Alexander fled to the Normans of Sicily. But a terrible pestilence broke out in the German armies, as so often happened, and thousands of the soldiers fell into the grave. Frederick returned to Germany, forced to leave Italy to herself, for the cities of the Lombard league were too strong against him.

The famous cities built the strong fortress, called Alessandria, in honour of their Pope, south-west of Milan, to protect that city. In 1174 Barbarossa came to subdue Alessandria. The siege went on till 1175. Then relieving armies came. It was at this time that Frederick sent to Germany, to Henry the Lion, for help, which Henry refused.

Frederick decided to march on Milan. The cities of the League determined to stop him. They went swiftly against him, and met him at Legnano in 1176. A picked body of the soldiers of the League, called the Company of Death, surrounded the wagon on which their standard stood, determined to fight to the last gasp rather than give in to this emperor from the north. Frederick nearly succeeded in cutting his way through to the wagon, but he was unhorsed, and all the efforts of his German knights were powerless. He was badly defeated, and fled, almost alone, to his faithful town of Pavia.

This is the famous battle of Legnano, when we see towns, and townspeople, not dukes or counts, coming forth to fight for their freedom and their rights.

In July 1177, exactly a century since Henry iv. had humbled himself at Canossa before Hildebrand, Frederick threw himself at the feet of Alexander, in St. Mark’s, Venice, in a solemn ceremony of reconciliation. At Venice the Emperor gave up all claim to the patrimony and temporal power of St. Peter. In 1183, in his final treaty of Constance, with the Lombard League, he gave up his claim to rule Lombardy, and the cities were allowed to govern themselves.

But again, the Emperor was not as humble as he seemed. The Lombard cities quarrelled among themselves, and he soon obtained power among them. In 1186 he married his son Henry to Constance, heiress of the Norman kingdom of Sicily. Now, with the strong kingdom of Sicily and Naples added on to the empire, the Pope was caught on the flank. This is a new turn in the contest.

In 1189 the old Emperor set off on a crusade to Palestine. Next year he was drowned whilst bathing in a river in Asia Minor. Thus ended one of the greatest and most energetic Germans.

Henry vi., Barbarossa’s son, made terrible work in South Italy. He died, however, in 1197, leaving a baby son to succeed him. In 1198 Innocent III., the great pope of the Middle Ages, was elected to the papacy. Innocent was of a noble Italian family, and a lawyer. He believed, like Hildebrand, that the papacy should exercise a spiritual rule over all Europe. But he saw that to have spiritual rule, the Church must have power, and to have power she must have a kingdom of her own, a real kingdom, with its centre and capital at Rome. So he set himself to work to put kings and princes in their places, and virtually to rule all Europe as if it were one big country. He was a wise and good man. He did not like the cruelties and extravagance of war. He wanted to establish a good, moral rule. And he failed, as Hildebrand had failed; because in the end it is impossible to rule mankind, at least in any great region, without the sword.

In the turmoil that followed Henry vi.’s death, Innocent tried to interfere. He had interfered in England, trying to force on the chapters the bishops he had elected himself — as in the case of Stephen Langton. He had brought King John to his knees, and exacted much tribute from England. All the time he wanted to uphold the cause of the righteous and the poor, and yet he only succeeded in rousing the deepest antagonism in the people. It was the same in Germany. There the bishops and archbishops were powerful great princes, very German in their ways, very lordly and worldly in their living, caring for their own bishopric and their own German power, but very little for far-off Rome. They were the most un-Roman and independent of all the clergy. The Pope wanted to correct this, to make them more humble and Christianlike. They stood against him with all their might, and all the Germans, clergy, princes, poor alike detested the Pope for his interfering. The songs and ballads of the time curse the name of Innocent, and call the Pope a stirrer-up of strife and hate, a devil seeking his own power. Yet he only wanted to do what was right, strictly, according to the Catholic conception.

Innocent did great work. He tried to enforce a cosmopolitan authority over Europe, when people wanted to act separately and nationally. But he tried all the time to make nations and princes wiser, more just, better in their dealings. His great Lateran Council of 1215, which was attended by 400 bishops, 800 abbots, and ambassadors from every great power, was one of the most splendid councils Europe has ever seen. It reformed the Church, and brought in new church laws, or canons, all wise and broad, forbidding, for example, the cruel trials by ordeal, or by duel, substituting methods of true justice.

But in the young Frederick was growing up one who would bring both papacy and empire to the brink of destruction. Frederick was only three years old when his father, Henry vi., died. The little boy remained with his mother, Constance, in Sicily or South Italy, under the protection of the Pope. He was red-haired, a real Hohenstaufen, but rather small and puny looking. He had for his tutor Honorius, who became Pope later on.

Frederick was perhaps the cleverest man of the Middle Ages. He was King of Sicily and Naples from the time he was four years old, and had all advantages. At court he usually spoke the Romance language, a kind of early Italian or French. He loved the minstrels and jongleurs who made poetry and sang to the harp, the troubadours. So when he was quite young he too learned to sing and make poems; and he was a good poet. Italian was his native language. At the Sicilian court too were Moors or Arabs. The Moors had established powerful kingdoms in Spain and Sicily. They were on the whole more educated, more civilised than the Europeans. They were the best mathematicians, astronomists, physicians, and botanists in the world, besides that they had a beautiful literature and architecture. Sicily of that day was a wonderful island, the meeting-place of East and West, the flower of civilisation. And of all this Frederick had full advantage. He studied philosophy and religion, and understood more than the popes. He wrote a book on hawking, which remained for centuries the best book on the subject. He made a collection of wild animals at Palermo, established a school of medicine at Salerno, and founded the university of Naples. He was perhaps the most cultured man in Europe, but Italian, hardly a German any more. His contemporaries called him the Wonder of the World.

In his ambition, and his war-like activity, he was like Napoleon. Napoleon too was born on an Italian island, and was emperor of a strange people. But Frederick had not the stubborn heart and fixed purpose of Napoleon, though he had a much more brilliant personality.

Frederick’s mother died in 1198, when he was still a baby, and she left him under the guardianship of Pope Innocent III. In 1211, a group of princes in Germany, the King of Bohemia, the Duke of Austria, the Duke of Bavaria, and others, hating the Guelphs, elected the boy Frederick, who was away in Sicily, King of Germany. In 1212, Frederick, being only fifteen years old, made a bold dash into Germany, and soon raised a great following against the Guelph Emperor Otto. In 1214 he got the upper hand; Otto iv. was defeated, Frederick was solemnly crowned emperor in the portico of Charlemagne’s basilica at Aix- la-Chapelle. Soon after he departed to Italy again, and only paid two more visits to Germany, in 1235 and in 1236. They were not very important. Frederick was a thorough Italian, though German by blood.

Innocent III. had helped Frederick against Otto iv., hoping to get a humble, dependent emperor. There was peace between the two till Innocent died, in 1216. After Innocent came Honorius III., who had been Frederick’s tutor. He was a mild, learned man, and the two remained friendly. In 1220 Frederick was crowned emperor at Rome, and for once the Romans did not raise the disturbance they usually made at the crowning of the hated foreign emperors. Innocent’s desire had been that the northern empire and the kingdom of Sicily should not be joined, under the Emperor, for if they were the Papacy would be placed between them as between the two blades of a pair of scissors. Unfortunately Honorius agreed that Frederick should unite both domains. Now the Papacy was in the Emperor’s fist.

The popes were very anxious to make Crusades, and Frederick was urged to go. For a long time he refused, and was threatened with excommunication. He thought Crusades foolish. But Honorius died in 1227, and Gregory, who was Pope after him, drove Frederick II. into setting sail from Brindisi. After a day or two at sea the Emperor fell ill, and returned. He was promptly excommunicated. ‘ Very well,’ thought Frederick, ‘ I will now go to Palestine.’ In 1228 he was already in the Holy Land. The Pope, who saw Frederick’s mocking cleverness, excommunicated him again. It was no good. Frederick turned to the world, and said — ’ You see I am the champion of Christendom.’ And all Europe applauded him. The people of Rome rose and drove out Gregory. The Emperor was delighted. He did not care a straw about Palestine and the Holy Places, but he had made his point.

Then, in Palestine, instead of wasting time fighting and squabbling, having a strong force at his back he made a treaty with the Sultan of Cairo, by which Jerusalem, Bethelehem, Nazareth, were yielded to the Christians, and all necessary means of communication with the coast. A campaign could not possibly have done so well. But the Pope was furious, and would have nothing to do with the success of an excommunicated man, declaring the whole treaty void. Frederick calmly had himself crowned King of Jerusalem, taking the crown himself from the altar, since no priest dared touch it. Then he wrote a friendly letter to the Pope, and Gregory was forced to agree to what had been done.

While Frederick was away, the Pope had stirred up Italy, and undone all the good work in Sicily. But in 1230 the two made friends, and the Emperor was relieved of the excommunication. Then Frederick set to work. lie loved his Sicilian kingdom, and determined to make it a model to the world. He established a pure autocracy, almost a tyranny, and set up a rigid system of government. But it was all excellent, for it kept the peace and the land prospered marvellously. The court was brilliant and intellectual; science, education, building flourished; no country was in such an admirable state. All this Frederick was able to build up upon the work of the great Normans who had preceded him.

Then he turned to Italy. He fought the strong cities of the League, capturing them one after the other. In 1237 he won a brilliant victory over Milan, thus wiping out his father’s disgrace at Legnano. By 1239 he had Italy in his hands, and began to organise it. Out of his Sicilian Court of Justice he made an Imperial Court for all Italy, and began to rule this southern empire, having crushed in Germany a revolt headed by his own son Henry, whom he imprisoned for life.

But there was bound to be perpetual war now, between the Emperor and the Pope, for the latter saw his kingdom, the States of the Church, encircled and ground down in the Italian grip of Frederick. In 1239 the Emperor was again excommunicated, and there began the final contest between the Papacy and the Hohenstaufen Empire.

‘ I will tear the mask from the face of this wolfish tyrant, and force him to lay aside worldly affairs and earthly pomp, and to tread in the holy footsteps of Christ,’ wrote Frederick of the Pope. The Pope replied that Frederick was a heretic, that he disbelieved in the immortality of the soul, that he spoke of Moses, Abraham, and Christ as the three great impostors.

The struggle was now to the death. Both sides tried to draw all Europe into the conflict. The Pope tried to turn Germany against its emperor, and failed. He summoned a great number of cardinals and bishops from every land, to make a universal solemn condemnation of Frederick. But Frederick was lucky enough to capture the twenty-two Genoese vessels that were conveying these prelates to the Tiber mouth, and he chuckled and kept them prisoners. All over Italy friars and wandering preachers went about stirring up the people against the infidel Emperor.

In 1241 Gregory died. Innocent iv. was elected. Some attempt was made at reconciliation, but it failed. Innocent iv. extorted money from the Church in every land, to keep up this vast struggle. In 1244 the Pope fled to Genoa, and cried to the world that he was a martyr to the violence of the evil Frederick. In 1245 he went to Lyons, called a great Council, declared the Emperor excommunicated and dethroned, deposed. He stirred up Germany, and had an anti-emperor elected, Henry Raspe. Then he declared a holy Crusade against the infidel Frederick. Innocent iv. determined to exterminate the Hoyse of Hohenstaufen, which had determined to exterminate the power of the Papacy. Frederick was declared to be a Pharaoh, a Herod, a Nero, who must be destroyed in Christ’s name.

The Emperor quickly replied. ‘ I hold my crown,’ he said, ‘ from God alone; neither the Pope, nor the Council of Lyons, nor the devil shall rend it from me.’ Then he went on: ‘ Shall the pride of a man of low birth degrade the Emperor, who has no superior nor equal on earth? ‘

Italy now became the scene of a hideous conflict. In the north, Eccelin da Romano, Frederick’s lieutenant, carried on a ruthless war which has given him a terrible name in history. Frederick was active in the south. But in 1247 Parma deserted to the Pope. Frederick hurried to recover it. He settled down to a siege, and built the city of Vittoria as a base of antagonism. But the Parmesans, after a long siege, made a sudden sortie, burnt Vittoria, utterly routed the Emperor, capturing even his crown. It was the death-blow to Frederick’s cause. He became more wild, suspicious of his nearest friends: a raving red beast, they called him. He was mad to destroy the Papacy. Like Napoleon in later days, he said how happy Asia was, that she need fear no intrigues of popes. He almost declared himself another Prophet of God, like Mahomet. He wanted the divine honours of the Augustan emperors of old to be paid to his person. He proclaimed bis own birthplace in Sicily sacred, and said that his great councillor Peter de la Vigne was the Peter, the Rock, on whom the Imperial Church was to be founded.

But all this was the frenzy of failure and mortal hatred of popes. In 1249 his Legate Enzio was defeated and imprisoned by the Bolognese. Frederick hurried north to relieve him. But on December 13, 1250, Frederick died, and the last hope of Hohenstaufen dominion in Italy vanished. Manfred, the Emperor’s illegitimate son, fought bravely on, more or less holding Italy for twelve years, till he was slain in battle in 1266. Frederick’s son Conrad had become emperor in Germany on his father’s death, but he too speedily died, in 1254, leaving a little son Con- radin. Conradin, who was a brave, capable youth, marched into Italy in 1268, two years after Manfred’s death. He was defeated and captured and beheaded by the help of the French, and so ended the ‘ viper brood ‘ of Hohenstaufen, as the Pope and the French called them.

The Pope would seem to be victorious. But in fact the papal power was shattered. From this time it fell into the hands of the French, who rose up as the greatest nation. There was no central papal power in Europe any more. For many years the popes lived at Avignon in South France, while little emperors rose and fell in Germany, unimportant. Nations, states, cities now became separate and strong; the great oneness of the power of the Church was gone. So we approach the divided Europe of later days, leaving the Christendom of the Middle Ages.