more his tact in conciliating the Saracens, enabled him to get possession of Jerusalem. But the pope's indignation pursued him even thither; no bishop would crown an excommunicated person, and Frederic had to put the crown on his own head. At the pope's suggestions the grand masters of the military orders refused to obey Frederic as commander-inchief. He therefore found himself compelled to make a ten years' truce with Meledin, Sultan of Egypt, on condition that the Christians should retain Jerusalem, Nazareth and a strip along the coast of Sidon. It may be noted here that in 1244 Jerusalem was finally lost to the Christians. After Frederic's return to Italy, in 1229, his treaty was disavowed by the pope, who persisted in enmity to him, and endeavored to procure the election of a new emperor.

A reconciliation was, however, effected between the great rivals, Frederic and Gregory IX., in 1230, after which the former employed himself in reorganizing the empire, and in attempting to reduce the revolted cities in Lombardy. In the mean time a conspiracy, formed by his son Henry, now king of the Romans, obliged him to visit Germany. He held a Diet at Mentz, in which his son was convicted of rebellion, and was, in consequence, sent to Sicily. Frederic, having composed the German disturbances, returned to Italy, and, finding his son engaged in a new conspiracy, imprisoned him in a castle of Apulia, where he shortly afterwards died. Frederic then invaded the domains of the Duke of Austria, his son's accomplice, took Vienna, and having procured the election of his son Conrad as king of the Romans, returned with a powerful army to Italy. He obtained a considerable victory over the Lombard League, and treated the vanquished with great severity. His power was now so formidable that the pope openly took part against him, and renewed his excommunication. A furious war succeeded, which spread throughout Italy, almost every town being ravaged alternately by two hostile factions. Gregory at length died; but Innocent IV., who succeeded, after a considerable vacancy, continued the quarrel, and, after fleeing to Lyons, excommunicated the emperor in 1247. Troubles were excited against him in Germany, where the pope's party elected Henry

Raspe, landgrave of Thuringia, as the new king of the Romans. An attempt was also made to poison the emperor, but was rendered abortive by timely discovery.

Frederic's continued effort to retain Naples and Sicily, which had for two centuries been recognized as possessions of the Holy See, had kept him at variance with successive popes and occupied all his energies to the weakening of his legitimate power. Finally his obstinacy in pursuing the siege of Parma was the occasion of a total defeat of his army in 1248, which caused his party to be almost entirely deserted in the north of Italy, and brought his affairs into great disorder. He retired into the kingdom of Naples, where he died at Fiorenzuola in 1250, in the fifty-sixth year of his age. Some historians affirm that he was smothered with a pillow by his natural son, Mainfroy. Frederic had married six wives, the last of whom was a daughter of John, king of England.

Frederic II. was distinguished by many splendid qualities, yet tarnished by unscrupulous ambition, violence, and an inordinate attachment to the fair sex. He is styled by an eminent historian: "The gay, the brave, the wise, the relentless and the godless Frederic." He had but little reverence for ecclesiastical authority, and was disposed to be the more tolerant to heresy and religious dissent than the spirit of his times allowed. He was the first of the German emperors to exhibit an Italian love of art and beauty, combined with the energy and valor previously characteristic of the line. These new traits are justly ascribed to his mother's influence. His court, wherever he sojourned, exhibited an almost oriental luxury and splendor, and added the attractions of poetry and song. He was also a liberal patron of learning, founded several schools, and caused the works of Aristotle and other ancient authors to be translated from the Greek and Arabic into Latin. He himself composed poems and some other works, and appears to have been imbued with a thoroughly modern spirit.

"With Frederic," says Bryce, "fell the Empire. From the ruin that overwhelmed the greatest of its houses it emerged, living indeed, and destined to a long life, but so

shattered, crippled, and degraded, that it could never more be to Europe and to Germany what it once had been. In the last act of the tragedy were joined the enemy who had now blighted its strength and the rival who was destined to insult its weakness and at last blot out its name. The murder of Frederic's grandson Conradin-a hero whose youth and whose chivalry might have moved the pity of any other foe-was approved, if not suggested, by Pope Clement; it was done by the minions of Charles of France."

THE UNBELIEVING CRUSADER.

Frederic the Second, the grandson of Barbarossa, was successively the pupil, the enemy, and the victim of the church. At the age of twenty-one years, and in obedience to his guardian, Innocent the Third, he assumed the cross; the same promise was repeated at his royal and imperial coronations; and his marriage with the heiress of Jerusalem forever bound him to defend the kingdom of his son Conrad. But as Frederic advanced in age and authority, he repented of the rash engagements of his youth; his liberal sense and knowledge taught him to despise the phantoms of superstition and the crowns of Asia; he no longer entertained the same reverence for the successors of Innocent; and his ambition was occupied by the restoration of the Italian monarchy from Sicily to the Alps. But the success of this project would have reduced the popes to their primitive simplicity; and, after the delays and excuses of twelve years, they urged the emperor, with entreaties and threats, to fix the time and place of his departure for Palestine. In the harbors of Sicily and Apulia, he prepared a fleet of one hundred galleys, and of one hundred vessels, that were framed to transport and land two thousand five hundred knights, with their horses and attendants; his vassals of Naples and Germany formed a powerful army; and the number of English crusaders was magnified to sixty thousand by the report of fame. But the inevitable or affected slowness of these mighty preparations consumed the strength and provisions of the more indigent pilgrims; the multitude was thinned by sickness and desertion; and the sultry summer of Calabria anticipated the mischiefs of a

Syrian campaign. At length the emperor hoisted sail at Brundusium, with a fleet and an army of forty thousand men ; but he kept the sea no more than three days; and his hasty retreat, which was ascribed by his friends to a grievous indisposition, was accused by his enemies as a voluntary and obstinate disobedience. For suspending his vow Frederic was excommunicated by Gregory the Ninth; for presuming, the next year, to accomplish his vow, he was again excommunicated by the same pope. While he served under the banner of the cross, a crusade was preached against him in Italy; and after his return he was compelled to ask pardon for the injuries which he had suffered. The clergy and military orders of Palestine were previously instructed to renounce his communion and dispute his commands; and in his own kingdom, the emperor was forced to consent that the orders of the camp should be issued in the name of God and of the Christian republic. Frederic entered Jerusalem in triumph; and with his own hands (for no priest would perform the office) he took the crown from the altar of the holy sepulchre. But the patriarch cast an interdict on the church which his presence had profaned; and the knights of the hospital and temple informed the sultan how easily he might be surprised and slain in his unguarded visit to the River Jordan. In such a state of fanaticism and faction, victory was hopeless, and defence was difficult; but the conclusion of an advantageous peace may be imputed to the discord of the Mahometans, and their personal esteem for the character of Frederic. enemy of the church is accused of maintaining with the miscreants an intercourse of hospitality and friendship unworthy of a Christian; of despising the barrenness of the land; and of indulging a profane thought, that if Jehovah had seen the kingdom of Naples he never would have selected Palestine for the inheritance of his chosen people. Yet Frederic obtained from the sultan the restitution of Jerusalem, of Bethlehem and Nazareth, of Tyre and Sidon; the Latins were allowed to inhabit and fortify the city; an equal code of civil and religious freedom was ratified for the sectaries of Jesus and those of Mahomet; and, while the former worshiped at the holy sepulchre, the latter might pray and preach in the

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mosque of the temple, from whence the prophet undertook his nocturnal journey to heaven. The clergy deplored the scandalous toleration; and the weaker Moslems were gradually expelled; but every rational object of the crusades was accomplished without bloodshed; the churches were restored, the monasteries were replenished; and, in the space of fifteen years, the Latins of Jerusalem exceeded the number of six thousand. This peace and prosperity, for which they were ungrateful to their benefactor, was terminated by the irruption of the strange and savage hordes of Carizmians. Flying from the arms of the Moguls, those shepherds of the Caspians rolled headlong on Syria; and the union of the Franks with the sultans of Aleppo, Herus, and Damascus, was insufficient to stem the violence of the torrent. Whatever stood against them was cut off by the sword, or dragged into captivity; the military orders were almost exterminated in a single battle; and in the pillage of the city, in the profanation of the holy sepulchre, the Latins confess and regret the modesty and discipline of the Turks and Saracens.-E. GIBBON.