speech by asserting that Frederick was wont to say that the riches and revenues of the Church were exorbitant, and that he had often boasted he would one day reduce ecclesiastics of every grade to that state of poverty in which they had been content to live in the early days of Christianity. It seems highly probable, not only that the latter charge was well founded, but that, although preferred last of all, it was in truth regarded by his accusers as the gravest they had to make against him.1

One of the representatives of the emperor, Thaddeus de Suessa, then rose and solemnly denied the truth of all the charges made against him, and as Frederick was at the time at Turin, he earnestly besought the council to give him an opportunity of replying to them in person. As the emperor had been summoned to the council and had not thought fit to appear, the Pope at first refused to listen to this application, but on the intercession of the ambassadors of France and England he agreed to adjourn the consideration of the matter for a fortnight to allow the emperor an opportunity of replying in person to his accusers.

On being made acquainted with the decision of the council Frederick flatly refused to attend, and he refused, moreover, in very offensive terms. He said, alluding to the capture of the cardinals, that Innocent was acting solely from motives of revenge because he had seized and imprisoned certain Genoese pirates who happened to be kinsmen of the Pontiff.3 Exasperated by the defiant attitude and still more by the reckless language of Frederick, the Pope no longer hesitated, and although not a single witness had been produced against him, proceeded to depose the most powerful monarch of the age. In vain did the representatives of the emperor,

1 M. Paris in 1245.

* Gibbon has not displayed his proverbial accuracy in alluding to this council. "Never," he says, "did any court of justice less deserve the name. It heard "neither the accusation nor the defence, and refused to grant to the person "accused the smallest delay, although his ministers, entrusted with full powers, "hastened to Lyons," &c.-Gibbon, Miscellaneous Works, p. 402.

* Innocent was a member of the noble Genoese family the Sinibaldi.

who seemed to have formed a truer estimate of the peril in which he stood than Frederick himself, bewail with tears and lamentations the decision of the council. The dreaded sentence was thundered forth with all those imposing solemnities which in a rude and superstitious age were so well calculated to strike the imagination and to move the pity or the terror of the beholder.1

Frederick treated the sentence of the council with defiance and derision, and he addressed a letter to his brother-in-law, the King of England, which affords strong confirmation of the truth of at least one of the charges made against him by the Bishop of Carniolanamely, that he intended to strip the bishops of their superfluous wealth. "We beg you," he said, "not to "consider that the majesty of our high station is in any degree lowered by the sentence pronounced against us by the Pope, for we are pure in conscience, and consequently have God with us." "It has always been our "intention and wish to induce the clerks of every order, "and chiefly those of the highest rank, to lead such lives as their predecessors did in the days of the primitive Church, and to imitate our Lord's humility. They used "to heal the sick, to bring the dead to life, and to reduce kings and princes to submission, not by arms but by holiness; but these men, devoted to the world and to its 'pleasures, put away the Lord, and by the super"abundance of their riches and possessions all religion is choked. To take away from such persons the super"fluous wealth with which they are burdened to their "damnation would be a work of charity. For this purpose, therefore, you and all other princes ought to unite with us," &c.

1 "Magistri igitur Thaddeus de Suessa et Walterus de Ocra et alii procuratores, "imperatoris, et qui cum ipsis erant, emisso ejulatu flebili, hic femur hic pectus in "indicium doloris percutientes vix a profluxio lachrymarum sese continuerunt. Et "ait magister Thaddeus memoratus. 'Dies ista, dies iræ, calamitatis et miseriæ.' "Dominus igitur Papa, et prelati assidentes concilio, candelis accensis, in dictum imperatorem Fredericum, qui jam jam imperator non est nominandus terribiliter, "recedentibus et confusis ejus procuratoribus, fulgurarunt."-M. Paris, p. 672. 2 Frederick was married to Isabella, sister of Henry the Third.

In a subsequent letter, addressed to the prelates and barons of England, Frederick emphatically denied the temporal jurisdiction of the Popes. He said, "Although "we with all good Catholics most distinctly acknowledge "our belief that full power in spiritual matters was "conferred by the Lord on the high priest of the Holy "Roman See, however great a sinner (which God forbid) "he might be, and also that whatever he should bind on earth should be bound also in heaven, and that whatever he loosed should also be loosed, yet nowhere do we read "that power was given to him, either by Divine or human "law, to transfer empires at his pleasure, or to decide on "the temporal punishment of kings and princes."1

To these appeals the king and the barons of England turned a deaf ear. Henry the Third was even weak enough to publish the sentence of deposition throughout the kingdom, alleging that he was a vassal of the Pope, and therefore bound to obey his commands. That sentence declared that the thrones both of Germany and Sicily were vacant. The electors of the empire were invited to choose a successor to the deposed monarch, and the Pope reserved to himself the right of disposing of the Sicilian crown. The result was a destructive civil war in Germany, during which first the Landgrave of Thuringia and afterwards the Count of Holland claimed the imperial throne. In Italy the prospects of Frederick were not more promising. The sanguinary tactics to which he had resorted at Parma failed to shake the resolution of its defenders. He was finally compelled to abandon

1 M. Paris, anno 1245.

2 Rymer, vol. i., p. 383.

3 The sentence of deposition was in the following terms:-"We do hereby sentence and deprive him, and all who are in any way bound to him by an oath "of allegiance we for ever absolve and release them from that oath, and by the apostolic authority strictly forbid any one from obeying him, or in any way "whatever attempting to obey him, as an emperor or king; and we decree that any one who shall henceforth give him assistance or advice, or show favour to "him as an emperor or king, shall be ipso facto excommunicated; and those in "the empire on whom the election of an emperor devolves may freely elect a successor in his place. With respect to the aforesaid kingdom of Sicily, we, with "the advice of our brother cardinals, will make such provision as may seem expedient to us. Given at Lyons, &c."-M. Paris, A.D. 1245.

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the siege, and shortly afterwards he received intelligence of the total defeat of his forces in Lombardy. With the remnant of his followers he retired to Apulia, where he died in the year 1250; and his enemies did not fail to discern the righteous hand of an avenging Providence in the succession of misfortunes which clouded his latter days.

The deposition of Frederick the Second may be regarded as the most extraordinary stretch of authority ever exercised by the Church of Rome. History records no such signal triumph of spiritual over temporal power. The victories won by Hildebrand over Henry the Fourth and by Innocent over Philip Augustus, although events highly interesting and instructive, established no precedent of such transcendent importance as the deposition of Frederick. No act even of Innocent the Third can be compared with it. Not only was Frederick the most conspicuous personage of the age in which he lived, but sentence of deposition was passed upon him within his own dominions. It was in the imperial city of Lyons that the Pope assumed the right of depriving the emperor of his crown.

And if his memorable feud with Rome brought defeat and ruin upon Frederick, it proved still more disastrous to his descendants. As he was declared to have forfeited the crown of Sicily as well as that of Germany, it became, for obvious reasons, a fixed maxim of Papal policy from this time forward that those two dignities should never be again united in the same person. Frederick left behind him one legitimate and one illegitimate son. The former died at the early age of twentyfive, leaving in Germany an infant named Conradino.2 Manfred, the illegitimate son of Frederick, was at first appointed guardian of the child, but was subsequently, in the year 1258, crowned King of Sicily in consequence of a rumour having got abroad that his nephew Conra

1 Comyn's Western Empire, vol. i., p. 318.

So named by the Italians to distinguish him from his father, Conrad.

dino was dead. But the title of Manfred was never acknowledged by the Pope, and after the kingdom had been offered to various princes as a fief of the Church, it was finally granted by Clement the Fourth, who was himself a Frenchman, to Charles of Anjou, brother of Louis the Ninth. The bull which invested Charles with this dignity was dated the 25th February, 1265, and the territories conferred upon Charles embraced, in addition to the island of Sicily, the whole of the South of Italy, from the Straits of Messina to the boundary of the Papal States. The kingdom was to be held as a fief of the Church in consideration of a tribute of 8,000 ounces of gold, to be paid annually under pain of forfeiture and excommunication; and every third year a white palfrey was to be presented to the Pope. Charles was, moreover, strictly prohibited from aspiring to the empire or to the sovereignty of any other state in Italy, was bound to leave all ecclesiastical causes to the exclusive jurisdiction of the tribunals of the Church, and to exempt all ecclesiastics from the payment of taxes.1

With an army of thirty thousand adventurers, collected from every part of Europe, but raised principally in France and Flanders, Charles set out for Rome, where, after swearing allegiance to the Pope, he was, on the 6th of January, 1266, solemnly crowned King of Sicily. But Manfred, a brave and ambitious prince, was still in possession of his kingdom, and, in spite of Papal bulls and interdicts, prepared to defend it to the last. With a singularly-assorted army, composed of Sicilians, Saracens, and Germans, he encountered Charles at Benevento. The combat was long and doubtful, but French discipline and valour finally prevailed; and unwilling to survive defeat, Manfred plunged into the ranks of the enemy and died desperately fighting at the head of a few devoted followers. The conquerors, in admiration of his valour, raised a rude monument of stones over the fallen

1 See Amari, the War of the Sicilian Vespers, by Lord Ellesmere, vol. i., chap ii.