MEDIEVAL HISTORY LIBRARY

BOOK IV CHAPTER XIV. FREDERIC II. [1246—1248.

Strife between Pope and Emperor—Conspiracies—Reciprocal Accusations— War in Lombardy—Search for an Anti-King— Henry llaspe elected—his Success—and Leath—Siege of Parma.     

If in northern and central Italy, no decided preponderance had as yet been gained by either party, the balance of success had been in favour of the Emperor. In the March of Ancona, the Guelphs had been defeated in a pitched battle. At Parma, the Fieschi, whose Ghibeline politics had been completely changed by the elevation of their kinsman to St. Peter’s Chair, were foiled in an attempt made by them and their kinsman, the Bishop, Alberto Sanvitale, son of a sister of Innocent’s, to excite a Guelph rebellion. The Ghibeline spirit of the city proved too strong for them. They were defeated and expelled; their houses were demolished, the revenue of the see was confiscated, at least for the life of the rebel prelate, and the publication of the papal sentence, excommunicating and deposing the Emperor, was prohibited on pain to the transgressor of losing his hand.

At Florence, indeed, a struggle between Guelphs and Ghibelines, originating in disagreement as to the treatment of heretics, had ended differently. Katharist doctrines had for very many years been covertly spreading in that city, and Innocent IV, soon after his election, as if to neutralize the accusation repeatedly brought against Popes, of connivance at heresy in Milan, ordered a strict inquisition into religious opinion, at Florence. He committed the business chiefly to the Bishop; who performed the duty enjoined him with horrible alacrity; with a zeal quickened by previous restraint; he and his subordinate assistants seemed to revel in the horrors day by day more characterizing Inquisitorial procedure, as this gradually developed itself into what ultimately became the one universal as terrific tribunal. Especially they stimulated delation in families. Persecution, as ever, inflamed enthusiasm; Katharists of both sexes now boldly avowed opinions which, till then, they had cautiously dissembled; at Florence, executions by fire became the order of the day, notwithstanding the strenuous opposition of the Imperial Podesta; who, however, confined his efforts to remonstrance, respectful though earnest. At length sectarian fortitude began to fail, and about the time of the assembling of the Council of Lyons, many of those who were summoned before the dreaded Inquisitors, professed repentance of their past errors, soliciting readmission into the bosom of the Church. But the Emperor, when deposed by the Pope in Council, no longer repressed his philosophic tendency to toleration in the vain hope of conciliating a ^determinedly implacable enemy. He now commanded the Podesta, positively to forbid the infliction of death for erroneous belief. The Papal Judges did not submit to this prohibition. They knew that an immense majority of the Florentines were both Orthodox and Guelph; and, calling them together, they twice gave battle to the Ghibelines and Katharists; who, from their inferior' numbers, were defeated upon both occasions. The Pope’s faction triumphed, and at Florence, in defiance of the Emperor’s commands, heretics were either converted, or burnt.

This change in Frederic’s conduct, rather than in his principles, with respect to the treatment of mistakes in religion, was not confined to Tuscany. In Sicily and Apulia, notwithstanding his quarrel with Gregory IX and Innocent IV, heresy had hitherto been held a crime. Persons suspected of this offence had there been brought before prelates appointed to investigate their faith, who were ordered, if they found it erroneous, to endeavour, conformably to the system of Innocent III, by admonition, explanation, and reasoning, to convert them. This pious labour was not to be impatiently abridged; but, when clearly inefficacious, the convicted heretics had been delivered over to the lay tribunals, for sentence and execution; which, in compliance with papal requisition, had generally implied death. This cruel compliance henceforward ceased, secondary punishments superseding the flames. In fact, in this and other respects, Frederic now acted as, virtually if not nominally, Head of the Church there. He even took upon himself to apportion the expense of the religious instruction of his subjects to their w ants; and, judging the number of bishoprics, and other ecclesiastical benefices, in his southern realms, excessive, he left those, which he deemed superfluous, vacant. His enhancing the stringency of a former edict, prohibiting money payments to the Roman See was no innovation, but consonant to the policy of divers monarchs, whose orthodoxy never was questioned. Apprehending that it had been disobeyed, he now affixed heavy penalties, in purse and person, to the transgression of this law; and ordered a strict guard to be kept upon ports and high roads, sanctioning, when suspicion of surreptitious transmission of the siyns claimed by the Pope was strong, the examination of the books of merchants and money-changers—then the officiated as bankers.

Innocent IV, following the example of Gregory IX, now let a swarm of Mendicant Friars loose upon Apulia and Sicily. Their instructions were to traverse both realms in all directions, make the excommunication and deposal of Frederic publicly and universally known, excite the common people against him, and at the same time collect money for the Pope’s exchequer. Frederic, who was now in Apulia, finding it impossible to repress the active enmity of these emissaries, declared that no one could claim toleration in a land, of which he stubbornly refused to obey the laws; and therefore ordered the Mendicant Friars, upon whom all warnings to this effect were vain, to be safely conveyed beyond the frontiers of his dominions: a measure approved by the secular clergy, seldom well disposed towards the friars, who officiously interfered with their parochial functions. During their expulsion, many of the friars publicly cursed the sovereign who banished them; and one, chancing to meet him, clutched the bridle of his horse, to pour forth a torrent of vituperative execrations in his face. The exasperated attendants were about effectually to prevent a repetition of the offence, by the individual offender; but Frederic checked their rage, quietly saying: “Let him alone! He would fain be a martyr, and thus a saint; but not through me shall he earn the honours of canonization.” The majority of the friars, however, submitted meekly to their expulsion, observing that, in this world, their home was everywhere and nowhere. The only consequent inconvenience was the loss of the theological professors to the University of Naples, in which capacity the Emperor had again habitually employed Dominicans. Again, he applied to the Abbot of Montecassino for substitutes; and again the place of the exiles was ably supplied by monks from that erudite monastery.

Innocent had, in like manner, to find demagogue substitutes for his banished friars, and he sought them everywhere. He addressed epistles to the prelates, the parochial clergy, the nobles, the municipal authorities, and even to the whole population of Apulia and Sicily, in which he loaded the Emperor with opprobrium, and commanded the receiver, or reader, of his letters, immediately to rise, “shake off the yoke of the accursed Nero, to whom they were no longer bound by any oath,” and return into the fold of the Church. He moreover authorized Cardinals Riniero Capoccio, an Apulian, and Stefano de Romania, or Romagna, to raise armies against Frederic in his own dominions; and employ such other means as they might think expedient, for converting Ghibelines, spurring Guelphs to action, and accomplishing the overthrow of the Emperor.

The papal letters and the means which the Cardinals deemed it proper to employ, proved efficacious to a degree which, one would fain hope, exceeded the wishes entertained by the Spiritual Head—if not of Christendom, yet of the largest body of Christians. But the most devout Papists can hardly indulge such a hope. Individuals in whom Frederic reposed most confidence, as Pandolfo Fasanella, for years his faithful and active Tuscan Podesta, Giacomo Morra, one of his most trusted counsellors, and Andrea di Cigala, Grand-Constable, were seduced into a conspiracy with the Conte di San Severino, the head of an hereditarily and inveterately Guelph family, for, not the dethronement only, but, the assassination of their anathematized liege Lord and benefactor. During the winter of 1245-6, the plot ripened in secrecy. Cardinal Riniero assembled an army, with which he held himself in readiness to join and support the conspirators, as soon as they should throw off the mask; and all arrangements were complete for the perpetration of the regicide at Grosseto—a town of central Italy, where Frederic then resided—seemingly by Fasanella and Morra themselves, whose high position afforded them ample opportunity for the crime. So certain was the success of the plot deemed, that the Bishop of Bamberg, as he returned home from the Papal Court at Lyons, publicly announced the immediate death of the Emperor by the hands of his own vassals; thus proclaiming the foreknowledge there obtained of the contemplated murder.

At this juncture, very little prior to the moment prefixed for the perpetration, something awakened the suspicions of the Countess of Caserta, a high minded, loyal woman. She followed up the casually obtained clue; satisfied herself that some nefarious design was in agitation, and communicated such information as she possessed to her sovereign. Inquiries were instantly set on foot, which resulted in the corroboration of her intelligence, by the confession of some of the conspirators, under the influence of either repentance or fear. The murderous portion of the plot, was of course foiled; and Frederic hastened to seek the more distant culprits. He had no difficulty in finding them. So securely had the Apulian confederates built upon the consummation, at the preconcerted time, of the murder, by those who had undertaken it, that, upon the day appointed, they rose in arms, announcing by proclamation the death of Frederic; Cigala, in virtue of his authority as Grand-Constable, took possession, unopposed, of several castles, and Cardinal Capoccio advanced from Perugia with his auxiliary army, fully confident that the continental portion, at least, of the Sicilian Kingdom, was recovered for the Holy See.

His exultation was ephemeral. From his visionary triumph he was startled by the appearance of Fasanella and Morra, who, fugitives from the lot of detected guilt, and unwelcome heralds of the Emperor’s advance in full force against their confederates, met him on his march. For so well and promptly had Frederic arranged his repressive measures, and so cordially was he supported by the Apulians, indignant at the treason which they now learned had been brooded amidst them, that scarcely had the assembled conspirators time to take refuge in the two strong castles of Scala and Capoccio. The first of these was speedily mastered; and, on the 31st of March, 1246, the Cardinal’s army was completely routed by the Imperial General Eboli. On the other hand, Capoccio was resolutely defended by San Severino and others of the revolted nobles; and for months resisted all the battering engines, as well as the repeated assaults, of the equally resolute besiegers. But at length its provisions were exhausted; and, upon the 18th of July, the noble ringleaders, with their little garrison of about 150 men, surrendered at discretion. In the castle were found some twenty ladies, and Frederic’s Lombard hostages, whom it had naturally been an object with the rebels to rescue from his power. That they were alive in Apulia, to be so rescued, when it is recollected that the Lombards had for months been at war with the Emperor, abundantly proves Frederic’s clemency, whilst again renewing our surprise at the habitual disregard of the safety or peril of hostages, by their insurgent kindred. But there were also found (what it is painful to believe) letters from the Pope, not only containing general instructions for the conduct of the rebellion, but sanctioning the intended regicide.

When the castle fell, the remaining members of the San Severino family were hastening, with the forces they had at length succeeded in raising, to relieve the last stronghold of their chief and his faction. On their way they encountered a body of Imperialists, by whom they were defeated, and those, who were not slain in the action, were made prisoners.

Frederic, to whom, as appears by his letters, his Sicilian kingdom on either side the Faro was as the apple of his eye, felt this Apulian treason, not only as “the unkindest cut of all,” but as a sort of parricide. His resentment was embittered by the fact, that most of the ringleaders were men whom he had highly favoured, in whom he had entirely confided; and he made up his mind to suffer the law to take its stern course. He proposed to have the ringleaders, prior to their execution, paraded through the country, with the papal letters of approbation and encouragement borne before them, as a justification of his own revolt against Innocent’s authority. But his Council judged it inexpedient thus to delay their final punishment, and they were at once put to death with the preliminary and concomitant horrors that still too generally, if not universally, form part of the sentence for high treason. Of the house of San Save-rino there now remained only a boy about nine years old, whom the friends of his family committed to the care of the Pope, as the last scion of a race martyred in his cause. Innocent educated the boy, and, as soon as he was of fitting age, married him to one of his nieces. The female prisoners were sent to Palermo, there to pass the rest of their days in conventual imprisonment.

Innocent could hardly deny his participation, proved by his own letters, in the plot, even in that for the assassination of Frederic; and the utmost attempted by his apologists, or his eulogists, is to affirm that his name was used by the Mendicant Friars, without sufficient authority. But Innocent himself does not appear to have complained of forgery, and he probably coloured the projected murder to his own mind, as the mere execution of the Council’s decree. At all events he retaliated the charge threefold upon Frederic; but resting his accusation upon grounds such as could command the belief only of impassioned Guelphs.

His stories were these. At Lyons, two newly arrived strangers were asserted by the Pope to be emissaries of the Emperor’s, sent to murder him; they were seized and imprisonedj but no proof of guilt was adduced, nor do they appear to have been, either publicly tried, or, without trial, executed, or in any way punished. This accusation rests wholly upon Innocent’s professed conviction; the other two were more plausible. One Radulf, an inferior attendant in the Imperial service, having quitted it, as he said, on account of some irregularity in the payment of his salary, had betaken himself to the thronged seat of the General Council, in search of employment. Here Gualtiero di Ocra, one, it will be recollected, of the Imperial envoys, engaged him, as Innocent averred, by extravagant promises of reward, to undertake the assassination of his former master’s enemy. An innkeeper, whom Radulf admitted into his confidence, falling sick, revealed the plot in confession to his priest. The secret of confession was not inviolable, towards the Vicar of Heaven; and Radulf, upon the denunciation of the innkeeper’s confessor, was arrested. He boldly denied the imputed guilt; was tortured, and upon the rack owned whatever was desired. The third story is, that two Italians, members of a confederacy of forty men, pledged to remove Innocent IV from a world he so grievously disturbed,—an act which would, they were convinced, be pleasing to God and man— revealed the conspiracy. Nor in those days of vehement and little restrained passion, is such an association unlikely to have been formed amongst fiery Italian Ghibelines; but neither are the betrayers of their confederates reported to have implicated the Emperor, as even cognisant, much less as the instigator, of the design; nor did the Pope himself charge him with having actually employed Radulf. Vaguely, however, he imputed all three attempts, whether real or imaginary, to Frederic, professed himself terrified, filled his palace with armed men, and scarcely ventured abroad, even to attend mass.

Frederic judged it necessary, how evidently soever groundless the accusations, to exculpate himself to his former advocate, the French King; and in a letter addressed to him for this purpose, he asks: “What rational man can suppose I would seek the death of an adversary, in a manner that must both embitter, and render eternal, the existing enmity? And what should I gain by his death?” Thinking it quite as essential to clear himself from the charge of heresy, as from that of employing assassins, he desired to be examined by competent judges upon all points of the Christian faith. The Archbishop of Palermo, the Bishop of Pavia, the Abbots of Montecassino, Cava, and Casanova, and the Predicant Friars, Rolando and Nicola, assembled for this purpose. They questioned the Emperor closely, wrote down his answers, signed the document, which they esteemed proof positive of the calumniated monarch’s orthodoxy, and carried it to Lyons. But Innocent sternly rebuked these volunteer Inquisitors, for presumptuously intruding themselves into an office, that he had not assigned them, and for holding intercourse with an excommunicated individual, whom, in disobedience to the Holy See, they dared to call the Emperor; and refused to receive their report. They did not abandon the cause, but strove to appease the Pope; and, at length, their humble apologies and earnest intercession so far prevailed, that he appointed three Cardinals to hear what they had to say. These Princes of the Church avowed themselves fully satisfied by the report, as to Frederic’s religion; and they laid before the Pope his offers, made through his examiners, to attend his Holiness wherever he should appoint, in order, in his presence, to clear himself from all suspicion of heresy, Mohammedanism, and atheism, simultaneously, and therefore somewhat contradictorily, imputed to him; and further, when in consequence, relieved from excommunication, to join the Crusade which the King of France was then organizing; nay more, if required, to divide his European dominions between his two sons, Conrad and the younger Henry—thus fulfilling his early, unwilling promise—and devote himself thenceforward exclusively to the defence of the Holy Land. But not even this report, speaking the conviction of his own Cardinals, and these offers, could satisfy Innocent. More obstinate, because less honest in his prejudice than Gregory IX, he, despite all the representations of the deputed Cardinals, on the 23rd of May, 1246, declared, that Frederic had, upon notorious facts, been pronounced a heretic; that he had not even yet renounced his friendly relations with Infidels; that his vindication, attested by persons subject to his terror-spreading tyranny, who had presumed to examine him without a papal commission, and who styled him Emperor, bore the strongest marks of deception; for which reasons the excommunication remained in force. He concluded with the following strangely ungracious concession: “Although, for these reasons, Frederic deserves no hearing, yet will we not refuse to allow him, at some day, to appear, unarmed and nearly unattended, before us, when we ourself will listen to him upon this matter, if lawful, and as lawful.” It were difficult not to suspect that Innocent, actuated by personal hatred of the friend whom he had abandoned—no uncommon sentiment—was unwilling either to find Frederic a faithful son of the Church, or to see him abjure errors hitherto entertained.

The Emperor seems to have adopted this opinion, as he thenceforward desisted from his previously repeated efforts to effect a reconciliation. He saw that the fortune of arms must again decide between himself and the Pope, and he took measures for securing a favourable decision. To divers Italian cities, Rome being one, he addressed epistolary exhortations to loyalty, with promises of remission and diminution of tolls, &c.; and he raised forces to give weight to his letters. One body of troops he sent to co-operate with the numerous Ghibeline Fuorusciti (a word so characterizing the language and habits of mediaeval Italy’s ever-factious, republican cities, that it really must be borrowed) from Viterbo, in recovering that town. The siege was formed, and hunger soon produced a desire to capitulate. But if the Cardinal-Bishop was absent, the Consuls were determined Guelphs, and the terms offered, including a demand that the Emperor’s epistle should be read to the whole population, were rejected. Hunger, however, proved stronger than consular authority; individual citizens found means to visit the besiegers’ camp, where they were fed by, and conversed with, their acquaintance. Food, representations of the injustice under which the Emperor was suffering, and arguments upon the impossibility of Viterbo’s singly resisting the imperial armies, gradually overpowered party spirit,: and the gate to which, a day or two afterwards, the besiegers advanced, was thrown open amidst shouts of “Peace! peace!” The Emperor’s offered pardon was joyfully accepted, and, in proof of loyalty, Cardinal Capoccio’s episcopal palace was laid low.

Frederic next ordered his son, Frederic of Antioch, Imperial Vicar, it will be remembered, in Tuscany, to possess himself of Florence, reinforcing him for that purpose. The young Vicar (now about seventeen,) guided, it may be presumed, by counsellors somewhat older than himself, hastened to obey; defeated his opponents, and, upon the 26th of December, triumphantly entered Florence. He expelled the heads of the Guelph faction, and razed their fortresses within the walls, thirty-six in number. Tuscany was now unanimously loyal. But such successes were not of magnitude materially to influence the issue of the contest; in Lombardy the fortune of war, as usual, fluctuated, and with it, equally as usual, the fidelity of some of the great vassals. In the course of one season, two Marquesses Malaspina, brothers, deserted the Emperor’s cause for the Pope’s, and again the Pope’s, for the Emperor’s.

Whilst, in Italy, Frederic was thus resolutely struggling to defend his sovereignty, in Germany, the new Legate, the Bishop of Ferrara—whom even Guelph writers describe as a man addicted to violent measures, because almost always under the joint influence of a gloomy temper and the morbid irritation consequent upon intemperate habits—was seeking an anti-king. He, and the prelates who acted with him, first applied to the Duke of Bavaria, both as the most powerful of the princes of the Empire, and as having shown himself, in his recent seduction by Albert Beham, accessible to such lures. Those lately ardent loyalists, the Archbishop of Salzburg and the Bishops of Ratisbon and Freising, now laboured to impress upon the Duke, the duty of following their example, in recognising the validity of the sentence of the Pope in Council. But Otho answered: “When I adopted the papal party, you called the Holy Father Antichrist, demonstrating to me that he was the source of all evil, all crime. I changed sides at your persuasion, and now you depict the Emperor as the worst of criminals, the harbinger of Antichrist. With you, what was right yesterday is wrong to-day; but I cannot be thus blown hither and thither, at the dictates of your selfish expectations”.

Unexpected as was this repulse, in a quarter where the Legate and his associated prelates looked for joyful acceptance, they were not thereby discouraged. But this was not the only disappointment they were destined to experience. They proffered the crowns of Germany and the Empire, successively, to the King of Bohemia, to the Dukes of Saxony, Austria, Brunswick, and Brabant, and to the Margraves of Brandenburg and Misnia. All these Princes had been both incensed and alarmed, by the absolute authority to which the Pope pretended, and by the preponderance which the clergy had acquired, into at least a temporary oblivion of their own ambitious aspirations. They severally refused, either to accept the proffered crowns, or to admit the validity of the sentence, deposing the Sovereign whom ecclesiastics and laity had unanimously elected. Still Innocent’s canvassers for a candidate emperor did not despair: but, somewhat discouraged, they descended a step lower, and now tendered the often rejected crowns to the Landgrave of Thuringia.

The young Landgrave Hermann, son to Lewis the Holy and St. Elizabeth, in 1241, when fast approaching the age at which he would expect to assume the government, had died, whether poisoned by his Regent uncle, as was generally believed in Thuringia, or not. This uncle had ever since uncontestedly possessed both title and power. Henry Raspe was an able ruler, and, as such, when Archbishop Siegfried of Mainz, young Conrad’s first Guardian or Counsellor, died, was one of those selected by Frederic to supply his place:—an argument surely—though standing alone against much concurrent testimony—that there is some exaggeration in the accounts of his ill usage of the widowed Landgravine, whom Frederic so highly admired. Again they met with a refusal; but one that, being prompted solely by personal and prudential considerations, instead of by grateful loyalty or enlarged views of policy, did not seem invincible. Henry Raspe declined, because neither strong enough nor rich enough to contend with the Emperor. He was answered, by offers of ample pecuniary supplies from the Pope, and by assurances of the active support of the whole body of German ecclesiastics, high and low,—of the whole Church, if necessary; and, cloaking his gratified ambition under a show of humble devotion, he rejoined : “I obey; and would though I had not another year of life before me.” The words were afterwards deemed unconsciously prophetic.

Innocent now addressed himself to securing the election of his hardly obtained candidate, for the proudest crown in Christendom. He wrote to all the German princes severally, exhorting and commanding them to acknowledge as just and lawful the sentence he had pronounced upon Frederic; and to prove themselves faithful sons of the Church, by forthwith unanimously electing Henry, Landgrave of Thuringia, King. He sent the Legate all the money extorted from the different states of Europe, therewith, as should seem most expedient, either to purchase votes or to hire troops for Henry Raspe; he despatched a host of Friars to effect this latter object more cheaply, by preaching a crusade against Frederic and Conrad; he forbade the Crusade for the Holy Land to be preached, until Frederic’s rebellion against the Holy See should be crushed; and upon the strength of this postponement, he appropriated to Henry Raspe’s service, the funds that had been intrusted to him, for the defence of the Holy Land, and the maintenance of indigent pilgrims, willing to devote themselves to the same sacred duty, but without means of support.

Innocent’s words and bribes were naturally ineffective with princes, who, feeling themselves entitled to succeed in case of a vacancy, had declined accepting the crown which they deemed lawfully the sovereign’s, to whom they themselves had given it. No temporal prince attended the Electoral Diet, convoked by the Archbishop of Mainz, to meet, not at Mainz or Frankfort, probably through fear of the citizens’ loyalty, but at a somewhat insignificant place called Hochheim. There the Archbishops of Mainz, Treves, Cologne (who, having been one of the captured Fathers of the Council, had upon his release sworn undeviating fidelity to Frederic) and Bremen, and the Bishops of Metz, Spires, and Strasburg, (⁶²) assembling upon the day after Ascension-day, a.d. 1246, elected Henry Raspe. I n consequence of this exclusively ecclesiastic election, he was generally designated as the Pfaffenkönig or Parsons-King-

Henry Raspers first steps were to conclude an alliance with the Lombard League, and to raise troops. In July, he repaired to Frankfort, there to hold a Diet of his partisans, whose numbers the Pope’s various measures, open and secret for alluring, overawing, and terrifying opponents, had by this time considerably augmented. Conrad, now just eighteen, had meanwhile been assembling his father’s faithful friends and vassals, at whose head he appeared on the 5th of August, before Frankfort. Henry, well knowing that much from the success of intrigue amongst the supposed loyal ranks of his adversary, victory was assured to him, came forth to give battle. Some hard fighting there nevertheless was, and Conrad even flattered himself that the day was his, when two of the principal Swabian vassals of his family, the Earls of Wurtemberg and Groningen, whom Innocent had bought with 6000 marks and the promise of the duchy of Swabia to divide between themselves, fled with the 2000 men they had brought into the field. This seems to have been a large proportion of the Imperial army, but still Conrad fought on desperately, with the really loyal remainder, till a disorderly attack upon his flanks utterly disheartened the small body of troops hitherto standing by him. They fled, irresistibly carrying him along with them, and leaving their tents and baggage to the enemy.

The consequences of this defeat were more disastrous than, from the apparently small numbers engaged, might have been anticipated. It shook the constancy of many who till then had been loyal. The Margrave of Baden, son of Frederic’s zealous and well-recompensed friend, now declared for Henry Raspe, as did the previously steadfast-seeming Swabian prelates; and many inferior nobles accepted the imperial fiefs lavished by the Antiking upon all deserters from the Emperor. Conrad, a gallant youth, was, however, undismayed. He found a powerful and now staunch supporter in the Duke of Bavaria, with whose daughter Elizabeth, he in the autumn of this year, completed his long since contracted marriage. He found the customary vigorous and zealous adherents of the imperial cause in the German cities, which, whatever old Guelph chroniclers, biassed by faction, or modern historians, dazzled by the names of free Republics, and of Italy, may aver to the contrary, certainly esteemed the Swabian Emperors protectors of their rights and privileges. They treated the papal excommunication and interdict as invalid, almost everywhere compelling the clergy to celebrate all rites of religion as usual: and, in some places, where the churches were pertinaciously kept shut, the people built others, which they invited Ghibeline priests to serve. Frankfort declared for the Emperor, the moment the departure of the Anti-king and his army freed the citizens from constraint; the episcopal cities especially distinguished themselves by their loyalty; and, the Bishop of Ratisbon dying about this time, the people could hardly be prevailed upon to allow him decent obsequies. The peasantry, though often forced by their Lords to fight against the cause they favoured in their hearts, were in general as loyal as the citizens; and most especially were the Freemen so of the small Swiss Cantons and the Grisons.

Henry Raspe had quitted Frankfort to follow up his victory, and, marching southward, he laid siege to Reutlingen, in Swabia. The Emperor had fortified Reutlingen, besides granting it the ordinary rights and privileges of Free Imperial cities, and the inhabitants were grateful. Their answer to the Anti-king’s summons ran: “To us, the oath of allegiance that we swore to our Emperor is sacred, in spite of papal dispensations, and we have vowed the Blessed Virgin a church, if she will deliver us out of the hands of an usurping Parsons’-King”. Their courage corresponded to their loyalty; they repulsed every assault, and after a while Henry Raspe, abandoning all hopes of Reutlingen, raised the siege. He next attacked Ulm, where he encountered similar resistance; and here Conrad, at the head of a new and more uniformly faithful army, sought him. Another battle was fought, in which Henry Raspe was defeated and wounded. He retreated to Thuringia, and, on the way, a fall from his horse so inflamed his wound, as to cause his death upon the 17th of February, 1247.

The defeat and death of the Parsons’ King seem at once to have neutralized the effect of the Pope’s bribes, and of his partisans’ arts. Even the clergy, at least of the inferior class, began to murmur at the heavy demands upon their income, for no Church interest, but for the personal quarrel of its Head. The vacillating, amongst the lay princes were confirmed in their allegiance, and those, who felt that they had cause to fear the Emperor’s resentment, sought to expiate their offences, upon the persons of their ecclesiastical seducers. The degree, to which this species of easy and not unpleasant expiation, was carried, may be inferred from a ludicrous anecdote, with which history has enlivened, and some may think, degraded, her pages.

The Legate, terrified at what he saw of the form taken by this burst of reviving loyalty, had sheltered himself in a Minorite cloister; then, recollecting that the Pope’s Legate might naturally be sought amongst Friars devoted to the Papal See, he resolved, at all risks, to leave both cloister and town. The Father-Guardian, thankful to be rid of a guest, at that conjuncture, bringing danger to his hosts, conducted him secretly, at dusk, to the town gate; but, contrary to custom, it was shut, possibly, for the very purpose of preventing the Legate’s escape; and dejectedly was the Bishop of Ferrara returning to the asylum he judged insecure, when, upon his way, he espied a large dog creeping through a hole in the outer wall. Terror had, for the moment, extinguished arrogance, and eagerly did the bestower of Empire drop on his hands and knees to crawl after his canine guide. But the representative of the Supreme Pontiff being, as has been intimated, addicted to the indulgence of his appetite, was more corpulent than the hound, and stuck in the aperture, unable either to advance or to retreat. The case was desperate, for whatever might be the intentions of the magistracy, detection in an attempt to escape, so laughably foiled, must provoke ill-usage, if nothing worse, from the rude and loyal populace. In an emergency so critical, the Father-Guardian mastered the respect due to the representative of the Head of the Church, and, applying his foot to the nearest part of the episcopo-legaline person, fairly pushed him out through the inconveniently narrow aperture.

Throughout the whole of this vigorous papal attempt to dethrone the Emperor, the only mention, that occurs of his former steady supporters, the Teutonic Knights, records their positive refusal to join Innocent against him. Of actively aiding him, they seem not to have thought; being, apparently, with the exception of the small detachment still in Palestine, almost, if not wholly, absorbed in conquering and converting their allotted vassals. Although their Grand-Masters individually often interfered in behalf of the Emperor, the Order no longer appears as acting in the general politics of Germany.

Innocent, whilst his anti-king was struggling against Conrad, in Germany, and Frederic was slowly gaining ground in Italy, had not been inactive. He had employed the time in levying an army, of which he now gave the command to Cardinal Ottaviano Ubaldini, with orders to cross the Savoy Alps, into Lombardy; obtain an interview with Conte Amedeo, on his passage, and recall him, a task presumed easy, to Guelph principles. But Frederic had found means further to secure the fidelity of his Savoyard great vassal and son-in-law. He had asked the hand of the youthful dowager, Beatrice Marchioness of Saluzzo, Amedeo’s daughter by a former marriage, for his own half legitimate, or legitimated and favourite son, Manfred, then about fifteen years old, whom at his wedding, he created Marchese di Alessandria, promising the young couple a considerable Italian principality. But Manfred is too important a personage in the later scenes of this whole grand drama, to be thus slightly introduced.

Upon the degree and manner of his legitimacy considerable obscurity rests; but that Manfred’s position was very different from that of Frederic’s illegitimate offspring, is evident from his being the only child, not the issue of one of his three royally born Empresses, provided for, or even mentioned, in his will. In the same obscurity, some writers have further involved the identity of Manfred’s mother. But what appears to be most like the truth, upon both points, is, that he was Frederic’s son by Bianca di Lancia, daughter of Bonifazio Marchese di Lancia, and that she was united to her sovereign, in some form, analogous to what is now termed a morganatic marriage, performed, either by the Archbishop of Palermo himself, or under his sanction. The real question appears to be, when did the ceremony take place? Manfred was clearly born prior to his father’s third marriage with Isabella of England, and his mother was alive after Isabella’s death ; whence the probability seems to be, that his birth was illegitimate, but that the Emperor, when again a widower, for the sake of this, his darling child, wedded the mother, which, by the civil law, it will be remembered, legitimates previously-born children. But whenever, or however, wedded, the not-royally born Bianca never bore the title of Empress, and only Jamsilla places Manfred, in any respect, upon a legal equality with Conrad and Henry.

That Manfred,—thought so well named Frederic’s hand or mind, and described as resembling Frederic more than any of his sons, not excepting the admired Enzio—well deserved to have his condition thus raised, will be seen hereafter. Enough for the present, to mention that, at the early age of eleven, his extraordinary endowments began curiously to manifest themselves. Being present in one of the many actions fought ' by his brother Enzio, in their father’s cause, he chanced to be taken prisoner by Marchese Azzo, who, looking upon him as a valuable hostage, committed him, for safe custody, to Conte Berardo, a member of the house of Este. But, in lieu of extorting any concession from the Emperor, in ransom for a darling child, he lost a partisan by the precaution. The captive boy’s eloquence won his jailer, not only to release him, but to conduct him in person to his father, and thenceforward, attach himself loyally to the Emperor’s service.

Amedeo, who gladly assented to the Emperor’s proposals for their children, was now again appointed Imperial Vicar in Lombardy; and, by raising difficulty after difficulty touching the passage of the Pope s army through Savoy, he, temporarily at least, prevented its crossing the Alps. Frederic profited by the delay to enter Lombardy in arms; and the Lombards, discouraged by the failure of the expected auxiliaries, following upon the discomfiture of their German confederates, professed a desire to treat. Frederic avowed himself impatient to be freed from such troublesome, because incessantly renewed, hostilities, and therefore as ready as the Lombards for negotiation. At the same time, he announced that, so soon as peace was restored in Italy, he should lead his army through Savoy to Lyons; there, pacifically, though in force, vindicate himself to the Pope’s satisfaction from the absurd charges brought against him; and then proceed, with the same army, to quell the disorders still troubling Germany.

All these consequences of the proposed pacification of Lombardy were as distasteful to Innocent IV, as to a right-minded Supreme Pontiff they would have been gratifying; and he took measures for impeding Frederic’s appearance at Lyons. He endeavoured to alarm Lewis, in regard to the intentions with which the Emperor was leading an army into the immediate vicinity of the French frontier; and simultaneously to frighten away the Emperor, by proclaiming that the French monarch had raised an army for the purpose of both guarding an exiled Pope, at Lyons, and escorting him back to Rome. Yet so little confidence did he really feel, in the pious King’s thus vaunted devotion to his cause; so conscious was he that Lewis inly condemned his conduct towards the Emperor, more towards young Conrad (whose kingdom of Jerusalem he had now pronounced forfeited and transferred to Alicia’s son, Henry King of Cyprus), and most, perhaps, his postponing the recovery of the Holy City itself, to, at best, a mere papal quarrel; that he was even then secretly deprecating the approach of the French troops to Lyons, unless upon his own prayer for protection.

The Pope’s conduct in these respects, his treatment of the Emperor, and neglect of the Syro-Frank states, revolted all such Oriental ecclesiastics as were unbiassed by faction. The Catholicos of the Armenians addressed to Innocent an admonition to obey the precept of Him whose vicegerent he entitled himself, and forgive the Emperor, even if he had offended seventy times seven times. Of this admonition Innocent took no notice; but it might be as a show of counterpoise to his postponement of the interests of the Asiatic Christians to his own, that he, about this time, despatched Minorites to most of the Saracen Princes, to attempt converting them to Christianity. He had too much worldly knowledge to expect such conversions; but this the Syro-Franks would hardly discover; and at any rate he would hope to obtain through these missionaries, information relative to the actual condition of those princes, and of Palestine, by which to regulate, perhaps to justify, his measures.

Meanwhile, the Pope’s alarms were relieved by the difficulty of arranging the pacification of Lombardy. Both Guelphs and Ghibelines professed their desire for peace; and w ell they might, if the consequences of the incessant hostilities are truly described; when we are told that the labours of the husbandman, here neglected, there left to women, could nowhere be carried on without military protection; that bands of robbers desolated the country, carrying off captives, whom they tortured to extort exorbitant ransom; that in many places—so scanty was the remaining population—wolves boldly entered the cottages, and devoured infants in the cradle. Yet these sufferings could not induce reciprocal concessions, sufficient for the foundation of a stable peace. Hostilities continued; the Imperial troops still occupied great part of Lombardy; Enzio was besieging Brescia, and Frederic of Antioch, after baffling a Guelph attempt to surprise Florence, was ravaging the territories of Perugia. But the wheel of Fortune now turned in favour of Innocent and the Guelphs. This first appeared at Parma.

Innocent’s kinsmen, whom the loyal citizens of Parma had expelled, plotted the surprise of the city during the festivities, with which the Commander of the Imperial force, there quartered, celebrated his daughter’s marriage. They effected their entrance as proposed, and instantly attacked the Ghibelines. The Podesta and the Imperial General hastened to allay the tumult: when, in the very beginning of the affray, the former was slain and the latter dangerously wounded. The distraction and despondency of the troops, thus deprived of their leaders, and the hesitating of the bulk of the population, whether from the confusion of a surprise, the effects of the festivities, or sheer popular mutability, insured the success of the attempt. The Fieschi recovered their possessions,  gained the ascendancy, reinstalled the Bishop, and carried the election of a Guelph Podesta. Such a reverse could not be suffered to pass unavenged; and the Emperor, deferring all thoughts of peace, made the recovery of Parma his first object.

He at once led his own army against the offending city, and summoned his two illegitimate sons and other detached commanders, to join him with their divisions. So rapid had these movements been, that Parma was very inadequately victualled, and great hopes were entertained that famine would compel an early surrender. The League made vigorous exertions to retain the newly gained prize; but Enzio defeated a body of Lombards hastening to the relief of the city, and a speedy triumph appeared certain. These hopes were disappointed by Cardinal Montelonga, whose zeal, in Innocent’s eyes, appears to have fully atoned for a libertinism, (⁶⁷) far exceeding—in a Churchman!—that for which Frederic was so sternly condemned. This energetic partisan having managed to enter the town, by his passionate eloquence excited and maintained a determined spirit of resistance; whilst Cardinal Ubaldini hastened to supply his place in Lombardy, and prevent Guelph ardour from flagging at a crisis so momentous. He, a better politician than general, perhaps, when he despaired of forcing the passage of the Alps, had left his army to await fresh instructions from the Pope, or to disband ; and, making his own way nearly unaccompanied, reached his proper scene of action. Arriving there, he reenkindled the spirits of the League, depressed by the late defeat, collected another army sufficient to overpower the body of Imperialists stationed to oppose his progress at a bridge over the Po, and threw ample supplies into Parma. The prospect of surrender from famine was now evidently remote; but the Emperor marked his determination not to raise the siege, by building a town of wooden huts, in which to carry it on throughout the winter; and, to prove his confidence of success, he named this camp-town Vittoria. He seems at the same time to have dismissed his sons to their respective commands—another analogous indication.

Unfortunately these disappointments, joined to the implacability of the Pope, appear to have gradually exasperated the Emperor, provoking him to acts of a cruelty quite foreign to his character and habits. Something of this the regicide plot in Apulia, had produced, which again shows itself during the tedious siege of Parma; though whether even here he were the aggressor, or again only retaliated barbarity, as at Brescia, has been questioned. He ordered Parmesan prisoners to be executed, two every day, in sight of the walls, thus, by fear for the lives of their friends, to coerce the citizens into surrendering; and he is said to have increased the numbers for execution, sometimes, by ordering natives of Parma to be seized wherever found, even at the Modenese University sometimes by the addition of Mantuan, and other captive rebels, to the sons of the besieged city. Parma, either in the enthusiastic Guelphism inspired by the Cardinal’s eloquence, or in reliance upon the Emperor’s latent generosity, sent a deputation to implore him to spare the helpless prisoners, uselessly sacrificed, since not even to save their lives would the town surrender. The prayer was granted, and a stop put to the diurnal executions.

Thus passed the end of the year 1247. During the first few weeks of 1248 the Emperor was confined to his bed by a dangerous malady, and all active operations were suspended. When he began to recover he was medically advised to hasten his convalescence by refreshing himself with his favourite pastime, hawking; and, with this object, on the 18th of February, leaving Vittoria and the conduct of the blockade to his Grand-Judge, Taddeo da Suessa— talent in those days did not confine its action to one department—he repaired, well accompanied, to a spot some miles distant, adapted to the sport. Whereupon the army, seemingly with the permission of Taddeo, who relied upon the habitual inertness of the besieged—their resistance, however invincible, having hitherto been of a passive character—proceeded to celebrate the sovereign’s recovery with mirth and festivity.

The Emperor’s temporary absence and the imprudent revelry of the troops, were noticed by the watchman upon a tower of Parma, and no sooner were the facts known, than the fiery exhortations of the impetuous Cardinal Mon-telonga stirred up the citizens to risk what they had not before dreamt of, to wit, a sally upon the besiegers* The sally was accordingly made, and the besieged had actually penetrated into Vittoria, before they were discovered: Taddeo holding them in such indiscreet contempt, that when told they were assaulting the camp, he laughed as he observed: “So the mice have crept out of their holes at last.” He hurried forth, nevertheless, to remedy the evil consequences of negligence. But the mice, as he called them, were armed and in order of battle; his warriors unarmed, and immersed in the pleasures of the table, where not in the helplessness of ebriety. The assailants increased the confusion of surprise, by setting the wooden huts on fire. Taddeo collected, and as he best could, arrayed those who were in a state to defend themselves; but whilst issuing orders, encouraging his men, and fighting gallantly at their head, he fell severely wounded, and from that moment resistance became hopeless. The troops, without a leader, and bewildered by the double danger, were beaten, routed, slaughtered, before they well knew against what they had to defend themselves.

The first intimation Frederic received of the disaster was the sight of an immense column of smoke in the direction of his town-like camp. He instantly galloped back with his whole company and escort, at the utmost speed of their horses, but was too late to stem the torrent. The camp was both on fire and in the hands of the rebels, before he arrived. To rally the fugitives for immediately renewed action, he found impossible; and could only accompany the flight of the main body, gathering the scattered survivors together, rallying, ordering, exhorting, as they went along, so as to bring this wreck of an army, in some sort of decent form, to Cremona. There he halted, to reassemble and reorganize the dispersed bands. His loss amounted to 4,000 men killed or taken; but the heaviest part, one of the heaviest losses he had yet suffered, was that of Taddeo da Suessa, who, since the death of Hermann von Salza, had been his most confidential friend and counsellor; and deservedly so, notwithstanding the calamity now caused by the supercilious neglect of due caution, for which he himself paid dear. Taddeo had not been killed by the blow that struck him to the ground; but he was wounded beyond all power of exertion, and in that state left by the flying troops, who probably thought him dead. He therefore fell irrecoverably into the hands of the Guelphs, was dragged a prisoner into Parma, inhumanly mangled, and, it is averred, actually cut to pieces at the instigation of the leaders, lest his honied eloquence,  should win his captors back to loyalty.

The booty in arms, cattle, and baggage of all descriptions, made by the men of Parma, was immense; the spoils that most elated them, being the Imperial crown and seal, found in the Emperor’s tent. These prizes were, of course, carefully preserved amongst the city trophies. Of the ordinary plunder, each man was required to make over half his share to the public treasury; and, so enthusiastic was the zeal excited by the Cardinal, that this was done, it is said, fairly, and without murmur or dispute. During the siege, the citizens had consecrated a silver model of Parma to Our Lady, the Deliverer, whose protection and active aid they implored. And now, in gratitude for their deliverance, which they mainly attributed to her intervention, they placed in their Cathedral a picture of the Madonna, accompanied by St. John the Baptist and St. Hilarius, with an inscription, purporting, that the enemies of Parma fly, because the Blessed Virgin protects the city.

CHAPTER XV. FREDERIC II. [1248—1250.