Page:A Short History of the World.djvu/289

 Recalcitrant Princes and Great Schism 269 possible to piece together something. of his court life in Sicily. He was luxurious in his way of living, and fond of beautiful things. He is described as licentious. But it is clear that he was a man of very effectual curiosity and inquiry. He gathered Jewish and Moslem as well as Christian philosophers at his court, and he did much to irrigate the Italian mind with Saracenic influences. Through him the Arabic numerals and algebra were introduced to Christian students, and among other philosophers at his court was Michael Scott, who trans- lated portions of Aristotle and the commentaries thereon of the great Arab philosopher Averroes (of Cordoba). In 1224 Frederick founded the University of Naples, and he enlarged and enriched the great medical school at Salerno University. He also founded a zoological garden. He left a book on hawking, which shows him to have been an acute observer of the habits of birds, and he was one of the first Italians to write Italian verse. Italian poetry was indeed born at his court. He has been called by an able writer, " the first of the moderns," and the phrase expresses aptly the unprejudiced detach- ment of his intellectual side. A still more striking intimation of the decay of the living and sus- taining forces of the papacy appeared when presently the Popes came into conflict with the growing power of the French King. During the lifetime of the Emperor Frederick II, Germany fell into disunion, and the French King began to play the role of guard, sup- porter, and rival to the Pope that had hitherto fallen to the Hohen- staufen emperors. A series of Popes pursued the policy of supporting the French monarchs. French princes were established in the king- dom of Sicily and Naples, with the support and approval of Rome, and the French Kings saw before them the possibility of restoring • and ruling the Empire of Charlemagne. When, however, the German interregnum after the death of Frederick II, the last of the Hohen- staufens, came to an end and Rudolf of Habsburg was elected first Habsburg Emperor (1273), the policy of Rome began to fluctuate between France and Germany, veering about with the sympathies of each successive pope. In the East in 1261 the Greeks recaptured Constantinople from the Latin emperors, and the founder of the new Greek dynasty, Michael Palasologus, Michael VIII, after some unreal tentatives of reconciliation with the Pope, broke away from the Roman communion altogether, and with that, and the fall of the Latin kingdoms in Asia, the eastward ascendancy of the Popes came to an end.