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268 in the town. The Pope naturally was zealous on this side. He dreaded an united and strong Italy, which would control him. His only chance of occupying the most prominent place and exerting the greatest power in the Peninsula lay in fomenting disorder, in setting every princeling and every town by the ears. Accordingly, whilst posturing as champion of the liberties of the republics, he was actuated solely by self-interest, which lay in keeping all powers in Italy weak by periodical blood-letting. The Papacy was the great and persistent enemy to national unity. The party of independence was that of the Guelfs.

Frederick II. united the empire and the kingdom of the Two Sicilies under one sceptre. Master of the South, he sought to recover the lost prerogatives of the empire in Lombardy and Tuscany, and it is probable that he would have succeeded and consolidated Italy into one kingdom but for the bitter hostility of the Papacy, which carried on an implacable war of extermination against the house of Hohenstaufen. The struggle was for an united Italy, a strong Italy, a peaceful Italy, and this was precisely what the Popes would not endure to have. They dreaded the formation of a single kingdom in Italy, with, as a consequence, the presence there of a rival and predominant power. But this purpose of the Popes was not seen clearly at the time. Dante saw it; he knew that the future of Italy was involved in the contest, and he could not understand aloofness in the strife. He terms those who did not feel the pangs and ecstasies of partisanship in this mortal strife, "wretches who never lived," and he consigned them to wander homeless on the skirts of limbo, among the off-scourings of creation.