Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/768

 732 FREDERICK [EMPERORS. sail from Otranto on the 29th June. Meanwhile, by securing the favour of the Frangipani and the other Roman patricians, he procured the expulsion of Gregory from Rome ; but the subtle spiritual influence of the papal ban was not affected by this seeming victory, and tidings of his excommunication reaching the Holy Land almost simul taneously with his arrival, the Knights of the Temple and the Hospital refused to take part in the crusade. Frederick, however, by mere diplomatic tact succeeded in persuading the sultan of Egypt to agree to a treaty, by which the church obtained possession of Jerusalem and the holy places on granting to the Saracens, besides various other privileges, free access to Bethlehem; and on the 18th March 1229 he, without any religious ceremony, crowned himself with his own hands king of Jerusalem. Such a striking and unexpected success wrought almost imme diately throughout Europe a complete revolution of opinion in his favour ; and when shortly afterwards he succeeded in defeating the papal forces which had invaded his dominions, the pope deemed it expedient to come to terms, and released him from the ba:i of excommunication 28th August 1230. In the interval of peace which followed, Frederick occupied himself in forming for his Sicilian kingdom a code of laws, the main features of which were the superseding of irresponsible feudal and ecclesiastical jurisdictions by a uniform civil legislation administered under direct imperial control ; the toleration extended to Jews and Mahometans, and the severe enactments against schismatics ; the pro visions for the emancipation of the peasants ; the regula tions for the encouragement of commerce, which contain perhaps the first enunciation of the modern doctrine of free trade ; and the establishment of annual parliaments, consisting of barons, prelates, and representatives from the towns and cities. He also devoted much of his attention to the advancement of learning and of the arts and sciences. The university of Naples, founded in 1224, bat whose operations had been for some time suspended, he now restored and liberally endowed ; at the medical schools of Salerno he provided Arab, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew teachers for the students of these different nationalities ; and he caused the translation into Latin of the works of Aristotle and of other philosophers both Greek and Arabic. He himself was learned both in Mussulman arts and sciences and in Christian scholasticism and philo sophy ; he knew Latin, Greek, French, German, Arabic, and Hebrew. He had a great interest in architecture, and ho fostered the infancy of Italian sculpture and painting; he and his minister Peter de Vinea were among the first culti vators of Italian poetry ; he also devoted much attention to natural history, and besides forming large collections of rare and curious animals wrote a treatise on the art of falconry, which shows a minute acquaintance with the habits of birds. With the influences of Western civiliza tion there was conjoined at his castles on the Apulian shore an Oriental luxury and splendour ; and in the harem of the Christian emperor his accusers found a con venient corroboration of their insinuation regarding his secret enmity to the Christian faith. The short period of peaceful progress was broken in 1234 by the rebellion of Frederick s son Henry, who, secretly instigated by the pope, joined the Lombard league. The revolt was, however, suppressed on the arrival of the emperor in Germany in 1235, and Henry was sent as a prisoner to the castle of San Felice in Apulia. In the same year Frederick married Isabella, sister of Henry III. of England. Conrad, second son of the emperor, was chosen king by the German princes in January 1237 ; and Frederick, after t l ie disastrous defeat of the Lombards at Corteuuova, November 27th of this year, appointed, in October 1238, his natural son Enzio king of Sardinia, Alarmed at the success of the imperial arms, Gregory, in March 1239, renewed against the emperor the ban of excommunication ; but the latter advancing into the states of the church, cap tured Ravenna, Faenza, and Benevento ; and after gaining, through the help of Enzio, a brilliant victory over the Gen oese fleet, was Hearing Rome when Gregory died August 21, 1241. After the short pontificate of Celestine IV. and an interregnum of eighteen months, Cardinal Sinibald Fiesco, up to this time one of the emperor s chief friends, became pope as Innocent IV. in June 1243. At once negotiations were entered into for an arrangement between them ; but the papal demands were too humiliating to per mit of their acceptance ; and Innocent, suddenly making his escape to Lyons, not only renewed, July 17, 1245, the church s ban against the emperor, but declared his throne vacant. Henry Raspe of Thuringia, elected by the papal party king of the Romans in May 1246, gained a victory over Conrad at Frankfort on the 5th August, but, suffering a total defeat near Ulm, February 17, 1247, died shortly afterwards ; and between his successor William of Holland and Conrad the struggle was carried on with indecisive results. In this same year Peter de Vinea, the minister and most intimate friend of Frederick, was discovered plotting against his life ; on 18th February 1248 Frederick s army in Italy was surprised and utterly routed by a sally of the citizens of Parma; in May 1249 his son Enzio was defeated and captured by the Bolognese; and, although in 1250 various successes in the north of Italy and the prospect of new and powerful alliances seemed to promise him a speedy and complete triumph, his strength had been so worn out by his arduous struggle, and his spirit so broken by such a succession of disasters that he died somewhat suddenly on the 13th December, at his hunting lodge of Fiorentino (also called Firenzuola), near Lucera. The general contemporary opinion regarding Frederick II. is expressed in the words stupor mundi; and whatever amount either of approbation or censure may be bestowed upon his career, wonder and perplexity are the predominant sentiments which its contemplation even yet awakens. It was not merely that his mental endowments were excep tionally great, but that, owing to his mingled German and Italian blood, the various influences to which he was sub jected in his early years, the strange times in which he lived, and the events with which destiny had connected him, his character was exhibited in such multiform aspects and in such an individual and peculiar light that in history we look in vain for his parallel. As to the nature of his religious faith there are no data for arriving at a certain conclusion. The theory of M. Huillard-Breholles that he wished to unite with the functions of emperor those of a spiritual pontiff, and aspired to be the founder of a new religion, is a conjecture insufficiently supported by the isolated facts and statements and the general considerations on which it is made to rest. Indeed the character of Frederick seems to have been widely removed from that of a religious enthusiast ; and at every critical period of his life he was urged to daring and adventurous projects rather by external circumstances than by either the prompt ings of ambition or the consciousness of any divine com mission. On any theory his enactments in reference to religion are, however, somewhat enigmatical. His perse cution of heretics may not have been entirely due to a desire to vindicate his orthodoxy before his Christian subjects ; but although his ideas regarding freedom of conscience were either inconsistent or hampered in their action by a regard to expediency, his toleration of the Jews equally with the Mahometans prevents us ascrib ing his toleration of the latter either to secret sym pathy with that form of faith or wholly to political