Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/517

 INNOCENT III AND THE STATES OF EUROPE 467 he also had his setbacks and failures. And his attempt to bring all Christendom under the pope as tern- Summary of poral overlord as well as spiritual head was not I^Saf S destined to be carried to triumphant comple- activity tion by his- successors. They were to have to struggle to maintain their political independence in Italy, and were to be absorbed in a desperate conflict with Frederick II, who had seemed so lamblike in his submission to Innocent. From 1 2 12 to 1220 Frederick was in Germany; he then returned to Italy and was crowned emperor by the pope at Rome; thereafter he made but two brief visits Earl to Germany and concerned himself chiefly with reign of Italian affairs. This was the fundamental cause of his strife with the Papacy. Before Frederick left Ger- many the princes there chose his young son Henry as King of Germany, and the pope was persuaded to permit Fred- erick to remain King of Sicily. In return Frederick promised to start on his crusade before the following August and issued various laws against heresy and in favor of the Church. But he found much disorder to suppress in south- ern Italy, and in Sicily it was necessary to crush the rebel- lious Saracens. To this end he secured another postpone- ment of his crusading vow, and it was only after five years of absorption in the affairs of his southern kingdom that he once again promised to set sail for the Holy Land by August, 1227, or become automatically excommunicate. He had already in 1222 married the heiress of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Frederick had already made it pretty clear that he was no friend of the communes. In Germany he had granted powers to the rulers^o^e ccles iastical sta tes at Frederick 1 1 the expense of the rising towns, and in his 1^1^ southern kingdom he annulled the trading privi- cities leges and monopolies of the Italian and Provencal ports like Marseilles, Genoa, and Pisa, which had hitherto en- joyed freedom from tolls and customs and had practically held the chief harbors of Sicily as their own trading stations and colonies. He intended to develop a merchant marine