He was "Lord of the world," absolute master of the lives and property of all his subjects—that is, of all men; the sole fountain of legislation; the embodiment of right and justice. These doctrines, which the great Bolognese jurists, Bulgarus, Martinus, Hugolinus, and others who constantly surrounded Frederic, taught and applied, as matter of course, to a Teutonic, a feudal king, were by the rest of the world not denied, were accepted in fervent faith by his German and Italian partisans. "To the emperor belongs the protection of the whole world," says Bishop Otto of Freysing. "The emperor is a living law upon earth." To Frederic, at Roncaglia, the Archbishop of Milan speaks for the assembled magnates of Lombardy: "Do and ordain whatsoever thou wilt, thy will is law; as it is written: 'Quicquid principi placuit legis habet vigorem, cum populus ei et in eum omne suum imperium et potestatem concesserit.'" The Hohenstaufen himself was not slow to accept these magnificent ascriptions of dignity, and though modestly professing his wish to govern according to law, rather than override the law, was doubtless roused by them to a more vehement assertion of a prerogative so hallowed by age and by what seemed a Divine ordinance.

That assertion was more loudly called for in Italy. The emperors might appear to consider it a conquered country without privileges to be respected, for they did not summon its princes to the German diets, and overawed its own assemblies at Pavia or Roncaglia by the Transalpine host that followed them. Its crown, too, was theirs whenever they crossed the Alps to claim it, while the elections on the banks of the Rhine might be adorned, but could not be influenced, by the presence of barons from the southern kingdom. In practice, however, the imperial power stood lower in Italy than in Germany, for it had been from the first intermittent, depending on the personal vigor and present armed support of each invader. The theoretic sovereignty of the emperor-king was in nowise disputed: in the cities toll and tax were of right his; he could issue edicts at the Diet, and require the tenants-in-chief to appear with their vassals. But the revival of a control never exercised since Henry IV.'s time was felt

as an intolerable hardship by the great Lombard cities, proud of riches and population equal to that of the duchies of Germany, or the kingdoms of the North, and accustomed for more than a century to a turbulent independence.

For republicanism and popular freedom Frederic had little sympathy. At Rome, the fervent Arnold of Brescia had repeated, but with far different thoughts and hopes, the part of Crescentius. The city had thrown off the yoke of its bishop, and a commonwealth under consuls and senate professed to emulate the spirit while it renewed the forms of the primitive republic. Its leaders had written to Conrad III., asking him to help them to restore the empire to its position under Constantine and Justinian; but the German, warned by St. Bernard, had preferred the friendship of the pope. Filled with a vain conceit of their own importance, they repeated their offers to Frederic, when he sought the crown from Hadrian the Fourth. A deputation, after dwelling in high-flown language on the dignity of the Roman people, and their kindness in bestowing the sceptre on him, a Swabian and a stranger, proceeded in a manner hardly consistent, to demand a largess ere he should enter the city. Frederic's anger did not hear them to the end: "Is this your Roman wisdom? Who are ye that usurp the name of Roman dignities? Your honors and your authority are yours no longer; with us are consuls, senate, soldiers. It was not you who chose us, but Charles and Otto that rescued you from the Greek and the Lombard, and conquered by their own might the imperial crown. That Frankish might is still the same: wrench, if you can, the club from Hercules. It is not for the people to give laws to the prince, but to obey his command." This was Frederic's version of the "Translation of the Empire."

He who had been so stern to his own capital was not likely to deal more gently with the rebels of Milan and Tortona. In the contest by which Frederic is chiefly known to history, he is commonly painted as the foreign tyrant, the forerunner of the Austrian oppressor, crushing under the hoofs of his cavalry the home of freedom and industry. Such a view is unjust to a great man and his cause. To the despot

liberty is always license; yet Frederic was the advocate of admitted claims; the aggressions of Milan threatened her neighbors; the refusal, where no actual oppression was alleged, to admit his officers and allow his regalian rights, seemed a wanton breach of oaths and engagements, treason against God no less than himself. Nevertheless our sympathy must go with the cities, in whose victory we recognize the triumph of freedom and civilization.

As the emperor's antagonist, the pope was their natural ally: he blessed their arms, and called on the barons of Romagna and Tuscany for aid; he made "The Church" ere long their watchword, and helped them to conclude their league of mutual support, by means whereof the party of the Italian Guelfs was formed. Another cry, too, began to be heard, hardly less inspiriting than the last, the cry of freedom and municipal self-government-freedom little understood and terribly abused-self-government which the cities who claimed it for themselves refused to their subject allies, yet both of them, through their divine power of stimulating effort and quickening sympathy, as much nobler than the harsh and sterile system of a feudal monarchy as the citizen of republican Athens rose above the slavish Asiatic or the brutal Macedonian.-J. BRYCE.

THE Emperor Frederic II. was one of the most famous crusaders, but is still more noted for his wars with successive popes. By his extraordinary natural gifts and his remarkable accomplishments he obtained the surname of the Wonder of the World.

He was born in 1194, being the son of the Emperor Henry VI., by Constance, of Sicily. While still in his cradle he was created King of the Romans, but the premature death of his father prevented his immediate succession. In the dispute

which ensued Pope Innocent III. claimed the right to decide between the rival claimants, and gave the preference to Otho IV. Frederic, trained by his mother, became extraordinarily learned for the age, having acquired the Greek, Latin, German, French and Saracenic languages. When the Emperor Otho was excommunicated by the pope, for nonfulfillment of his pledges, young Frederic, by a partial elecAfter some tion, was declared emperor in December, 1210. years of contest he came into peaceable possession of the Imperial throne by the retreat and subsequent death of Otho. After being crowned at Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1215, proceeded to Rome, to receive, according to custom, the At his coronacrown from the hands of Pope Honorius III.

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tion he swore to defend the possessions of the Holy See, and also to cross over into Asia with an army of crusaders at the requisition of the pope.

At once marching into Naples, where the brothers of the late Pope Innocent had excited a revolt, Frederic reduced the country to his obedience. Then, carrying his troops into Sicily, he obliged the rebellious Saracens in that island to surrender, and transported them to the continent. The papal claims of sovereignty over the kingdom of Naples soon involved Frederic in a dispute with the court of Rome, which brought upon him ecclesiastical censures. The difference, however, was accommodated; and the emperor, as an earnest of his sincere intentions of going in person to the Holy Land, according to promise, engaged, upon the death of his wife Constance, to marry the daughter of John de Brienne, king of Jerusalem. A renewal of the confederacy of the Lombard towns against the imperial authority occupied him some time, He held an assembly at Cremona in 1226, and marched to Milan, but was not able to obtain admission. A treaty in 1227, mediated by the pope, produced a temporary cessation of these disturbances.

Gregory IX., who now succeeded to the papacy, urged Frederic with so much importunity to undertake his crusade that at length he set sail from Brundusium (Brindisi), but through real or pretended illness put back in a few days. The pope was so much incensed at this proceeding that he thundered forth a sentence of excommunication against the emperor, who, in revenge, ravaged the lands of the church and persecuted all ecclesiastics who adhered to the papal cause. He also incited the Frangipani and other Roman nobility to commit hostilities against Gregory, who was at length obliged to seek refuge in Perugia. The conflicts of the parties of the Guelphs and Ghibellines, which had lain dorinant from the time of Conrad III., revived with great animosity in the Italian towns. In 1228 Frederic embarked in earnest for the Holy Land, leaving the Duke of Spoleto as his lieutenant in Italy. On the pope's refusal to come to an agreement, his territories were ravaged by an army of Germans and Saracens. Frederic's vigor as a soldier, and still