§ 43. GREGORY IX. AND FREDERICK II. 185
floor to indicate the emperor's going out into darkness. Gregory justified his action in a letter to the Christian princes, and spoke of Frederick as " one whom the Holy See had educated with much care, suckled at its breast, carried on its shoulders, and whom it has frequently rescued from the hands of those seeking his life, whom it has brought up to perfect manhood at much trouble and expense, exalted to the honors of kingly dignity, and finally advanced to the sum mit of the imperial station, trusting to have him as a wand of defence and the staff of our old age." He declared the plea of the epidemic a frivolous pretence and charged Frederick with evading his promises, casting aside all fear of God, having no respect for Jesus Christ. Heedless of the censures of the Church, and enticed away to the usual pleas ures of his kingdom, he had abandoned the Christian army and left the Holy Land exposed to the infidels.1
In a vigorous counter appeal to Christendom, Frederick made a bold protest against the unbearable assumption of the papacy, and pointed to the case of John of England as a warning to princes of what they might expect. " She who calls herself my mother," he wrote, " treats me like a step mother." He denounced the secularization of the Church, and called upon the bishops and clergy to cultivate the selfdenial of the Apostles.
In 1228 the excommunication was repeated and places put under the interdict where the emperor might be. Gregory was not without his own troubles at Rome, from which he was compelled to flee and seek refuge at Perugia.
The same year, as if to show his independence of papal dictation and at the same time the sincerity of his crusading purpose, the emperor actually started upon a crusade, usually called the Fifth Crusade. On being informed of the expedi tion, the pope excommunicated him for the third time and inhibited the patriarch of Jerusalem and the Military Orders 1 Luard's ed., M. Paris, III. 145 sq. See Registres, p. 107.
18G THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1210-1294.
from giving him aid. The expedition was successful in spite of the papal malediction, and entering Jerusalem Frederick crowned himself king in the church of the Holy Sepulchre. Thus we have the singular spectacle of the chief monarch of Christendom conducting a crusade in fulfilment of a vow to two popes while resting under the solemn ban of a third. Yea, the second crusader who entered the Holy City as a conqueror, and the last one to do so, was at the time not only resting under a triple ban, but was excommunicated a fourth time on his return from his expedition to Europe. He was excommunicated for not going, he was excommunicated for going, and he was excommunicated on coming back, though it was not in disgrace but in triumph.
The emperor's troops bearing the cross were met on their return to Europe by the papal army whose banners were in scribed with the keys. Frederick's army was victorious. Diplomacy, however, prevailed, and emperor and pope dined together at Anagni (Sept. 1, 1230) and arranged a treaty.
The truce lasted four years, Gregory in the meantime composing, with the emperor's help, his difficulties with the municipality of Rome. Again he addressed Frederick as " his beloved son in Christ." But formal terms of endear ment did not prevent the renewal of the conflict, this time over Frederick's resolution to force his authority upon the Lombard cities. This struggle engaged him in war with the papacy from this time forward to his death, 1235-1250. After crushing the rebellion of his son Henry in the North, and seeing his second son Conrad crowned, the emperor hastened south to subdue Lombardy.1 " Italy," he wrote in answer to the pope's protests, 1236, " Italy is my heritage, as all the world well knows." His arms seemed to be completely suc-
1 Henry died in an Italian prison. Conrad, whose mother was lolanthe, was nine years old at the time of his coronation. In 1235 Frederick married for the third time Isabella, sister of Henry III. of England. This marriage explains Frederick's repeated appeals to the clergy and people of F.ngland.