§ 43. GREGORY IX. AND FREDERICK II. 187
cessful by the battle of Cortenuova, 1237. But Gregory abated none of his opposition. " Priests are fathers and masters of kings and princes," he wrote, "and to them is given authority over men's bodies as well as over their souls." It was his policy to thwart at all hazards Frederick's designs upon upper Italy, which he Avanted to keep independent of Sicily as a protection to the papal state. The accession of the emperor's favorite son Enzio to the throne of Sardinia, through his marriage with the princess Adelasia, was a new cause of offence to Gregory.1 For Sardinia was regarded as a papal fief, and the pope had not been consulted in the arrangements leading to the marriage. And so for the fifth time, in 1239, Gregory pronounced upon the emperor the anathema.2 The sentence charged him with stirring up sedition against the Church in Rome from which Gregory had been forced to flee in the conflicts between the Ghibelline and Guelf parties, with seizing territory belonging to the Holy See, and with violence towards prelates and benefices.3
A conflict with the pen followed which has a unique place in the history of the papacy. Both parties made appeal to pub lic opinion, a thing which was novel up to that time. The pope compared * the emperor to the beast in the Book of Revela tion which urose out of the sea full of words of blasphemy and had the feet of a bear and the mouth of a lion, and like a leopard in its other parts, opens its mouth in blasphemies against God's name, his dwelling place, and the saints in heaven. This beast strives to grind everything to pieces with his claws and teeth of iron and to trample with his feet on the universal world." He accused Frederick of lies and
1 Potthast, p. 952 ; Huillard-Bre'holles, VI. 1, 136.
2 In view of these repeated fulminations it is no wonder that the papal legate, Albert of Bohemia, wrote from Bavaria that the clergy did not care a bean (/a&a) for the sentence of excommunication. Huillard-Bre'holles, V. 1032 ; Potthast, 908.
3 The document is given in full in M. Paris, Luard's ed., III. 553 sq.
4 Br^holles, V. 327-340 ; Paris, III. 590-608.
188 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1216-1294.
perjuries, and called him " the son of lies, heaping falsehood on falsehood, robber, blasphemer, a wolf in sheep's clothing, the dragon emitting waters of persecution from his mouth like a river." He made the famous declaration that " as the king of pestilence, Frederick had openly asserted that the world had been deceived by three impostors,1 — Jesus, Moses, and Mohammed, two of these having died in glory and Jesus hav ing been suspended on the cross. Moreover, he had denied the possibility of God's becoming incarnate of a virgin." 2
This extensive document is, no doubt, one of the most vehement personal fulminations which has ever proceeded from Rome. Epithets could go no further. It is a proof of the great influence of Frederick's personality and the grow ing spirit of democracy in the Italian cities that the emperor was not wholly shunned by all men and crushed under the dead weight of such fearful condemnations.
In his retort,3 not to be behind his antagonist in Scripture quotations, Frederick compared Gregory to the rider on the red horse who destroyed peace on the earth. As the pope had called him a beast, bestia, so he would call him a wild beast, belua, antichrist, a second Balaam, who used the pre rogative of blessing and cursing for money. He declared that, as God had placed the greater and lesser lights in the heavens, so he had placed the priesthood, sacerdotium, and the empire, imperium, on the earth. But the pope had sought to put the second light into eclipse by denying the purity of Frederick's faith and comparing him to the beast rising out of the sea. Indignantly denying the accusation of the three impostors, he declared his faith in the "only
1 The charge is made in an encyclical of Gregory sent forth between May 21 and July 1, 1239.
2 Iste rex pestilential a tribus barotoribus, ut ejus verbis utamur, scilicet Christo Jesu, Moyse et Mohameto totum mundum fuisse deceptum, et duobus eorum in gloria mortuis, ipsum Jesum in ligno suspensum manifeste propo ne ns, etc.
3 Bre"holles, V. 348 sqq.