§ 43. GREGORY IX. AND FREDERICK II. 189
Son of God as coequal with the Father and the Holy Spirit, begotten from the beginning of all worlds. Mohammed's body is suspended in the air, but his soul is given over to the torments of hell."
Gregory went further than words and offered to the count of Artois the imperial crown, which at the instance of his brother, Louis IX. of France, the count declined. The Ger man bishops espoused Frederick's cause. On the other hand, the mendicant friars proved true allies of the pope. The emperor drove the papal army behind the walls of Rome. In spite of enemies within the city, the aged pontiff went forth from the Lateran in solemn procession, supplicating deliverance and accompanied by all the clergy, carrying the heads of the Apostles Peter and Paul.1 When Frederick retreated, it seemed as if the city had been delivered by a miracle. However untenable -we may regard the assump tions of the Apostolic see, we cannot withhold admiration from the brave old pope.
Only one source of possible relief was left to Gregory, a council of the whole Church, and this he summoned to meet in Rome in 1241. Frederick was equal to the emergency, and with the aid of his son Enzio checkmated the pope by a manoeuvre which, serious as it was for Gregory, cannot fail to appeal to the sense of the ludicrous. The Genoese fleet conveying the prelates to Rome, most of them from France, Northern Italy, and Spain, was captured by Enzio, and the would-be councillors, numbering nearly one hundred and in cluding Cardinal Otto, a papal legate, were taken to Naples and held in prison.2 In his letter of condolence to the imprisoned dignitaries the pope represents them as awaiting their sentence from the new Pharaoh.3 Brilliant as was the
1 Breholles, V. 777 sqq.
2 M. Paris with his usual vivacity says, " They were heaped together like pigs."
3 Breholles, V. 1120-1138 ; G. C. Macaulay gives a lively account of the pro ceeding in art. Capture of a General Council, Engl. Hist. Rev., 1891, pp. 1-17.
190 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1216-1294.
coup de main, it was destined to return to trouble the inventor. And the indignity heaped by Frederick upon the prelates was at a later time made a chief charge against him.
Gregory died in the summer of 1241, at an age greater than the age of Leo XIII. at that pope's death. But he died, as it were, with his armor on and with his face turned towards his imperial antagonist, whose army at the time lay within a few hours of the city. He had fought one of the most strenuous conflicts of the Middle Ages. To the last moment his intrepid courage remained unabated. A few weeks before his death he wrote, in sublime confidence in the papal prerogative : " Ye faithful, have trust in God and hear his dispensations with patience. The ship of Peter will for a while be driven through storms and between rocks, but soon, and at a time unexpected, it will rise again above the foaming billows and sail on unharmed^ over the placid surface."
The Roman communion owes to Gregory IX. the collection of decretals which became a part of its statute book.1 He made the Inquisition a permanent institution and saw it en forced in the city of Rome. He accorded the honors of canonization to the founders of the mendicant orders, St. Francis of Assisi and Dominic of Spain.
§ 44. The First Council of Lyons and the Close of Frederick's Career. 1241-1250.
ADDITIONAL LITERATURE. — MAXSI, XXIII. 605 sqq. ; HEFELE, V. 105 sqq.— C. RODENUERG : Inn. IV. und das Konigreich Sicilien, Halle, 1892. — H. WEBER : Der Kampf zwischen Inn. IV. und Fried. II. Berlin, 1900. — P. ALDINGER : Die Neubesetzung der deutschen Bisthumer unter Papst Inn. IV., Leipzig, 1900. — J. MAULBACH : Die Kardinale und ihre Politik urn die Mitte des XIII. Jahrhunderts, 1243-1268, Bonn, 1902.
Gregory's successor, Coelestin IV., survived his election less than three weeks. A papal vacancy followed, lasting the unprecedented period of twenty months. The next pope, Innocent IV., a Genoese, was an expert in the canon
1 See section on The Canon Law.