self to Elijah rooting out the prophets of Baal, and de- CHAP. XIII. nounced his foe as the Antichrist of the New Testament, since it was God's representative on earth whom he was resisting. The one scoffed at anathema, upbraided the avarice of the Church, and treated her soldiery, the friars, with a severity not seldom ferocious. The other solemnly deposed a rebellious and heretical prince, offered the imperial crown to Robert of France, to the heir of Denmark, to Hakon the Norse king, succeeded at last in raising up rivals in Henry of Thuringia and William of Holland. Frederick died in the midst of his strife, A.D. 1250, and his son Conrad IV (associated with him in the Empire since 1237) survived him only four years. Germany was by this time a prey to anarchy, for Conrad had been occupied with efforts to save Italy. Manfred, an illegitimate son of Frederick II, maintained the contest there till his defeat and death near Benevento in 1266; and with Conrad or Conradin, son of Conrad IV, a gallant boy of fifteen who had crossed the Alps to assert his rights to Sicily (which the Pope had bestowed on Charles of Anjou), the house of Hohenstaufen ended.

Though this long struggle was a continuation of that which began nearly two centuries before under Henry IV,

.

by his partizans but in his own letters Jesi, his birthplace, is referred to as Bethlehem, while Pier delle Vigne, his minister, is spoken of as the Peter of the new Church, Petrus in cuius petra fundatur imperialis ecclesia et Augustalis animus roboratur in coena cum discipulis' (Huillard Bréholles, ut supra, DXIII). This may be the origin of Dante's reference to Piero as holding 'both the keys of the heart of Frederick '(Inf. xiii. 58).

The wizard Michael the Scot, whose lean ghost Dante found in Malebolge (Inf. xx. 115), was astrologer to Frederick II and translated for him some works of Aristotle.

e Hakon, one of the greatest of the kings of Norway, and the one whose diplomacy succeeded in obtaining the submission of Iceland, refused, saying that he would fight against the enemies of the Church, but not against those of the Pope.

CHAP. XIII. yet in this latest phase it is not so much the Teutonic Emperor who is attacked as the Sicilian king, the unbeliever and friend of Mohammedans, the hereditary enemy of the Church, the assailant of Lombard independence, whose success must leave the Papacy defenceless. And as it was from the Sicilian kingdom that the strife had chiefly sprung, so was the possession of the Sicilian kingdom a source as much of weakness as of strength, for it distracted Frederick's forces and put him in the false position of a liegeman resisting his lawful suzerain. Truly, as the Greek proverb says, the gifts of foes are no gifts, and bring no profit with them. The Norman kings were more terrible in their death than in their life: they had sometimes baffled the Teutonic Emperor; their heritage destroyed him.

Conrad IV, 1250-1254.

A.D. 1268.

Italy lost to

With Frederick fell the Empire. From the ruin that overwhelmed the greatest of its houses it emerged, living indeed, and destined to a long life, but so shattered, crippled, and degraded, that it could never more be to Europe and to Germany what it once had been. In the last act of the tragedy were joined the enemy who had now blighted its strength and the rival who was destined to insult its weakness and at last blot out its name. The murder, after his defeat at Tagliacozzo, of Frederick's grandson Conradin — a hero whose youth and whose chivalry might have moved the pity of any other foe — was approved, if not suggested, by Pope Clement; it was wrought by the minions of Charles of Anjou.

The Lombard league had successfully resisted Frederthe Empire. ick's armies and the more dangerous Ghibeline nobles: their strong walls and swarming population made defeats in the open field hardly felt; and now that South Italy had passed away from a German line-first to an Angevin, afterwards to an Aragonese dynasty—it was plain

that the peninsula was irretrievably lost to the Emperors. CHAP. XIII. Why, however, should they not still be strong beyond the Alps? was their position worse than that of England when Normandy and Aquitaine no longer obeyed a Plantagenet? The force that had enabled them to rule so widely would be all the greater in a narrower sphere.

power in

So indeed it might once have been, but now it was Decline of too late. The German kingdom broke down beneath the imperial weight of the Roman Empire. To be universal sovereign Germany. Germany had sacrificed her own political unity and the vigour of her national monarchy. The necessity under which projects in Italy and disputes with the Pope laid each Emperor of purchasing by concessions the support of his own princes, the ease with which in his absence the magnates could usurp, the difficulty which the monarch returning found in resuming the privileges of his crown, the temptation to revolt and set up pretenders to the throne which the Holy See held out-these were the causes whose steady action laid the foundation of that territorial independence which rose into a stable fabric at the era of the Great Interregnum. Frederick II had by The Great two Pragmatic Sanctions, A.D. 1220 and 1232, formally Interregnum. granted rights, already beginning to be rooted in custom, which were wide enough to give the bishops and nobles practical sovereignty in their own towns and territories, except when the Emperor should be present; and thus his direct jurisdiction became restricted to his narrowed domain, and to the cities immediately dependent on the crown. With so much less to do, an Emperor became altogether a less necessary personage; and hence the seven magnates of the realm, now by law or custom virtually sole electors, were in no haste to fill up the place of Conrad IV, whom the supporters of his father Frederick had acknowledged. William of Holland was in the field,

Double election of Richard of England and Alfonso

of Castile.

CHAP. XIII. but resisted by the Swabian party: on his death, in 1256, a new election was called for, and at last set on foot. The archbishop of Cologne advised his brethren to choose some one rich enough to support the dignity, not strong enough to be feared by the electors: both requisites met in the Plantagenet Richard, earl of Cornwall, brother of the English Henry III. He received three, eventually four votes, came to Germany, and was crowned at Aachen. But three of the electors, finding that the sums he had paid to them were smaller than those received by others, seceded in disgust, and chose Alfonso X of Castile, who, shrewder than his competitor, continued to watch the stars at Toledo, enjoying the splendours of his title while troubling himself about it no further than to issue now and then State of a proclamation.g Meantime the condition of Germany Germany was frightful. The new Didius Julianus, the chosen of during the Interregnum. princes baser than the praetorians whom they copied, had neither the character nor the outward power and resources to make himself respected. Every floodgate of anarchy was opened: prelates and barons extended their domains by war: robber-knights infested the highways and the rivers: the misery of the weak, the tyranny and violence of the strong, were such as had not been seen for centuries. Things were worse than they had ever been under the Saxon and Franconian Emperors; for the petty nobles who had then been in some measure controlled by their dukes, were now, after the extinction of several of the great houses, left without any feudal superior. Only in the cities were shelter or peace to be found. Those of the Rhine had already leagued themselves for mutual

f Surnamed, from his scientific tastes, 'the Wise.'

The Interregnum is by some reckoned as the two years before Richard's election; by others as the whole period from the death of Frederick II or that of his son Conrad IV till Rudolf's accession in 1273.

A.D. 1271.

defence, and maintained a struggle in the interests of CHAP. XIII. commerce and order against universal brigandage. At Death of last, when Richard had been some time dead, it was felt Richard, that such things could not go on for ever: with no public law, and no courts of justice, an Emperor, the embodiment of legal government, was the only resource. The Pope himself, having now sufficiently improved the weakness of his enemy, found the disorganization of Germany beginning to tell upon his revenues, and threatened that if the electors did not appoint an Emperor, he would. Thus Rudolph of urged, they chose, in A.D. 1273, Rudolf, count of Haps- Hapsburg, burg, founder of the house of Austria."

1273-1292.

of the Em

pire.

From this point there begins a new era. We have seen Change in the Roman Empire revived in A.D. 800, by a prince whose the position vast dominions gave ground to his claim of universal monarchy; again erected in A.D. 962, on the narrower but firmer basis of the German kingdom. We have seen Otto the Great and his successors during the three following centuries, a line of monarchs of unrivalled vigour and abilities, strain every nerve to make good the pretensions of their office against the rebels in Italy and the ecclesi

h'Electores imperii ad indictum et mandatum domini papae apud Franchenfurte super electione convenientes, comitem Rudolfum . . . in regem elegerunt.' Ann. S. Rudb. Salisb. ad ann. (Pertz, M. G. H. ix). Rudolf, though only a count, had considerable possessions, was a man of force, and had won fame and popularity. He had been faithful to Frederick II and Conrad IV, and had accompanied Conradin into Italy. Hapsburg (Habichtsburg, 'Hawk's Burgh') is a castle (built about A.D. 1020) in the Aargau on the banks of the Aar, and near the line of railway from Olten to Zürich, from a point on which a glimpse of its ruins may be had. Within the ancient walls of Vindonissa,' says Gibbon, the castle of Hapsburg, the abbey of Königsfelden, and the town of Brugg have successively arisen. The philosophic traveller may compare the monuments of Roman conquests, of feudal or Austrian tyranny, of monkish superstition, and of industrious freedom. If he be truly a philosopher, he will applaud the merit and happiness of his own