moral superiority, in the most brilliant manner.

Although, in the fight around Ptolemais, the superiority was doubtless
on Saladin's side, there was a moment in which Europe threatened to
oppose to the mighty Sultan an antagonist as great as himself. In May,
1189, the emperor Frederick IX marched out of Ratisbon with his army
for Syria. He had already ruled thirty-seven years over Germany and
Italy, and his life had been one of war and labor, of small results,
but growing fame. He was born a ruler in the highest sense of the
word; he possessed all the attributes of power; bold yet cautious,
courageous and enduring, energetic and methodical, he towered proudly
above all who surrounded him, and had the highest conception of his
princely calling. But his ideas were beyond his time, and while he
tried to open the way for a distant future, he was made to feel the
penalty of running counter to the inclination of the present
generation. It seemed to him unbearable that the Emperor, who was
extolled by all the world as the defender of the right and the
fountain-head of law, should be forced to bow before unruly vassals or
unlimited ecclesiastical power. He had, chiefly from the study of the
Roman law, conceived the idea of a state complete within itself, and
strong in the name of the common weal, a complete contrast to the
existing condition of Europe, where all the monarchies were breaking
up, and the crowned priest reigned supreme over a crowd of petty
princes.

Under these circumstances he appeared foreshadowing modern thoughts
deep in the Middle Ages, like a fresh mountain breeze, dispersing the
incense-laden atmosphere of the time. This discrepancy caused the
greatness and the misfortune of the mighty Emperor. The current of his
time set full against him. When, as the representative of the State,
he enforced obedience to the law, he appeared to some an impious
offender against the Holy Church; to others, a tyrant trampling on the
general freedom; and while conquering in a hundred fights, he was
driven from one position after another by the force of opinion. But so
commanding was the energy, so powerful the earnestness, and so
inexhaustible the resources of his nature that he was as terrible to
his foes on the last day as on the first, passionless and pitiless,
never distorted by cruelty, and never melted by pity, an iron defender
of his imperial rights.

We can only guess at the reasons which may have induced a sovere