inary one, and amply
worthy our attention.

The young monarch had grown up in Sicily, of which charming island he
became guardian after the death of his mother, Constanza. He was crowned
at Aix-la-Chapelle, having defeated his rival, Otho IV.; but spent the
greater part of his life in the south, holding his pleasure-loving court
at Naples and Palermo, where he surrounded himself with all the
refinements of life then possessed by the Saracens, but of which the
Christians of Europe were lamentably deficient.

It was in 1220 that Frederick returned from Germany to Italy, leaving
his northern kingdom in the hands of the Archbishop of Cologne, as
regent. At Rome he received the imperial crown from the hands of the
pope, and, his first wife dying, married Yolinda de Lusignan, daughter
of John, ex-king of Jerusalem, in right of whom he claimed the kingdom
of the East.

Shortly afterwards a new pope came to the papal chair, the gloomy
Gregory IX., whose first act was to order a crusade, which he desired
the emperor to lead. Despite the fact that he had married the heiress of
Jerusalem, Frederick was very reluctant to seek an enforcement of his
claim upon the holy city. He had pledged himself when crowned at
Aix-la-Chapelle, and afterwards on his coronation at Rome, to undertake
a crusade, but Honorius III., the pope at that time, readily granted him
delay. Such was not the case with Gregory, who sternly insisted on an
immediate compliance with his pledge, and whose rigid sense of decorum
was scandalized by the frivolities of the emperor, no less than was his
religious austerity by Frederick's open intercourse with the Sicilian
Saracens.

The old contest between emperor and pope threatened to be opened again
with all its former virulence. It was deferred for a time by Frederick,
who, after exhausting all excuses for delay, at length yielded to the
exhortations of the pope and set sail for the Holy Land. The crusade
thus entered upon proved, however, to be simply a farce. In three days
the fleet returned, Frederick pleading illness as his excuse, and the
whole expedition came to an end.

Gregory was no longer to be trifled with. He declared that the illness
was but a pretext, that Frederick had openly broken his word to the
church, and at once proceeded to launch upon the emperor the thunders of
the papacy, in a bull of excommunication.

Frederick treated this fulmination with contempt, and appealed from the
pope to Chris