offered to convict
the pope himself of negotiations with the infidels; but his antagonist,
conveniently impressed with a sudden horror of shedding blood, gave way,
and peace between the parties was made. It lasted nearly nine years.

[Sidenote: His political institutions.] In this period, the intellectual
greatness of Frederick, and the tendencies of the influences by which
he was enveloped, were strikingly manifested. In advance of his age,
he devoted himself to the political improvement of Sicily. He
instituted representative parliaments; enacted a system of wise
laws; asserted the principle of equal rights and equal burdens,
and the supremacy of the law over all, even the nobles and the
Church. He provided for the toleration of all professions, Jewish
and Mohammedan, as well as Christian; emancipated all the serfs
of his domains; instituted cheap justice for the poor; forbade
private war; regulated commerce--prophetically laying down some
of those great principles, which only in our own time have been
finally received as true; established markets and fairs; collected
large libraries; caused to be translated such works as those of
Aristotle and Ptolemy; built menageries for natural history; founded
in Naples a great university; patronized the medical college at
Salernum; made provisions for the education of promising but indigent
youths. All over the land splendid architectural triumphs were created.
Under him the Italian language first rose above a patois. Sculpture,
painting, and music were patronized. His chancellor is said to have
been the author of the oldest sonnet.

[Sidenote: They are denounced.] In the eye of Rome all this was an
abomination. Were human laws to take the precedence of the law of God?
Were the clergy to be degraded to a level with the laity? Were the Jew
and the Mohammedan to be permitted their infamous rites? Was this
new-born product of the insolence of human intellect--this so-called
science--to be brought into competition with theology, the
heaven-descended? Frederick and his parliaments, his laws and
universities, his libraries, his statues, his pictures and sonnets, were
denounced. Through all, the ever-watchful eye of the Church discerned
the Jew and the Saracen, and held them up to the abhorrence of Europe.
But Gregory was not unwilling to show what could be done by himself in
the same direction. He caused a compilation of the Decretals to be
issued, intrusting the work to one Raymond