n
had retaken Jerusalem, A.D. 1187. Barbarossa was drowned in a river in
Pisidia. Richard of England was treacherously imprisoned; nor did the
pope interfere for this brave soldier of the Cross. [Sidenote: Birth of
Frederick II.] In the meantime, the Emperors of Germany had acquired
Sicily by marriage--an incident destined to be of no little importance
in the history of Europe; for, on the death of the Emperor Henry VI. at
Messina, his son Frederick, an infant not two years old, was left to be
brought up in that island. What the consequences were we shall soon see.

[Sidenote: Review of the preceding events.] If we review the events
related in this chapter, we find that the idolatry and immorality into
which Rome had fallen had become connected with material interests
sufficiently powerful to ensure their perpetuation; that converted
Germany insisted on a reform, and therefore made a moral attack on the
Italian system, attempting to carry it into effect by civil force. This
attack was, properly speaking, purely moral, the intellectual element
accompanying it being derived from Western or Arabian influences, as
will be shown in the next chapter; and, in its resistance to this, the
papacy was not only successful, but actually was able to retaliate,
overthrowing the Emperors of Germany, and being even on the point of
establishing a European autocracy, with the pope at its head. It was in
these events that the Reformation began, though circumstances intervened
to postpone its completion to the era of Luther. Henceforth we see more
and more plainly the attitude in which the papacy, through its material
interests, was compelled to stand, as resisting all intellectual
advancement. Our subject has therefore here to be left unfinished until
we shall have described the Mohammedan influences making pressures on
the West and the East.

CHAPTER II.

THE AGE OF FAITH IN THE WEST--(_Continued_).

THE WESTERN OR INTELLECTUAL ATTACK ON THE ITALIAN SYSTEM.

_The intellectual Condition of Christendom contrasted with that of
Arabian Spain._

_Diffusion of Arabian intellectual Influences through France and
Sicily.--Example of Saracen Science in Alhazen, and of Philosophy in
Algazzali.--Innocent III. prepares to combat these Influences.--Results
to Western Europe of the Sack of Constantinople by the Catholics._

_The spread of Mohammedan light Literature is followed by Heresy.--The
crushing of Heresy in the South of France by a