warm
sweater underneath his monkish garb), waited outside the gates of the
castle of Canossa. Then he was allowed to enter and was pardoned for
his sins. But the repentance did not last long. As soon as Henry
had returned to Germany, he behaved exactly as before. Again he was
excommunicated. For the second time a council of German bishops deposed
Gregory, but this time, when Henry crossed the Alps he was at the head
of a large army, besieged Rome and forced Gregory to retire to Salerno,
where he died in exile. This first violent outbreak decided nothing. As
soon as Henry was back in Germany, the struggle between Pope and Emperor
was continued.

The Hohenstaufen family which got hold of the Imperial German Throne
shortly afterwards, were even more independent than their predecessors.
Gregory had claimed that the Popes were superior to all kings because
they (the Popes) at the Day of Judgement would be responsible for the
behaviour of all the sheep of their flock, and in the eyes of God, a
king was one of that faithful herd.

Frederick of Hohenstaufen, commonly known as Barbarossa or Red Beard,
set up the counter-claim that the Empire had been bestowed upon his
predecessor "by God himself" and as the Empire included Italy and Rome,
he began a campaign which was to add these "lost provinces" to the
northern country. Barbarossa was accidentally drowned in Asia Minor
during the second Crusade, but his son Frederick II, a brilliant
young man who in his youth had been exposed to the civilisation of
the Mohammedans of Sicily, continued the war. The Popes accused him of
heresy. It is true that Frederick seems to have felt a deep and serious
contempt for the rough Christian world of the North, for the boorish
German Knights and the intriguing Italian priests. But he held his
tongue, went on a Crusade and took Jerusalem from the infidel and was
duly crowned as King of the Holy City. Even this act did not placate
the Popes. They deposed Frederick and gave his Italian possessions to
Charles of Anjou, the brother of that King Louis of France who became
famous as Saint Louis. This led to more warfare. Conrad V, the son
of Conrad IV, and the last of the Hohenstaufens, tried to regain the
kingdom, and was defeated and decapitated at Naples. But twenty years
later, the French who had made themselves thoroughly unpopular in Sicily
were all murdered during the so-called Sicilian Vespers, and so it went.

The quarrel between the Popes a