The pope was infuriated; he treated the story of his illness as an empty pretense, and, without waiting or asking for explanation, he launched the sentence of excommunication against the perjured outcast, Frederick of Swabia. This took place within six months from his elevation to the See, and from that day Frederick found but little rest in this world, till he found it in his grave. In vain did he send bishops to plead his cause, and witnesses to the reality of his sickness: the pope's only answer was, "You fraudulently pretended sickness, and returned to your palaces to enjoy the delights of leisure and luxury;" and he renewed the excommunication again and again, requiring all bishops to publish it.
But in place of Frederick being humbled, and brought before Gregory IX., as Henry IV. was brought before Gregory VII. at Canosa, he boldly denounces the whole system of popery. "Your predecessors," he wrote to Gregory, "have never ceased to encroach upon the rights of kings and princes; they have disposed of their lands and territories, and distributed them among the minions and favorites of their court; they have dared to absolve subjects from their oaths of allegiance; they have even introduced confusion into the administration of justice, by binding and loosing, and persisting, without regard to the laws of the land. Religion was the pretext for all those trespasses upon the civil government; but the real motive was a desire to subjugate governors and subjects alike to an intolerable tyranny—to extort money, and so long as that was to be got, to care little if the whole structure of society were shaken to its foundations." And many other things of a like nature did Frederick dare to say, which shows the weakened state of the papal power. At the same time he was a good Catholic king in many respects, enacting severe laws against the heretics; but he wanted the pope to keep his own place and rule the church, and leave him to rule the empire. He was willing that the pope should be the clerical, but he must be the lay, chief.
Frederick's great crime, in the mind of the fanatical pontiff, was his reluctance to go to the Holy Land. He had preferred the interests of his empire to the orders of the Holy See. This prudential calculation was his unpardonable sin. He did not see the sense of sacrificing men, money, and ships, without a reasonable prospect of success. He was resolved, however, to fulfill his vow and prove his sincerity as a soldier of the cross.
In the end of June, 1228, he again sailed from Brindisi. Much of the deadly animosity against the Mahometans which had animated the older Crusaders had passed away. Frederick was on friendly terms with the sultan; so that, instead of seeking by fire and sword the extermination of the followers of Mahomet, the Emperor proposed a peaceful treaty. This was agreed to by the generous Kamul, and a treaty was concluded on the 18th of February, 1229, by which Jerusalem was to be made over to the Christians, with the exception of the temple, which, although open to them, was to remain under the care of the Moslem. Nazareth, Bethlehem, Sidon, and other places, were to be given up. By this treaty the Crusaders had gained more than they had for many years ventured to expect as possible.
But this bloodless victory, gained by an excommunicated monarch, exasperated the hoary pontiff to frenzy. He denounced, hi terms of furious resentment, the unheard-of presumption of one under the ban of the church daring to set his unhallowed foot on the sacred soil of the Savior's passion and resurrection; and bewailed the pollution which the city and the holy places had contracted from the Emperor's presence. But God overruled this remarkable event, in His providence, to lay bare to all mankind the hollowness of Gregory's professed enthusiasm for the liberation of the Holy Land. His own papal and personal dignity were a thousand times dearer to him than the birth-place of Christ. He resorted to every device which his own inventive malice, and that of his advisers, could suggest to accomplish the failure of the expedition and the ruin of Frederick. His minorite friars were dispatched to the patriarch and the military orders of Jerusalem, to throw every impediment in the way, with the expressed intent that Frederick might find either a grave or a dungeon in Palestine. A plot was laid by some Templars for surprising Frederick on an expedition to bathe in the Jordan; but, the plot being discovered, the Templars were disappointed. The revengeful old man, however, had not yet done plotting. He collected a considerable force, and, headed by John of Brienne, invaded the Apulian dominions of the Emperor. Tidings of these movements brought Frederick with all speed from the East. The papal armies fled at his approach, and the whole country was rapidly recovered by the influence of his presence.
But the papal sword was now drawn—the sword of implacable strife and discord. During the course of a long reign, Frederick, the greatest of the Swabian house, "was excommunicated for not taking the cross, excommunicated for not setting out to the Holy Land, excommunicated for setting out, excommunicated in the Holy Land, excommunicated for returning, after having made an advantageous peace with the Mahometans," was deposed from his throne, and his subjects absolved from their oath of allegiance. But without attempting further to describe the military advantures of the empire, or to trace the faithless politics of the papacy, we will only add, that the wretched old pontiff died in his ninety-ninth year, in the midst of hostilities, and from a fit of wrathful agitation. He was succeeded by Innocent IV., who followed in the footsteps of Innocent III. and Gregory IX. The cause of Frederick gained nothing by the change of pontiffs. He lived till the year 1250, when, in the fifty-sixth year of his age and the twenty-seventh of his reign, he died in the arms of his son, Manfred, having confessed, and received absolution from the faithful archbishop of Palermo.
With the death of Frederick we might suppose that papal hostilities would have at least paused for a little; but it was far otherwise. The hatred that followed him to his grave, and far beyond it, pursued his sons, until it was extinguished in the blood of the last scion of his house, on the scaffold, at Naples. The war was carried on between what was called the Guelphic and the Ghibelline armies, or the papal and the imperial factions. Pope Clement IV. invited the cruel Count Charles of Anjou, the brother of Louis IX., to hasten to the help of the Guelphic army, with the promise of the crown of Sicily. "He accepted," says Greenwood, "the papal commission with the eagerness of an adventurer, and in the reckless spirit of a crusader. He was one of the most accomplished of the tyrants that figure in the world's history: cruelty, rapacity, lust, and corruption, wrought their perfect work under his command." With a large army, which had been raised for the rescue of the Holy Land, he entered Italy. Some of the bravest of the chivalry and gentry of France were in this "army of the cross." But in place of going to assist their brethren in Palestine against the Mahometans, the pope absolved them from their vow, promised them the forgiveness of sins and eternal blessedness, to turn their arms against their brethren of the house and followers of the late Emperor. This was papal zeal and honesty for the deliverance of the holy sepulcher.
Charles of Anjou being crowned king of Sicily, the pilgrims received a license to slay and plunder in the quarters pointed out by the pope; and under his direction they invaded the fairest portions of the Emperor's dominions. But he was in his grave, and the magic of his name was gone. His sons hastened to collect such adventurers as their finances enabled them to assemble; the contest for a time was doubtful, but the well-disciplined chivalry of France at length overcame the ill-trained bands of the young princes. Manfred fell in battle, Conrad was cut off suddenly by death, and the younger Conradin, with his youthful cousin, prince Frederick of Bavaria, were taken prisoners, and beheaded by Charles in the public square at Naples.
Christendom heard with a shudder the news of this unparalleled atrocity. For no other crime than fighting for his hereditary throne against the pope's pretender, Conradin, the last heir of the Swabian house, was executed as a felon and a rebel on a public scaffold. The pope was charged with participation in the murder of a son and heir of kings; he had put the sword into the tyrant's hands, and must stand before the tribunal of divine and human judgment, as stained with the blood of Conradin. In the end of the following month the detested pope followed his victim to the grave, beyond which it is not our province to go; but sure we are that the Judge of all the earth will do right, and that from the throne of divine righteousness he will hear the sentence of eternal justice, which admits of no succeeding change forever. The fire is everlasting, the worm never dies, the chain can never be broken, the walls can never be scaled, the gates can never be opened, the past can never be forgotten, the upbraidings of conscience can never be silenced—everything combines to fill the soul with the agonies of despair, and that forever and ever. Who would not desire, above all things, to be pardoned and saved through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, who died to save the chief of sinners? (Mark 9:44-5044Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. 45And if thy foot offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter halt into life, than having two feet to be cast into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched: 46Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. 47And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire: 48Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. 49For every one shall be salted with fire, and every sacrifice shall be salted with salt. 50Salt is good: but if the salt have lost his saltness, wherewith will ye season it? Have salt in yourselves, and have peace one with another. (Mark 9:44‑50).)