minister Pietro della Vigna was to take the place of Saint Peter. * He did not get so far as to
make this project public, but wrote about it to della Vigna. Suddenly, however, he became
convinced, rightly or wrongly, that Pietro was plotting against him; he blinded him, and
exhibited him publicly in a cage; Pietro, however, avoided further suffering by suicide.
Frederick, in spite of his abilities, could not have succeeded, because the antipapal forces that
existed in his time were pious and democratic, whereas his aim was something like a restoration
of the pagan Roman Empire. In culture he was enlightened, but politically he was retrograde.
His court was oriental; he had a harem with eunuchs. But it was in this court that Italian poetry
began; he himself had some merit as a poet. In his conflict with the papacy, he published
controversial statements as to the dangers of ecclesiastical absolutism, which would have been
applauded in the sixteenth century, but fell flat in his own day. The heretics, who should have
been his allies, appeared to him simply rebels, and to please the Pope he persecuted them. The
free cities, but for the Emperor, might have opposed the Pope; but so long as Frederick
demanded their submission they welcomed the Pope as an ally. Thus, although he was free from
the superstitions of his age, and in culture far above other contemporary rulers, his position as
Emperor compelled him to oppose all that was politically liberal. He failed inevitably, but of all
the failures in history he remains one of the most interesting.
The heretics, against whom Innocent III crusaded, and whom all rulers (including Frederick)
persecuted, deserve study, both in themselves and as giving a glimpse of popular feeling, of
which, otherwise, hardly a hint appears in the writings of the time.
The most interesting, and also the largest, of the heretical sects were the Cathari, who, in the
South of France, are better known as Albigenses. Their doctrines came from Asia by way of the
Balkans; they were widely held in Northern Italy, and in the South of France they were held by
the great majority, including nobles, who liked the excuse to seize Church lands. The cause of
this wide diffusion of heresy was partly disappointment at the failure of the Crusades, but
mainly moral disgust at the wealth and wickedness of the clergy.
* See the life of Frederick II, by Hermann Kantorowicz.