CHAP. I.

MARKWALD IN SICILY.

25

the protectorate. An excommunication more full, if possible, more express, more maledictory, was hurled against the recreant German. Every one who supplied provisions, clothing, ships, or troops to Markwald fell under the same anathema. Any clerk who officiated in his presence incurred deprivation. Markwald retired to Salerno; a fleet from Ghibelline Pisa was ready to convey him to Sicily. He crossed the straits; received the submission of many cities, was welcomed by many noble families, by the whole Saracen population. Innocent pursued him with the strongest manifestoes. He addressed a letter to the counts, barons, citizens, and the whole people of Sicily. He reminded them of the atrocious cruelties perpetrated by the Emperor Henry and his German followers; announced the excommunication of Markwald, the absolution of all his adherents from their oaths of fidelity. "He is come. to Sicily with the pirate William the Fat to usurp the throne; to say of the infant Frederick, This is the heir, let us slay him, and take possession of his inheritance.' He is leagued with the Saracens; he is prepared to glut their throats with Christian blood, to abandon Christian wives to their lusts." Towards the Saracens, nevertheless, Innocent expresses himself with mildness; "if they remain faithful to the King, he will not merely maintain, he will augment their privileges." The Pope went further: he addressed a solemn admonition to the Saracens. "They knew by experience the gentleness of the Apostolic See, the barbarity of Markwald. They had been eye-witnesses of his cruelties, the drowning in the sea, the roasting of priests over slow fires, the flagellation of multitudes. He who was so cruel to his fellow Christians would be even more ruthless to strangers, to those of other rites and other creeds. He who could ungratefully and rebelliously rise against the son of his liege lord would little respect the rights of foreigners; all oaths to them would be despised by one who had broken all his oaths to the Roman See."s With still more singular incongruity, he assures the Saracens that he has sent as their protectors the Cardinal of St. Laurence in Lucina, the Archbishops of Naples and

Tarentum, as well as his own relatives John the Marshal and Otho of Palumbria Markwald, notwithstanding these denunciations and addresses, pursued his way and appeared before Palermo.

In Apulia, warlike cardinals, and even James the Marshal, the cousin of the Pope, though he showed considerable military skill as well as valour, were no antagonists against the disciplined and experienced Germans, Diephold, and Frederick Malati, who held Calabria. Innocent wanted a warrior of fame and generalship to lead his forces. France was the land to supply bold and chivalrous adventurers. Sybilla, the widow of Tancred of Sicily, dethroned by Henry, had made her escape from her prison in the Tyrol. She married her eldest daughter to Walter de Brienne, of a noble but impoverished house. Walter of Brienne came to Rome to demand the inheritance of his wife, the principality of Tarentum and the county of Lecce, which Henry had settled on the descendants of Tancred. Walter was the man whom Innocent needed. He was at once invested in the possession of Tarentum and Lecce; at the same time he was sworn to assert no claim to the kingdom, but to protect the rights of the infant Sovereign. Piety, justice and policy, equally demanded this security for the Pontiff, as guardian of Frederick; a security precarious enough from a powerful, probably an ambitious stranger. Walter returned to France to levy troops. Markwald, in the mean time, with his own forces and with the Saracens, besieged Palermo; the Papal troops, headed by the Archbishop of Naples, the Marshal and the Legate, came, the former directly by sea, to the aid of Walter the Chancellor, who had refused all the advances of Markwald. A battle took place, in which Markwald suffered a total defeat. Magded, the Emir of the Saracens, was slain. In the baggage of Markwald was found, or said to be found, a will with a golden seal, purporting to be that of the Emperor Henry. It commanded his wife and son to recognise all the Papal rights over Sicily; it bequeathed Sicily, in case of the death of his son, in the fullest terms to the Pope. It commanded the immediate restitution of the estates of the

t Epist. i. 489. Nov. 24, 1199.

СНАР. І.

WALTER OF TROJA CHANCELLOR.

27

Countess Matilda by the Empire to the Pope. If this will was made during the last illness of the Emperor (yet it contemplates the contingency of his wife dying before him), he might have been disposed either as leaving a helpless wife and an infant heir, to secure the protection of the Pope, and so the surrender of the Matildine territories may have been designed as a direct reward for the confirmation of his son in the Empire; or the whole may have been framed in a fit of death-bed penitence. The suspicious part was another clause, bequeathing the duchy of Ravenna, with Bertinoro and the march of Ancona, to Markwald; but even this, if the Duke died without heirs, was to revert to the Roman See.

June, 1201.

The appearance of Walter of Brienne at the head of a small but chosen band of knights; his commission by the Pope as the leader of the faithful,* his rapid successes, his defeat of Diephold before Capua, the retreat of the Germans into their fortresses, his peaceful occupation of Tarentum, Lecce, and great part of Apulia, alarmed, or gave pretence for alarm, to the great nobles of Sicily. The ambitious churchman Walter of Troja, the Chancellor, aspired to the vacant archbishopric of Palermo. Innocent had been obliged to consent to his taking possession of the temporalities of the See, though he withheld the pallium. The Chancellor had the strongest apprehensions of the progress of Walter of Brienne. A gradual approximation took place between the Chancellor Archbishop and Markwald. The Chancellor was to leave Markwald in undisputed possession of Apulia, Markwald the Chancellor in that of Sicily. The friendship was hollow and mistrustful. Each suspected and accused the other of designs on the Crown-Markwald for himself, Walter for his brother, Gentile Count of Manupelles. Both, however, were equally jealous of Walter of Brienne: Markwald as already more than his equal in the kingdom of Naples The Chancellor assumed loyal apprehension for the endangered rights of the infant Frederick, whom the Pope, as

"The will is in the Gesta, xxvii. It is of very doubtful authenticity. Could it have been forged by Markwald, to be produced if occasion required? or was

it from other hands?

* Domino protegente fideles ab infidelibus."-Gesta, c. xxx. y May 3, 1203.

he suspected, would betray. Innocent was compelled to justify himself in a long letter addressed to the young Frederick, whom he warned to mistrust all around him, and to place his sole reliance on the parental guardianship of the Pope. The Chancellor Walter of Troja was now in the kingdom of Naples, levying money for the service of the realm, which he is accused of having done in the most rapacious manner, not sparing the treasures, nor even the holy vessels of the churches. He might plead, perhaps, the tribute paid by the realm to the Pope. To the Papal legate, the Bishop of Porto, he professed unbounded submission, took the oath of allegiance, and received absolution. When, however, he was commanded not to oppose Walter of Brienne, against whom he was in almost armed confederacy with the Germans, he broke fiercely out, as if in indignant patriotism: "If St. Peter himself uttered such command, he would not obey; the fear of hell should not tempt him to be guilty of such treason; " and he is said to have blasphemed (such is the term) against the Pope himself. From the presence of the Legate he set out openly to join Diephold. A battle took place near Bari. Walter of Brienne, though embarrassed by the presence and the fears of the Legate, gained a complete victory many important prisoners, among them a brother of Diephold, were taken.

Sept. 1202.
Death of
Markwald.

But in Sicily as well as Naples the partisans of Walter of Troja, comprehending the greater part of the Norman and native nobles, were now in alliance with the Germans. Markwald entered Palermo, and became master of the person of the King. He died shortly after of an unsuccessful or unskilful operation for the stone. The palace and the person of the King were seized by a powerful Norman noble, William of Capperone. From him Walter the Chancellor, who still claimed to be Bishop of Troja, and, despite of the Pope, Archbishop of Palermo, endeavoured by a long course of intrigue to wrest away the precious charge. In the kingdom of Naples, the death of Walter of Brienne, who was surprised, taken, and who died of his wounds as a prisoner of Diephold, gave back

a

"The battle, the 11th of June, 1205.

CHAP. I.

FREDERICK II.

29

the ascendancy to the German party. The Pope was constrained to accept their precarious and doubtful submission; to admit them to reconciliation with the Church. Diephold became the most powerful subject, and more than a subject in the kingdom of Naples.

Thus grew up the young Frederick, the ward of the Pope, without that pious, or at least careful education' which might have taught him respect and gratitude to the Holy See; among Churchmen who conspired against or openly defied the head of the Church; taught from his earliest years by every party to mistrust the other; taught by the Sicilians to hate the Germans, by the Germans to despise the Sicilians; taught that in the Pope himself, his guardian, there was no faith or loyalty; that his guardian would have sacrificed him, had it been his interest, to the house of Tancred. All around him was intrigue, violence, conflict. Government was almost suspended throughout Sicily. The Saracens hardly acknowledging any allegiance to the throne, warred with impartiality against the Christians of both parties; yet neither had any repugnance to an alliance with the gallant Infidels against the opposing party. Such was the training of him who was in a short time to wear the Imperial crown, to wage the last strife of the house of Hohenstaufen with his mother, rather perhaps his step-mother, the Church.

b The Cardinal Cencio Savelli, after- first the nominal charge of his educawards the mild Honorius III., had at tion.