blooming period of the Sicilian court.
Frederick's unorthodoxy proved no drawback to his intellectual
influence. More than any other man of mediaeval times he contributed,
if only as the memory of a mighty name, to the progress of civilised
humanity.

[1] Charles of Anjou gave this nickname to Manfred, who
carried on the Siculo-Norman tradition. Frederick, it may
here be mentioned, had transferred his Saracen subjects of
the vale of Mazara to Lucera in the Capitanate. He
employed them as trusty troops in his warfare with the
Popes and preaching friars. Nothing shows the confusion of
the century in matters ecclesiastical and religious more
curiously than that Frederick, who conducted a crusade and
freed the Holy Sepulchre, should not only have tolerated
the religion of Mussulmans, but also have armed them
against the Head of the Church. What we are apt to regard
as religious questions really belonged at that period to
the sphere of politics.

[2] It is curious to note that in this year 1215, the date
of Magna Charta, Frederick took the Cross at
Aix-la-Chapelle.

Let us take leave both of Frederick and of Palermo, that centre of
converging influences which was his cradle, in the cathedral where
he lies gathered to his fathers. This church, though its rich
sunbrowned yellow[1] reminds one of the tone of Spanish buildings,
is like nothing one has seen elsewhere. Here even more than at
Monreale the eye is struck with a fusion of styles. The western
towers are grouped into something like the clustered sheafs of the
Caen churches: the windows present Saracenic arches: the southern
porch is covered with foliated incrustations of a late and
decorative Gothic style: the exterior of the apse combines Arabic
inlaid patterns of black and yellow with the Greek honeysuckle: the
western door adds Norman dog-tooth and chevron to the Saracenic
billet. Nowhere is any one tradition firmly followed. The whole
wavers and yet is beautiful--like the immature eclecticism of the
culture which Frederick himself endeavoured to establish in his
southern kingdoms. Inside there is no such harmony of blended
voices: all the strange tongues, which speak together on the
outside, making up a music in which the far North, and ancient
Byzance, and the delicate East sound each a note, are hushed. The
frigid silence of the Palladian style reigns there--simple indeed
and dignified, but li