might doubtless well
think that what he had once asserted had at last become true: "We are no
mere mortal man; we have the place of God upon earth." [Sidenote: The
triumph at his death.] In his address to the clergy of Sicily he
exclaimed, "Let the heavens rejoice and let the earth be glad; for the
lightning and tempest wherewith God Almighty has so long menaced your
heads have been changed by the death of this man into refreshing zephyrs
and fertilizing dews." This is that superhuman vengeance which hesitates
not to strike the corpse of a man. Rome never forgives him who has told
her of her impostures face to face; she never forgives him who has
touched her goods.

[Sidenote: Power of the Church at this moment.] The Saracenic influences
had thus found an expression in the South of France and in Sicily,
involving many classes of society, from the Poor Men of Lyons to the
Emperor of Germany; but in both places they were overcome by the
admirable organization and unscrupulous vigour of the Church. She
handled her weapons with singular dexterity, and contrived to extract
victory out of humiliation and defeat. As always since the days of
Constantine, she had partisans in every city, in every village, in every
family. And now it might have appeared that the blow she had thus
delivered was final, and that the world, in contentment, must submit to
her will. She had again succeeded in putting her iron heel on the neck
of knowledge, had invoked against it the hatred of Christendom, and
reviled it as the monstrous but legitimate issue of the detested
Mohammedanism.

[Sidenote: Vitality of Frederick's principles.] But the fate of men
is by no means an indication of the fate of principles. The fall of
the Emperor Frederick was not followed by the destruction of the
influences he represented. These not only survived him, but were
destined, in the end, to overcome the power which had transiently
overthrown them. We are now entering on the history of a period
which offers not only exterior opposition to the current doctrines,
but, what is more ominous, interior mutiny. Notwithstanding the
awful persecutions in the South of France--notwithstanding the
establishment of auricular confession as a detective means, and
the Inquisition as a weapon of punishment--notwithstanding the
influence of the French king, St. Louis, canonized by the grateful
Church--heresy, instead of being extirpated, extended itself among
the laity, and even spre