ed to
them the city of Tusculum and its territory, which had rebelled
against the Romans; which city was all destroyed and laid waste by the
Romans, and was never afterwards rebuilt. And when the said Henry was
come to Rome he found that the said Pope Clement was dead, which had
sent for him; and Pope Celestine, a native of Rome, had been elected
by the cardinals, so that the said Henry was present at his
consecration, which took place on Easter Day of the Resurrection, in
April, in the year of Christ 1192; and he lived as Pope six years and
eight months and eleven days. And when Celestine had become Pope, on
the second day after his consecration, he crowned the said Henry
emperor. And before the said Henry departed from Germany, the Church
was at variance with Tancred, king of Sicily and of Apulia (son to the
other Tancred, which was sister's son to Robert Guiscard, as we made
mention in the chapter wherein we treated of the said Robert), by
reason that he did not, as he should, faithfully pay tribute to the
Church, and that he presented bishops and archbishops to benefices at
his pleasure to the shame of the Pope and of the Church; wherefore the
said Pope Clement treated with the archbishop of Palermo to take away
the kingdom of Sicily and Apulia from the said Tancred, and gave order
to the said archbishop that Constance, sister of King William and
rightful heiress of the realm of Sicily, which was a nun in Palermo,
as we afore made mention, and was already more than fifty years old,
should leave the convent, and he gave her dispensation that she might
return to the world and enter into matrimony; and the said archbishop
caused her secretly to depart from Sicily and come to Rome, and the
Church gave her to wife to the said Emperor Henry, whence a little
while after was born the Emperor Frederick II., which brought such
persecutions upon the Church, as we will tell hereafter in treating of
him. And it was not without Divine occasioning and judgment that such
a baneful heir must needs be the issue, being born of a holy nun, and
she more than fifty-two years old, when it is almost impossible for a
woman to bear a child; so that he was born of two contradictions--against
spiritual laws, and, in a sense, against natural laws. And we find,
when the Empress Constance was pregnant with Frederick, there was
doubt in Sicily and throughout all the realm of Apulia whether, by
reason of her advanced age, she could be pregnant; for