ated and made Emperor, and the
great things which came to pass._

[Sidenote: Inf. x. 119; xiii. 59, 68, 75; xxiii. 66. Purg. xvi. 117.
Par. iii. 120. Convivio iv. Canzone, ver. 21; also cap. 3: 37-44; 10:
6-12. De Vulg. El. i. 12: 20-35. Epist. vi. (5) 126-135. Par. iii.
118-120.]

[Sidenote: Inf. x. 119.]

[Sidenote: Cf. Purg. xvi. 115-117.]

Sec. 1.--In the year of Christ 1220, on the day of St. Cecilia in
November, there was crowned and consecrated Emperor at Rome Frederick
II., king of Sicily, son of the Emperor Henry of Suabia, and of the
Empress Constance, by Pope Honorius III., with great honour. In the
beginning he was a friend of the Church, and well might he be, so many
benefits and favours had he received from the Church, for through the
Church his father Henry had for wife Constance, queen of Sicily, and
for dowry the said realm, and the kingdom of Apulia; and when his
father was dead, he being left a little child, was cared for and
guarded by the Church as by a mother, and also his kingdom was
defended, and he was elected king of the Romans against the Emperor
Otho IV., and he was afterwards crowned Emperor, as aforesaid. But he,
son of ingratitude that he was, not acknowledging Holy Church as a
mother, but as a hostile stepmother, in all things was her enemy and
persecutor, he and his sons, almost more than his precursors, as
hereafter we shall make mention. This Frederick reigned thirty years
as Emperor, and was a man of great capacity and of great valour, wise
in books, and of natural intelligence, universal in all things; was
acquainted with the Latin tongue, and with our vernacular, with
German and French, Greek and Arabic, of abounding talents, liberal and
courteous in giving, courageous and prudent in arms, and was much
feared. And he was dissolute and licentious after divers fashions, and
had many concubines and catamites, after the manner of the Saracens,
and he sought indulgence in all bodily pleasures, and led an epicurean
life, not taking account that there were ever another life; and this
was one chief cause why he became the enemy of the clergy and of Holy
Church. And the other was his greed in taking and sequestrating the
revenues of Holy Church, to squander them evilly. And many monasteries
and churches he destroyed in his kingdom of Sicily and Apulia, and
throughout all Italy, and this, either through his own vices and
defects, or by reason of the rulers of Holy Church who could