f all Christians." And this said and declared, he
caused the process against the said Emperor to be published; and
condemned him and excommunicated him as a heretic and persecutor of
Holy Church, laying to his charge many foul crimes proved against
him; and he deprived him of the lordship of the Empire, and of the
realm of Sicily, and of that of Jerusalem, absolving from all fealty
and oaths all his barons and subjects, excommunicating whoever should
obey him, or should give him aid or favour, or further should call him
Emperor or king. And the said sentence was passed at the said council
at Lyons on the Rhone, the year of Christ 1245, the 17th of July. The
principal causes why Frederick was condemned were four: first,
forasmuch as when the Church invested him with the realm of Sicily and
of Apulia, and afterwards with the Empire, he swore to the Church
before his barons, and before the Emperor Baldwin of Constantinople,
and before all the court of Rome, to defend Holy Church in all her
honours and rights against all men, and to pay the rightful tribute,
and to restore all the possessions and jurisdictions of Holy Church,
of the which things he had done the contrary, and was perjured, and
treacherous, and had vilely and wrongfully defamed Pope Gregory IX.
and his cardinals by his letters throughout the whole world. The
second thing was, that he broke the peace made by him with the Church,
not remembering the pardons granted to him by withdrawal of the
excommunications, and with respect to all the misdeeds done by him
against Holy Church; and in that peace he had sworn and promised never
to injure those who had been with the Church against him; but he had
done quite the contrary, seeing that he had scattered them all, either
by death or by exile, them and their families, taking away their
possessions, and had not restored either to the Templars or to the
Hospitallers their mansions which he had occupied, the which by the
articles of the peace he had promised to restore and give back; and
by force he had kept vacant eleven archbishoprics, with many
bishoprics and abbeys in the Empire and in the Kingdom, not suffering
those who were duly elected by the Pope to hold or to till them; doing
violence and extortions on sacred persons, constraining them to appear
and plead before his bailiffs and secular lords. The third cause was
the sacrilege he had done, when by the galleys of Pisa, and by his son
King Enzo, he had taken the c