Note 260 — Chapter IX · CHRISTENDOM IN THE MIDDLE AGES
Reading edition
Freethought in south-western Europe, however, had a measure of countenance in very high places. In the thirteenth century the Emperor Frederick II had the repute of being an infidel in the double sense of being semi-Moslem260 and semi-atheist. By Pope Gregory IX he was openly charged, in a furious afterthought,261 with saying that the world had been deceived by three impostors (baratores)—Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed; also with putting Jesus much below the other two, and with delighting to call himself the forerunner of Antichrist.