Note 262 — Chapter IX · CHRISTENDOM IN THE MIDDLE AGES

Frederick was in reality superstitious enough; he worshipped relics; and he was nearly as merciless as the popes to rebellious heretics and Manicheans;262 his cruelty proceeding, seemingly, on the belief that insubordination to the emperor was sure to follow intellectual as distinguished from political revolt against the Church. He was absolutely tolerant to Jews and Moslems,263 and had trusted Moslem counsellors, thereby specially evoking the wrath of the Church. Greatly concerned to acquire the lore of the Arabs,264 he gave his favour and protection to Michael Scotus, the first translator of portions of Averroës into Latin,265 and presumptively himself a heretic of the Averroïst stamp; whence the legend of his wizardry, adopted by Dante.266 Thus the doubting and persecuting emperor assisted at the birth of the philosophic movement which for centuries was most closely associated with unbelief in Christendom. For the rest, he is recorded to have ridiculed the doctrine of the Virgin Birth, the viaticum, and other dogmas, “as being repugnant to reason and to nature”;267 and his general hostility to the Pope would tend to make him a bad Churchman. Indeed the testimonies, both Christian and Moslem, as to his freethinking are too clear to be set aside.268 Certainly no monarch of that or any age was more eagerly interested in every form of culture, or did more, on tyrannous lines, to promote it;269 and to him rather than to Simon de Montfort Europe owes the admission of representatives of cities to Parliaments.270 Of his son Manfred it is recorded that he was a thorough Epicurean, believing neither in God nor in the saints.271 But positive unbelief in a future state, mockery of the Christian religion, and even denial of deity—usually in private, and never in writing—are frequently complained of by the clerical writers of the time in France and Italy;272 while in Spain Alfonso the Wise, about 1260, speaks of a common unbelief in immortality, alike as to heaven and hell; and the Council of Tarragona in 1291 decrees punishments against such unbelievers.273 In Italy, not unnaturally, they were most commonly found among the Ghibelline or imperial party, the opponents of the papacy, despite imperial orthodoxy. “Incredulity, affected or real, was for the oppressed Ghibellines a way among others of distinguishing themselves from the Guelph oppressors.”274