Note 78 — Chapter III

See Cantù, Gli Eretici d'Italia, vol. i. Discorso 5, and the notes appended to it, for Frederick's edicts and letters to Gregory IX. upon this matter of heresy. The Emperor treats of Heretica Pravitas as a crime against society, and such, indeed, it then appeared according to the mediaeval ideal of Christendom united under Church and Empire. Yet Frederick himself, it will be remembered, died under the ban of the Church, and was placed by Dante among the heresiarchs in the tenth circle of Hell. We now regard him justly as one of the precursors of the Renaissance. But at the beginning of his reign, in his peculiar attitude of Holy Roman Emperor, he had to proceed with rigor against free-thinkers in religion. They were foes to the mediseval order, of which he was the secular head.