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    generally the case ; though , certainly , it was done to a considerable extent . On the other hand , the protection and patronage of the imperial party has been too often considered as having been the ' main support and cause of opposition to the papal faith . The reverse was in most cases the truth . There was , abundant freedom of opinion among Frederic and his friends ;

    but it was indifference to all religion , and hone joined more ardently than they did , from motives of policy , in the persecution of conscientious believers . The atheism of these men , though it certainly contributed to bring the papal corruptions into disrepute , must not be confounded with the religious fervour of the sectaries .

    Frederic II . being indebted ta the Pope for his crown , on the very day of his coronation published a constitution , ( so were the imperial ordinances called , ) with the approbation of the Pope , in which , among other things , he placed the Catari , Gazari , Patareni , Arnaldisti , and all denominations of heretics , under the imperial ban , and ordered their properties to be conn ' s-

    cated . This ban rendered all persons subject to it liable to be killed with impunity by any one . But it was not long before the court of Rome and the Emperor quarrelled ^ Frederic was fi rst excommunicated for not going to the Crusade , and afterwards for going to it his own way ; and after a perpetual interchange of injuries and insults he died in 1250 , still under the papal

    sentence . During all these quarrels , ( in which the proceedings of both parties were equally fatal to religion , ) arid in the intervals of peace between them , the Emperor ' s policy was continually to conciliate and flatter the court of Rome , when he could do so without injury to himself . The Dominicans , who had been at first busy in the Crusades against the foreign heretics , when there was no more war of that sort to be made , piously turned their thoughts

    towards keeping home clear of them . They obtained authority from the court of Rome , to inquire after those whom they suspected of an impure faith , and to denounce them to the bishops and the secular power , in order that they might punish them if convicted of heresy . And thus arose the machinery of the Inquisition . Frederic , at the instigation of the Pope , published four terrible constitutions against heretics , and by one , in particular , he ordered them to be burned alive ; and this appears to be

    the first law in which such punishment is formally denounced for heresy . In doing this the Emperor ' s view was not only to conciliate the good-will of the court of Rome , and get the credit of orthodoxy , but to diminish the power of his eternal enemies , the Lombard cities , where religious freedom was connected with political , where , in fact , there was the greatest number of heretics , and where he , perhaps , hoped that the ferocity of the friars would be favourable to him in cre . ating schisms , bringing the papal authority into discredit , and making the Guelphs turn Ghibelhnes , in their own

    defence . It is no wonder , in this view , that he so loudly denounced Milan as the rendezvous of heretics ; since it was the most powerful of the towns which had leagued against him and his predecessor Frederic I , The friars and the court of Rome were however far more cunning than he , for when armecj with the imperial protection they exercised their authority against political enemies as well as heretics ; they exerted themselves in favour of the Pope , whom alone they Jooked upon as their sovereign and lord ; and the very weapons put into their hands by the Emperor were turned against his friends and partisans . In this way it came to be asserted or insinuated that heretic and uhibejline were one and the same thing * We read , that whilst

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    32 Review . M ' —Cries Italian Reformation .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1828, page 32, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2556/page/32/