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of the Mohammedans of Sicily, continued the war. The

Popes accused him of heresy. It is true that Frederick seems

to have felt a deep and serious contempt for the rough Christian

world of the North, for the boorish German Knights and

the intriguing Italian priests. But he held his tongue, went

on a Crusade and took Jerusalem from the infidel and was

duly crowned as King of the Holy City. Even this act did not

placate the Popes. They deposed Frederick and gave his

Italian possessions to Charles of Anjou, the brother of that

King Louis of France who became famous as Saint Louis.

This led to more warfare. Conrad V, the son of Conrad IV,

and the last of the Hohenstaufens, tried to regain the kingdom,

and was defeated and decapitated at Naples. But twenty years

later, the French who had made themselves thoroughly unpopular

in Sicily were all murdered during the so-called Sicilian

Vespers, and so it went.

The quarrel between the Popes and the Emperors was

never settled, but after a while the two enemies learned to

leave each other alone.

In the year 1278, Rudolph of Hapsburg was elected Emperor.

He did not take the trouble to go to Rome to be

crowned. The Popes did not object and in turn they kept

away from Germany. This meant peace but two entire centuries

which might have been used for the purpose of internal

organisation had been wasted in useless warfare.

It is an ill wind however that bloweth no good to some one.

The little cities of Italy, by a process of careful balancing,

had managed to increase their power and their independence

at the expense of both Emperors and Popes. When the rush

for the Holy Land began, they were able to handle the transportation

problem of the thousands of eager pilgrims who were

clamoring for passage, and at the end of the Crusades they

had built themselves such strong defences of brick and of gold

that they could defy Pope and Emperor with equal indifference.

Church and State fought each other and a third party--the

mediaeval city--ran away with the spoils.

THE CRUSADES

BUT ALL THESE DIFFERENT QUARRELS

WERE FORGOTTEN WHEN THE TURKS

TOOK THE HOLY LAND, DESECRATED THE

HOLY PLACES AND INTERFERED SERIOUSLY

WITH THE TRADE FROM EAST TO

WEST. EUROPE WENT CRUSADING

DURING three centuries there had been peace between Christians

and Moslems except in Spain and in the eastern Roman

Empire, the two states defending the gateways of Europe.

The Mohammedans having conquered Syria in the seventh

century were in possession of the Holy Land. But they regarded

Jesus as a great prophet (though not quite as great

as Mohammed), and they did not interfere with the pilgrims

who wished to pray in the church which Saint Helena, the

mother of the Emperor Constantine, had built on the spot of

the Holy Grave. But early in the eleventh century, a Tartar

tribe from the wilds of Asia, called the Seljuks or Turks,

became masters of the Mohammedan state in western Asia and

then the period of tolerance came to an end. The Turks took

all of Asia Minor away from the eastern Roman Emperors

and they made an end to the trade between east and west.

Alexis, the Emperor, who rarely saw anything of his Christian

neighbours of the west, appealed for help and pointed to

the danger which threatened Europe should the Turks take

Constantinople.

The Italian cities which had established colonies along the

coast of Asia Minor and Palestine, in fear for their possessions,

reported terrible stories of Turkish atrocities and Christian

suffering. All Europe got excited.

Pope Urban II, a Frenchman from Reims, who had been

educated at the same famous cloister of Cluny which had

trained Gregory VII, thought that the time had come for

action. The general state of Europe was far from satisfactory.

The primitive agricultural methods of that day (unchanged

since Roman times) caused a constant scarcity of food. There

was unemployment and hunger and these