Nobles were
themselves free, it is conceded, but not the people. The king
was too weak, too restricted in his action by the feudal
constitution to reach them, and the higher clergy were ex officio
sovereigns, princes, barons, or feudal lords, and were led by
their private interests to act with the feudal nobility, save
when that nobility threatened the temporalities of the church.
The only reliance, under God, left in feudal times to the poor
people was in the lower ranks of the clergy, especially of the
regular clergy. All the great German emperors in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries, who saw the evils of feudalism, and
attempted to break it up and revive imperial Rome, became
involved in quarrels with the chiefs of the religious society,
and failed, because the interest of the Popes, as feudal
sovereigns and Italian princes, and the interests of the
dignified clergy, were for the time bound up with the feudal
society, though their Roman culture and civilization made them at
heart hostile to it. The student of history, however strong his
filial affection towards the visible head of the church, cannot
help admiring the grandeur of the political views of Frederic the
Second, the greatest and last of the Hohenstaufen, or refrain
from dropping a tear over his sad failure. He had great faults
as a man, but he had rare genius as a statesman; and it is some
consolation to know that he died a Christian death, in charity
with all men, after having received the last sacraments of his
religion.
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