^24 ITALY. that the foothold of heresy was secure, and that the hopes based on the death of Frederic II. were not destined to fruition. Every motive had long conspired to render the Church eager for the destruction of Ezzehn, who was its most dreaded antagonist, and every expedient had been tried to reduce him to subjection. As far back as 1221 Gregory IX., then legate in Lombardy, had ex- torted from him assurances of his hatred of heresy. In 1231 his sons, Ezzelin and Alberico, were at the papal court expressing horror at his crimes and promising to deliver him up for trial as a heretic if he would not reform, in order to escape the disinherit- ance which they would otherwise incur under Frederic's laws. They pledged themselves, moreover, to deliver to him letters from Gregory, dated September 1, in which he was bitterly reproached for his protection of heretics, and told that if he would humbly acknowledge his errors and expel all heretics from his lands he might come within two months to the Holy See, prepared to obey implicitly all commands laid upon him; otherwise heaven and earth would be invoked against him, his lands should be aban- doned to seizure, and he, who was already a scandal and a horror to men, should become an eternal opprobrium.^ Whether the sons dutifully presented to their father this por- tentous epistle does not appear, nor is it of any importance save as showing how EzzeUn was already regarded as the mainstay of heresy, and how habitually zeal for the faith was made to cover the ambitious political designs of the Church. Ezzelin's courage never wavered, and his adventurous career was pursued with scarce a check. When Frederic II. overcame the resistance of Lombardy, he gave, in 1238, his natural daughter Selvaggia to Ezzelin in marriage and created him imperial vicar. The unani- mous testimony of the ecclesiastical chroniclers represents him as a monster whose crimes almost transcend the capacity for evil of human nature, but the unreheved blackness of the picture defeats the object of the painter. Possibly he may have been among the worst of the Itahan despots of the time, when faithlessness and contempt for human suffering were the rule, but the long un- broken success which attended him shows that he must have had ■qualities which attached men to him, and the report that he was
- Epistt. Ssecul. XIII. T. I. No. 451.— Rayuald. ann. 1231, No. 20-22.
