Page:Christianity in China, Tartary, and Thibet Volume I.djvu/165

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CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA, ETC.
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QUARREL OF THE POPE AND EMPEROR. 153 religion ; and by restoring tranquillity to the Christian world, enable us also to afford you more effectual help." * Unfortunately for Hungary, the quarrel between the Pope and the Emperor, instead of being reconciled, became more violent than ever, and the partisans of Gregory the Ninth reproached Frederick Barbarossa with the calamities by which the Christian world was afflicted. Some even went so far as to accuse him of having called in the Tartars to Europe, and excited them secretly against the Catholics. f He had, in fact, contented himself with exhorting the Christian princes to take up arms, and had expressed himself on the subject in such choice phrases, and with such an affec- tation of eloquence, as to justify, in a great measure, the reproach addressed to him by the Pope, that in the presence of the Tartars, he behaved more like an idle pompous orator making speeches, than a Christian Emperor at the head of his troops. Frederick does indeed seem to have tried to amuse himself with bons mots, even in the midst of the events which were making so terrible a sensation in Europe. We have said that in whatever direction the Mongols turned their arms, they sent forward envoys, who called on princes and people to submit themselves to the Grand Khan, and a refusal infallibly drew down on the country a Tartar invasion, and all the disasters and miseries that followed in its train. If submis sion was offered, the prince who consented to become

  • This letter is dated from the Later an, July 1. 1241. Odor Ray-

naldi, " Annal. Eccl.," torn. ii. p. 259. f " Verbis adversus infideles pugnare contentus, ipse ad clienses Roman* Ecclesiue obterendos, Tartaricum furorem exercebat." — Matt. Parisias, " Hist. Angl."