was too distracted for such an enterprise, and the popes dreaded imperial domination quite as much as heresy. There was bitter irony in the reply of Frederic II., when, in 1236, he was subduing the rebellious Lombards, and he answered the clamor of Gregory IX., who called upon him to transfer his arms to Syria, by pointing out that the Milanese were much worse than Saracens, and their subjugation much more important.[214] We have no means of obtaining an approximate estimate of the Waldenses, but in some districts they must have been almost as numerous as the Cathari. The remains of the Arnaldistæ and Umiliati had eagerly welcomed the missionaries of the Poor Men of Lyons, and had not only adopted their tenets, but had pushed them to a further development in antagonism to Rome. As early as 1206 we see Innocent III. alluding to Umiliati and Poor Men of Lyons as synonymous expressions, and endeavoring with little success to effect their expulsion from Faenza, where they were spreading and infecting the people. In Milan they had built a school where they publicly taught their doctrines; this was at length torn down by a zealous archbishop, and when, in 1209, Durán de Huesca sought to bring them back to the fold, a hundred or more of them consented to be reconciled if the building were restored to them. Evidently they had little to dread from active persecution, and subsequent letters of Innocent show them to be still flourishing there. The Waldenses who were burned at Strassburg in 1212 admitted that their chief resided in Milan, and that they were in the habit of collecting money and remitting it to him.[215]