Nor was there anything in the policy of the time which made Frederick unwilling to further a project which he had all along designed. From the moment of his elevation to the See of Rome Gregory IX. had displayed a firm and unbending temper towards the Emperor. Frederick felt the first instances of his harshness in 1227, when, returning sick and feeble from the baths of Pozzuoli, he found himself excommunicated because he had not sailed to Palestine with the Crusade. This severe sentence was renewed in 1228. Frederick reached the Holy Land that year, but only to meet a mutinous spirit, encouraged among the Crusaders there by the Pope’s orders. On his return in 1229 the sharp edge of discipline was again drawn against him, and we need not wonder if such repeated severity at last convinced the Emperor that there was no hope of living at peace with Rome, nor any reason to study further accommodations with one who seemed determined to be his enemy. The moment had now come when restraints, long submitted to for the sake of policy, being removed, Frederick might well bethink him of his former plans so long held in reserve, and take measures to carry out his purpose of enriching the learned world with the prohibited books of Averroës. This plan not only promised to fulfil a long cherished desire and mortify an implacable foe, it must also have presented itself in the light of a welcome concession made to a deserving servant of the Crown. Michael Scot had laboured long to form the works in question. His interest, as well as every other reason, now demanded that they should lie no longer concealed. The fame he was certain to gain by this publication would be the best consolation, perhaps the only one now possible, for his disappointments in the ecclesiastical career. To employ him actively in the matter may well have appeared not only just, considering his previous interest in it, but the best cure for a spirit sadly disordered and depressed. We need not wonder that Frederick at last fully formed his resolution, or that he chose Michael Scot as the means of carrying out a publication that was now definitely determined on.