Romans, who drove him three times out of the city, Frederick had frequent opportunities of showing himself serviceable to the pope by giving direct aid or mediating in his favour. Nevertheless he continually conspired with the rebellious Lombards, and in A.D. 1239 renewed the ban against the emperor. The pope who had hitherto only charged Frederick with a tendency to freethinking, as well as an inclination to favour the Saracens (§ 95, 1), and to maintain friendly intercourse with the Syrian sultans, now accused him of flippant infidelity. The emperor, it was said, had among other things declared that the birth of the Saviour by a virgin was a fable, and that Jesus, Moses and Mohammed were the three greatest impostors the world had ever seen,--a form of unbelief which spread very widely in consequence of the crusades. Manifestoes and counter-manifestoes sought to outdo one another in their violence. And while the wild hordes of the Mongols were overspreading unopposed the whole of Eastern Europe, the emperor’s troops were victoriously pressing forward to the gates of Rome, and his ships were preventing the meeting of the council summoned against him by catching the prelates who in spite of his prohibition were hastening to it. The pope died in A.D. 1241, and was followed in seventeen days by his successor Cœlestine IV. § 96.20. For almost two years the papal chair remained vacant. Then this position was won by =Innocent IV.=, A.D. 1243-1254, who as cardinal had been friendly to the emperor, but as pope was a most bitter enemy to him and to his house. The negotiations about the removal of the ban were broken off, and Innocent escaped to France, where at the =First Lyonese or 13th Œcumenical Council of A.D. 1245=, attended by scarcely any but Frenchmen and Spaniards, he renewed the excommunication of the emperor, and declared him as a blasphemer and robber of the church deprived of his throne. Once again with the most abject humility Frederick sued for reconciliation with the church. The pope, however, wished not for reconciliation, but the destruction of the whole “viper brood” of the Hohenstaufens. But the rival king, Henry Raspe of Thuringia, set up by the papal party in Germany, and William of Holland, who was put forward after his death in A.D. 1247, could not maintain their position against Frederick’s son, Conrad IV., who as early as A.D. 1235 had been elected in place of his rebel brother Henry as king of the Romans. Even in Italy the fortune of war favoured at first the imperial arms. At the siege of Parma, which was disloyal, the tide began to turn. The sorely pressed citizens made a sally in A.D. 1248, while Frederick was away at a hunt, and roused to courage by despair, put his army to flight. His brave son, Enzio, king of Sardinia and governor of Northern Italy, fell in A.D. 1249 into