The ebb from the high-water mark of the Emperor’s fortunes was marked by the revolt and successful resistance of the Guelf city of Parma to the imperial forces--a defeat Frederick might have wiped out in fresh victory had not his own health begun to fail. In 1250 he died, still excommunicate, snatched away to hell, according to his enemies, not dead, according to many who from love or hate believed his personality of more than human endurance. Yet Frederick, whether for good or ill, had perished, and with him his imperial ambitions. Popes might tremble at other nightmares, but the supremacy of the Holy Roman Empire over Italy would no more haunt their dreams for many years. Naples also, to whose conquest and government he had devoted the best of his brain and judgement, was torn from his heirs and presented by his papal enemy to the French House of Anjou. Struggling against these usurpers the last of the royal line of Hohenstaufen, Conradin, son of Conrad, a lad of fifteen, gallant and reckless as his grandfather, was captured in battle and beheaded. Frederick had destroyed in Germany and built on sand elsewhere; and of all his conquests and achievements only their memory was to dazzle after-generations. _Stupor et Gloria Mundi_ he was called by those who knew him, and in spite of his ultimate failure and his vices he still remains a ‘wonder of the world’, set above enemies and friends by his personality, the glory of his courage, his audacity, and his strength of purpose. _Supplementary Dates. For Chronological Summary, see pp. 368-73._ Pope Alexander III 1159-81 Emperor Philip II 1197-1208 Emperor Otto IV 1197-1215 Fourth Lateran Council 1215 The Sixth Crusade 1228-9 Battle of Cortenuova 1237 Death of Conradin 1268 XV LEARNING AND ECCLESIASTICAL ORGANIZATION IN THE MIDDLE AGES The word ‘progress’ implies to modern men and women a moving forward towards a perfection as yet unknown, freshly imagined indeed by each generation: to the Middle Ages it meant rather a peering back through the mist of barbarian invasions to an idealized Christian Rome. Inspiration lay in the past, not merely in such political conceptions as the Holy Roman Empire, but in the domain of art and thought, where too often tradition laid her choking grip upon originality struggling for expression.