His philosophical indifference to religion did not prevent him from posing as the representative of the orthodox faith and the restorer of primitive Christianity. He compared himself to Elias and to Christ. He humbly solicited enrolment among the monks of Casamara. In a communication to the successor of St. Francis of Assis, he declared his belief in the Scriptures and his hope of eternal salvation. He presided over important religious festivals and assumed the most prominent part in the celebration of their ceremonies. On his death-bed, he wished, in token of his pretended reverence for the humblest ministers of the Gospel, to be clothed with the cowl of a Cistercian friar. Policy caused him to thus profess allegiance to the Church, but there is little doubt that he was an unbeliever, perhaps an atheist. In unguarded moments he scoffed at all religion. One of his favorite jests was in ridicule of the Eucharist. He criticised Divine Wisdom for the selection of the barren land of Palestine, instead of the rich and fertile Sicily, as the abode of the chosen people. In the very cradle of Christianity, at the spot once sanctified by the presence of the Saviour, he edified his Moslem hosts by comparing the throngs of pilgrims who crowded to the shrine to droves of the most stupid and unclean of animals. His unflinching antagonism to the Papacy caused the clergy and the rabble to regard him as Antichrist. He was deposed by the Council of Lyons; was four times excommunicated by the Pope; and was repeatedly disciplined by inferior prelates. In the implacable contest which broke his power and destroyed his house, the ecclesiastical autocracy of Rome, for the moment, triumphed. The civilization he had fostered was checked and obscured. His treasures were scattered. His libraries disappeared. The last of his race perished ignominiously on the scaffold. But the spirit of independent thought which he promoted, and whose exercise he bequeathed to posterity, survived the attack of intolerance and tyranny, to be revived in a better and a more auspicious age.