The pontificate of Gregory IX is in more ways than one a critical period in the history of the repression of heresy. It saw the first clear authorization of the death penalty for the obdurate heretic. Capital punishment had at times been shown to be the popular remedy for heresy; it had sometimes been adopted by the secular arm, sometimes approved by the clergy. But it had not been legalized in the empire, formally sanctioned by the temporal law of the world, as the general rule of Christendom. The first public law of Europe enjoining it was the work of the Emperor Frederick II. That the most extraordinary member of the house of Hohenstaufen, being a man who despite a curious strain of superstition in him was a rationalist and a sceptic, should have been responsible for this legislation may at first sight appear astonishing. An Italian, not a German, brought up among the half Greek, half Saracen influences of Sicily, drawing his inspiration rather from Averrhoës and Arab free-thought than from any Christian source, amazingly versatile, poet, lover of learning, statesman, diplomatist, his outlook upon the world was altogether individual, his intellect powerful and singular, untrammelled by convention. He was a medley of strange contradictions: he protected Jews and Mussulmans; he persecuted heretics. The Averrhoïst heretics from Islam interested him, the heretics from Catholicism not at all. On November 22, 1220, Frederick produced his first constitution for Lombardy.[310] This repealed the penalties of Frederick Barbarossa in his edict of 1184, confiscation of property and outlawry, penalties severe enough, because outlawry in the Middle Ages was a terrible punishment, putting the culprit at any man’s mercy. This first constitution appears to have been inspired by Honorius III.[311] A second constitution of March 1224, published at Catania for the whole of Lombardy, first introduced the death penalty—death at the stake; but at the discretion of the judge, the loss of the tongue might be substituted.[312] In 1231 in the Constitutions of Melfi, which applied indeed only to Sicily, this element of choice was no longer included, and the penalty was made absolutely death by fire. In 1238 this regulation was extended to the empire, being afterwards introduced into the Sachenspiegel and Schwabenspiegel of Germany.[313] Thus death by fire became the recognized punishment for heresy in the empire. In 1226 Louis IX issued ordinances prescribing severe punishments for heretics; but at the time the use of the stake was general in France, and it was formally accepted as the legal punishment in the _Etablissements_ of Louis IX in 1270.[314]