which was reserved for the royal hunting, was, with the still existing castle of Castel del Monte, a striking example of the severe yet elegant style which he had adopted. [Sidenote: Frederick and Honorius III., 1216–1227.] The successor of Innocent III. was Honorius III., a member of the noble Roman house of Savelli. He was a gentle, earnest, mild-mannered man, who had grown grey while discharging a monotonous round of financial business in the papal Curia. He was neither a statesman nor a zealot, yet he was a high-minded and religious prelate, and intent above all things upon renewing the Crusades. He had been tutor of Frederick, and wished him well. But though Honorius’ conciliatory temper gave the young king ample opportunities for working out his Sicilian policy, there were grave matters outstanding that could not but give rise to difficulties between the Papacy and its former ward. Frederick had promised Innocent III. to prevent the permanent union of the Empire and Sicily by investing his young son Henry with his Italian kingdom, to be held as a fief of the Papacy. He had also pledged himself to embark personally upon a Crusade. As success strengthened his love of power and impatience of external control, Frederick became unwilling to fulfil either of these obligations. Honorius urged him repeatedly to depart for the East to uphold the declining cause of the Cross. Frederick exhausted his ingenuity in piling up excuses for delay, and the meek Pope was content to accept them. At last, in April 1220, Frederick allowed his son Henry to be elected King of the Romans, and therefore his successor in the Empire as well as in Sicily. This was an impudent violation of his plighted word and an open defiance of the Pope. He had the effrontery to pretend to Honorius that the election had been made without his knowledge, and in September he returned from Germany to Italy, professing the utmost deference to the papal authority, and offering a settlement of the long-outstanding dispute about the inheritance of the Countess Matilda. He was now profuse in promises to the Pope and clergy. In November 1220 the long-suffering Honorius crowned him Emperor at Rome. The Pope, moreover, allowed him to keep Sicily for his lifetime, on condition that he maintained therein a separate administration from that of the Empire. In return for all this, Frederick again solemnly took the Cross, and lavished concessions on the Church. He annulled all laws hostile to the privileges of the clergy. He declared the Church exempt from all taxes, and conferred on all ecclesiastical persons absolute immunity from lay jurisdiction. He sacrificed the rights of the municipalities in favour of the prelates, and he promised to lend the whole force of the secular power to supplement the Church’s efforts for the extirpation of heresy. If he hoped to shift on the towns and the heretics some of the worst disabilities that he had imposed upon