A war between such enemies must necessarily prove terrible, and spread desolation and confusion throughout Christendom. Gregory, on his return to Rome, repeated his excommunications in the church of St. Peter; Frederick, in order to revenge himself, seduced into his party most of the Roman nobles, who took up arms, insulted the sovereign pontiff at the very foot of the altar, and compelled him to abandon the capital of the Christian world. The pope, driven from his states, pursued his enemy with more fury than ever; and, availing himself of the formidable authority of the Church, he released the subjects of Frederick from their oath of fidelity, by reminding them that they could owe no obedience to those who _opposed themselves to God and his saints_. On his side, Frederick drove the Templars and Hospitallers from the kingdom of Naples, plundered the churches, and ill-treated all ecclesiastics whom he suspected of being attached to the party of the Holy See. He sent troops to ravage the patrimony of St. Peter, and enlisted the Saracens established in Sicily, under the banners of a Christian prince, to combat the head of the Christian church. The Roman states were ravaged, and given up to the horrors of war. The eyes of all Europe were fixed upon these deplorable scenes, and every one seemed to have forgotten the holy war. The Christians of Palestine, however, never ceased to implore aid from the West. A letter to the pope from the patriarch of Jerusalem, the bishops of Cæsarea and Bethlehem, and the grand masters of the three military orders, painted in strong colours the despair into which the Christians of the East had fallen, when they learnt that Frederick had deferred his departure. The pope received their complaints with expressions of sorrow and kindness, and communicated them to the faithful with greater zeal, from their furnishing him with a fresh opportunity of accusing the emperor of Germany. But the nations of the West, occupied with their own dangers, and terrified at the sight of the violent storms that had recently burst forth, were not in the least moved by either the lamentations from Palestine or the pressing exhortations of Gregory. In this unfortunate position of European affairs, the Christian colonies, abandoned to themselves and their own feeble resources, and a prey to the greatest disorders, must have been invaded and entirely destroyed, if Providence had not stirred up fresh discords among their enemies.