But Frederick still delayed, for he saw little chance of winning the glory he coveted under present conditions in the East. He was not going to send an army thither merely to put John of Brienne back on the throne of Jerusalem. Even the news of the loss of Damietta only served to point the moral that without a huge army, for which time and money were absolutely necessary, supreme success could not be achieved. Then John of Brienne himself landed in Europe to ask in person for the help that was so long in coming. He {209} brought with him his beautiful daughter, Yolande, and her presence inspired the Pope with new hopes. He now proposed that the Emperor Frederick should marry the maiden and go forth to the Holy War as the heir of John of Brienne. The marriage took place in 1225, more than eleven years after Frederick's vow as a Crusader had first been taken. Almost immediately the Emperor showed his real motive in the marriage by declaring that as John held his royal rights only through his wife, they passed on her death to her daughter, through whom they were now held by her husband, and the Emperor therefore at once proclaimed himself "King of Jerusalem." Not even then, after the unavailing opposition of John had died away, did Frederick start upon the Crusade. In his beautiful Sicilian kingdom, surrounded by learned Jews, cultivated Saracens, Norman troubadours and Italian poets, he had become too easy-going, too tolerant of all forms of faith or of none, to have any real religious motive to stimulate his actions. He was, indeed, inclined to meet even the Sultan of Egypt himself on terms of the friendliest equality. But Honorius had been succeeded as Pope by the proud and domineering Gregory IX., to whom this spirit of dallying was loathsome. An imperative letter summoning the Emperor to fulfil his broken vow seemed at first to have some real effect, and in the August of 1227 a large army assembled at Brindisi. There the men were seized by fever, and though Frederick actually set sail with the fleet, it was only to return after three days to the harbour of Otranto, while the host dispersed. The Pope was furious, and, paying no heed to the Emperor's plea of sickness, proceeded to excommunicate, "with bell, book and candle," one whom he said had been nursed, tended, {210} and aided by the Church, only to cheat her with false hopes and trickery. A pretty quarrel now arose. Frederick appealed to the sovereigns of Europe, declaring that his illness had been real and that "the Christian charity which should hold all things together is dried at its very source." Meantime he treated the ban of excommunication with contempt.