Normans, Frederick and Manfred the Suabians, and what they praise in them is the sound political basis which they knew how to establish and to maintain with a firm hand. _Eo tempore,_ says Falcando of Roger, _Regnum Sicilia, strenuis et præclaris viris abundans, cum terra marique plurimum posset, vicinis circumquoque gentibus terrorem incusserat, summaque pace ac tranquillitate maxima fruebatur._ And the so-called Jamsilla, of Frederick II: _Vir fuit magni cordis, sed magnanitatem suam multa, qua in eo fuit, sapientia superavit, ut nequaquam impetus eum ad aliquid faciendum impelleret, sed ad omnia cum rationis maturitate procederet;... utpote qui philosophisæ studiosus erat quam et ipse in se coluit, et in regno suo propagare ordinavit. Tunc quidem ipsius felici tempore in regno Siciliæ erant litterati pauci vel nulli; ipse vero imperator liberalium artium et omnis approbatæ scientia scholas in regno ipso constituit ... ut omnis conditionis et fortuna homines nullius occasione indigentiæ a philosophiæ studio retraherentur._ The state, profane culture, 'philosophy,' impersonated in the heresiarch Frederick, are thus set in clear relief. And while on the one hand more and more laical theories of the state become joined to these political and cultural currents (from Dante, indeed from Thomas Aquinas, to Marsilio of Padua), and the first outlines of literary history (lives of the poets and of men famous for their knowledge, and the rise of vernacular literatures) and histories of manners (as in certain passages in Ricobaldo of Ferrara), on the other hand scholasticism found its way to such problems and conceptions by means of the works of Aristotle, which represented as it were a first brief summary of ancient knowledge. It is unnecessary to say that Dante's poem is the chief monument of this condition of spirit, where the ideas of the Middle Ages are maintained, but the political, poetical, and philosophical affections, the love of fame and of glory, prove their vigour, although subordinated to those ideas and restrained, as far as possible, by them.